Grumpy Doctor

by B. B. Hamel

  “He’s difficult,” I said, hedging. “But he’s going to teach me.”

  John gave Milo a look. “Back off, all right?”

  Milo shrugged like a sullen child and went back to eating. The other boys started talking about their attending, a man named Dr. Baker, who was perfectly nice and quite good at what he did—but there was no way he was anywhere near as talented as Piers.

  I wondered if I was missing out on something. The four guys, they seemed close to each other. I figured getting thrown into this gauntlet of training probably bonded people together, and I missed that, and wouldn’t get it, not under Piers. No way in hell he’d bring anyone else on board. He was mad enough about having to deal with me already.

  But still, it was nice to sit with a group and talk crap about the other people in the hospital, even if Milo was a dick, and they treated me like a little sister.

  None of that mattered once I stepped into the operating room.

  Sometimes, I dreamed about what it would be like. I pretended that I was a conductor with an entire orchestra hanging on my every movement, responding to the wave of my hands. My patients were that orchestra, and I could carry them through an operation with swift, exacting motions, exactly like Piers had done, perfect and pristine. No complications, no wasted motions, each one timed down to the millisecond.

  Just a daydream though. I was far from actually operating on my own. First, Piers had to let me assist. Then he’d let me do something minor, not an entire procedure, but something small, and under strict supervision. Slowly though, I’d take on more and more, until—

  Control. Complete control. My own operating room.

  After lunch we headed back down to the operating suites to find Dr. Baker. He had something scheduled for the next few hours, although I wasn’t sure exactly what—gallbladder removal, I thought, but hadn’t been paying attention when he talked about it. As I lagged after the group of guys, and they played grab-ass with each other like frat idiots, I caught sight of someone lingering near the elevators.

  He wore a dark nylon jacket and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. I was used to seeing civilians around the hospital—but he held a small notepad and a pen, and was scribbling something furiously. I stopped and frowned at him, trying to figure out what the guy was doing, and why he was near the surgical suites, when he looked up, and his eyes went wide.

  I didn’t recognize him, but he clearly recognized me. I watched him turn away and step onto the waiting elevator. He was older, in his fifties, pale skin, average face. I wouldn’t have noticed him in a crowd if it weren’t for that notepad. The elevator doors shut, and he disappeared.

  “You coming?” John lingered outside of the prep room. “Baker wants us scrubbed and in there. I think we might get to assist.”

  “Coming,” I said, but couldn’t stop looking at the elevators.

  Something about the guy, and something about the way he looked at me, had me totally spooked.

  “Lori,” John said, and I shook my head, pulling myself away.

  I joined them and did my best to forget about that man—but it nagged at me during the whole procedure.

  Dr. Baker was good. He was businesslike and efficient, and went out of his way to explain what he was doing for our benefit. The guys all hung on his every word, and I did my best to pay attention, but I found myself thinking about Piers the whole time, and comparing the two men. Where Piers was economical and exacting, Dr. Baker could be a little loose, a little slow. He was a good teacher though, and when we were finished, I felt like I’d picked up on some things at least.

  The guys laughed and joked with each other as we left and wandered into the hall. Dr. Baker hung back, speaking with the nurses and making notes. I slowed and stopped when I spotted Piers standing nearby, leaning up against a wall, chewing on the end of a pencil. He looked thoughtfully toward us, head tilted, and the guys went silent.

  “Your boss is here,” John whispered. “Better go.”

  I nodded. “See you, guys.” I walked over to Piers and crossed my arms as he looked at me.

  “How’d that go?” he asked, nodding his head toward the surgery suite.

  “Good,” I said. “Dr. Baker actually takes the time to explain what he’s doing.”

  He grunted. “Of course he does. That guy’s ten years past his prime. Come on.” He pushed off the wall and started walking.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I need you to do laundry for me.”

  I wanted to argue, but I was tired, and honestly, I thought laundry would be better than wandering around with the pack of frat bros back there. They were nice, and could be fun, but I needed a break from their crap. I followed after Piers and let him take me down into the lobby, then out into the street.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “There’s a laundromat around the corner.”

  I slowed and came to a stop. He didn’t notice for a bit and had to stop then come back, looking annoyed. “What now?”

  “You can’t treat me like I’m your personal assistant.”

  “It’s part of the learning process.”

  “Piers. I’m serious.”

  He scratched the back of his head. “How about this. You do my laundry, and I’ll let you sit in on another procedure tomorrow. What do you think?”

  I thought he was a total dick. I should be sitting in on all his procedures every single day. That was how I would learn.

  But I knew that if I pushed back, or if I told him that painfully obvious fact, then he’d just pull back and withhold what I needed, only because he could.

  Asshole. If he weren’t so good—

  “Fine,” I said. “But I’m not your damn maid.”

  He shrugged. “Never said you were.”

  He turned to start walking, but suddenly stopped. His face dropped and it looked like his skin went pale. His hands tugged at his shirt, and he squinted, staring at someone across the street.

  I followed his gaze. “Oh, hey,” I said, “I saw that guy earlier. Do you know him? Was that why he was staring at me?”

  Piers looked at me sharply. “What did you say?”

  “That guy,” I said weakly, nodding toward the man in the dark jacket and the baseball cap. He was already walking away, not hurrying, but moving with purpose. “He was watching me. Earlier, in the hospital. Do you know him?”

  He worked his jaw silently for a second then grabbed my arm. His hands were firm, but not rough as he tugged me along.

  I didn’t argue. His face was strained, like something was wrong, and I was more confused than anything else. He tugged me along until we reached the laundromat, then we ducked inside together.

  The place was mostly empty. An old woman sat near a dryer, reading a magazine. A bag of clothes sat unattended next to a washer—his stuff, I figured. He was so arrogant, he couldn’t imagine someone might steal from him.

  “Who was that back there?” I asked once he released me. I felt the strange desire for him to touch my skin again.

  “Nobody,” he said. “Laundry. Clean it.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait,” I said. “Hold on. That guy clearly knows you and he was watching me. What the hell’s going on?”

  Piers stood there and I could see the tension radiating from him. It was painfully obvious that he didn’t want to have this conversation, but I wasn’t about to let it go. That guy was weird, and the way he was reacting was even weirder.

  “He’s a private detective,” he said.

  “He’s a… what?”

  He looked back at me. His expression made me take a step back. His eyes were pained—his lips pulled into a grimace.

  “Private detective,” he said. “Hired to follow me around. And now you too, apparently.”

  “Hold on.” I held up my hands. “I don’t want anything to do with that.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “Get used to it.”

  “Why? I mean, what?”

  He kept staring, int
ense and gorgeous. I thought of that hand on my leg. I thought of him making me do laundry in exchange for doing his damn job. I thought of his fingers moving, so sure and perfect, like weaving a magic basket.

  “When you’re a surgeon, you get your control. But you also get the blame when things go wrong, and they will go wrong, doesn’t matter how good you are. Things go wrong sometimes.” He turned away. “Don’t ever forget it. Bring that bag to my office when you’re done.”

  He left, hustling down the street. The small bell near the door rang as it slid shut.

  I stood there, confused as all hell. The lady with the magazine glared at me and shook her head.

  I didn’t know what Piers meant. I mean, I understood that surgeons lost patients sometimes—there was no getting around that, it happened to everyone. But we saved way more than we ever lost. It was a balance, and a positive one at that.

  But a man following him, and a lost patient—there was something about it, right there, but eluding me.

  I sighed with frustration, but set about doing his damn laundry, because I really did want to watch him work again.

  And because now I felt like there was something I needed to know.

  6

  Piers

  “You know they’ve got someone following me, don’t you?” I stood in the doorway to Gina’s office. She was on the phone and seemed annoyed that I’d barged in.

  Well, fair enough. Her secretary had told me to wait in the hall, but I didn’t bother listening.

  “Sorry, Alan, something just came up. I’ll call you later, okay?” She hung up then folded her hands neatly in front of her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I threw my hands up. “Come on. You really don’t know?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I paced back and forth in front of her desk. Her office smelled like fresh paper and book glue. Framed diplomas hung on the wall, and the bookshelf behind her held more than a few awards—probably for being some kind of outstanding bureaucrat.

  “I’m being followed, and no, I’m not paranoid. I’ve seen him a few times now. He’s not subtle.”

  “You’re sure you’re not paranoid?”

  “Gina.”

  She sighed and glanced up at the ceiling like she wanted to call upon some higher power. “If you’re being followed, I don’t know what you think I can do about it.”

  “The hospital needs to know.”

  “So what?”

  I stopped pacing and leaned over the back of a chair, staring straight into her face. I tried to keep my voice level, but anger simmered down below.

  “I understand you think I might deserve this because I’m an asshole, but look at the bigger picture. You think it’s good for the hospital if some rich shithead thinks he can harass a doctor every time they fuck up? We’re going to live in a world where doctors are constantly afraid to make one wrong move, and when that happens, a lot more people are going to die. You know this isn’t about me.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I have trouble believing that you’re so idealistic, Piers. Frankly, I have trouble believing you care about anyone but yourself.”

  I clutched the back of the chair tighter. “Think for one second. If the hospital set the precedent that a private investigator can stalk one of their doctors, that’s going to have rippling effects all over the industry.”

  “You might be right, but I can’t do a thing about this.”

  “Take it to your boss and your boss’s boss. Go to the board directly if you have to. Do something other than sit there and ignore the problem because you have an issue with me personally.”

  “I don’t have an issue with you, Piers. I only wish you weren’t such a self-centered prick all the time.”

  I paused at the door and looked back at her. I wanted to make her understand that this wasn’t about me, that it was about her as much as it was about any doctor—but I knew my words would fall on deaf ears. I’d never gotten along with Gina, mostly because I really was a self-centered prick, and truly hated taking direction from anyone but myself. Even still, personality flaws aside, I wasn’t wrong about this.

  I left, and as I walked down the quiet hospital hallway, a new plan began to form. It was probably stupid and reckless, but I couldn’t sit back and let that PI stalk me all over the city. I had to do something, and if Gina and the hospital wasn’t going to help, then I’d do it all myself.

  Lori stood talking with a group of other young surgery residents. I pulled her aside, practically tugging her by the wrist.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, stopping and glaring at me.

  “There’s something we need to do.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Piers. You can’t just yank me around the hospital like a dog.”

  I hesitated. Maybe I was being a little much. “Fine, fair enough. We’re going to go confront my stalker.” I walked on then, heading toward the elevators.

  She caught up. “Your stalker?”

  “The private investigator that’s been following me around. Have you seen him yet today?”

  “Down in the lobby. Wait, hold on, you’re going to confront him?”

  I nodded and jammed the call button. We rode the elevator down in silence, surrounded by a gaggle of nurses on their lunch break.

  He wasn’t sitting in the waiting room, or in any of the chairs in the atrium. Lori kept up and tried pushing for more information, but I was too set on this plan to listen or stop. I stepped out the front door, through a wafting cloud of smoke from a pair of janitorial staff, and hesitated. The streets were full, and I wondered if I’d be able to spot the guy. I squinted, scanning for a familiar face, but the mass of people heading to and from their jobs felt like a blur.

  “There,” Lori said, pointing.

  I followed her gaze and sure enough, there he was, sitting at a nearby bench. I marched up to him, ignoring Lori’s protest, and he watched with a surprised frown.

  “You,” I said. “Stalker.”

  He was a middle-aged man, pale skin, boring face. He had a black hat pulled down low and wore the most banal outfit I’d ever seen: gray windbreaker, khaki pants. He had a small notebook in his lap, and he closed it as I loomed over him with my arms crossed.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, trying out an awkward smile.

  “Let’s cut the bullshit. You’ve been following me around for the past week and I want to know why.”

  His face melted into a mask. “I’m not sure you want to do this, Mr. Hood.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into. You realize you’re affecting my work? And my work’s important, unlike yourself.”

  He didn’t rise to my bait. “I understand that I can be a nuisance, and I apologize for that, however—”

  “You need to stop following me,” I growled at him. I practically felt Lori jumping from foot to foot behind me, probably eager to get me to stop whatever I was doing, and she was probably right—as soon as I opened my mouth, I knew this was a bad idea.

  But I couldn’t help myself. This blob of a man represented everything wrong with the world. Doctors were treated like nothing more than healing robots, and when something went wrong, everyone wanted to instantly jump to lawsuits. The Tippett family knew the risks when I operated on Nil, and they knew the risks were even worse than usual, considering his age and his overall health. And yet they went ahead with it, as if their eighty-year-old patriarch was invincible.

  I resented them, and hated myself for taking them on, but that was what we did. When rich people wanted a special surgery, we performed it, and apparently, we accepted their lawsuits afterwards.

  It was garbage. It was beyond garbage—it was blackmail.

  “I need to do my job,” Blobman said. His eyes flicked over to Lori. “Are you the new student?”

  “Don’t answer,” I said, glaring at her, then looked back at the blob. “If you understand what you’re doing, th
en you know that you’re distracting me from my patients. I know the Tippetts hired you to stalk me and try to find something to use against me in court, but I’m telling you that you’re on the wrong side. Those people only want money, they don’t give a damn about the people I work on every single day, and all the other lives I save. They want to make a quick buck on their family member’s death.”

  Blobman didn’t even look at me. I was so pissed off, but he only continued to give Lori a curious stare. “What do you think about this?” he asked her. “Do you think he’s right? Am I just a big distraction?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know what either of you are talking about.”

  “She’s not a part of this.” I stared down at the blob and realized he wasn’t the issue. He was a symptom of the problem, but he wasn’t the problem himself. The Tippett family was the problem, and anyone else that thought they could bully their way into more money, simply because life didn’t go their way every time.

  I turned away, back toward the hospital. This was a mistake, a stupid mistake. I got emotional and angry, and let my anger make decisions for me. I learned a long time ago to push past my emotions and to follow logic as much as possible. I learned on the operating table that emotions could get someone killed, and I did my best to make sure that never happened.

  In this instance, I made a stupid error, but I wouldn’t do it again.

  “What do you think of him?” Blobman asked Lori as I walked away. I paused and looked back at them. “Is he as good as they say?”

  She glanced at me. “Yes, he is.”

  “He’s not full of shit then?”

  She hesitated, smiling slightly. “I didn’t say that.”

  Blobman made a note. “Is he reckless? Quick to operate where perhaps less invasive treatments are available?”

  “No,” she said, frowning. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so.” He tapped his lips with the end of his pen. “Tell me, would you trust your life to him?”

  “You don’t have to answer,” I said. “Come on, Lori. Let’s go back.”