Ten
Cole
“Morning, I’m Dr. Cole Brennan, I believe I’m assigned to the first floor?” I winked at the receptionist for good measure. Maybe she could show me where the coffee was later.
“Hi there, you’re reporting to the attending, Dr. Mallory. He’s about my height, with dark hair, actually, why don’t I just take you down there?” She offered, her sparkling green eyes looking up at me from behind the desk.
“That would be great.”
As we passed rooms, she poked her head into one and gave greetings to parents and kids.
“First day?” she asked.
“Yeah, is it obvious?”
“Well you just looked at the kid in the wheelchair like something was wrong with him, so yeah, that’s obvious. You have to look at them like they’re normal, like nothing is wrong. Because for some of these kids, this is their whole life. So this is normal. Their normal.”
That hit me right in the gut. Even if I wasn’t really a kid person, I would definitely do my best. And when I was done here I would make sure we made a large donation to the hospital.
No kid should have to live here. No kid should feel like being sick is normal.
She walked me down the hallway until finally, we hit another reception desk.
“Is Dr. Mallory with a patient, Ashley?” She asked the receptionist.
“No, he is sitting in the break room. Kind of quiet here this morning, you must be the new doc on staff. I'm Ashley. I work the day shift.”
I waved at the petite blonde behind the desk but noticed that I wasn't even that interested. That didn't really make much sense except of course I could only think of Addison. I was really going soft.
The original receptionist pointed me in the direction of the break room. “Follow the smell of the coffee. And good luck.”
I nodded to her and walked down the hallway a few more doors before saw one that was open. A few doctors were sitting in on brightly colored couches drinking coffee and a couple were looking at m
agazines.
“Dr. Mallory?” I asked addressing a man with dark brown hair like the receptionist had said.
“Oh hey there, you must be Dr. Brennan. It's nice to meet you. Under interesting circumstances, no?” He stood up and walked out to the hallway as I followed him.
“I'm sorry, I don't think I understand.”
“Your uncle is on the board. Easy to get a job when you have connections.”
“Yeah I guess you could say that, but I'm on loan so…”
Dr. Mallory stopped in front of me and spun around facing me. “You and I both know you're not on loan from anywhere. But I'm the only one in this whole damn hospital that knows that so I'll keep my mouth shut, mostly because these kids deserve good doctors. Are you a good doctor?”
I shrugged. If he already knew the truth about me there was no point lying. “I've no idea to be totally honest. I did medic training in the Army and then they paid for me to go to school but I have no hands-on experience, especially with kids. I mean besides my residency and that was in a veteran’s hospital. No kids there.”
He rolled his eyes. “I had a feeling that was going to be the case, but I was hoping I was wrong.” He pulled a tablet off the wall next to the reception desk and gave it to me quickly using his finger to drag across charts.
“See this turquoise color? That's all of your charts. It's a pretty quiet morning in here so I think you only have about three kids right now. Appointments for the day I mean. You'll get the occasional walk-in but really we mostly deal with kids that have already been patients here in the past. The walk-ins come from other hospitals that can't set a bone or don’t have an MRI machine that small enough for little humans. The work is steady and you won't deal with anything too serious on this floor.”
“Sounds good, where do I start?”
Dr. Mallory smiled at me. “Well good, the military gave you something besides your medical background.”
“What's that?”