The Devil Wears Scrubs Read online

  The doors to the elevator slide open and in walks Sexy Surgeon. It gives me some small degree of satisfaction to see he looks kind of tired too. His blue eyes are a little less bright and he’s got dark circles under them. But he still manages a wide smile when he sees me.

  “Medicine Intern!” he says. He’s lucky I’m too tired to punch him. “How’d you survive your first call?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumble.

  He laughs. “You can’t be worse than our new interns.”

  I recall how Sexy Surgeon yelled at that woman in the ER. I guess there may be more painful things than having Alyssa as my senior resident.

  “Hey,” I say. “Do you know where the call rooms are?”

  He nods. “Eighth floor.”

  I point to the elevator buttons. “And how exactly do I get to the eighth floor?”

  “Oh, the elevator doesn’t go there, of course,” he says. Of course. “I mean, do you want patients’ families randomly wandering into our call rooms?”

  “I guess not,” I grumble. “Well, how do you get there, then?”

  “Elevator to seven, then go up the stairs,” Sexy Surgeon says. He smiles at me. “I’m headed there myself. I’ll show you the way.”

  I don’t know if it’s a show for my benefit, but Sexy Surgeon still seems to have a whole lot of energy for four in the morning. When we get to the stairs, he takes them two or three at a time up the two flights to the eighth floor. I’m taking them one at a time, clinging to the banister. I hear him yelling at the top, “Pick up the pace, Medicine Intern!”

  Compared to the rest of the hospital, the eighth floor is eerily quiet and dimly lit. There are no monitors beeping, no nurses rushing around, and no weird smells either. All I can hear is a low hum of the air conditioning. There are rows of doors, each labeled with a different designation. As I walk down the hall with Sexy Surgeon, he points out a room labeled “Senior Surgery Resident.”

  “That’s me,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Yours is probably down the hall somewhere,” he says. He winks at me, “Of course, you’re welcome to join me in here.”

  Oh my God, I can’t believe he just said that to me. I have been awake for a billion hours and so has he and he’s actually hitting on me? What an arrogant jerk. This is too insulting for words.

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “You don’t even know my name.”

  “Sure I do,” he says.

  “Okay. What is it?”

  I can see I’ve got him, but he still manages a cocky grin. “It’s Medicine Intern.”

  Is this guy for real? “No, it’s not.”

  “Um… Michelle?”

  “No.”

  “Ingrid?”

  “No!”

  “Aphrodite?”

  “Please stop guessing.”

  “Fine,” he says. “What’s your name?”

  I hesitate. I don’t want to get to know this guy, but then again, he’s definitely helped me out a bunch of times tonight. And I don’t want to be a bitch. Anyway, he’ll figure it out soon enough.

  “It’s Jane,” I say.

  “Hi, Jane,” he says. “I’m Ryan.” He raises his eyebrows and cocks his head in the direction of his call room. “So… now that we know each other…”

  “Go to hell, Ryan,” I say.

  He laughs. “Oh, well. Worth a try, right?”

  Ryan disappears into his call room. As the door slams shut, I feel the tiniest twinge of… I don’t know. Definitely not regret. The foremost thing on my mind right now is sleep.

  Actually, it’s too late now, but maybe Ryan could have helped me out with locating Dr. Reilly. I’d love to see Sexy Surgeon chew out the guy who’s clearly been avoiding me all night. Maybe tomorrow.

  I wander down the hall, passing the OB/GYN call rooms, until I get to a room labeled “Medicine Resident.” My feet are barely holding me up at this point, so I open the door to the room.

  The call room is very quiet and dark. It’s warm—like a womb. There’s no window, a single bed that’s been recently made up, and a desk next to the bed with a phone on it. There’s also a small attached bathroom. The room has pretty much everything I could need for the next two hours. It’s perfect.

  I set the alarm on my phone for 6:15 a.m., which is the latest I could possibly contemplate waking up the next morning. Then I kick off my shoes, and pull off my white coat and stethoscope and dump them on the desk. I slide under the covers of the bed. For a few moments, I worry that I’m going to get paged and woken up, but the lack of sleep quickly overcomes me, and I’m down for the count.

  _____

  Uninterrupted, I probably could have slept for the next two hours. Hell, make that 24 hours. But that isn’t in the stars. Less than half an hour after I drift off, I’m awakened by the sound of the door to the call room creaking open and cold air flooding my cozy little womb.

  For a second, I have no idea what’s going on or where I am. Then it comes back to me: I’m an intern, I’m on call, and I’m in the call room. And the person at the door is Alyssa, for some reason.

  “What are you doing in here?” she nearly screams at me.

  I blink at her, and rub my eyes, squinting at the flood of light that’s rushed in from the hallway. I don’t get it. She told me to go to the call room to get some sleep. Did she mean she just wanted me to store the sleep for later, like for example, in three years from now?

  “Huh?” I manage.

  “Jane,” she says. “What are you doing in my call room?”

  “Oh,” I mumble. “It said ‘Medicine Resident’ on the door, so…”

  “Right,” she says. “I’m the medicine resident. You’re the intern. You take one of the intern rooms.”

  “Oh,” I say. I add, “Sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  “Get out of my call room,” she says.

  I blink at her. What? “What?” I say.

  “This is my call room,” she reiterates. “Go to your call room.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “This one has a private bathroom.”

  Considering we have only about an hour left to sleep, I don’t see how much it really matters, but I can tell Alyssa’s not going to let this go. At this point, it’s easier to just move. I shrug on my white coat, grab my stethoscope, and slide my feet back into my clogs. I trudge past Alyssa toward the door.

  “Excuse me,” Alyssa says. “You’re just going to leave your dirty sheets on the bed?”

  “I…” Baffled, I just shake my head. “What do you want me to do?”

  “There are clean sheets in the hallway linen room,” Alyssa says.

  “Are you serious?” I ask.

  Alyssa is dead serious.

  So at five in the freaking morning, I go out in the hallway and grab a new sheet and blanket from the linen room, and I make Alyssa’s bed. I even change her pillowcase, because I know she’ll be horrified if I don’t. The whole thing feels incredibly surreal.

  “Fine,” she says when I’m finished. My shoulders sag in relief. I was half-expecting her to make me retrieve a mint for the pillow. “You can go find a dirty linen bin to throw the old sheets.”

  I nod, even though I have no intention of doing so. When I find the call room that says “Medicine Intern,” I’m going to throw the sheets on the floor. Someone else who’s slept more than one hour can deal with this tomorrow.

  “By the way,” Alyssa says to me. “Did you get those sticky notes yet?”

  Hours awake: 22 (give or take)

  Chance of quitting: 83%

  Chapter 9

  I stumble out of bed the next morning, my one remaining hour of sleep having been interrupted by a call to inform me that a patient was allergic to Lithium. I hadn’t ordered Lithium on this patient so I have no idea why this warranted an urgent 5 a.m. page, but I gave my verbal consent to add Lithium to the patient’s allergy list. At least, I think I did. I only vaguely remember it, as if i
t were some kind of dream.

  While in the communal bathroom, I brainstorm what I can do to make myself feel more like a human being. I readjust my ponytail, which helps very slightly. There’s a travel-sized tube of toothpaste on the sink. I squeeze about half an inch of toothpaste onto my finger and start massaging my teeth. Funny how I feel more like I’m about to do the Walk of Shame after a sexy hook-up than finish my first shift as a doctor.

  I quickly pre-round on my patients, which means I essentially look into their rooms to make sure they are still alive. Everyone is still alive. We’ve all somehow survived my first shift as an intern. Apparently, people are harder to kill than I thought.

  I arrive at Dr. Westin’s small office, where we’re meeting to discuss our patients from the night before. Dr. Westin looks very chipper, especially compared to the three of us. He’s clean-shaven, and his shirt is so blindingly white that I have to avert my tired eyes. He beams when he sees me, which almost makes up for the way Alyssa glares at me and looks at her watch.

  “Did you have an exciting first night on call, Jess?” Dr. Westin asks me.

  Apparently, I’m Jess now.

  “Yes,” I mumble as I sink into a chair in front of his desk. If there weren’t a chair for me to sit in, I definitely would have cried. As is, I’m only barely keeping it together.

  Connie, who apparently arrived an hour ago or something, has already reviewed her patients, so I’m up next. I tell Dr. Westin about Mr. Petrovich and his maybe chest pain, an elderly lady named Mrs. Thompson who has a mild kidney infection but seems better now, and Mr. Swanson and his abscess.

  “What did Surgery say about the abscess?” Dr. Westin asks me.

  I squirm. “I wasn’t able to reach the consult resident last night.”

  Alyssa’s eyes fly open. “Are you serious?”

  “I paged him twice,” I say lamely. And I realize that twice was not nearly enough. I should have been paging him every ten seconds all night long.

  “I’ll page him right now,” I promise.

  Alyssa just shakes her head. “You need to speak with him before you leave.”

  It’s official. I will be spending the rest of my life in this hospital on this call.

  After we pop in on my patients and Alyssa gives me a mile-long list of things to do, I slink away as quickly as I can. When I finish my to-do list, I can leave. Yet I don’t know how I can possibly get through this nearly infinite list. I feel like Cinderella, when she was given that huge list of chores before the ball. I will never get to the ball at this rate.

  The first thing I do is find a quiet spot on one of the wards and page Dr. Reilly again. After ten minutes, it’s pretty clear he’s not going to call me back. This asshole is wrecking my life right now.

  And that’s when I lose it.

  I call Dr. Reilly’s pager number again, but this time instead of leaving a callback number, I leave a voice message. “Dr. Reilly,” I say. “This is Dr. McGill with Medicine. I have been calling you the entire night to talk to you about a patient who has an abscess and is extremely ill, and you have not had the courtesy to call me back. Apparently, you have absolutely no concern for patient welfare. I want you to know that I am going to report this behavior to your attending. If anything happens to this patient because you were unwilling to do your job, I intend for you to be found personally liable. Thank you very much.” And then I hang up.

  Holy crap. I didn’t really say all that, did I?

  Yet there was something cathartic about it. It felt good taking out my frustrations on another person. No wonder Sexy Surgeon enjoys it so much.

  _____

  I’m discharging Mrs. Thompson with the kidney infection, which means I have to find the sheet to write out her discharge summary and medications. I go to 3-North, where Mrs. Thompson is located, and find a file cabinet in the back room that supposedly contains all the forms. I pull open the drawer to the file cabinet.

  Wait. What was I looking for?

  Oh right… discharge paperwork.

  I start rifling through the papers: antibiotic forms, radiology forms, insulin sliding scales… oh my God, I am so tired…

  Wait. What was I looking for?

  Crap.

  I check my notes. Right, discharge summary form.

  I am really, really tired.

  “Medicine Intern!”

  I look up and see none other than Sexy Surgeon himself standing in front of me. Or Ryan, I think he said his name was. His thick blond hair is slightly mussed and his scrubs a bit wrinkled, but other than that, there’s no sign that he’s been awake most of the night. I’m sure he hasn’t spent the last ten minutes searching for a discharge form because he was too tired to think straight.

  “Hey,” I mumble.

  “You look tired,” he observes.

  Gee, thanks. “Yeah, I’m kind of tired.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” he says. “I’ve got a huge treat for you.”

  I raise my eyebrows. I admit, I’m intrigued.

  Ryan grins at me, showing off his perfectly straight, white teeth. He’s close enough that I can smell his minty breath. I wonder if he brought a toothbrush with him to the hospital. “In a few minutes,” he says proudly, “you are going to get to see me completely rip apart one of your co-interns. I am going to destroy her. I’m going to make her cry, Jane. I’m going to make her wish she’d never been born.”

  And now I feel guilty because the idea of seeing someone else get yelled at is not entirely distasteful. I remember how good it felt when I let off some steam on Dr. Reilly. Maybe this is why everyone in medicine is so damn mean.

  “So what horrible thing did this poor intern do?” I ask.

  Ryan snorts. “You wouldn’t even believe it. She left this really bitchy, completely inappropriate message on my pager. About how she was going to hold me personally responsible for her patient or some bullshit like that, just because I didn’t return her page the second she snapped her fingers. I mean, she’s a freaking intern. Can you believe the nerve?” He shakes his head. “You haven’t seen Dr. McGill around, have you? Someone told me she was on this floor.”

  Oh no.

  I am a complete idiot. Seriously. How in hell did I not realize that Ryan had to have been the surgery resident on call for consults last night? And now, for the first time, his badge is flipped around the right way and I can see his name. Ryan Reilly, MD.

  I am so screwed. Sexy Surgeon is about to make me cry.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen her,” I say carefully. I’m such an awful liar.

  “Oh.” Ryan frowns, disappointed. “Do you know where she went? The nurse on the phone said she was here like five minutes ago.”

  “Maybe the nurse was messing with you,” I suggest.

  Ryan laughs. “Oh, no. That would never happen.”

  Yeah, I’ll just bet.

  “Damn,” he says. “Well, I’ll catch up with her eventually. Too bad you won’t get to see it.”

  “Too bad,” I mumble. And the Academy Award goes to… Jane McGill!

  And I almost get away with it. I am so close. Except at that moment, a tiny Philippina nurse named Mary peeks her head into the back room and says to me, “Dr. McGill, you forgot to sign the order you wrote for Tylenol.”

  Ryan’s eyes light up and he looks around for the elusive Dr. McGill. The whole thing would be almost amusing if it wasn’t so terrifying. It actually takes him a good fifteen seconds before he realizes that we’re the only two people in the room. That’s when his face darkens. “You…”

  “I am so sorry,” I say. My voice has taken on an unattractively whiny, pleading tone. “I was paging you all night. And Alyssa was really mad at me that I couldn’t reach you. I didn’t realize that you were Dr. Reilly.” I can’t help but add for good measure: “And I’m really tired.” I take a shaky breath. I wonder if I should get down on my knees and beg. “Please, please don’t make me cry.”

  Ryan is just staring at me, still trying to dec
ide how angry he should be with me. Finally, he shakes his head. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” I raise my eyebrows. “Meaning…?”

  “Okay, I’ll see your consult.”

  Well, gee, thanks for doing your job. Still, I am nothing but relieved. “Thanks.”

  “And I won’t even yell at you,” he adds, grinning now. He is way too handsome when he grins like that. And unfortunately, I’m pretty sure he knows it. Handsome surgeons are the worst. “On one condition…”

  Oh great. “What is it?”

  “I’m getting together with some other residents at a bar tonight to get drinks,” he says. “I want you to come with.”

  I stare at him. “Are you serious? We’re post-call. I’m not going drinking.”

  Ryan snorts. “Come on, you’re all of… what—26 years old? Nap for a few hours and you’ll be good to go. We’re not meeting till like eight o’clock.”

  “Well, forget it. I’m not going.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad,” he says. “I guess your patient is going to die of septic shock.”

  The really sad part is that I’m less worried about something bad happening to Mr. Swanson than I am about Alyssa yelling at me. “You’re not serious.”

  Ryan folds his arms across his chest. “Try me.”

  He’s not serious. He can’t be.

  Except he really might be. He’s definitely a big enough asshole.

  “Fine,” I hiss at him. “I’ll go get drinks with you tonight.”

  “I had a feeling you would,” he comments, looking so self-satisfied that I wish I could smack him. He winks at me. “I hope this is a hell of an abscess, Dr. McGill.”

  I hope so too. But really, what do I know?

  _____

  My only small victory of the morning is that Ryan is impressed enough with the abscess that he agrees to take the patient to the OR to drain it. I’m really patting myself on the back for that one as I report the news to Alyssa as we “run the list” one last time in the resident lounge before I go home. “Running the list” seems to involve going through the checklist of all the things she told me to do so she can explain how I did each of those things wrong.