The Mafia Doctor

  Brianna Blake

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  Chapter 1. New Job

  I dropped my favorite Christmas mug.

  “Noooooooo!” I screamed while jumping on the ground to try to catch it before it landed and got smashed in a million pieces. It was no good. It shattered. My delicious morning chai splashed all over my blue scrubs. I shouldn’t even be wearing the scrubs already, but I was too excited to see how it would look. This job was everything I’d dreamed of after SIX years of medical school. I’d finally start a residency in a new hospital!

  My cat got near the chai and started licking it. I looked at the clock. Ten past seven. I was so late for my first day I couldn’t even tell. I grabbed a cloth to try to get everything clean quickly because my cat couldn’t lick the shattered glass; otherwise, my poor Fish would get his nose bleeding.

  I tried to clean everything as fast as I could, grabbed my purse, my car keys. When I was already in the hall waiting for the elevator, it hit me. I was still wearing dirty scrubs, and now it was half-past seven, and I had to be in the hospital in fifteen minutes. Way to go, Emily. Way to go. I left the elevator door open, holding it, and I knew I’d be screwed if anyone saw that. Still, it took forever to get to my apartment floor, and I needed to save some time.

  I ran to my bedroom, ripping my dirty scrubs apart, grabbed a pink t-shirt that was lying on top of my bed, and smelled it. Kind of icky but not too icky, so I put it on, together with some jeans, got clean scrubs, and started heading off the door again.

  “Bye-bye, Fish, be good while mommy is at work,” I told my black and white cat, who meowed as an answer. He really wanted to go for a walk in the hall, but I didn’t have time to lose. I smashed the door shut, locked it, and got to the elevator.

  The traffic was as bad as it could be on a Monday morning, and I was already late. But I wouldn’t let this ruin my mood. I was a real doctor now. I’d save lives! I put some Christmas music blasting on the radio. While I was singing “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” as loud as I could, I noticed the driver in the car by my side looking at me like I’d gone mad. I waved at him, and he blushed and drove away, maybe to get away from me as fast as he could. I chuckled again. I had a nice way of scaring people.

  I got to the hospital at eight twenty. Okay, yeah. I was a bit late for my first day. But I was sure they would get it, maybe other people were late too. I walked into the hospital and had no idea where I should go. The reception was packed with people, and I felt like asking them what kind of help they needed. I was ready to help! However, I saw the guy in the car beside me, the same guy who judged me for singing my Christmas songs on top of my lungs. He was wearing the blue scrubs, and he might know where I was supposed to go, so I followed him down a hall.

  “Hey, hey!” I tried calling. He turned back and frowned when he saw that I was the one singing. Then, a funny smile played on his lips.

  “Hey, aren’t you the Christmas song girl? I couldn’t stop staring at the way you could hit such high notes. Honey, what are you doing here? You should be a professional singer,” he asked with a thin voice and a funny face. I laughed, without knowing if he was mocking me or not. I never knew when people were mean to me. I didn’t really care either.

  “Hi, hi, I’m new here, it’s my first day, and I’m running a bit late. I have no idea where I should go or what I should do,” I started saying, smiling excitedly. He looked me up and down.

  “Poor little thing. I’ll help you find your way. Pray that you aren’t on Dr. Rocci’s team. Otherwise, the handsome devil will kill you. Otherwise, you should be fine on my team with Dr. Smith,” he said while kept walking down the hall. I was in the same place, staring at him. He turned around and looked puzzled at me. “Come on, honey, follow me. We don’t have all day. We have lives to save!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m a little slow, you see.”

  “Oh, stop that. You’re just a little lost. Let me tell you one thing, I loved your acajou hair. And these curls? Girl, you’re rocking it,” he said, touching my hair. I’d never heard anyone describe it like that. Usually, people would tell that it was a bit ginger but not ginger enough, so I’d be red-headed. It had shades of brown. But I loved it and smiled. “I’m Johnathan, by the way, but you can call me Johnny.”

  “I’m Emily Thomas. Nice to meet you, and I’m sorry that I almost made you deaf by singing my songs,” I said, shaking his hand formally. I realized he had his brown hair up in a bun, he was taller than me, and he had an Asian face.

  “I’m telling you the truth. I actually liked your voice,” he said while we kept walking down the white hall. One of the things that I liked the most in hospitals, the way everything was white, clean, and looked to be in their places. It made me calm: like everything would be all right, like I’d be able to help people, to make them feel safe.

  We kept walking until we got to a staff cafeteria. It was packed with doctors, residents, students, nurses, and everyone else. People seemed in a rush, going up and down the cafeteria, eating while walking, and I took a deep breath and opened up a huge smile.

  “I can’t believe I’m about to start the first day in Hospital Evergreen. It was my dream since I was a little girl!”

  “Awww, it’s so cute to see newbie’s joy. Don’t let anyone kill it, especially not Dr. Rocci.”

  “Who’s Dr. Rocci after all?” I asked, looking around. He chuckled.

  “You’ll know when you meet him. Pray to not be on his team. For now, let’s get you started in the hospital routine, and I might be able to show you around. I have to be in surgery at nine, but we have plenty of time until there.”

  “Okay! I’m so glad that I found you, Johnny!”

  “Aren’t you a sweetie?” he said, and we started walking in the cafeteria. I followed him when he went to a table full of doctors in white vests, probably my superiors.

  They looked at us, the majority of them with warm smiles. I wondered if the mysterious Dr. Rocci was any of them.

  “Dr. Smith, this is our new kid, Emily Thomas,” Johnny said, pointing at me. I smiled and waved at her. She was beautiful. She was a blond woman, near her fifties, a little bit chubby but who opened up the biggest smile so far.

  “Welcome, Emily!” she said. “Are you the new resident doctor?”

  “Yes, ma’am! I’m so excited to be here. I was just approved in the test last week.”

  “That’s amazing. It’s such a difficult exam. I hope you’ll find a happy beginning of your career here, honey,” she said and pointed at a place at the table for Johnny and me to sit.

  So far, so good. Everyone was kind and loving. I couldn’t believe that would be my new place of work! Some people can be really mean during med school, but it didn’t seem the case so far in Hospital Evergreen.

  “Is she gonna stay with us, doctor?” Johnny asked her about me, doing a facial expression that reminded me of a puppy asking for things. “Say yes, say yes. We need these gorgeous curls with us. And she sings like an angel too!”

  Dr. Smith laughed and looked at me, putting a spoonful of green jelly in her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, Johnny. Our team is complete. She’ll probably go to Dr. Rocci’s team.”

  Everyone at the table gasped and looked at us.

  “Ugh, good luck,” said a black woman that was sitting beside Dr. Smith.

  “Don’t say that, Dr. Entwhistle,” Dr. Smith said, but she didn’t look like she meant that.

  “Dr. Rocci is gorgeous, smoking hot, but he’s also a pain in the ass, pardon my French,” Dr. Entwhistle continued, ignoring Dr. Smith. I laughed, but my heart was starting to beat fast. They agreed on that statement, and I really didn’t need to have a mean boss. I couldn’t handle it well.

  “Actually, you should go to meet him right now. I think all of his interns and residents are already working. He doesn’t really come to the cafeteria with us,” Dr. Smith said.

  “He said he won’t go to the Christmas party!” Johnny exclaimed, putting his hand on his chest like he couldn’t take that news. “Can you imagine that? He’ll miss my Christmas special cake, and he doesn’t even care. He didn’t even want to be part of Secret Santa. That guy needs to learn some manners.”

  Everyone laughed, but I had a bitter taste in my mouth. That wasn’t good news.

  “No Secret Santa?” I asked. I really, really loved Christmas gatherings and parties. It wasn’t good news that my new boss hated it.

  “I think you can still join! Can’t she, doctor?” Johnny exclaimed. Dr. Smith’s face lightened up like she had gotten good news.

  “Oh, but, of course, darling, it would be a pleasure to have you with us. But, now, as I said, you better get going. If I remember it right, he’s in the baby wing today. You should head there. It’s in corridor A.3. You get the elevator, 3 floors up, right, right, you can go wrong. Got it? Right, wrong!”

  Everyone laughed. I forced myself to laugh, too, despite the way my heart was beating. I was a bit afraid of meeting this Dr. Rocci.

  “Okay! 3 floors up, right, right.”

  “And don’t call it ‘the baby wing.’ He hates that. Call it obstetrics.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, swal

lowing hard.

  “Oh, don’t call me ‘ma’am,’ I’m happy with Kate,” she said.

  “See you for lunch, all right, sweetie?” Johnny said too, waving while I got up. I was thinking about eating something, but somehow I didn’t feel hungry anymore.

  I knew it would be hard to find the right place. I wasn’t the best with directions. And I was already VERY late, it was getting close to nine o’clock, and I still hadn’t started working. That was bad. I found the elevator all right, and I knew I had to turn right and then right again, but I was really nervous.

  Someone screamed for me to hold the door. I did right on time to see a patient in wheelchairs getting inside. She had an IV in her vein, and she was wearing the hospital gown. A real patient, my first one, well, not officially, but I had the opportunity to talk to her.

  “Hello, how’s your day being?” I tried to say, as sympathetically as I could, while we went up. She looked at me with no patience, her face a bit pale, her hair in the same color as the sand.

  “Not very well, you know. They just removed my kidney last month.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my face getting hot.

  “Can you take me to my room? It’s room 217, and I find it very hard to go there by myself pushing this wheelchair,” she asked. “I’m damn tired of this hospital. You guys haven’t got the right support for your patients, you see. I had to find my way to the exam room by myself! And then I have to get back to my room, by myself! I’m paying my home-value in here, and that’s what I get.”

  “Oh, I’m very sorry, terribly sorry,” I said, not really knowing what to say. I had absolutely no idea where room 217 was. And I also needed to find my new boss because I was absurdly late, and I’d get fired on the first day. But I made a promise, and patients always came first. “I’ll take you there.”

  The elevator stopped on the third floor. I grabbed the patient and started going with her through there. She looked up at me, confused.

  “It’s not here. Don’t you know your own hospital?” she asked, bitter. I took a deep breath. She was in pain, she was suffering, and I was the doctor. It was my job to have patience.

  “There’s a better way to get there through here,” I lied. I didn’t like to lie, but I had no other option. I had to do it.

  “Does it? No one informed me. I knew it couldn’t be right. I had to go up a ramp by myself every day,” she said, complaining again. Patience. “Someone should have let me known. It’s absurd.”

  “I agree, ma’am,” I said, pushing her through the hall. I had no idea where we were, but I could hear some babies crying, so it should be the baby’s wing. Now I just needed to find the room 217 wing. Isn’t that the room from The Shining too? That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I was looking desperately for someone to ask for help. A nurse passed by my side. I tried to catch her attention, so I turned around to her, but it was too late. She was already gone, and I looked at her crossing the hall behind us, going away forever when I heard:

  “Can you take me to my room?” she asked again. I turned to look at her, about to say that I’d do that, but she completed, “this girl here doesn’t seem to know where that is.”

  I realized she wasn’t talking to me but to another doctor that got near us.

  He really was smoking hot. Hotter than I’d ever seen.

  He was bulky, enormous, with large shoulders, and he should be addicted to exercising because his arms almost didn’t fit the scrubs. He had shiny green eyes, a well-groomed beard, and dark hair. He could have come directly from one of those romance books about super hot guys that we never found in real life. What was that? He was tattooed on his neck. And on his hands. And I bet on the rest of him as well. Wow.

  “H-hi,” I stuttered. He glared at me. I didn’t care. He could do anything to me, and I highly doubted I’d care.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked with a guttural manly voice that made my legs shake.

  “I… was helping… this…” I tried to say, but he dismissed me with a shake of his head and rolled his eyes. Talk about Monday morning mood.

  “This is the obstetrics wing. She should go to the room's wing downstairs. And you should have been here almost one hour ago.”

  “I just…”

  “No excuses.”

  I shut up. The patient looked like she had got her kidney back, smiling from ear to ear from seeing my scolding. I should have left her alone to go to her room.

  “I’m sorry that you had to witness that,” he told her with a loving voice.

  “It’s all right, dear,” she answered, running her wrinkled hands through his arm. He smiled a beautiful smile that made my panties go woot woot.

  “I’ll take you to your room. And you,” he turned to me again, his expression immediately changing to anger again. “Emily Thomas, right?”

  He knew my name! But I was in trouble!

  “Yes, sir,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “I don’t want you on my team. I’ll ask the team coordinator to remove you. Sorry, but I can’t have lateness. When you’re late, you’re killing people,” he said, dry, serious, stern. I stared at him, wide-eyed. I was dead sure that wouldn’t be good for my start on that company.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Rocci!” I exclaimed, trying to sound as sorry as I felt. My heart was thundering, my stomach was full of butterflies, and I wasn’t sure if the butterflies came from my encounter with this smoking hot man or that in less than one hour in my new hospital workplace, I’d already screwed up.

  “That’s not good enough,” he growled with no patience. The patient, on the other hand, was loving the whole scene. He turned around to take her back to the elevator, and I stayed there, defeated, too afraid to ask about what I should do then.

  I didn’t want to say anything else to him because I was afraid he would slap me.

  I’d quite like it if he slapped me, but I don’t think it would be professionally good.

  So I stood there, completely lost. I had no idea about anything on the new job: I hadn’t a good schedule, tasks, hell, I didn’t even have my scrubs on. But I was a helpless romantic and optimistic, so I wouldn’t let this defeat me.

  I did the only thing I could think of, I went back to the cafeteria. It wasn’t nine o’clock yet, so I thought Johnny would be there. And I was very pleased to see that I was right. He was sitting at the same table, emptier now, but Dr. Smith was still there too, with Dr. Entwhistle and two other people.

  I sat there, not saying anything, and lay my head on the table.

  “Oh, darling!” Johnny exclaimed. “You met Dr. Rocci, haven’t you?”

  “Mfhmfff…” I said, but the words sounded mumbled because I didn’t raise my head.

  “What?” Johnny asked, giggling.

  “He said he can’t have me on his team, so I’m fairly sure I’ll lose the job,” I said, looking at everyone there. “Good thing for the first day.”

  “What?” Dr. Entwshistle asked, but she was also smiling like I was a big fat joke. Maybe I really was. I shouldn’t have eaten that many donuts out of anxiety.

  “Yeah. He said I was late and there was all the story with the patient that lost her kidney, and I got back here, not knowing what to do, and since your team is full, Dr. Smith, I might as well get my things and go home.”

  “What kidney?” Johnny asked, confused, and laughed. Dr. Smith put her chubby hand on top of mine, comforting me.

  “It’s okay, honey. We’ll find another team for you. You won’t lose your job.”

  “You could join mine, what do you think?” Dr. Entwhistle asked. I looked at her with the face like I’d just seen a saint coming to Earth in front of me.

  “Really?!” I asked in a high-pitched voice that I didn’t intend to produce. They all laughed.

  “The psychiatrist wing always has some places available,” she said, grinning, her white teeth contrasting with her dark skin. She was gorgeous.

  “Psychiatrist…?” I asked. What I really wanted to say was: anything but that! Anything but that!

  It’s not that I didn’t like the idea, it was just that it was one of the most inaccurate parts of medicine. There wasn’t a surgery that could be done, a tumor that could be removed. You had to pray for the medicine for the head to work and the therapy to do the biggest part of it.

 

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