“Coping fine? What about Clarissa Morgan? Any of the chiefs planning on helping her?” Lillian increased her intensity.
He tilted his glasses at her. “Now, this is interesting. Found your spine. We wondered about you after your intern year. We weren’t sure you were going to cut it after the incident.”
“None of that was my fault,” she said simply. She was not going to defend her actions again after the event which had dominated her first year of residency. “None of what happened was Clarissa’s fault. Is the death of the Steadman baby why I didn’t get picked for chief resident?”
“This is why I’m not so worried about you. If you survived the hell you got put through your intern year, this should be a walk in the park.”
“Did you vote against me for chief resident?” she accused.
Gallo took off his glasses and faced her for the first time. “No, Hernandez. You should be happy you aren’t chief resident.”
“What? I deserved to be chief resident.”
“Why? To open up doors and get you into fellowship? If you’d wanted to do a fellowship, you’d have applied for a fellowship instead of chief resident. Don’t you realize ‘chief resident’ is a code word for a poorly paid shitty job for people who don’t’ know how to be doctors despite finishing residency?”
“That’s what you think?”
“What? You think the reason I don’t kiss your feet and cover you with praise is because I don’t think you’re doing a good job? You didn’t need my help. Same as I think you’re smart enough and strong enough to go seek your own emotional help now if you need it.”
“So you think I’m a good doctor?”
He rolled his eyes. “If I thought you were a bad doctor, I wouldn’t have hired you. I didn’t vote against you for chief resident, but I didn’t cry when they didn’t pick you. It would be a waste of your talents.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Good,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”
She gritted her teeth. “How’s this? Take me off the schedule for Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s.”
“You’re scheduled for them.”
“Then unschedule them. I need emotional me time.”
He considered it. “Done.”
“And you will never have office manager Nicole call me at home on my day off to force me to come into the hospital.”
“It was necessary.”
“No, it wasn’t. I wasn’t back up call. You didn’t volunteer to come in.”
“Fine. I like this new thing you’re doing. You’re funny when you start to get mean.”
“I’m not mean. I just know what I want. And get Clarissa more than a week off if she needs it.” She used the command voice she used on Sean.
“I’ll work on it.”
“Good. Don’t disappoint me.” She walked off with her best parting shot.
Chapter28
“I’d say you earned this extra day off,” Charlie Layton said over the phone to Sean.
“I’d say so. Is El Socio singing like a canary?”
“Sadly, no, but the tech guys going over the hospital surveillance videos think he acted alone. He’s not telling us why he did anything.”
“And…”
