I leaned into her. “Just for the sake of clarity, why don’t you tell me what that is.”
She whacked my arm. I slapped her ass. And then, through no fault of ours, we were plastered up against the door, kissing the breath out of each other.
“Two more days,” she said against my lips.
It took everything in me to kiss her one last time and step back. “Two more days.” I pointed to the door. “I’m not leaving until you’re inside. Get in there. Don’t make me yank off your socks again and tuck you into bed.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
I couldn’t help it. I wrapped her up in my arms and held her tight. “Good night, Whit.”
She pushed up on her toes and kissed me. “Good night, Henry.”
This one right here.
Seventeen
Whitney
Rule Number Twelve:
Be a good time without being the center of attention.
“And then shesays to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize you were a doctor. I thought you werejusta nurse. You were so efficient and you knew your way around so well. You seemed like a nurse.’ And I’m looking at her like,Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?” Meri made a disgusted noise. “Because she’s going on and on about how she’s seen me in the NICU every day this week and she doesn’t come out and say it, but the gist is that she ignored me because she always ignores nurses. Aside from the fact that’s a major miscalculation, my ID badge is right there and I’ve introduced myself to several parents as Dr. Mercer.”
I twisted a finger around my necklace. We were waiting for our ORs to open up. Friday mornings always moved more slowly than the rest of the week. “And she thought it was a good idea to say all of this to you? My god. Does she not have any survival skills?”
“That’s what I’m asking,” Meri continued. “Aren’t these residents supposed to know who they’re reporting to? Didn’t we compulsively research all our attendings when we were residents?” Not waiting for a response, she barreled on. “Needless to say, that resident will not be scrubbing in with me until she grows some situational awareness.”
“I don’t say this often, but you might want to get a little tougher with these residents. They need to be appropriately afraid of you.”
“Um, hi. I might be able to help.”
We glanced over to find two of my residents lurking near the nurses’ station. “Help with what, Dr. Cortes-Dixon? Dr. Tran?”
Tori and Cami whisper-yelled and nudged each other until Tori stepped forward, saying, “If you need people to be afraid of you, Dr. Mercer, you’re welcome to yell at me in front of a bunch of residents any day. I can cry, if you want.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Meri said. “Generous offer, but no.”
“Okay, well, maybe y’all could join us tonight to celebrate the end of this rotation,” Cami said.
“We have this whole ritual,” Tori added. Her bow tie was printed with tiny frogs sitting on lily pads. “We go to the same place, order the same drinks, and we all get up and sing the same karaoke song.”
“I have to know what that song is,” Meri said.
“‘TiK ToK’ by Kesha,” Tori said.
Meri nodded. “I’m not sure I want the answer to this but why? Just…why?”
“It’s Hazlette’s CPR song,” Tori replied with a laugh. “We were all having trouble with our timing during orientation so he played this song until we got it right because we were such an embarrassment. Then we had it stuck in our heads for a full week.” She laced her hands together in CPR position. “Wheneverwe’re having a bad day, someone drops a few lyrics and we bust out our best compression dance moves.”
“Just so you know, Hazlette has the best moves,” Cami added.
Yeah, I knew all about that.
“Of course he does,” Meri said. “It sounds like Dr. Hazlette is talented in many special and unexpected ways.”
“Watch it,” I said under my breath. When she gave me an evil grin, I decided it was time to change course. “Did you do things like that with your first-year cohort?”
