“Maybe that’s the problem,” Victoria mused. “It’s you, not me. She doesn’t know what to do when you’re not insulting her.”
“They were definitely looking at you,” Ashley said, firm in her conviction. “And talking about you. They didn’t run away when I looked at them, but they couldn’t get out of here fast enough when they saw you’d caught them.”
Jen looked between them both. “Why would a surgeon from Oncology be talking about you?” she asked Victoria.
Victoria could only shrug as she stabbed half-heartedly at her Cobb salad. “I genuinely have no idea. But they’re not the only ones.” She stuffed a bite of ham and lettuce into her mouth. “I saw some nurses in Cardio earlier. And an orderly in the ER was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. Oh, and a couple of residents in the OR with me today, they were chatting and watching methrough the scrub room window, but certainly did shut their mouths quickly when I entered the room.”
Ashley frowned. “You didn’t tell me about all those.”
“I would have gotten around to it eventually. I think.” Victoria frowned. “To be perfectly honest with you both, up until now I had thought I was imagining things.”
“It would seem not.” Jen propped her chin in her hand and looked thoughtful.
“I haven’t heard anything,” Ashley said, mystified.
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Victoria poked at her salad again. “Everyone knows we’re close friends as well as colleagues. And they know you’re with Jen here, so they’ll take care to keep out of her earshot as well.”
“That’s true,” Jen agreed with a nod.
They ate without speaking for a bit, all of them deep in thought. Ashley broke the silence. “I could corner Majumdar, maybe,” she offered, her smile almost gleeful at the prospect of tormenting her professional nemesis. “Like you said, Jen, I’m no stranger to putting the fear of God into her. I can get answers.”
“Please don’t,” Jen replied mildly. “I do have a liver transplant on the books with her for tomorrow. I need her to be unintimidated, if at all possible, she is always so very nervous working with me.”
Ashley actually looked disappointed. “Oh, all right.”
“Ashley, please don’t concern yourself with it. I’m sure it’s just some new rumor about me ‘cracking up’ going around again.” Not that the prospect didn’t annoy Victoria greatly, because it very much did. But of all the things she had to worry about, hospital gossip seemed like bottom of the pile stuff. Something she could deal with later, mostly passively, simply by continuing to display her cool competence.
Her phone beeped with a reminder. “Ah. I’ve got to get moving. Afternoon rounds for me.”
The women smiled up at her as she got to her feet. “You’re probably right, it’s probably nothing,” Jen told her, reaching over to give her hand a pat.
“I’ll keep my ear to the ground, though,” Ashley assured her.
“Lovely. Thank you.” Somehow, Victoria mustered up a smile, gathered her garbage, and headed for the cafeteria door.
As she was shoving her lunch detritus into a dangerously full can and wincing when she touched a half-eaten Sloppy Joe, a surprised voice hailed her. “Dr. Ellis!”
Victoria turned to see the Emergency Department chief, Deb Morales, standing in the doorway. “Dr. Morales, hello.”
She hadn’t seen Deb since the day of the mass casualty event. And she didn’t really know the woman that well. She did know she was seeing Hayley Milton, the nurse that had landed Victoria in her current predicament, and she was glad that Hayley didn’t seem to be around. That little reminder of where things had gone wrong would not have helped her mood in the slightest.
As it was, the look of uncertainty on Deb’s face wasn’t boding well for her, either. “Dr. Ellis, I’m glad I ran into you. Is it possible we can talk?”
“I was about to do rounds…” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything that a nervous-looking ER chief needed to tell her. It would only add one more lit match to the fire.
“Please.” Deb Morales, who routinely rode her motorcycle to work in the Emergency Department, looked so deeply ill at ease that Victoria wanted to run screaming in the other direction as far away as she could get. But she did find herself following the woman out into the corridor, and around a corner into a quieter part of the busy basement level of Oakridge. “I don’t like getting involved in other folks’ business, normally.”
“Well, we can part ways now and pretend you never even tried,” Victoria volunteered with a painfully false cheer. “Problem solved.”
Deb tugged at the end of her long dark ponytail, growing less happy by the minute. “I would, but I do think you need to know this is happening. It’s spreading like wildfire.”
An icy cold finger trailed its way down Victoria’s spine. “What is?”
Glancing around to be very sure they were alone, Deb leaned in, her dark eyes full of worry, her brow furrowed. “There are rumors that you were seen kissing that Staff Wellness therapist. Dr. Monroe?”
Stay calm. “Is that so?”
“I don’t know where it all started.” Deb looked like she was about to start wringing her hands. “Or who started it. But you have a right to know that it’s being discussed.”
