“Hi, Andrew,” she said, throwing in a wriggle as she went past.
Jane leaned forward and said, “FDO,” to Lin and me under her breath.
“What’s that?” Lin asked, keeping her voice down.
“’Fucks Doctors Only’,” Daniel explained.
Dr. Maynard nodded. “Registrar’s Mattresses. You’ll get to pick them; they invariably work in ICU.”
Lin and I exchanged glances, then we both burst out laughing. Jane waved a chip at us and said, “Sure, you think it’s funny now. Just wait until you’re a resident, it won’t be quite so funny, then, especially if they find out you’re planning on specialising in something profitable.”
“Not gen med,” Dr. Maynard said. “Orthos make a decent living, but I’ve always thought dermatology was the way to go for a career path. None of your patients ever die, none of them get better, and you never have to get out of bed in the middle of the night. Either of you thought about what area you want to work in?”
I shook my head. “Just getting through finals is enough of a goal at the moment. Getting through and not stuffing up badly.”
Lin said, “I really like lab work. I’d like to do micro.”
Dr. Maynard stared at Lin for a moment. I must admit I thought she was pretty weird, too. “I don’t think either of you have anything to worry about with your finals. And you’ll both make damn good doctors.”
I was inordinately pleased with Dr. Maynard’s praise, and wished I shared his confidence in our abilities.
“Hospitals are strange,” I said, and everyone besides Lin cracked up. She just nodded sympathetically beside me.
Smart one, Blake. Now I looked even more like an idiot.
That would serve me right for opening my mouth and just letting words fall out. I bit into my cheese sandwich, trying to salvage some dignity, and Dr. Maynard patted my shoulder reassuringly.
“They are,” he agreed. “Weird shit happens here.”
All right, we had a full-on lust situation here. Serious chemistry. Fuck, but his hand felt good, and my overactive imagination thought that it slid off my shoulder a little too slowly.
Tomorrow I was wearing my pink triangle earring.
Chapter Four
I was exasperated. There was no other word for it. Nevins was staring at me like a deer trapped by car headlights, so I smiled at the poor patient who was retching and indicated with my head for the students to follow me out of the cubicle.
“Okay, who here has actually inserted a naso-gastric tube?” I asked.
There was a universal shaking of heads.
“Can any of you at least tell me how to check that one is correctly positioned?” I was going to throttle someone soon.
If it wasn’t Nevins, it’d be whoever was supposed to have taught them this stuff already.
Lin said, “Um, there’s three ways, Dr. Maynard. Litmus paper to test acidity of aspirate, auscultation for gurgling of injected air, and X-ray confirmation of the location of the radio-opaque tip.” She looked like she was about to cry, so I smiled reassuringly at her.
“Absolutely right. Now, Blake, tell me about the relative merits of each method.”
Long eyelashes fluttered and I noticed Blake’s earring.
That was brave of him, and I wondered for a moment if this was a response to the discussion of the predatory nurses here.
During this moment, Blake got his shit together and retrieved a textbook answer from his memory.
“Good,” I said when he’d finished. “Follow me.”
I took them to the storeroom and searched the shelves and bins for a little while, then grabbed a handful of NGT kits and lube sachets. “Here,” I said. “Go home tonight and practice on yourself. I’m not letting you learn on an unsuspecting member of the general public.”
There was a stunned silence from the little dears before they took their kits and filed out of the storeroom. Blake was last, and as he walked past, I said quietly, “Nice earring.”
I was out of line, of course, since that was almost flirting, and I expected Blake to just pretend he hadn’t heard, but he paused and looked at me sideways.
“Do you have one, too?” he asked, and he coloured a little.
My eyes were fixed on his mouth now, and God help me, but I was getting hard. We were definitely into flirting territory now.
“No, but I should have.” My eyes dropped for an instant to Blake’s hands. He was squeezing the sachet of lube between his fingers. I glanced at the door of the storeroom, even though I knew there was no way we could lock ourselves in here.
Nevins appeared in the doorway and we both let out long breaths of relief. Jesuuuus, but things had been about to get out of hand. “Um, Dr. Maynard,” he said. “I need more lube. I just burst the sachet.”
He held out one hand, which was dripping lube.
I cracked. Between the combination of sexual tension and the dawning realization I was actually flirting with a sexual harassment suit, as well as a student, it was all too much. I clung onto the shelving beside me and shook with laughter.
I waved a hand feebly at the bin containing the lube sachets, and Nevins took another one with his clean hand.
When he’d gone, I looked at Blake, shaking my head in disbelief and still chuckling. He was grinning back at me, a hundred megawatt smile that warmed me all the way through.
As Jane frequently said, JesusfuckingChrist.
“Back to work,” I said to him. “Let’s go eke out the public health system’s resources a little further by exploiting the free labour you people represent.”
Thud.
I leaned forward and thumped my head softly on the table again.
Thud.
“No,” I said, my voice a little muffled until I sat up again.
“That is wrong on so many levels.” The spotty kid, who had been reading from his Palm Pilot, paused and peered at me through his spectacles.
“What did I say wrong?” the student asked, and I glared at him.
“You cannot say that being black is a risk factor for heart disease.”
“But it is…” he spluttered. “Our pathophysiology textbook says so…”
“Then your textbook is wrong.” Judging by the look on the kid’s face I had said something scandalous. “It’s the social disadvantages that go with being black that are the risk factors: being poor, being malnourished, having a lower standard of education, and impaired access to health care. There is nothing intrinsic about skin colour that affects heart disease risk.”
“But…” the kid said, and I shook my head.
“That’s just crap,” I said. “Just like being gay isn’t a risk factor for HIV infection. It’s the sexual activity itself that is the risk factor, not the orientation. Read your textbooks with a critical mind, people. Deep-seated prejudices run through them.”
There was stony silence around the table, though Blake was looking smug and managing to mostly hide it.
“Have any of you got a textbook with you?” I asked. “I’ll show you what I mean.”
I’d politicise these brats before this was over. It was that, or I was going to wind up cancelling the tutorial and stomping out.
Nevins handed over a textbook from his backpack.
Excellent; it was a reproductive anatomy text; I couldn’t have asked for a better example.
Five seconds in the index gave me the page I wanted. “Tell me what’s wrong with this passage,” I said, and I began to read: “Menstruation is the failure to achieve pregnancy. If the egg released at ovulation is not fertilised, the corpus luteum degenerates, the endometrium deteriorates and the necrotic tissue is lost through the vagina.”