ROUND 1
CHAPTER ONE
TALIA
“Thirteen.” The dry erase marker squeaked as I added a tally mark to the inside of my locker’s metal door.
Thirteen. “A new record.”
Thirteen days without a patient yelling at me. Thirteen days without anyone requesting Dr. Anderson, Dr. Herrera or Dr. Murphy in my place. Thirteen days without Rachel, the charge nurse at Quincy Memorial, lecturing me for, well . . . anything.
Thirteen good days.
What were the chances this streak would last through Christmas next week? If I made it to twenty-two days in a row, that would mean I’d gone an entire work month without my intelligence, my education or my skills being called into question.
The door to the staff locker room opened, and Rachel stood in the threshold. Oh, God. Don’t ruin my streak.
“Hi, Rachel.” I forced a smile. “How was your day?”
“Fine.” Her voice was flat. She was in her late forties and might have been pretty if she’d relaxed. Or if she’d let her hair down. But in the three years I’d worked with Rachel, I’d only ever seen her blond hair, streaked with gray at the temples, pulled into a severe bun.
Was it short? Long? No clue. Even the few times I’d bumped into her outside of work, Rachel’s hair had looked the same. Was that why she was so sour? Was that bun giving her a headache? Her frown was as ever present as her hairstyle. Did she ever smile?
“I’ve got a problem with a chart, Talia.”
“Okay,” I drawled.
There was no problem with a chart. I’d spent three years getting lectured by this woman on exactly what boxes to check, how she wanted the doctors to input notes and where her nurses looked for patient details.
Dr. Anderson, Dr. Murphy and Dr. Herrera each had their own charting preferences. They put their notes wherever they pleased. Had Rachel ever lectured them on their charting? No. She also didn’t call them by their first names. I was the lesser doctor on staff and Rachel always found a way to remind me that I was just a resident.
I was just Talia.
I was just the girl who’d grown up in this small Montana town and who’d loved it enough to move home after medical school. I’d come home to give back to my community and, maybe someday, earn the respect that Dr. Anderson had garnered in his decades as Quincy’s favorite doctor.
Not only was he my boss, he was also the man who’d delivered my five siblings and me into this world. He was a staple in our town. Did Rachel razz him about meticulous charting? Doubtful.
“Should we take a look?” I returned my marker to the locker’s shelf, then closed it up, following Rachel to the nearest nurses’ station.
She took a seat, clicking with fury through the hospital’s records as I hovered over her shoulder. When she had the chart pulled up, she shifted so I could read the screen.
It was Memphis’s chart. My sister-in-law had come in for a routine pregnancy checkup this afternoon. I scanned the information for anything out of place. Medications prescribed? None. Labs ordered? Just the standard urine analysis. Baby’s heart rate? Normal. The nurse had entered in Memphis’s vitals.
“What’s the problem?” I asked Rachel.
“Your notes.”
“What about the notes?” I’d added a few quick sentences stating that Memphis was feeling fine and that her weight and blood pressure were in the normal range.
“I can’t read those notes and know what concerns were discussed with the patient.”
“You can read those notes and see that the patient had no concerns to discuss.” I kept my smile firmly in place, but damn, this woman loved to poke at me. She’d been poking for three years and it was growing old.
This entire encounter was a waste of my time. And she’d just broken my thirteen-day streak.
Why was it always her? Was it horrible that I wished she’d retire early? Her nursing staff was wonderful. They were a joy to work with, and I would bet my annual salary that not a single one of them would have felt misinformed by the brief summary notes in Memphis’s chart.
But nothing I did seemed to be enough for Rachel. She viewed this hospital as hers and I was the too-young, too-inexperienced doctor roaming her hallways, intruding on her turf.
“Anything else?” I asked. “I’ve got dinner plans.”
Memphis had been my last patient for the day and Knox had tagged along. My brother never missed a thing when it came to his wife and kids. After the checkup, they’d invited me to dinner, and I rarely turned down Knox’s cooking. He owned the best restaurant in town, and though meals at Knuckles were always outstanding, the real magic came alive when he was cooking at home for those he loved most.
Lunch today had been a stale granola bar and a protein shake. My stomach had been growling for an hour. As if on cue, it rumbled.
Rachel’s eyes dropped to my waist as her lip curled.
This was a test, right? Maybe Rachel was simply putting me through some sort of resident physician hazing. Maybe she wanted to make sure I had the backbone to be one of Quincy’s doctors. Why else would she be so nasty? What the hell had I done to make her dislike me so much?
Nothing. The answer was nothing. So this had to be a test.
Well, hazing ritual or not, Rachel would need to come at me with more than nitpicking and frowns. My dream was to work at Quincy Memorial. This was just as much my hospital as it was hers. My family had founded Quincy, and generations ago, the Edens had donated money to help build this hospital in the first place.
“Have a great night, Rachel.” My tone held more sugar than a kid’s Halloween bag. With a quick finger wave, I walked away from the desk and retreated to the locker room.
It was empty, so I let out a groan as I spun the combination on my lock and ripped the door open. Then I grabbed the microfiber cloth I kept on the shelf and erased my tally marks.
Zero. “Gah.”
Hopefully Rachel would back off after my residency was over. Was that what I needed before she’d treat me like the other doctors? A full-fledged medical license?
I was close. I was so close. I’d been lucky after medical school. Many small-town hospitals weren’t accredited to take on residents, but Dr. Anderson had jumped through the hoops years ago so that he could have a resident on occasion. Dr. Murphy had been the first. Then I’d applied and Dr. Anderson had taken me under his wing.
We hadn’t talked about the timing of me taking my licensure exam, but I assumed it would happen this spring. And after another few years, I hoped to earn my board certification in family medicine too, just like Dr. Anderson.
If I earned a certification, would that stop patients from giving me the side-eye when I walked into an exam room? It didn’t happen all the time. It happened less than it had a year ago. But it still happened. I still overheard the whispered questions.
Is she old enough to be a doctor? Are you sure she knows what she’s doing? Isn’t one of the other doctors available today?
Most of the pushback I got was from men, especially older men. Even at twenty-nine years old, I was still viewed by some of Quincy’s good ol’ boys as Harrison Eden’s girl.
I was a good doctor, right? Dr. Anderson would have told me if I’d been doing a bad job. He wouldn’t let me treat people if he thought I’d do them harm.