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“If he’s going to comment on it, he should know what he’s talking about.”
Emily smiled. “I appreciate you,” she said. “But I can’t ignore the bottom line, either. Regardless of anything else that was going on around me, I just plain should have been here on time. That’s my responsibility. And I’m sure that’s what Dr. Berger is going to say when I talk to him about it.”
“You’re going to talk to him about it?”
“Yeah, he asked me to stop by his office before I go home.”
Sara groaned. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” she said. “That sounds awful.”
“I wanted to be noticed on my first day, but definitely not for something like this,” Emily agreed.
“It could be worse,” Sara said. “One of the guys I went to med school with just messaged our group text — someone in his intern group spilled a tray of needles on his first day.”
“Yeah, that would be worse,” Emily agreed. “But I was hoping my first day would be a whole lotbetter.”
“It’s only one day,” Sara consoled her. “I’m sure things will get better from here. Hey, do you want to exchange phone numbers? I’d love it if we could stay in contact. Maybe I can give you traffic updates!”
Emily laughed. “You know, I wouldn’t have believed that it would be possible for me to laugh about this today,” she said. “I’m glad you took the time to talk to me, Sara.” She held out her hand for Sara’s phone and put in her contact information. “I’m glad we’re both assigned to Dr. Berger,” she said. “Having someone I get along with here is going to make things a whole lot easier.”
Sara punched in a quick text message so that Emily would have her contact information as well. “Good luck talking to him tonight,” she said sympathetically. “No matter what happens, you’ll get through it. And in a few weeks, this will all be a funny story you tell at parties.”
Emily hoped her new friend was right, but even so, she couldn’t help feeling a mounting anxiety as she made her way to Dr.Berger’s office a few hours later, knowing that she was going to have to face the music.
CHAPTER 2
EMILY
“Come in,” said a cold voice in response to Emily’s knock.
It made Emily feel as if she had swallowed a chunk of ice. She’d heart stories about Dr. Berger, of course. When you made a study of a man’s career the way she had, you couldn’t help but hear those stories. How he was constantly angry, never warm, wonderful in every way except for bedside manner. She had expected it, to a degree. But she hadn’t known that it would be like this.
She went into the office.
It was sparse. She would have imagined that he would have photos, or at least some sort of personalization to make the place his own, but he didn’t. He’d hung his degrees, framed, on the wall behind him, and he had a bookshelf full of diagnostic manuals, but that was it. Even the pens in his pen holder were all identical, as if he was allowing someone else to supply them. In fact, she was sure he was — they were all the sort of click-top pens that drug manufacturers gave away to hospital workers. He must have just grabbed a box of those.
For some reason, that surprised her more than anything else had so far. When she was established, she knew she would want to select pens of her own. Apparently he took no joy in little things like that.
He looked up at her. “So,” he said. “Dr. Swinton.”
She had the strangest impulse to sayyes, sir.“Dr. Berger.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. Emily took a deep breath to steady herself. On top of everything else that made this difficult, he was very handsome. She hadn’t been prepared for that. The scowl on his face should have worked against his angular jaw, deep brown eyes, and the dark wavy hair that swooped across his forehead — but it didn’t. For some reason, it only made him more attractive to her.
“Sit down,” he said.
She sank into the chair opposite him and folded her hands in her lap. Above all, she couldn’t let him see how attracted to him she was. He already thought she was flaky, that she was the kind of woman who would be late on her first day because she was worrying about her makeup. It definitely wouldn’t help matters if he discovered she was someone who had a crush on her boss as well.
“Not off to a very good start,” he told her.
She nodded. The best thing to do here would be to take his criticism in stride, admit that she had been wrong, and hope they could move on. “I’m very sorry I was late,” she said. “There was a traffic accident. I know it’s no excuse — I should have left home earlier so I wouldn’t be impacted by traffic. I can assure you that I’ve learned my lesson.”
“You mean to say that I can expect you never to be late again?”
“That’s what I mean,” she agreed, feeling a twinge of anxiety in her chest. Now that she was making this promise, she reallycouldn’tbe late ever again. She never intended to, of course, but accidents happened. What if she was overpromising?
“Well, I hope you’re right about that,” Dr. Berger said. “I’ll give you one more chance — I don’t want to write you off based on what happened today — but you have an uphill battle with me, Ms. Swinton.”
“I’m determined,” she told him, squaring her shoulders. “You’ll see, Dr. Berger. I’m a good bet. This has been my dream for a very long time.”
