The Intern by Peter Hogenkamp

Author:Peter Hogenkamp [Press, TouchPoint]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TouchPoint Press
Published: 2020-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

***

In a hospital as old as Golden Arches, a woman could always find a place to get off the grid: a vacant classroom, an unused janitorial closet deep in the bowels of the basement, or even the stacks inside the rarely used medical library. Maggie had considered all of these as a place to take a nap but settled on the last on account of a rat sighting in the janitorial closet and a recent Melendez hook-up in the classroom—or at least a purported Melendez hook-up, which was not necessarily the same thing.

Maggie found the burnt orange chair in between the last two stacks on the side of the library opposite the window and settled into the overstuffed cushions. There was no one else in the library, which wasn’t surprising because virtually all the medical information contained therein was also available with an internet connection and a subscription to PubMed, which was free to all the physicians and house staff. And since the medical librarian, a fussy and ill-dispositioned sexagenarian who still had her job for the sole reason no one had the courage to let her go, was in position at her desk, Maggie doubted the situation was going to change.

She flopped her legs over an arm, rested her head back against the head, and closed her irritated eyes. Fatigue overcame her, and she dropped off to sleep without delay, not waking until a firm hand shook her shoulder sometime later.

“Maggie, wake up.”

She recognized her father’s voice. “Dad?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Prying open her eyes, she saw her father standing there in the light of the fluorescent bulbs. He was wearing his surgical scrubs and hat; the magnifying loops with which he used to operate were propped on his head

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Yoda told me you were here.”

She scooched over to make room for him, and he sat down next to her. “What’s up?”

“We need to talk.”

Maggie had heard her father say this only a few times in her life, but enough to know it didn’t bode well.

“I got an angry phone call this afternoon.”

“Oh? Who from?”

“Brock Jones,” her father said.

“Do I know him?”

“You know him alright. In fact, you just met him today.”

Neurons synapsed in her tired mind, creating the image of the man who had fathered Grace Jones. She looked him over in her mind’s eye, admiring his lean but powerful figure and his erect bearing. Brock Jones was a jerk, but he was a handsome one.

“What’d he want?” Maggie asked.

“He wanted to complain about you.”

“For what? Doing my job?”

“His daughter isn’t your patient, Maggie.”

“Sure, she is. She’s on the pediatric floor; I’m a pediatric intern. And not only that, I assisted on her surgery. That creep had no right to complain about me.”

“That creep was the starting safety on the New York Giants the last time they won the Super Bowl, Maggie.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“It means he can cause you a lot of problems if you piss him off.”

She snorted,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.