Ten
Aiden
“Morning, I’m Dr. Aiden Bradford, I believe I’m assigned to the first floor?” I winked at the receptionist for good measure. Maybe she could show me where the coffee was later.
“Hi there, you’re reporting to the attending, Dr. Mallory. He’s about my height, with dark hair, actually, why don’t I just take you down there?” She offered, her sparkling green eyes looking up at me from behind the desk.
“That would be great.”
As we passed rooms, she poked her head into one and gave greetings to parents and kids.
“First day?” she asked.
“Yeah, is it obvious?”
“Well you just looked at the kid in the wheelchair like something was wrong with him, so yeah, that’s obvious. You have to look at them like they’re normal, like nothing is wrong. Because for some of these kids, this is their whole life. So this is normal. Their normal. Especially the poor shifter kids, they need your sympathy the most. You understand them better than any of us.”
That hit me right in the gut. Even if I wasn’t really a kid person, I would definitely do my best.
No kid should have to live here. No kid should feel like being sick is normal.
She walked me down the hallway until finally, we hit another reception desk.
“Is Dr. Mallory with a patient, Ashley?” She asked the receptionist.
“No, he is sitting in the break room. Kind of quiet here this morning, you must be the new doc on staff, another Bradford guy right? I'm Ashley. I work the day shift.”
I waved at the petite blonde behind the desk but noticed that I wasn't even that interested. That didn't really make much sense except of course I could only think of Molly. I was really going soft.
The original receptionist pointed me in the direction of the break room. “Follow the smell of the coffee. And good luck.”
I nodded to her and walked down the hallway a few more doors before saw one that was open. A few doctors were sitting in on brightly colored couches drinking coffee and a couple were looking at magazines.
“Dr. Mallory?” I asked addressing a man with dark brown hair like the receptionist had said.
“Oh hey there, you must be Dr. Bradford number three. It's nice to meet you. Under interesting circumstances, no?” He stood up and walked out to the hallway as I followed him.
“I'm sorry, I don't think I understand.”
“Your uncle is on the board. Easy to get a job when you have connections.”
“Yeah I guess you could say that, but I'm on loan so…”
Dr. Mallory stopped in front of me and spun around facing me. “You and I both know you're not on loan from anywhere. But I'm the only one in this whole damn hospital that knows that so I'll keep my mouth shut, mostly because these kids deserve good doctors. Are you a good doctor?”
I shrugged. If he already knew the truth about me there was no point lying. “I've no idea to be totally honest. I did medic training while I was in Alpha Squad and then they paid for me to go to school but I have no hands-on experience, especially with kids. I mean besides my residency and that was in a veteran’s hospital. No kids there.”
He rolled his eyes. “I had a feeling that was going to be the case, but I was hoping I was wrong.” He pulled a tablet off the wall next to the reception desk and gave it to me quickly using his finger to drag across charts.
“See this turquoise color? That's all of your charts. It's a pretty quiet morning in here so I think you only have about three kids right now. Appointments for the day I mean. You'll get the occasional walk-in but really we mostly deal with kids that have already been patients here in the past. The walk-ins come from other hospitals that can't set a bone or don’t have an MRI machine that small enough for little people, or maybe no doctors who understand shifter protocols. The work is steady and you won't deal with anything too serious on this floor.”
“Sounds good, where do I start?”
Dr. Mallory smiled at me. “Well good, the military gave you something besides your medical background.”
“What's that?”
“A can-do attitude. I appreciate that. It means you get the job done, and I don't have to follow you around. I really don't have time to babysit you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need to be babysat, I'm a grown man. Point me in the direction of my first patient and I'll get to work.”
He pointed me toward a room labeled AB one and I walked in to see a young girl sitting on the table with what mostly look like a scraped knee. I scanned through her chart as I introduced myself to her mother and realized why she was there. Previously she had some blood clotting issues, so a scraped knee for her meant a hospital visit. That sucked.
“I'm Dr. Bradford, but you can just call me Aiden, what do we have here?”
Her mother introduced her as Olivia. “I know it's probably nothing, but she's had so many problems in the past, and I just felt like we needed to come in.”
I waved her concerns away. “Don't worry about it. Let's see that knee, Olivia. What were you doing anyway? Trying to partake in some type of rodeo?”
That elicited a small smile from the girl. “I'm not a cowgirl. I was just playing on the monkey bars and I fell. It's very simple doctor.”
She was sassy, and I appreciated it. “Monkey bars huh? How many did you get to?”
“Only three. Then I lost my grip, I fell in the mulch.”
I heard her mother sigh behind me. “I told you not to go on the monkey bars, they're dangerous.”
Olivia now sighed, matching her mother's tone almost perfectly. “And I told you I was careful. It was an accident Mom.”
I took a look at her chart again, someone had already come in and done some blood work on her and it seemed that her iron levels were normal. The blood had mostly dried on her knees and she looked pretty good overall.
“I like to do a full examination just to be safe, but I think she's fine. I'm going to send in a nurse to put a gown on her and we’ll get started.”
The mother nodded and she helped Olivia hop off the table. I walked out and closed the door behind me putting in my tablet that I needed a nurse's assistant. Someone arrived only a moment later and went in with a gown that had teddy bears on it. All the bright colors and sounds and kids were going to take some getting used to. My bear was overwhelmed, pawing at the surface. I had past so many parks on my way here. I would definitely need to stop one day and take a run. Unleash my beast a bit and relax.
As I continued to look over her chart my cell phone started buzzing in my pocket. I figured I had a couple minutes to answer quickly when I realized it was my uncle calling. And he wanted exactly what I was expecting.
“So when do I get to meet this girl? How is the first day of work going? Have you seen either of your brothers?”
“Can’t you even say hello? The girl is great. And you can set up some fancy dinner for whenever you want. And so far the hospital’s not that bad. I do appreciate however that I'm not cleaning bedpans. Instead, I'm just fixing up a scraped knee.”
“I didn't want it to be a full prison sentence. You already did something similar to that in the past few days.”
“You're so charming when you're angry, do you know that?”
“I'm going to ignore that last comment. How about dinner at Jordan’s, tomorrow?”
I nodded. “I'll make it work.” The nurse opened up the door again and I knew it was time to go.
“I've got to get back to work. See you tomorrow.”
I ended the call and walked back into tend to Olivia's knee. Tomorrow, the ruse would begin.