Anatomy of a Meet Cute by Addie Woolridge
Chapter Four
“I promise. It’ll be like ten minutes max,” Duke said as he unlocked the front door.
“I’ve lived with you for two months. You’ve never taken a ten-minute shower in your life.” Sam chuckled, following him in. By the time they reached the house, Duke and Sam had broken down their entire day at the hospital, laughed at Raphael’s lucky game socks, and rock-paper-scissors battled for the shower. Sam lost. And now it would be a good forty-five minutes before she could get near the shower. Probably longer if Duke used up all the hot water.
“You always act like I’m—” He stopped short just a few feet into the hallway. “Hey, Jehan, what’s going on?”
Duke sounded like someone trying to talk a child into handing them a kitchen knife instead of running over and sticking it in an electrical socket. Peeking around him, Sam saw why. Jehan had situated herself on the couch, face splotchy with tears, surrounded by bits and pieces from magazines, a few legal documents, and a laptop and tablet, both of which were open to Pinterest.
“I’m just a little overwhelmed. Trav doesn’t really get the engagement party thing, so I’m trying to move fast, but now my mom and my aunts have opinions . . .” Jehan’s lip quivered as she forced a shuddering breath into her lungs. “It’s a lot to handle.”
“It’s okay. We’ll get through this,” Sam said as Jehan picked up a magazine and halfheartedly stacked it on top of another. Sam pointed to a semicleared spot on the floor next to her. “Can I sit down?”
“Of course. I didn’t expect you all to be home for another twenty minutes. I thought I had time to clean up.” She sniffed, grabbing another fistful of papers and shuffling them around.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll help.” Sam caught Duke’s eye. He shrugged at Jehan and shook his head as she continued to rearrange papers, oblivious to the both of them. Sam widened her eyes and jerked her head at him to come sit down. He shook his head again, right as Jehan looked up.
Stopping midmotion, Duke tried to turn his vigorous headshake into some sort of sniffing gesture, then said, “I really smell after that game. Let me hit up the shower, and then we can all”—he pointed vaguely in the direction of Jehan’s piles and shrugged—“organize things.”
“Thanks,” Jehan hiccuped, looking back down at the piles around her and missing the pointed look he gave Sam before disappearing in the direction of the shower.
“So what happened?” Sam asked, gingerly peering at her friend.
“I started talking to my mom about the party, and it exploded.”
“Exploded how?” Sam asked, then immediately wished she hadn’t.
Great soggy tears started rolling down Jehan’s face as she pointed to the magazines. “My mother started sending me all this. Then she told my aunts, who got involved. Now there are multiple Pinterest boards, and everyone has expectations, but no one is helping.”
“Okay, so we want to work on managing expectations. After all, it’s just a small party—”
“Not anymore.” Jehan’s voice wobbled as she dropped her head into her hands. “My mom is insisting I invite everyone from my parents’ social circle. She wants half her office here.”
“It’s okay. We can get through this,” Sam said, pulling Jehan’s hands away from her face so she could look her in the eye.
“Mom wants a proper wedding; Travis wants a fast wedding in DC. I just want to practice medicine and be left alone,” Jehan continued as if she hadn’t heard anything Sam had said.
“I’m here. Duke’s here. You don’t have to do this by yourself.” The sentiment that Jehan just wanted to be alone during what should be a happy time struck Sam as odd, but she decided to poke at it later. Right now, she needed to calm her friend down, not help her spin out faster.
“This whole fellowship thing is so much harder than they told us it would be.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Sam laughed. “Honestly, how long was your last shift?”
“Sixteen hours. The doctor taking over for me was late and—”
“Girl, after a sixteen-hour shift is not the time to look at your auntie’s Pinterest board. You’re tired.”
“You’re right,” Jehan sniffed, looking around with a critical eye for possibly the first time in hours. “And Travis and I haven’t ever been separated like this since we started dating six years ago. I know it’s a sensitive time for him. We’ve never had to negotiate our relationship from a distance. He likely thinks dismissing my family’s expectations is helpful.”
“See. Everyone’s processing right now.” Sam picked up a pile and stacked it carelessly on top of another, trying to think. Jabs at Travis would not help anyone right now. Looking for an encouraging way to reframe her friend’s struggle, she said, “I’m sure Travis can learn to respect the role your family plays in important events. Your mom and aunts can wait forty-eight hours, and tomorrow, we can space out after work, look at the pretty pictures, decide which ones to keep and which ones to throw out. Sound good?”
“When you say it like that, I feel ridiculous.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Smiling at her, Sam shook her head and laughed. “After all, you talked me out of flipping out over seeing my mom in LA. Roomies are good for perspective.”
“Honestly, anxiety is really normal,” Sam said, smiling up at the woman in front of her. Sheila was relatively new to the clinic, which meant that her baby and Sam would get to go through her first year at SF Central together. The thought was fun for Sam, but she didn’t voice that to her patient, who was already looking a little nauseous while Sam walked her through an outline of the next six months pre- and postpartum.
“This is a lot,” Sheila said, fidgeting on the exam table. “How does anyone remember all this?”
“A lot of it, your body will likely do for you.” Sam laughed. “And what it doesn’t do, anyone in your life who has been pregnant in the last few years will remember for you.”
Sheila giggled. “Advice from strangers. Every pregnant person’s worst nightmare.”
“I’m not sure I’d take it from them. At least not without vetting it first,” Sam laughed, then began to write down a list of a few things Sheila should keep in the house as her pregnancy progressed. “Does your family live locally?”
“No. It’s just me and my partner. They drive a short-haul truck route, so right now it is just me. We’re originally from Utah.”
“Oh,” Sam said. Suddenly her nerves made a lot more sense. “In that case, I might recommend taking a few classes to help you make a few other pregnant friends, and if you are so inclined, you might want to speak with a birthing specialist.”
“Birthing specialist?”
“Commonly called a doula.” Sam made a mental note to cut down on the jargon next time she had this conversation.
“Where can I find those? Classes and the birthing . . . whatever you called it.” Sam felt her heartbeat pick up. Not three seconds ago she’d been riding high on her ability to suggest resources. Now she was crashing under the weight of where to actually get them. Sheila must have sensed her hesitance, because she started, “I can google—”
“No worries!” While Sam was a fan of learning to change a headlight from YouTube, googling pregnancy plus anything had an equal likelihood of getting her ripped off as solving her problem. “It’s just that I’m still new here, so I am not sure which services are reputable in the area. But you have another appointment in a few weeks, so why don’t I ask around, and we can talk about your options then?”
Sheila nodded, the corners of her mouth turning up slowly. “Sounds good.”
“Okay then. Any other questions I can answer for you?” Sam asked, praying that if she had questions, they were medical in nature. Last week someone had asked where the nearest coffee place was, and it had nearly killed Sam to admit she didn’t know that either.
“No, I think I’m all set. Thank you, Doctor.”
“All right. Take care. And call that number or send me an email if you have any questions before your next appointment.” Sam handed her the page she had been writing on and stepped out of the room, careful to gently close the door behind her.
Sam walked down the hallway, sighing heavily as she made her way to the nurses’ station. She felt Sheila’s question rattling around in her head and winced. Much to her chagrin, the charge nurse was not at the desk. Sam wanted to be able to email her patient the information as soon as possible. She also wanted to get the answers to her questions from anyone other than Grant.
She’d seen him at the short convening he held for the fellows and residents he was supervising that day. The meeting was only fifteen minutes and entirely patient focused, but Sam could almost feel Grant’s mind assessing her every word, looking for some new way to retrieve the upper hand the entire time. By the end of the morning, she decided that avoiding him was the best possible outcome. Duke pointed out that it would be physically impossible for her to avoid the man for the next three years, but Sam had to disagree. Where there was a will, there was a way. And she had a lot of will. Except . . .
She also had a lot of questions. Loath as she was to admit it, Grant would have the answers. If it was between maintaining a petty grudge and providing patient care, Sam could suck it up for twenty minutes.
Rounding the corner toward the graying staff lounge, Sam spotted him through the webbed window in the door. Perched on the end of a couch, he was huddled over some paper spread out over a coffee table. His dark hair was perfectly in place, held together by the same kind of alchemy that also made his scrubs wrinkle-free despite being six hours into a shift. The muscles in his left arm flexed as his pen hovered over the page, preparing to write down notes on whatever was causing the crease in his brow.
Does he have to be hot?It was one thing to have to work with someone who you didn’t really like. It was another thing to work with someone who was so good looking it was difficult to make eye contact with them. Why couldn’t he just be disheveled like everyone else?
Taking a deep breath, Sam reminded herself that she’d watched the guy peg someone with a basketball. Whether or not he was perfectly put together, she didn’t need to be intimidated by him. Grant’s gaze flicked briefly to the door as Sam did her best to glide through it, willing her heartbeat to slow down as she entered the room.
“Hey,” Grant said, the muscles in his face twitching toward a smile before he looked back down at whatever he was writing.
“Hello,” Sam said, with a small wave that instantaneously felt absurd. He wasn’t looking at her. Why was she waving? Looking for something to do with her hands, she went over to the coffee machine and stared at its buttons for a moment. She just needed to be cool. Colleagues bounced ideas off each other all the time. Fumbling with a puny-looking paper cup, Sam poked at a button promising a latte before turning to face the couch and its occupant again.
“Hey, Grant. I’ve been meaning to ask—” The sound of the machine wheezing and grinding coffee beans interrupted her right as he looked up, a hint of his earlier concentration still furrowing his brow. The machine let out a puff of steam and seemed to quiet down as it began to fill her cup, and Sam took another deep breath. “Wow, that is loud. How does anyone have a conversation over that?”
“Fair warning—it tastes how it sounds. Most of us get coffee from the cafeteria.” Grant half smiled, and the lines on his forehead disappeared. “What’s up?”
“I just saw a patient and—” The machine began to beep like a construction truck backing up, causing Sam to jump three inches. She clutched her collarbone and tried to identify the source of the sound.
“It means it’s done. You’ve never used this before?”
“How is this done? There is like two tablespoons of weird sludge in there.” Sam frowned at the machine, which continued to squawk. “And no. Jehan makes us all a big thermos of coffee every shift. Now I know why.”
“You have to take the cup out, or it’ll just keep beeping,” Grant said, sounding tired.
“Talk about a design flaw,” Sam mumbled, snatching the cup out of the machine. In her mind, this conversation had gone a lot smoother. Still holding the weird cup of foam, she turned to face Grant. “Right. So where was I?”
“You had a question.” He raised an eyebrow at her from over his shoulder.
“Yeah . . .” How could one eyebrow make someone feel so stupid? Struggling to reform her question, she said, “I’m wondering what resources or coaching we have available for pregnant individuals?”
“Oh. Good question . . . ,” Grant said, leaning away from the coffee table and drawing his shoulders back in a subconscious stretch as he thought. “Do you mean in the hospital?”
“Yes.” Sam felt the tension in her face return and rubbed her forehead as she made her way over to the shabby chair next to the couch. Dropping herself into it, she added, “Typically, hospitals often have community programs. I know I should know these things by now—”
“You have been a doctor here for exactly two months. Why would you know that?” Grant chuckled, then grinned at her. There was that disarming smile again. The one that felt like sunshine. “I can guarantee you half the staff here don’t have a sense of any community programs besides the one for smoking cessation.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t beat yourself up over this one. There will be plenty of other stuff to be upset about. Trust me,” Grant said. His tone was more kind than the dismissive shrug that accompanied his words, and Sam found herself smiling in spite of her best efforts.
“As long as there is an avenue for guilt somewhere. Wouldn’t want to miss out on the self-flagellation.”
Grant smirked at her joke, then leaned forward again. “To answer your question. It wasn’t covered in orientation because we don’t have any community programs for it.”
“What?”
“You came to SF Central because you wanted to work with some of the city’s most underserved people, didn’t you?” Grant asked. It wasn’t an accusation, but it wasn’t warm and fuzzy either.
Sam’s unease returned as she nodded her affirmation, deciding that words would likely get her in trouble.
“I did too. The reality is that public hospitals and clinics don’t have that kind of money, even with our research partnership with Stanford. This hospital barely has money to keep the lights on. We don’t have staff for community groups.”
Sam inhaled sharply in an effort not to bite Grant’s head off. She understood the budget situation. It was evident in everything she saw all day, from the dated exam rooms in the clinic to the fact that she didn’t have a laptop for charting. She knew what a lack of funding looked like, and she didn’t need him to explain it. If the hospital didn’t receive funds from the government to hire young doctors like her, she wouldn’t be here.
“I know the hospital has limited resources. I’m not completely stupid, contrary to my efforts on the plane.” Grant’s eyes went wide, his eyebrows inching toward his hairline. “Using my own powers of observation and a shred of common sense, I figured out the funding thing pretty quickly. I just thought maybe someone here might have started—”
“I’m sorry. Of course you understand hospital budgets. You’re a community health researcher.” Grant twisted the pen in his hand and let out a nervous chuckle. “You have a master’s in public policy.”
“How do you know that?”
“Orientation booklet.” Grant shrugged, managing to look both contrite and charming. “Anyway, I don’t think you are stupid, and implying that was not my intention.”
“Oh.” Sam blinked a few times. She had steeled herself for a fight, and now she was sitting in her battle armor with no enemy in sight. The whole interaction had caught her off guard. She wanted to hold a grudge, but a small voice in the back of her head registered Grant’s tone. He wasn’t trying to be rude. If anything, he seemed to be attempting to relate. Albeit poorly. Still bristling, she said, “It happens.”
Grant’s expression hovered somewhere between charming repentance and a grimace. “Anyway, before I interrupted you, you were saying?”
Sam looked down at her coffee cup, less with the intention of drinking whatever was in there and more to help herself focus. Better to block out Grant’s presence while she tried to formulate her question. “I was just thinking that maybe some of the staff might have gotten something off the ground. Maybe partnered with a local birthing center or something?”
Sam looked up in time to catch Grant exhaling slowly. Letting his eyes flick to the door of the room, he shifted his posture, leaning toward her. “It’s a little trickier than just funding limitations. There is a generation gap at play. I think you’ll find that some doctors here are excited about community programming and the idea of a community hospital as more than a triage center for people who are underinsured.”
“And?” Sam felt herself leaning forward, too, as if being pulled into his secretive observations by a magnet and abandoning whatever effort she might have made to be cool.
“Then we have some who are . . .” Grant looked back toward the door again, dropping his voice to just above a whisper. “They are just more comfortable with how things have always been done.”
“Oh.” Sam’s heart sank as Grant’s meaning dawned on her. “Let me guess—the people who are ‘traditional’ also happen to be making program decisions?” Sam asked, putting traditional in air quotes.
Grant nodded at her, as if he had just conveyed some sort of conspiracy theory, then leaned back against the couch, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“And no one has tried to find a way around this?”
“Well”—Grant used his hands to heighten his shrug—“not since I’ve been here. It’s kind of a lot for a new fellow to take on, and there is already such high burnout among physicians. Starting something like that is a big ask, even if you could get the support or funding.”
“Right. So you don’t know of anyone who has actually tried, then?” Sam asked, attempting to soften her words. She didn’t want to make it sound like Grant or any of her other colleagues hadn’t been doing their jobs. Still, it nagged at her. How did an entire hospital full of people just decide to ignore an obvious problem?
“I don’t think I do,” Grant said, glancing back down at the journal article he was reading, clearly signaling that Sam’s line of questioning should wrap up before he needed to get to wherever it was that senior fellows went next.
Hint taken. Reaching for her coffee cup, Sam sighed. “Okay then, I guess it is up to me to try. One more question, then I’ll leave you alone. Who is the best person for me to approach about getting a program off the ground?”
“Try to start a program?” Grant’s head tilted in surprise, as if Sam had just told him that she wanted to parachute off the roof.
“Yup. Someone has to push the old guard. It’s clear the program is needed. Why not me?”
“Being a research fellow is hard. You’re working like seventy hours a week,” Grant said. The incredulity on his face was almost funny. “I don’t want to tell you how to live, but I might suggest scaling back your ambition. It takes most researchers a decade to get a single initiative off the ground. Doing it in your first year of fellowship is a stretch.”
“I can’t just let my patients get half the care they deserve,” Sam said, ignoring the fact that Grant’s eyebrows were dangerously close to his hairline. Clearly, he hadn’t expected pushback from her. “I assume I should start with Dr. Franklin?”
“Well, yes. He would be the one to start with.” Grant tilted his head and stared at her as if she were a journal article that he didn’t totally understand. “But like I said, why not give yourself more than a few years in the job before you try to get community programming off the ground? The other research fellows are just doing small studies for their projects. Blood analysis, patient-attitude surveys, and that kind of stuff. This is really swinging for the fences.”
Her mother had been trying to control her for years. Waiting for Sam to fail so she could pick at her. But this time she wasn’t going to fail. Nope. She’d give up breathing long before she went back to Ohio as a failure. She might be biting off more than most people could chew, but she could do it. Grant would have to do better than a stern talking-to if he wanted her to be less ambitious.
Sam put her free hand on her hip and looked him right in the eye. “And like I said, the patient I just saw deserves support. It’s not like I can ask her to let her baby bake for the next three years because it is convenient for my schedule.”
Grant’s laugh filled the room, lighting up all four graying corners with his tenor. “I appreciate the sense of urgency. And if anyone could do it, I’m sure you could.”
“Can and will.” Sam felt her jaw set. He had a warm, rich laugh. A laugh she probably would have enjoyed under other circumstances. She liked it a lot less when he was trying to talk her out of something.
“Right.” Grant nodded, the humor still playing around his eyes as he looked her over like her dream was too adorable for him to crush. A man who looked like that probably hadn’t failed at anything in his life. Perfect people never did. She hated that look almost as much as she hated people doubting her. “Well, they say advice is worth what you pay for it. And mine’s free, so do what you want. But if I were you, I’d focus on securing funding for a simple research question for your fellowship.”
“Duly noted. Where is Dr. Franklin’s office?”
“Up on the fifth floor, near the men’s room,” Grant sighed, the tired expression returning to his face as he watched her walk her untouched coffee over to the trash can.
“Wonderful. I’ll have a chat with him,” Sam said, her words a little too perky to be believable.
“Hey, Sam.” Grant’s words floated over her shoulder, stopping her as she pushed on the door.
Turning slowly to face him again, Sam schooled her features into a neutral expression as best she could. “Yes?”
“Dr. Franklin can be sticky, but he’ll usually meet you halfway. I hope it works out.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Sam felt a half smile creep across her face as he extended her an olive branch. “Thank you for your help.”
“Anytime.” Grant flashed a hundred-watt smile, making eye contact. It should have been a simple glance, a gesture that was easy for Sam to return. Then their eyes met, and something in the air changed along with Grant’s expression. It was as if electricity ran hot and buzzing between them, and Sam felt like she was one half of a magnet helpless against the pull of his other half. Sam felt the heat returning to her cheeks. Grant licked his lips, and she bit down on hers to keep from gasping.
It hit her that she was dangerously close to crossing over into meaningful-eye-contact territory. If she didn’t move soon, either she was going to melt with unexpected sexual tension or things would get hot enough in the little lounge that the papers in front of Grant ignited. She could not dissolve into a quivering mass in front of this man, first because that would be extremely unsanitary in a hospital and second because not ten seconds ago he’d been actively trying to dissuade her from pursuing her research idea. Clearing her throat, Sam blinked and looked down at the floor, causing Grant to clear his throat and look at his papers, effectively halting the pull between them.
“Gonna get back to work,” Grant said, gesturing vaguely over the papers at the same time Sam spoke.
“Okay, bye.”
Nodding once, Sam turned and walked through the door without a word. Safely in the hallway, she exhaled. She was lucky that smile came attached to someone so difficult, or she would have much bigger problems to solve than starting a community program.