Torment

chapter three

"You're five minutes late, Mac. That's coming off your pay."

Big Doris taps her clipboard while I take my seat at Admissions Desk One in Oakland's leading county hospital. Although only five-foot-two and weighing no more than ninety-nine pounds, Big Doris is possessed of an unnaturally loud voice, and her words boom throughout the crowded waiting room, drawing titters from the patients waiting to see the triage nurse.

"I'm not late. The clock is five minutes fast. According to my watch, I'm exactly on time."

"According to the hospital clock, you are late." Big Doris writes up a shame-inducing green slip for my personnel file and then peers down at me over horn-rimmed glasses that I suspect are only for show.

"No wonder you failed out of pre-med in college. You don't even have the discipline to get to work on time."

"I didn't fail out," I explain through clenched teeth. "I graduated with a science degree and an Intermediate-Level EMT qualification. I didn't have the money to pay for medical school."

"Ha!" she snorts. "As if there aren't dozens of organizations willing to provide scholarships to train new doctors. You must have been at the bottom of the class."

Why is she always antagonizing me? She was so pleasant the first month, and positively evil for the last twenty-three months since I joined the department.

"I was at the top of my class. I just wasn't sure if it was what I wanted to do. I didn't want to take money away from people who were truly committed."

She tears the green slip off her pad and flutters it in the air just out of my reach. "So much more fulfilling to be working the Admissions Desk and making a fraction of the salary, isn't it?"

Snatching the slip from her fingers, I give her a cool smile. "I'm grateful to have any job in this economy."

Two seconds after she stomps away in her four-inch, fire engine red pumps, my counterpart at Admissions Desk Two and second best friend, Charlie, pokes his head around the partition.

"Don't let her get to you. She's jealous because you are so much prettier than her. Just don't eat any of her apples. She might be suffering from wicked queen syndrome."

"Maybe if I eat a poisoned apple, my prince will come." I turn on my computer. "Nothing else has worked so far."

My computer hums to life and I stow my purse in the bottom drawer of my desk. Charlie rolls his desk chair into my cubicle, while seated, with a coordinated jerking of his hips and heels. His Mickey Mouse scrubs are bunched up around his thighs and a length of hairy calf protrudes above Disney-themed socks. His bright orange Crocs squeak when he pulls himself to a stop.

"Here I am." He throws his arms out to the sides and almost knocks over the partition. "One prince, ready to kiss you and carry you away to my tiny bachelor pad in the sky."

My grin and snort of laughter do nothing but encourage him. He closes his eyes and purses his lips, waiting for the kiss that is never going to happen.

"Sorry," I lie, not wanting to hurt his feelings. "My heart is taken by the prince who shall not be named."

"It's Doctor Drake, isn't it?" he whispers. "I can lower my standards. I'll dye what little hair I have left the color of spun gold, add some blue contacts, lose one hundred and fifty pounds, work out, get a fake tan, take a chisel to my jaw, accept a job as a highly paid surgeon, and hang out in the waiting room for twenty-three months pretending to be assessing the staff."

"Doctor Drake is the head of administration now," I interject. "That's why he's always lurking around. And rich guys make me nervous. I'm more of a pizza and beer kind of girl, not caviar and wine. I wouldn't be able to walk the walk or talk the talk. I just want to find someone I could be comfortable with. Someone like me."