Sincerely, Dr. Cruz

Three: Yes Doctor?

Chapter Three: Yes Doctor?
Rhode Island Hospital: Providence, Rhode Island

“Dr. Simmons, may I ask where you are to be at the moment?”

Katrina looked up from our table quickly, her expression going from content to scared in a matter of seconds.

“Dr. Reddy! I’m supposed to be on my way to the conference with Dr. Fordham now, actually.”

“Yes well, you’re about to be late for that. Consider this your first and last warning Dr. Simmons.”

“Y—yes sir.” Kat stumbled as she got up from the table and walked past the older doctor.

“And I hope you two wrap up here soon. Your next assignment will be with me.”

Jaya and I nodded as we began gathering the remnants of our lunches and followed Dr. Reddy to the nuclear medicine center.

“I shall have you two know that as first years, I expect that you two learn the time frames in this hospital really well. Because your next assignment doesn’t start until 2:00 doesn’t mean you leave lunch at 1:55 or whatever you were planning on. The schedules are strict and if your assigned time is 2:00, then you best arrive at 1:45. I would’ve expected that Miss Simmons learned that by now.” Dr. Reddy fumed all at once.

Jaya was at a loss for words whereas I didn’t know if words were needed at the moment. I just carried myself along and washed up before entering the nuclear medicine center, only to find Brad there.

Oh great.

“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Cruz and Dr. Mohan. I was expecting some help here soon.”

“Cut it Dr. Stanley.”

I was surprised with Dr. Reddy’s tone, but was more amused with Brad’s instant face fall, followed by a quick “sorry” before resuming his work analyzing x-rays and MRI’s. I looked over to Jaya and realized that we were in the same boat. It took both of us every ounce of strength we had to not laugh at Brad.

“Dr. Mohan, I want you to come with me. Dr. Cruz, Brad will guide you through the operation and applications of the nuclear scanning machines. Is that understood?” Dr. Reddy said, particularly peering at Brad.

Oh joy; I was stuck with the ass.

After Jaya and Dr. Reddy left I had no choice but to follow Brad into a lab. Really, he didn’t talk for the first twenty minutes, usually just grunting in response to my questions or pointing out directions. It wasn’t until I picked up a file on a desk that he talked.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking at this file…?”

“Well no duh, but why?”

“Because you’re obviously not going to verbally command me to do what I’m supposed to, so I’ll just read about it and figure it out myself.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Okay then, will be ever so kind as to enlightening me about what this contraption here does?”

“It’s the feeder. I have no idea what its fancy medical name is but everyone refers to it as the feeder. Film and imaging in produced there, but I’m not too sure on its other functions. Usually before sending a patient in, if they have previous MRI’s or other scans, we feed it in through there to allow for there to be a side by side comparison with the concurrent scanning happening.”

“There, was that so hard?”

“Very. It felt like every word I said was sucking more and more air out of my lungs.”