Between the Pipes

Chapter 8

On Monday morning, Sarah headed to work at the family medicine clinic expecting a busy day. Booking full-day clinics on Mondays and Fridays and keeping Wednesday as a half-day was the smartest thing she'd done when she'd set up her practice. It left Wednesday afternoons free for paperwork. Chart notes, requisitions, consult letters, forms...big tedious yawn. It needed to get done, though, or patients wouldn't get very far, and spending an afternoon was better than staying late into the evening.

Danni picked up the other days of the week at the clinic. She had her own roster of patients, but if a problem was urgent, regardless of the day or roster, the patient was seen.

Sarah shivered as she walked along the sidewalk. No snow yet, but time to pull out a warmer jacket. It wouldn't be long before the leaves started to fall and there'd be a ton of raking to do at the clinic. They hadn't really thought about that when they'd searched for a building to renovate. Bright, cheerful, big enough for both of them – that had made the list. And they'd insisted on charm.

Charm? The first real estate agent had looked over his glasses at them. "You're kidding, right?"

Nope. They'd be spending half their week there, sharing good news – or worse, bad news – with anxious patients. It had to be a place where they wanted to be.

Luckily the second agent had understood, and they'd found the perfect little bungalow in a quiet, charming neighbourhood.

The front doors of the clinic opened to the waiting room. They'd painted the walls a soft blue. Sunlight streamed in through a large picture window, and plenty of glass separated the waiting room from the reception area, so Teresa Shar, their administrative assistant and receptionist, got plenty of vitamin D. Beyond the reception area, there were three examining rooms, similar in layout and painted pale green and soft yellow, as well as space for their nurse and two offices.

Sarah slipped in through the back door. She didn't run late very often, but if she did, a back door meant she didn't have to slink through a waiting room full of patients.

Her office was directly across the hall from Danni's. She could sit at her Shaker-style desk, with its simple lines, in her down-filled, try-not-to-fall-asleep-reading-medical-journals chair and see across to Danni's antiqued curlicued furniture.

Too bad the clean lines didn't extend to the surface of her desk. It wasn't a mess, exactly. Well, maybe it was, but it was an organized mess with an in-box, an out-box, and an area for need-to-read journals stacked by date. It was a time-saver system. The journals were probably out of date by the time they reached the bottom, and by then, really, there was no point in reading them. She could toss them into the recycling bin with a little less guilt. More helpful, it was a reminder to go online to check the latest journals there.

Sarah hung up her coat and leafed through the papers in her in-box. Her day sheet for the morning listed twenty patients, with two patients booked for complete physical exams. Busy as predicted. She initialled the lab reports and set aside the ones that needed follow up.

Someone knocked, and her door inched opened. Megan Myles, the clinic nurse, poked her head in. "Your first patient is ready." Megan had retired from a hospital job, but had far too much energy to stop nursing.

"Thanks, Megan. I'll be right there."

Sarah shrugged on her lab coat, grabbed her stethoscope, and threw a prescription pad in one pocket and her cell phone – a.k.a. drug dosage calculator and handy reference – in the other. She had smiled when she'd read an editorial in the latest medical journal lamenting the fact that doctors didn't wear lab coats anymore. Apparently, she was in the minority, but once you'd experienced babies peeing into the air the moment the diaper came off, you tended to embrace the white coat. Yeah. She wouldn't be changing anytime soon.