Doctor In The House

If only. Bailey laughed softly to herself. “Tell that to the attendings. As for the chief neurosurgeon, the guy I’ve been assigned to, he doesn’t seem to sleep. Ever. He’s there when I arrive in the morning and he’s still there when I leave at night.”

“Maybe he does it with mirrors,” Simon quipped.

“Maybe,” she allowed. “They call him Ivan the Terrible.”

“That doesn’t sound warm and toasty. He giving you a hard time?”

She almost responded with, “Is the Pope Catholic?” but given Simon’s increased dedication to piety, she decided to skip the rhetorical comment. “Dr. Munro gives everyone a hard time. I think he might be lonely.”

“With a name like Ivan the Terrible, I don’t doubt it. Don’t try to mend his broken wing, Bay.” It was a reference to her always bringing home hurt animals when she was a little girl. “Just take care of yourself—and get that rest. You know what happens if you burn the candle at both ends—”

“—all you wind up with is a lump of wax in the middle,” Bailey said, echoing her brother as she repeated the line she had heard more times than she could count. “All right, enough about me, how about you?” They cared about each other, but it was unusual for Simon to call out of the blue like this. “What’s new in your life? How are you doing?”

“I’m doing okay.”

Bailey sat up. She knew her brother inside and out, knew all the nuances. There was something just a little bit guarded about his answer, about his voice. She thought she’d heard him hesitate before he gave her the innocuous reply.

“Okay, give. What’s up? Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he protested. “You couldn’t be more off.” And then Simon paused for a second, as if debating just how to frame what he was about to tell her. “I’m being ordained.”

“Ordained?” That had always been her parents’ dearest wish, to have their children follow in their footsteps. At least Simon hadn’t disappointed them, she thought. “Oh, Simon, that’s wonderful. Mom and Dad must be proud enough to burst.”

“Pretty much,” he agreed modestly. “But Mom calls it a mixed blessing.”

“What’s mixing it?”

He laughed softly. “Well, I’m going to need my own ‘flock’.”

“Which means you’ll have to go off on your own,” she concluded, understanding. “Poor Mom.”

“Thanks. I was wondering where I was going to get my daily dose of guilt.”

She knew he wasn’t upset. Simon had always taken things in stride, upbeat, but with no false illusions. Unlike her, he didn’t have an impetuous bone in his body. He thought everything through carefully before making a move. She used to call him “the turtle” when they were younger because his moves were so deliberate and slow.

“I just mean, first me, then you.” She made an assumption as to where her brother’s first ministry would be. “I suppose they could come back to live in the States.”

He laughed at the thought. They both knew how settled their parents were, how dedicated to the life they had undertaken.

“Too savage for them,” he quipped. They both laughed. “Listen, I’m going to have some time before I start and I thought I’d come out to see my favorite sister in the flesh.”

“As I recall, I am your only sister,” she reminded him.

“Good thing for you,” he teased, sounding like the Simon she knew again. “If there’d been competition, you might not have made the cut. I’m not sure about the timing yet. How does the end of April, beginning of May sound to you?”

“Like it’s much too far away,” she told him wistfully. Talking to Simon had stirred feelings of nostalgia within her exhaustion.

“Know what you mean, Bay. I miss you, too,” he told her with affection. “I’ll call you again when I have something more concrete to offer, like flight number and time. You take care of yourself, hear?”

She had no idea why she felt so teary-eyed suddenly. “I will.”

“And tell anyone who gives you a hard time to back off and leave you alone or they’ll have your big brother to reckon with.”

“Will do.” The line went dead after a quick, “Goodbye.”

Bailey found herself smiling down at the receiver in her hand. She could just hear Munro’s response to that one. He’d tell her exactly where she could put her protective big brother. But she did appreciate the thought.

Appreciated her brother calling her, as well, even though the sound of Simon’s voice had made her feel almost sad and definitely homesick. Sad even though she loved what she was doing, loved the prospect of getting up each morning, coming in and donning her hospital livery, even though she knew that she was going to be at odds with Munro the moment the man laid eyes on her.

She hadn’t felt this homesick since that first week when she’d left home to get her undergraduate degree. After the first week, the intoxicating wave of freedom had swept her away and she’d gotten immersed in college life.

Until then, except for a week here and there, she had never been away from her parents or away from the continent of Africa, not since she was ten and they had first undertaken the mission to which they were still so fiercely dedicated.

Maybe it was putting up with Munro that made her feel like a lone crusader, stranded in the middle of the forest. She’d been at Blair Memorial for almost three full months now, and he had yet to allow her so much as to hold a scalpel in her hand, other than lining it up on a surgical tray just before a procedure. Granted he allowed her in the operating room for almost every surgery he did, but to watch, nothing more. He just had her do a thousand and one errands. Busywork.

It was time for him to show her a little respect. She’d known that progress would be slow, but this was almost going backward.

Bailey bounced up, no longer tired. She knew what she was going to do, she thought. What she had to do. She was going to the hospital tomorrow morning and confront Munro. She would demand that he start teaching her something beyond how to dash to Radiology to fetch MRI films and rush them back to him. She hadn’t endured all those years of grueling study and endless bills to be an errand girl.