Man Cave

THEO

I’d been at the job
three hours and I was already having second thoughts. Not about Hunter Valley.
The town was cool as shit. I’d visited before since Maverick pretty much moved
his ass up here because of a work project… then a woman project. And Dex, who
had a Hunter Valley woman project of his own but was settled in Denver with
her.

There wasn’t a woman
messing with my life.

I’d done that all by
myself. Maybe I should have visited Family Health Services before I quit being
a trauma surgeon and accepted the role as family physician. Over the phone. It
was like buying a boat sight unseen only to arrive at the marina and discover
it was barely afloat.

The medical practice
wasn’t sinking. I was.

Over the weekend, I’d
switched from an eighty-hour a week trauma surgeon to Monday through Friday,
plus every other Saturday morning general practitioner. It wasn’t the extra
free time that was an adjustment, although that was something to get used to.
It was the patients. So far this morning I’d treated a man for chlamydia,
handing him not only a prescription for antibiotics but some condom samples.
After that, I pulled an eraser out of a six-year-old’s ear and performed a
newborn baby well-check.

“Doing okay?” Verna
Jeffries asked, holding out a mug filled with steaming coffee over the check in
counter as I walked by.

I slung my
stethoscope around my neck and eagerly snagged it, mentally blessing her
practical nature.

I scanned the waiting
area–which was currently empty–as I took a sip. The practice was in a converted
old house in the historic downtown area. The entry was the original family
room, fireplace and all. The bedrooms had been converted into exam rooms. My
office, which I shared with Dr. Jeffries–Verna’s husband–was the old den.

This place was a long
way from the hospital’s clinical interior.

“Good coffee,” I
said, pleasantly surprised. The brew at the hospital in Denver was mostly a
HAZMAT situation except for the ICU break room, which I frequented–used to–way more than a surgeon based in
the ER should.

“I get the beans from
Steaming Hotties.”

I knew the place
because Mav wore its damned pink t-shirt often enough.

“To answer your
question, yes. Doing okay. So far, so good,” I replied, inwardly sighing. No
one had died anyway, which was a distinct possibility of my old job.

But was treating
sexually transmitted diseases the escape I really wanted?

I had enough money. I
could quit entirely. Buy a boat that floated and sail the seven seas.

She laughed. Her dark
eyes were filled with humor, although I expected it was at my expense. From
what she told me this morning when she handed me the first batch of insurance
paperwork, that she was a grandmother of three, liked to snowshoe and had the
best sourdough starter in town.

I had no idea what
the last meant, so I’d only nodded when she’d overshared. Or maybe she
regular-shared and I was used to non-sharing. My previous co-workers didn’t
have lives outside of the hospital, like me, so we didn’t have much to talk
about besides tricky cases.

“It’ll take some
getting used to,” I added diplomatically.

“Getting used to
what?” she wondered. “Seeing this many patients in a day?”

On the computerized
schedule I had twelve patients plus a one-hour window for call-in urgent visits
like kids with unplanned ear infections.

I shook my head.
“Having patients be conscious.”

Because patients
sedated and prepped for surgery didn’t tell me their quirks and talents. If
they did have chlamydia, it was the least of their worries.

With a head cock, she
eyed me, as if giving me some kind of her own swift assessment, just like I
gave to every patient when entering an exam room.

“I think you’re going
to find all your patients awake.
Except for the babies. Those you might want asleep.”

I considered the one
I’d just seen, who’d been blissfully asleep except when he got an immunization
and nodded. “Wise words.”