Jayden headed cautiously towards the front entrance of Sacred Heart Hospital. One reason being, it was her first day, and on her first day of anything, she always thinks that she must be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Another being the fact that when she was called earlier that week, the voice hadn't sounded very enthused.
The phone rings in her apartment. Jayden hops off the couch where she was reading some medical journals, and looks at the caller ID.
Sacred Heart Hos.
It read. She picked it up, a butterfly feeling of joy and misery leaping inside her.
"Hello?" She asked.
"Yes, may I speak to a...Miss...Jayden Coones?" The voice asked. It sounded to her a little unprofessional...and oddly enough...a little sweaty.
"Yes that's me. Is this Mr. Buckland? My other hospital said Sacred Heart would contact me via their lawyer."
"God bless you, you know my name." He whispered faintly into the phone.
"Uhm, excuse me? I didn't quite hear that."
"Oh, I uh, I mean yes, this is the lawyer. I'm just calling to confirm your 9 AM shift starting Monday."
"Yes, I'll be coming in."
"Of course. Now, when you do, ask for a Dr. Cox. The chief of medicine sends his apologies, so he won't be able to show you around...and says he's got to golf-" There was a muffled yell in the background, and then a choking noise from the phone. "Oh, yes yes...I mean he's got to go for a very important meeting."
"Oh...kay.." She said, a little freaked out.
"Ah, and also, watch out for that step in the front, it's a doozy going down it. It's just a lawsuit waiting to happen I tell you." He hung up without a farewell.
Jayden cleared her throat, hung up, then looked around her new apartment, pretending as if that hadn't just happened.
She walked to the door, her legs feeling like Jell-O and her head in a swirl of anxiety.
You're good. You're fine. Everything's going to be okay. Just relax Jay.
Jayden took a deep breath outside the door, then opened the door and stepped in. She looked around and smiled. This would be a piece of cake getting used to things here. It was a hospital, just like her other one, not another planet. She glued a smile to her face, and headed towards the nurse's station in the ICU, where she was told to report.
When she reached her destination, she peered over to the nurse's station, and saw a Latina woman sitting at her desk, typing some information into the computer. She sighed to herself.
Here goes nothing
She was about five feet away from the desk when the woman looked up. She smiled warmly and Jayden got a weird feeling that she was secretly being judged by her.
"Can I help you?" The nurse asked finally, after a five second awkward stare down which was nearly unnerving to her.
"Uhm hi, I'm Dr. Coones. I transferred here and was told to sign myself in at the ICU on my first day and ask for a Dr. Cox."
"Oh! Dr. Coones, of course. I was told to expect you. My name is Carla Espinosa, but just call me Carla." She said. The feeling of being judged was gone.
"You can call me Jayden. But actually everyone called me J.C. at my old hospital."
"Really? That's weird. I have a friend, Dr. Dorian, and we call him J.D." She laughed, expecting Jayden to laugh along, and when she didn't, she said.
"Isn't that weird?"
Jayden looked at her for a second, nodded, then Carla said:
"Okay, well I'll page Dr. Cox and tell him you're here so he can give you a tour of the place, get you a locker, and introduce you to our faculty here." She said, pulling her pager off her hip to send Dr. Cox a message.
"That would be so super. Thank you. Say, where's the bathroom? I've had to use the bathroom all morning, but my toilet is broken, and I still haven't gotten a plumber to fix it."
Carla pointed down the hall, and Jayden left. She sat back down at the computer and continued her work.
"Fwwwweeeeet" Dr. Cox whistled as he quickly walked towards Carla.
"So, why the hell is Kelso dropping this chore on me?" He asked, leaning against the counter and looking annoyed.
"Hey! You don't even know her. I think she seems nice. Shy, but nice."
"Yeah? Well is she ugly? Does she have an extra appendage? Is she my ex-wife in disguise? Is she Hugh Jackman in disguise? Does she have the most annoying laugh in the world? Is she a zombie? Is she as annoying, stupid, or incompetent as little Suzan? Just lay it out there now Carla...because really, something must be wrong with this girl."
"Oh please. Dr. Coones seems like a very capable Dr.. Her name is Jayden, and I think she's sexy. And who's Suzan?"
Before Dr. Cox could answer, J.D. came around the corner.
"Hey, have either of you seen my shoes? I swear I had them on before I came here..."
Dr. Cox bared his teeth, growled, and gave an I-can't-believe-I-have-to-work-with-these-people grimace, looked at Carla, then back to J.D. and said.
"Say, Amy, what do you say we give you a little job to do. You're gonna take a nice lady around the hospital, and try just as hard as you very well can to show some stones when she tries to eat your face off, am I..." He started talking, but Carla interrupted.
"Dr. Cox, here she comes."
He grabbed a chart off the counter and was pretending to read it when she walked over. He didn't give her as much as a glance.
"Dr. Coones, this is Dr. Cox, he'll be with you all of today."
"Hello sir." Jayden said politely.
"Listen here cream puff, I don't know why that big, bad chief of medicine stuck me with you, but I'm sure there must be something wrong, because Bob Kelso doesn't just change something on me last-minute if it doesn't have to do with torturing me until I want to stick needles full of cyanide into my eyes and set my testicals on fire with some propane gas and defibrillator paddles, so I'm gonna go ahead and say this..." He finaly looked up at her, and dropped his mouth open.
He stared at the soft-faced, blonde haired, hazel eyed girl in awe. What the hell was Bob Kelso's angle? Stick him with this hot girl, and laugh when she rejected him?
"Hah, what Dr. Cox is trying to say is, he wanted me to take you around the hospital today instead-" J.D. started, obviously into the girl.
"Woah woah woah there Shirley, I said nothing like that. Not on your life will you take my job away from me." He flicked his head to the side, motioning out the door, and mouthed 'Get out' to him. J.D. smiled at Jayden, and left quietly.
Dr. Cox turned to her, and smiled warmly.
"Hell-o Dr. Coones."
"Oh, you can call me Jayden if you like." She said, as she blushed.
"Hell-o" He said again. He said it in a flirty tone.
"...hi..." Jayden said, looking at him weirdly.
"Hellllllooooooooo" He said again, flirtatiously.
Jayden leaned over the counter a little, and out of the side of her mouth, whispered to Carla.
"Does he have short term memory loss because I'm pretty sure he said that already."
"Relax. He's hitting on you." Carla whispered back.
"Uhm...oh." Carla watched as Jayden turned a bright red and smiled shyly at Dr. Cox.
He seemed to have come to his senses, took her arm, started walking, and then said.
"Shall we go Jayden? Oh, that is just such a sexy name. I mean really...I never knew-" Dr. Cox's voice faded as he guided her through the door and they left Carla and Laverne, who were giggling and gossiping about what had just gone down.
Carla and Turk sat across from Jayden at their lunch table near the window. Carla watched Jayden smile and pick at her food in a sort of trance.
"So...how do you like it around here?" She asked, staring into Jayden's pretty eyes which, at the moment, seemed green with happiness.
"Oh, so much! I can't believe I actually get a locker here. I mean, at my old place, only men had lockers. Everything seems so up-to-date."
"What's your favorite thing so far?"
"These charts. They are just so cool. We had rusty old clipboards for chart holders." She picked up a chart she had next to her, and flipped it open and closed a few times. Jayden sighed peacefully. She seemed relaxed. Not so shy anymore. Carla also suspected she may have a crush on Dr. Cox.
"So," Jayden said, picking a new topic to converse with. "How long have you been here?" She looked from Carla, who was slowly eating a sandwich, to Turk, who had just shoved half a sub into his mouth.
"Ten years." Carla replied proudly. They both looked at Turk, and when he didn't look up, she elbowed him in the side.
"Oo, foo wees." He said through a mouthful of sandwich. Carla elbowed him again, then said:
"Please excuse his wonderful manors. He's been here two years. How about you? How long have you been working?"
"Well, actually I just finished my residency, so five years. That's why I decided to move."
"Are you kidding? You look like you're twenty!" Carla blurted out. Ah, so that's what she'd been so critical about. She thought Jayden looked too young to be a doctor.
"No, actually you guessed ten years too young. But thank you. I guess it's an advantage to look younger now. I say that because when I was 21, I was kicked out of so many places and accused of having a fake license just to get alcohol." She contemplated her untouched food for a minute, then said:
"So how about Dr. Cox...how old is he?" She tried saying it nonchalantly, and finaly picked an olive off of her plate to eat.
Carla smiled knowingly and then said:
"Well...he's about thirty eight. He's been here since he was twenty five of course. So I'd say about 13 years."
"Wow. You know he doesn't even look that old. He's got a nice body too."
"How would you know?"
"Do ya mind if I change my t-shirt, it's got a mustard stain on it?" He said
"Oh, not at..." She turned around to face him. His chest was bare, and he was showing his muscles off to her. She opened her mouth and gawked, before turning red and saying:
"Haha...yeah uhm, shirt, your body, now please." She didn't say it in a rude manor. More of an embarrassed one. Dr. Cox smiled devilishly and pulled a different shirt out of his locker.
"So glistening." She said dreamily.
Carla giggled.
"God I know." She said, thinking about it.
"Baby?" Turk asked through a mouth full of food.
"Oh please you could stand to lose a few more pounds." She tapped on his stomach.
He got up, done with his food.
"Baby I tell you somethin. I tell you this right here," He pounded his fist on his abdomen.
"This is allll muscle." He picked up his trash and put it in the garbage, while walking away and telling himself how good he looked.
Carla laughed and looked back to Jayden.
"You know, it's funny. Usually he's only attracted to the controling, bitchy type. But look at you. You're so...not."
Jayden blushed and said:
"I know. And usually I'm not attracted to cocky, self-obsessed men who act like they've got cold hearts and just need to be loved. There's something about this guy though."
"Well well well, look who was speaking of the self-indulged devil." Dr. Cox said, walking up to them, a coffee in one hand, the other tucked into the pocket on his doctor's jacket.
"Actually we weren't. We were...just discussing..." Jayden couldn't think of anything quick enough, so Carla cut in.
"How much medication to send one of her patients home with. Yeah. There's something about that guy we can't figure out...and that was it..." She looked up to the clock. "Oh geez, I gotta go, my lunch was over five minutes ago." She got up, and watched Jayden mouth 'Thanks' to her.
"Wehehell." Dr. Cox said, laughing as he sat down across from her.
"Look who the gosh darn booty train ate, digested and spit back up." He sipped his coffee mischievously. Jayden looked up at him, a little disgusted.
"My Dear, tell me, why do I bump into you all the time?"
"I've only been here one day...and we have the same lunch break." She smiles something pretty at him and he appears to melt a little.
"Oh, of course. So, have any family?" He asked, trying to remember past advice Turk had given him on picking up girls.
"Older Brother, Ken, and my Dad, Steve. No mother. How about you?"
"Let me just say this, I hate, my family. My parent's are gonezo, and my freakish Christian of a sister still lurks out in the world somewhere, driving devils out of homeless four year old kids or whatever the hell religious people do."
"Euh, I really don't like people like that. I'm more of a spiritual kind of person, you know? I only believe in a God, none of that other flimsy flamsy stuff." She waved her hand in the air, as to push the conversation away.
"So where ya come from?" He asked, still nodding in agreement with her.
"Oh, New York. This little town in central New York named Clinton. You?"
"Pittsburg. You know, the place where the air is 50 carbon dioxide?" Jayden laughed a little at this, and Dr. Cox smiled, knowing he was so close to being in.
"College?"
"Oh, Northeastern. You?"
"Not important. Ever dated a hard ass?" He asked, slowly easing into the topic.
"Well there was this one guy, in college, that had the firmest buns I've ever felt."
Dr. Cox stopped smiling.
Oh great, she's an air head
Jayden cracked up, pointing at his expression.
"Oh my gosh you actually thought I was an helium head!" Dr. Cox sighed in relief and smiled warmly at her joke. She dropped her hands to the center of the table, still shaking with laughter.
"You are such a cutie."
"Aw" She flirted, turning her head sideways and looking up cutely at him.
There it was. He was in. He put his hands out on the table and cupped them over hers.
"Say Jay, watta ya say you try your luck with this hard ass and go out to dinner with me?" He knew it. He was so in.
Jayden giggled shyly.
"No." She said politely. She pulled her hands away, still giggling, and stood up.
"Uhm...pretty lady say what?"
"What?"
"Atta girl." He stood up. Not until then did the shock wear out and it hit him. She'd rejected him. She started to walk away, tossing her nearly untouched food into the garbage on the way by.
"Wait wait wait!" He said, catching up to her.
"Did.." He laughed, "Did you say no?"
"Uhm yeah. Later Dr. Cox." She flirted again, as she walked away, leaving him standing there dumbstruck and yet falling for her more.
He whined in the back of his throat, confused.
"Good afternoon, Janitor." J.D. said forcefully. "I'll bet you have my shoes in your locker there."
"Nope. Just a pig."
"A pig?"
"Yep." The Janitor opened his locker, and pulled a live baby pig out. "I named him J.D. Yeah, I figure in a few months he'll be big and fat, and it will be right around the time of Christmas so...crrrrrt!" He made the noise as he slashed his finger around his neck.
"You're an evil man." J.D. said quietly.
"Am I? Hmmm..."
"Look, just give me my shoes back!" He yelled at the man in the jumpsuit.
"I don't have your shoes. But if I find out who does, I'm gonna thank them. Nice nurse shoes by the way."
"They're Carla's and they're killing my feet! Too small. My feet tend to chafe when the shoes aren't just perfect fitting."
"Heheheh. Nurse scary pants' shoes." He put the pig back into his locker, shut it, and stood up.
"Now git. Go on now boi! Geet!"
J.D. backed away carefully, then turned and ran out of the lounge.