Chapter Three

Leah Haverty slowly relaxed as the numbers ticked off the upper dial of the elevator. By the time the doors opened on the office space in the basement, she had her shoes in her hands. She walked down the middle aisle of the cubicals belonging to her staff, and went into her own extra-large cube, sliding the frosted glass door over the opening. Quickly, she pulled on a pair of black slacks under her skirt, and then slid her skirt off. "Mark," she called over the cubical wall. "Would you come here, please?"

A man only a few years younger than she, stepped up to the wall of her cube and peeked over. "How'd it go?"

Stepping into her fuzzy pink piggy slippers, she answered, "As expected. Slocum warned me about McIntyre, so I didn't argue. I let Slocum tell him. Come in. I want to talk to you."

Mark Hansen slid the glass door to one side, stepped in and sat down on a chair in front of Leah's desk. None of the staff wore their suit jackets in the office, shedding them and loosening their ties by the time the elevator reached the basement each morning. He slouched in the chair.

"Mark, I need you to train the other department heads. McIntyre is going to be a problem. I'm sure it's going to take longer than we have in the schedule, and I'll be damned if he makes us miss our milestones." She handed him a piece of paper containing a graph. "Here are the names and the schedule. Go ahead and get on their calendars. They get paged for emergencies frequently, so the sooner you get started, the better."

After Mark left her office, Leah called McIntyre's secretary to schedule training with Trapper, knowing full well that he wouldn't. "And Ms. Tisdale, please schedule me for a time when he has no pressing appointments in a three hour period."

"I'll schedule you for Friday then. He tries to leave his calendar clear of any surgeries, so that is usually his lightest day."

"Thank you, Ms. Tisdale."

Ann Tisdale moved the receiver from her ear and looked at it. "How rude. She didn't even say goodbye before she hung up."

"Who was that?" asked Ernie who had just left Trapper's office.

"The Ice Queen."

"Did you expect anything less?" asked Ernie as she left the office.

Leah Haverty arrived at an empty office on Friday morning. She placed a book on Trapper's desk, and then sat in his chair, typing commands into his computer and writing down patient numbers, procedure numbers, and any other data she would need to train him. Once she was finished pulling training data, she moved to the chair in front of his desk and waited…and waited. She expected him to delay his arrival at the hospital just enough to miss his training appointment, so before she entered his office, she stopped at his secretary's desk and was able to schedule the next three hours by asking Ms. Tisdale to shift some of his appointments to the afternoon. When Ms. Haverty explained that this appointment was mandatory, ordered from Mr. Slocum's office, the secretary felt obliged. The fact that Ms. Haverty wasn't very nice about it only made her argue less.

When Trapper walked into his office at half past nine, he paused and smiled. As he had anticipated, the Ice Queen would be waiting for him. "Ms. Haverty, I'm sorry I'm late," he said, moving behind his desk and setting the book in the center to the side. He sat down and clasped his hands together, maintaining his patronizing smile. "I'm afraid we'll have to reschedule."

Adjusting from her cross-legged position, she placed both feet on the floor and leaned forward with a self-satisfied smile of her own. "That's quite alright, Dr. McIntyre. I know you're a very busy man, so I scheduled the next three hours as a backup. We have plenty of time." Trapper's smile was instantly gone. "Now, Dr. McIntyre, if you'll move your chair over in front of the keyboard, we'll get started."

"Before we start, I need to tell Ms. Tisdale to hold my calls unless it's urgent." While Ms. Haverty sat back and waited, Trapper left his office. "Ann, would you tell Gonzo to call me in twenty minutes, and tell him to make it urgent?"

She smiled and winked. "Consider it done."

Grinning, Trapper went back into his office and took his seat. "I'm all yours."

"Good. Now let's talk about your reference book first. This book has a listing of all the commands you'll need to enter information into the application or retrieve information from the application. So let's open the book and start from the beginning."

Leaning back in his chair, Trapper either closed his eyes or looked up at the ceiling, listening to "Blah blah blah," and typing whatever she asked him to type on the keyboard, then nodding at whatever came up on the screen.

Twenty minutes into the session, his phone beeped. "Dr. McIntyre, you have an urgent call on line one."

"Excuse me for just a minute," he said, reaching across Ms. Haverty to answer his phone. "Dr. McIntyre. When did this start?"

On the other end, Gonzo was making up the story as he went. He stuttered when he had to come up with a name, and looking down on the table in front of him, he spied a package of ketchup.

Ms. Haverty hit the speaker button. "…and so Mrs….Heinz…collapsed right on the floor."

Shooting up out of his chair, Trapper rushed around the desk and turned the speaker off, even as Ms. Haverty pulled the keyboard over in front of her and furiously entered something into the computer.

Trapper never yelled, but his first words were loud enough for Ms. Tisdale to hear. "Don't you ever…."

Ms. Haverty sat back and raised her hand to stop him, speaking firmly. "Don't you even start with me." Turning the monitor around, she pointed at it. "There's no record of a Mrs. Heinz in any department in this hospital." Hanging up the phone, Trapper moved his hands to his hips and glared at her. She stood and stepped so close they were almost chest to chest. Flicking the name tag on his coat with a finger, she continued in a low, harsh tone. "You know, doctor, you wear your Chief of Surgery badge like a crown, and you have all your little minions do your dirty work. You will learn to use this computer or you won't be saving any lives. It's time to get over yourself, Dr. McIntyre, and stop wasting my time."

Lowering his head like he was about to charge, he grabbed her arm and pulled her across the office into his bathroom, standing her in front of his mirror. "Say that last part again," he said sternly as he left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Leaning with his hand on the door knob, he held it while she tried to pull it open. "If you don't let me out of here, I'll have you charged with unlawful detainment!"

When he finally let go, she stormed out of the bathroom over to his desk, jerked all the wires out of the back of the computer, moved the monitor to the middle of his desk and gathered her things. She straightened her jacket before she said angrily, "Don't call me when you find you can't release any of your patients from the hospital." Moving the reference book and her notepad to the top of the computer, she picked it up, but when she turned toward the door, the heel of her shoe broke off, and she stumbled, catching herself on the arm of a chair where she deposited her arm load.

Trapper rolled his eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked with a noticeable lack of concern in his voice.

She glanced at him over her shoulder and exhaled loudly before she picked the computer up with her other things and hobbled out of Trapper's office on one shoed foot and one bare foot. As she hurried to the elevator, everyone in the hall and at the nurse's station stopped and snickered. Trapper followed her, leaning against the counter at the nurse's station with a pretentious smile, watching Ms. Haverty struggle to push the button in the elevator.

"Does that mean you won round two?" asked Ernie, grinning.

"My dear, that was the match," he answered, patting the counter and turning back toward his office.