Quality Ingredients

Chapter 2

"Is it twisted to feel a little let down that it's a slow night?" Miller flicked his eyes up at Roseanne. He sat at a desk at the nurse station in the ER and Roseanne stood beside him as she sipped from her coffee.

"It's still early," Roseanne shrugged and stifled a yawn.

"You sleep okay?" He asked her. She had her glasses on and her hair was a little messier than usual. She still looked tired. She had fresh scrubs on and was on her second cup of coffee but all of the standing around wasn't doing much to perk her up.

"Took me a little while to get there, but yes, I did get a few good hours, thanks," Roseanne replied and took another sip of her coffee. "And it's not twisted. You're going to struggle with that your whole career." She still did. There was nothing quite like the feeling of saving someone's life even when she did it every day, but there was truly nothing like the feeling of NOT saving someone's life. Roseanne worked in trauma, so it happened a lot more than if she were in another field. She got the surprise surgeries from car accidents. She got the rare but still too regular gunshot wounds. She got the hunting accidents and the motorcycle accidents and the boating accidents. She got the people who made mistakes. She didn't have carefully planned tendon surgeries or meticulously calculated tumor removals.

She saved a lot of lives, but she lost a lot of them too. She had to step back and remind herself that a slow night was a good thing. No one was suffering.

"Hi, Dr. Park, Dr. Miller," Maya, one of the nurses approached the two of them carrying three charts. "We have a laceration of the forearm in bed one, looks like stitches. She's a thirty-three year old female. We have a very obvious broken arm in bed two, seventeen year old male. Haven't gotten him to x-ray yet, but I don't need to see the films to know that thing is a mess. Also chest pains and fever on a fifty-four year old male in bed three."

"So much for a slow night," Miller chuckled.

"What do you want?" Roseanne asked him.

"Definitely not stitches. That's boring," Miller scoffed.

"She didn't say how many stitches or what caused it," Roseanne raised a brow at him. "Could be really juicy. Literally and figuratively. Who knows? She might need that whole arm cut off."

"Damnit," Miller sighed. Roseanne caught him again. He was always so eager and she was so calm and patient. It came with her years of experience and the field she was specializing in. He liked being around her, and even though her constant calm always knocked him down a few pegs, he admired it and wanted to work with her as much as possible.

"You get chest pains in three, I'll take a look at stitches and tell her to hold tight while I get broken arm down to X-ray. Sounds good?" Roseanne asked.

"What if chest pains is just gas?" Miller whined.

"You wanna roll that dice? Could be something really good," Roseanne taunted. "Unless you want the stitches. Although, we haven't gotten a whole lot of details on broken arm. Maybe that's the good one."

"Fine. Give me chest pains. But if he's just full of one big fart, I'm finishing broken arm," Miller muttered and grabbed his chart from Maya. "You take stitches. It's been a while since you were alone in a room with a thirty-three year old female." Miller wagged his brows at her.

"Deal," Roseanne laughed and took the charts from Maya and ignored Miller's dig. "Maya, I'm going to need to arrange for x-rays, can you call down and get that started for me and get a team up here to wheel him out?" Roseanne set her coffee down and pointed at Maya.

"Absolutely, Dr. Park," Maya nodded. She liked being around Dr. Park, too. Roseanne put the interns and nurses at ease and ran a very calm ship. It was what made Jackson pick her out of her pack of interns to work with him in the first place. She was a leader in her group. People listened to her. That was important in a crisis. And as soon as the crisis was over, she was silly and funny and sweet again. Patients loved her.