It was hot.
And she was also hot.
But anyway, time to focus. “I’m good.”
“Alright.” She walked out and shut the door behind her.
I took a look at the schedule and saw the long list of patients I had, a long-ass list. I was seeing everyone back-to-back, and my appointment windows were very short. I grabbed the phone and called Sicily at her desk.
She answered. “Dr. Hamilton’s office. Sicily speaking. How can I help?”
“Why are my appointments so short?” I blurted.
“There’s a lot of demand for you—”
“I like to have plenty of time with each and every patient. I don’t rush through my appointments like other doctors. This isn’t feasible. You need to fix this.”
There was a pause before she calmly responded. “Dex, you have only so much time to see patients, and if I changed it back to what it was before, that would mean we’d have to cancel half of these patients, and they all need to see you.”
I sighed into the phone.
“I’ll be there in a second.”
I slammed the phone down, flustered she’d pulled this stunt.
She walked in a moment later and shut the door behind her.
“Look.” I rose to my feet behind the desk. “I appreciate what you’re doing, but this is how I do things. You can’t just go over my head and make these kinds of decisions when you don’t know shit about medicine.” I pointed my finger into my chest. “I’m the one taking care of these patients. I’m the one seeing them. I don’t like to be rushed. I like to give them the quality care they deserve.”
She slowly approached my desk, her hands together in front of her stomach. “I understand that—”
“I’m human, Sicily. I can’t just increase my pace because I feel like it. There’s a system to this. You can’t reduce appointment windows and shove people into the roster. That’s unacceptable—”
“Dex, can I defend myself now?” She raised her hands to silence me.
I released a long sigh.
“I wasn’t going to say anything because I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now, but you’ve heavily, heavily in demand. Once people started to realize you were back in the game, my inboxes exploded. I’ve had to turn away so many people who need your care, listen to them sob and beg to get an appointment, and I have to tell them no, over and over again. Since your time is booked between research and your residents, there’s no more time. There’s literally not enough time for you to see everybody. I couldn’t condense the list even shorter. This was the only solution.”
“How am I supposed to do this many surgeries on this many patients?” I demanded. “These can be twelve-hour procedures—”
“I know, I know,” she said calmly. “But we’ll figure it out. I wanted to know if you would consider leaving your position at the research clinic. I know it’s unprofessional since they just hired you, but I think your time is better suited seeing patients.”
I dropped my chin and stared at the surface of the desk as I considered the suggestion, as I tried to prioritize my time. I shook my head. “I can’t do that.” I lifted my chin and looked up at her again. “It has nothing to do with professionalism. Research is critical for patient care in the future, innovations and solutions that will help patients for years to come. If the brightest minds aren’t working on this, then medicine isn’t evolving, practices aren’t improving. I can reduce my hours there, but I can’t remove it altogether. And my teaching position with the residents isn’t negotiable either because preparing the next generation of heart surgeons is just as important as the surgeries I do myself. Not to mention all my work that needs to be done through my charitable organization, which I haven’t considered until now.”
“I can do it for you. Utilize me as much as possible.”
I shook my head. “I have to do it. I have to make appearances and speeches to get new donors and inspire existing donors. Without that money, I can’t take care of a lot of these patients.”
Her eyes fell in defeat.
My hands were planted on the surface of the desk, so I straightened and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to find a solution to this. “This is what we’ll do. I’ll switch my schedule from two days a week to three. I’ll have the university cover my position with another physician for that day, and I’ll take research partners to fill in the day I’m missing. That will give us another day for patient care and my surgeries. I’ll also work half days on Saturday to see my patients.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “What about Andrea?”
“I don’t need a nurse. I can do that stuff myself. And you don’t need to come in either. I can handle it.”