POINT OF VIEW
--- Joan Emerson (AE215jfe@aol.com)
“How can you possibly say that? That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard!”
“Now just a darned minute! It’s no such thing!”
“You know perfectly well that will never happen!”
“We could always hope . . . . . . . .”
She looked up in surprise. Generally the noise in the cafeteria made it virtually impossible to hear the person you were talking to, never mind hearing someone else’s conversation --- even if they were sitting at the very next table. But their raised voices captured her attention and she glanced over in their direction.
“Problem?” he asked softly as he sipped the steaming coffee filling his cup.
“Hhhmmmm?” she absently replied, her attention still focused on their loud conversation.
“Is something wrong?”
Shaking her head, she refrained from saying anything about the matter and returned her attention to her lunch.
It had been a long morning for everyone; this brief respite in the cafeteria was the first opportunity any of them had had for conversation since the start of the shift. After the morning they had put in, she was most definitely not in the mood for idle chit-chat. “That’s getting pretty heated,” she offered contemplatively as she set about removing the lettuce and tomato from her chicken salad sandwich.
On cue, she looked across the table at her luncheon companion and, obviously angry, demanded, “Doesn’t it make you angry? Why do you waste your time with it when you know it doesn’t mean anything?” The sound of her spoon slamming onto the saucer reverberated throughout the room.
He gave her a surprised look, but shrugged and, saying nothing, turned his attention to the roast beef and mashed potatoes swimming in a plateful of thin brown gravy.
“Salad has no place in the middle of a perfectly good sandwich!” she groused as she put her sandwich back together and took a bite. Making a face, she grumbled, “I hate wheat bread!”
He laughed lightly. “I guess they just don’t have your flair for making sandwiches!”
She favored him with a look of disdain as she dropped the sandwich onto the plate. Pushing her chair away from the table, she tromped off to get a fork and, returning, proceeded to eat the chicken salad filling out of the sandwich.
“It won’t make a bit of difference! You just wait and see!”
He sighed. “Of course it will,” he soothed.
She rolled her eyes in disgust. “Not in this lifetime!” she shot back. “Not as long as everyone just goes along ignoring the problem, pretending it’s not there!”
Clearly disapproving, she looked up from the remnants of the sandwich . . . . . . . . now minus its filling . . . . . . . . and glanced over at the other table.
Too absorbed to notice the attention they were attracting, they continued their growing-louder-by-the-minute argument. “And just how did you arrive at that idiotic conclusion?” he demanded hotly.
“Think I ought to say something?”
“It’s none of your business. I think you ought to stay out of it.”
“Pretty soon the whole place is going to be in it!” she snapped as her annoyance grew. She expected professional, adult behavior from the people around her; this mess was rapidly turning into a knock-down, drag-out. And she was becoming angrier and angrier by the minute.
“Look,” she declared hotly, daring him to disagree, “it’s a simple matter of arithmetic. If manning for the shift is five people, and only five, that has to mean that each one of them will have total responsibility for more than one of . . . . . . . .”
“But it never works out that way!” he cut in, his voice betraying his own rising anger. “You know perfectly well we . . . . . . . .”
“Of course not!” she interrupted, ignoring the point he was trying to make. “And that’s the whole point. If there’s never enough people to even cover . . . . . . . .”
She’d had enough. Standing up, she moved across the small space that separated their two tables.
They both looked up at her as she stopped at the edge of their table. Anger blazed in her eyes; filled with fury, sitting there, she dared her to say something.
“You might want to keep it down just a bit,” she advised quietly, knowing full well that, in this situation at least, her advice carried the weight of a command. Taking advantage of her position, she went on to inform them, “You’re becoming the main point of attraction for the noontime crowd.” That said, she turned away and sat back down in her own chair. She said nothing to him; her look dared him to make a comment to her about interfering.
He didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he chuckled, “I guess we’re slipping just a bit.”
She found her annoyance ebbing in the face of his laugher. Confused, she asked, “Slipping? How?”
Pushing aside the empty coffee cup, he reached across the table to gently take hold of her hand. “Your student nurse . . . . . . . . my intern . . . . . . . . arguing in the middle of the cafeteria . . . . . . . . we’re supposed to have taught them better than that!”
She looked at him, amazement filling her dark blue eyes. “Oh. You mean we’re supposed to have taught them to play nice?”
He chuckled; “Or at least to fight fair!”
After a moment, a grin spread across her face. Rolling her eyes and looking at him askance, she softly queried, “Think we ought to show them how it’s supposed to be done?”
He laughed as he glanced at his watch. “As tempting as that might be, Nurse, duty calls,” he replied as he stood. “Besides, our referee is nowhere in sight!”
She grinned at that, then, and, as he pulled back her chair, she softly murmured, “There’s always tonight . . . . . . . .”
He looked at her in surprise. “In case you’ve forgotten, Nurse, our favorite referee is on vacation for another week!”
“You mean we’re on our own?” she teased. Favoring him with a rather saucy, suggestive look, she turned away from the table. Eyes twinkling brightly as she headed for the door, she added, “Just you wait and see!” Glancing over her shoulder, she rolled her eyes at him. “And fair hasn’t got one single thing to do with it, Doctor!”
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