Page 56 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“Everyone, I’m delighted to introduce Dr.Gao, the center’s senior adviser. And this right here is Dr.Holbrook, the architect of our wonderful program,” Kaiya said, taking a step back to better see the whole group, then added, “If you each want to pick a desk and grab a tablet, then come back over, Sam and I will run down the day’s plan. Also, I have name tags until your badges come in.”
With that, a flurry of activity broke out across the room, and whatever Grant wanted to say was officially pushed to the side of Sam’s mind to make room for nerves as the program’s corresponding physicians began to arrive, including Dr.Franklin. A small piece of Sam wished that he had volunteered to go in a later phase of the program, after they had a chance to work the kinks out and get into a rhythm with the group. Unfortunately, Jehan and Duke had informed her that there was no nice way to tell Dr.Franklin that while everyone appreciated his support, his presence made them nervous, so could he please not try to be supportive.
“Are you ready to start?” Grant said, giving her an encouraging smile as people began to gather around.
“I was born ready,” Sam whispered instinctively.
Humor played with the corners of Grant’s mouth. His smile had a calming effect on Sam. If nothing else, at least she could count on their inside jokes today.
Nodding to Kaiya, Sam felt her lungs expand as she took a deep breath, then called to the room, “All right, let’s get started.”
Sam wasn’t sure what she had expected, but dead silence and roughly ten sets of eager eyes on her—plus Dr.Franklin’s half-skeptical expression—were what she got. Clearing her throat, she said, “So I want to start by thanking you all for coming. I know everyone here is passionate about our community and has a deep sense that we can create an even better way to care for pregnant people. I also want to extend my most sincere and special thanks to Kaiya Owens. Her knowledge has been indispensable.”
Sam paused to grin at Kaiya while the gathering clapped. Kaiya smiled, then rearranged the front of her yellow sweater set in an effort to not look too flattered. Finally, she waved her hand at Sam. “Go on.”
“As you will have read in the email, we have paired each doula with a doctor or midwife who is in charge of the patients’ primary clinical care here at SF Central. Our hope is that we can arrange these twenty-minute meetings once a month where provider pairs can briefly go over the patients’ charts and birthing center notes so that each provider can assist the other in meeting the patients’ needs. On the tablets the hospital provided, each doula should be able to log in and see their patient list. Just tap the name, and their chart should come up. From there, y’all are off to the races. You’ll have about a half hour to speak, and then our patients will arrive so they can get to know our doulas. Any questions?”
“What do we do if we have a patient ask us about joining the program in a couple of weeks? Would that be too late?” Dr.Choi called from the back.
Kaiya glanced over at Sam, confirming that she would field the question, then began to explain the enrollment options. With the sound of Kaiya’s voice as a backdrop, Sam felt her nerves start to unwind. The program was officially underway, and even better, the doctors were asking encouraging and even excited questions about the long-term potential of the program. She had been nervous about Dr.Franklin’s presence, but maybe it was good for him to see how the other doctors viewed this. Now he knew that it wasn’t just Sam on a soapbox. Other people supported this idea too.
“All right, if there are no more questions, let’s get going,” Kaiya cheered, then whipped out her tablet and marched right toward Dr.Choi, who still had more questions.
“Good work,” Grant said, as soon as the pairs had found each other.
“I was a little bit nervous about how all of this would go over, but it seems like people are excited about it.”
“You were nervous? What for? It’s a good idea,” Grant said, looking genuinely surprised by Sam’s admission.
“Honestly, Dr.Franklin scares me a bit,” Sam laughed. “Plus, what if he was right and everyone was just humoring me or something?”
“One, everyone is scared of Howie.” Grant smiled as if using Dr.Franklin’s first name would make him any less scary, then added, “Two, did you really think you could get this many medical-care providers to agree to humor you in the middle of their extremely busy workday?”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Sam said, shaking her head.
“No, really—”
“Sorry, we are having trouble with the sign-in page.”
Sam and Grant simultaneously turned their heads to find Dr.Franklin’s partner, a green-haired doula whose name tag readEarnest, standing near them. Looking nervously between them and Dr.Franklin, he handed Grant the tablet, saying, “I’m sure I’ve just clicked the wrong thing.”
Grant had just started to poke at the tablet, a scowl on his brow, when Kaiya said, “Actually, I’m having trouble too.”
“Oh,” Sam said, a slow sense of dread taking up the space in her stomach where the knots had previously been.
“I’m getting anInsufficient Credentialerror, if that helps,” another doula called from the back, and it took everything in Sam not to yell that it did not, in fact, help. Instead, she swallowed the impulse and tried not to feel Dr.Franklin’s eyes on her.
Grant looked at her and frowned. “I don’t think their clearance credentials were properly entered into the system.” It was a simple sentence, but Sam’s brain processed the information as if Grant had just handed herGrey’s Anatomyand asked her to memorize it in an hour. Mistaking her silence for misunderstanding, he continued, “They can’t log in to the portal to see the charts.”
“Stupid paper system,” Duke said, from somewhere in the back corner. “This happens all the time. You should see what happens when a doctor’s office sends over a whole load of charts. Coding errors, lost paper, you—”
“We can just log in to our portal and show them for now,” Dr.Choi said, cutting off Duke’s rant about the hospital’s ancient records system.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t.” Sam heard herself say the words that made her blood run cold. When they had made the choice to get tablets instead of laptops that were plugged into docking stations, IT wouldn’t let them load the full system onto the tablets. They claimed it was a HIPAA violation waiting to happen. Sam could almost hear the IT administrator’s smug voice echoing in her head as they asked,What if someone accidentally walks outa here with one and loses it?Turned out losing one was the least of their issues.
“Why can’t we use them?” Earnest asked, pulling Sam out of her anger spiral. Gazing over at him, Sam almost laughed. While she felt like crawling into a hole, he looked completely relieved that he wasn’t the problem with the tablet.
“There were HIPAA-compliance concerns,” Grant said, then added, “If you will excuse me, I’m going to call upstairs and see if we can’t figure out exactly why our paperwork hasn’t been processed.” Grabbing his phone from his pocket, Grant dashed out the door, leaving Sam to manage the group.
