Life Sentences Read Online Free PDF

sound like my father, Doctor Peters,” she told the brash young man. “And I don’t like him either.”
    He backed away and grunted, “No need to get testy.”
    “No need to be disrespectful,” Pilar retorted and held out her hand. “I’m Doctor Pilar Brookstone and you’re going to have to get used to me around here for a few years.”
    Doctor Peters’ unenthusiastic hand shake reminded Pilar of those she detested, like a limp offering of dead fish. “You know what I discovered in med school?” Pilarasked as she dropped his hand and wiped hers against her lab coat.
    He shrugged and looked uninterested.
    “You don’t need a high testosterone level to be a doctor.”
    “Yeah, well tell me that after a Saturday night of removing bullets and sewing up ten-inch gashes when you’ve been up twenty-four hours.” The two doctors walked through the doors to the physicians’ lounge and straight to a large, stainless steel coffee pot.
    “I will, Doctor Peters,” Pilar stated, and handed him a steaming cup. “Coffee?” Pilar winked and noted she’d caught him off guard while she scoped his body as he had hers in the parking lot. Though he seemed ill at ease under Pilar’s scrutiny, he showed no other signs of timidness. Pilar noted that his rugged good looks were more like Indiana Jones than a doctor, who in her mind should fit the likeness of the white-haired, bespeckled pediatrician of her childhood. Now, Pilar sounded like the male colleagues she accused of stereotyping. Still, no one would question that Doctor Peters’ self-assured good looks would interfere with his ability to suture the wounded.
    As he took the cup from Pilar, Doctor Peters reminded her, “Remember you’re only a resident. You have a lot to learn.”
    Pilar grabbed her sandwich and coffee. Eating alone at the outdoor picnic table seemed more congenial than any further confrontation. Had her heated face revealedher true reaction to his admonishment? Pilar regained her composure and headed out the door, waving, “See you Saturday then?”
    As Jeremy Peters stood motionless, mouth hinged open like a ventriloquist’s dummy, Pilar whispered to herself, “Round one is mine.” But was that a good way to start her first year?
    The rest of the week didn’t go smoothly, but not because of the job. In fact, Pilar seemed to have impressed her supervising doctor by her no-nonsense manner and desire to help anyone in need of care. Everyone else, however, especially Doctor Peters, seemed put-off, Pilar guessed, by her looks. Any skills Pilar displayed intimidated, rather than engaged her co-workers. The two qualities, beauty and talent, seemed like oil and water. They just didn’t seem to mix. Disappointed, Pilar found that the work world was no different from her college experiences. Though there were women doctors on staff at Receiving, most female employees were nurses who clearly had learned their place in hospital hierarchy. Pilar believed she was treated more like the nurses. For instance, one time an orderly quickly retrieved the pen she dropped and returned it, commenting, “You’re too pretty to do the heavy work.” Had she noted sarcasm, or just disrespect in his tone?
    Another time a male nurse asked Pilar out for “a friendly cup of coffee.” She declined, of course, only to be assaulted by unkind words. “Do you think you’re too goodfor me, Doc?” She told him no, that she was his supervisor and dating was against the hospital rules even though she had been well aware that male doctors broke that regulation regularly.
    When Pilar and other doctors crowded around the coffee pot one morning she wanted to ask, “You can’t seem to make up your minds. Am I too bright or too pretty?” Instead, she held back her question and took her coffee to a corner table where she sat alone. The group seated at the table next to her laughed and chatted comfortably. Would she ever loosen up enough to join them? What held her back?
    If Julie