Chapter 16

“Here she is now!” Jenny said excitedly, shrugging out of her coat and slipping it onto one of the hooks in the employee lounge. “Good morning, Doctor!”

“Good morning, Jenny,” the deeply tanned woman said, smiling. “Is this your friend?”

“Yes,” Jenny said, wrapping her strong fingers around Desiree’s arms and thrusting her toward the woman in the white coat. “This is Sarah Browning. Sarah, this is Dr. Pennyfeather.”

“Oh, uh,” Desiree said, reaching out to shake the woman’s hand. “I’m sorry, um... I thought you were... a man. Not right now, of course, it’s obvious you’re a woman, but...”

“Yes, that’s my husband. He’s also Dr. Pennyfeather. It’s a joint practice.”

“Oh,” Desiree said stupidly.

“Well, Jenny, why don’t you find Lila and have her give Sarah all the necessary paperwork?”

“All right.”

Dr. Pennyfeather the female walked off into the clinical area leaving Sarah and Jenny alone together.

“Oh, my God,” Desiree said, “she must think I’m an idiot! Why did I say that?”

She moaned with false suffering. Jenny smiled sympathetically. “I’m sure it’s fine. She’s very difficult to read. She’s really sort of... closed, if that makes sense. She’s hard to get to know. But she’s always very fair. I really like her. You know, for someone I don’t know that well.”

Jenny opened the door to their immediate left that led into the file room. “Lila, are you in here?”

“Yeah,” a voice called from somewhere in the stacks.

“I need you to pull some new employee papers for Sarah to fill out.”

“Oh, is she here already?”

“Yeah,” Jenny answered.

“Okay, gimme just a sec,” Lila said. “I’ll be right out.”

“Okay.” Jenny closed the door to the file room and led Desiree around to the reception area. “Lila handles the phones and the insurance, usually, and the billing, too, except for collections. We use a service for that. Me and you will be assisting the doctors, but you’ll be doing grunt work until you’ve got enough education under your belt to work on patients.”

“Okay,” Desiree agreed. As far as she was concerned, pulling files was infinitely preferable to pulling teeth.

“Hello,” a pretty olive-skinned brunette said, emerging from the file room. “I’m Lila; you must be the new girl.”

“Yeah, I’m D—Sarah,” Desiree said, reaching out to shake Lila’s hand. “Sorry, I’m Sarah Browning. I am tripping on my tongue this morning, I swear.”

Jenny had given her a peculiar look, but now she turned to smile at Lila. “Sarah’s just starting today. She’ll be giving you a hand with filing and stuff until she gets up her hygienist hours.”

“Oh, great!” Lila said happily. She handed Desiree a stack of forms and a pen. “You just fill those out and we’ll get started. I’m actually really relieved to see you; we’re getting way behind on the filing, and I’ve got this month’s billings to attend to, so you can see I’m swamped. Really, it will be so great to have the help.”

“This is one of the fastest growing dental practices in the city,” Jenny told Desiree confidentially.

“Oh,” Desiree said, nodding as if she understood the significance of that remark.

“Well, I better get to work,” Jenny said. “I’ll see you later, Sarah.”

This time it only took Desiree a few seconds to realize she was speaking to her. “Oh. Oh, okay, bye.”

“You can sit over there if you like,” Lila said, pointing to the spare chair at the end of the long, smooth counter.

“Okay, thank you,” Desiree said. She dutifully sat and began filling out forms; there were tax forms, benefit dispersal sheets, and a few other emergency contact pages and personal work history forms that Desiree agonized over. She had no idea what to put. She couldn’t very well ask anyone who thought she was dead for a reference. She hesitantly put her mother down as a reference, listing her instead as a woman for whom she had cleaned house. She put her brother down as her cousin, listing him as a personal reference. Chewing her lip, she brought the forms back to Lila, who accepted them with a smile. That smile faded as she began looking through everything.

“Wow,” the pretty petite brunette said, “you seriously have no work history? No experience doing anything except cleaning houses?”

“Uh huh,” Desiree said sheepishly.

“Hm,” Lila went on, “and you only have two references.”

“I was going to put Jenny, but I mean... you already know what she says about me,” Desiree said weakly.

Lila scribbled on the page. “You’ll have to list her anyway; we need at least three verifiable references.”

“Oh. Thank you,” Desiree said, seeing Lila write Jenny’s information on her sheet.

“No problem,” Lila said. “All righty, why don’t you just chill out for a moment while I go find the doctor?”

“Okay.”

Lila got up and left the desk. She disappeared into the clinic’s patient treatment area, and Desiree waited uncertainly in her absence. The phone rang, and Desiree hesitantly answered it.

“Dr. Pennyfeather’s Dentistry,” she said nervously.

“Hi, it’s me-- Lila,” the voice on the line said.

“Lila?” Desiree repeated, puzzled.

“Yes. Could you come in here, please?”

“All right. Where?”

“The doctor’s private office.”

Desiree hung up the phone and squared her shoulders.

Why did she suddenly feel like a child being sent to the principal’s office?