“You paged?”
“Yes, please sit down.” He smiled at me, but it wasn’t the same smile as before. There was no playfulness in his eyes, and his lips were tight.
“What’s this about?”
“You haven’t seen your email today?”
“Not since two in the afternoon. I was in charge of a training with the residents today—”
“Yes, yes,” he said, cutting me off. “Statistics got back to us. The preliminary data of the trial is in.”
“It is?” My heart raced. This step of the trial wouldn’t make or break it, but if it improved outcomes, it could mean . . . I couldn’t go there. Not without the numbers to back it up. Dr. Medina simply nodded.
“Yes. A lot of it looks promising, but I have some questions, and I’d like to go over the data with you,” he said.
“You looked at the data already?”
“Well, yes,” he said, his brow furrowing.
“Why did they send it to you?”
“I asked the statistics department to cc me when the results came in—”
My pulse quickened with a rage I knew I wouldn’t be able to tame. “You had no right. That is my data—”
“I thought you agreed we would work on this together?”
Dr. Medina looked aghast as if he couldn’t understand where I was coming from. I counted to ten to suppress the anger building. He was overstepping onmytrial. He wasn’t used to people telling him ‘no,’ I could tell. But someone had to.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “Dr. Medina, from now on, I’d appreciate being the first one to see the results ofmytrial.”
“A sensitivity training is not more important than this,” he countered.
“No. But I won’t set aside my other hospital duties. Research is one big part of the whole. I’m also expected to teach—”
“I don’t see the problem here,” he said.
Clearly,I thought. “You are overstepping on my trial, Dr. Medina.”
He leaned back in his chair and scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “I’m not sure what to do here.”
“Look, moving forward, I’d like to be in charge of the trialIwrote. I’m grateful for your mentorship, but that doesn’t mean you can just take over—”
“I see—”
“I mean no disrespect, Dr. Medina.”
“Well, what’s done is done. I’d still kill to go over the preliminary data with you.”
He offered no reassurances, but I was already on dicey ground with my boss, so I let the matter go. We could always re-visit the conversation if he continued to overstep.
“Fine. I have time this evening,” I said.
“No, I can’t this evening. I’m on call tonight.”
“Oh.” I slumped back in my chair, thinking about my schedule.
“How about Friday night. You’re off, right?” he asked.