ROMeANTICALLY CHALLENGED. Marina Adair

Rome General’s newest floater, her schedule was in constant flux. Besides the afternoons, when she filled in for Dr. Tanner, her shifts consisted of one surprise after another. Annie hated surprises, almost as much as infuriating landlords who dropped in unannounced.

      Her new job was a lot like men: inconsistent and predictably unpredictable. Only on the hospital floor there was no window to crawl out of. No door to hide behind. And absolutely no room for error.

      Annie had left Connecticut with the intent to shake things up a little, put some of the fun and excitement she’d been missing back into her life. But a little stability here and there would be nice. She missed the comfortable rhythm she’d mastered at her previous job. The friendships she’d fostered, the confident stride she’d adopted the moment she slid on that lab coat.

      She was unflappable and unstoppable.

      But here, every day seemed like a new opportunity for the universe to flip her the big one. It was as if she were trapped in a bizarre Groundhog Day loop that played the same twenty-four hours over and over. Only the obstacles were different, the learning curve steeper, and she was always the new kid on the ward.

      While her morning had started out great, with Gloria laughing and telling stories about growing up as a triplet, by the time Annie was ready for her shift, she was still feeling a lingering ickiness from her call with Clark that she needed to shed.

      Annie pulled on her lab coat and waited for Alicia Keys’s song “Girl on Fire” to start playing in her head. Waited for the bass of life to kick in, the crackle of energy to thump against her chest.

      All she felt was heartburn.

      Resigned, she went to the nurses’ station and checked the posted schedule: ER duty followed by a few hours in oncology and ending with the only constant in her day, family practice.

      She started off strong, treating a set of siblings with strep throat, a sprained ankle, and three cases of the flu. Then the attending doctor asked her to take a patient to radiology to get an MRI, which the doctor assured her was scheduled.

      It was not.

      By the time she straightened things out, she was informed the MRI was no longer needed. From there, she spent the rest of her day playing catch-up. For a woman who listed “Accountability” as the second most important trait in a potential significant other—right beneath “Looks at me the way I look at pizza”—Annie’s new life was about as predictable as a bouncy ball in a glass shower.