Prejudice Meets Pride by Rachael Anderson Page A

truth—that Emma would need a lot of training? She hoped for the latter. There was nothing worse than falling short of someone’s expectations.
    “Have a seat,” Janice quipped.
    “We good here?” Kevin asked.
    “Just peachy,” came the reply.
    “Thanks, Janice,” Kevin said.
    The brief interchange made Emma feel as though she was a problem that had just been passed off to someone who didn’t want to deal with it.
    Emma gripped her purse straps, wanting to blurt out, “Sorry, this was a mistake,” and bolt, but Becky’s words came back to her mind, gluing Emma to her seat. You’re a mom now, and as such, you need to learn that it’s sometimes necessary to set your pride aside for the sake of your kids. Capiche?
    Capiche . As much as Emma didn’t want to be here, she would stay. Kajsa and Adelynn needed her to stay. Her credit card bill needed her to stay.
    An application appeared on the desk in front of Emma. “Mind filling this out for me?”
    “Sure.” Emma took her time with the forms. It was so much easier to write than fiddle with her purse straps in the awkward, tense silence. But when she noticed Janice glance her way for the third time, Emma quickly signed her name and set the pen down.
    “Finished?”
    “Finished.”
    Janice pushed back her chair and stood. “If you’ll follow me, I have some new patient files that need to be entered into our database. I’ll brief you on our system and let you get to work.”
    The thought of being left alone sounded really good to Emma. She couldn’t wait for Janice’s piercing stare to focus elsewhere. But that was before Janice’s five-minute explanation on what appeared to be an incredibly complex computer program. She said something about using the Tab key for one thing and Enter for another, then clicked different buttons and pointed to the areas Emma should input things like emergency numbers and insurance information. She blew through examples so fast that Emma couldn’t keep up, and by the time Janice took a step back and said, “Make sense?” Emma could formulate only one response.
    “Sure,” she lied.
    As Janice’s three-inch heels clacked against the tile floor, taking her away, Emma stared at the screen. Was she really supposed to remember all that? Did most people catch on that quickly, and was she just slow? Probably. Emma had never had a head for stuff like this.
    With a shrug, Emma picked up the first patient file, and after trying a few different things, finally found the Add a new patient option. She typed the last name of Carson in the appropriate field and hit Enter, but instead of moving the curser to the next line, it took her to a page she didn’t recognize. Huh? The ESC key only kicked her out of the patient form completely, putting her back to where she’d started—a blank canvas with a bunch of words and symbols sketched across the top.
    Oops.
    Emma cleared her throat and tried to look nonchalant as she repeated the initial step to add yet another new patient. A familiar, blank form appeared, and this time after typing the last name, Emma tried striking the Tab key. Like magic, the curser moved to the next line, exactly where she wanted it to go.
    Take that, complex and backward computer program. Emma smiled. Who needed an in-depth tutorial? Not her.
    Ten minutes later, her fingers came down on the keyboard with hard, frustrated strokes as she pounded out the last name of Carson for the fourth time. This was getting ridiculous. If it wasn’t for her natural instinct to hit the Enter or ESC keys, she’d be on the third patient by now. Instead, she kept inadvertently exiting out of the patient record and having to start all over. At this rate, she’d take all week to input the small stack of patient files Janice had given her. Why wouldn’t the stupid computer save what she’d already typed instead of making her redo everything? Where was the Save button anyway?
    There was none.
    A feeling of unease materialized in