Loud wailing bounced off the wide vacant walls of her all-white office, testing her patience with the annoying noise.

The mother shushed her wailing child, apologetic eyes turning sideways to her as she remained still in her seat from across them, watching indifferently from being used to this. It doesn’t make it less annoying, however. Years of practice was what made her good at pretending that her ears aren’t ringing and that she actually has long patience when she clearly really doesn’t. She took off her stethoscope around her neck and placed it on her desk, offering a tight-lipped smile at the frantic mother who is still calming down her child in a futile attempt as if to say that it’s okay, children are usually scared of doctors, especially of syringes, albeit inside her she really wants to tell your child is already wailing even when I just mentioned the word ‘syringe’ and is crying as if I’m dentist instead. I guess I should check for her mental health too. As she watches on with that small, forced smile, for the nth time today, she wonders just why she chose to be a pediatrician rather than be a neurologist like she has always wanted to. Blame her mother who is already a neurologist and who told her that she should take another medical field instead.

It’s already half an hour past her lunch break and yet here she is, stuck waiting for a patient to stop wailing so she could finally take some of the child’s blood and give it to the medical technologist so it would be examined, because the child seems to have a problem in her blood and the illness, though inevitably, is already at the tip of her tongue albeit it isn’t tested yet. Almost half of her patients that came to her with symptoms like these ended up being diagnosed with the illness that she has in mind.

It took another half an hour before the child has calmed down and she had done her best in her experience with children and loud noise to endure it until the last batch of the child’s tears ran out. The mother who has hopeful eyes apologized and thanked her multiple times before ushering her sniffling child whom she had given candy as a treat out the door, and the soft shut of it made the deafening silence reign over the all-white room. She stared at the door where the mother and her pale child with red rashes all over her body disappeared to, and for a fleeting moment, a gleam of emotion crossed her blank eyes. It’s a harsh world. Aside from being better at pretending that she doesn’t find all of her patients annoying, she had also learned to not dwell on any of them. She can pity them, but that certain emotion would offer no help to the sick children she sees every day.

She took off the glasses that she wore when she wrote the medical prescription, sighing and reaching out for her phone so she could order a take-out. Usually, the doctors and nurses, even with the other staff and guards of the hospital, also call for a take-out when it’s time for lunch and share it all together but really, she doesn’t even mingle with them daily to come out of her office and join them. Besides, she hates socializing.

There was a knock on the door, and she put down the phone by her ear and answered in her rich and velvety voice, “Come in.”

A head tentatively poked from outside, and a sheepish and slightly frightened nurse asked, “Doc Moon, um, do you want to order pizza with us?”

She raised a brow. “I just ordered mine.” she told him, and the nurse blinked and slowly nodded his head.

“O-oh. Okay, Doc Moon. Sorry for disturbing you.”

She stiffly nodded her head back and went back to the patient files in her hand. She vaguely heard the door being closed carefully as if the slightest noise would make her angry. It was only a few minutes later before there was a call on her phone, and she didn’t bother answering it as she stood up from her seat. She left her office and passed by the nurses who were chatting almost loudly by their desks, but the chatter and voices immediately toned down into whispers to complete silence when she walked past. The nurses, old and new, bowed down their heads, not wanting to meet her in the eye. Only did when her back was finally turned to them that they raised their heads, all eyes trailing after her voluptuous figure hidden by the long white coat as long ebony as charcoal hair flows down the expanse of her back. It was complete silence that anyone could hear a pin drop, and it’s only after she left that the people went back to normal again, though now their topic has turned into something else—or someone else.

“Doc Moon is so intimidating. Do you see the children crying after they leave her office? Well, I think I would cry too if she’s my doctor.”

“She’s also scary. No one really talks to her here unless it’s important and necessary.”

“That’s right! I was tasked to send files to her once and I swear after I left her office I realized that I can’t last any time longer than that. I can’t exactly explain it… but it feels suffocating and it was like I’m with someone so superior.”

“Duh, are you dumb? Of course, she’s superior, she is an M.D.! And as far as I have heard, she’s also planning on enrolling abroad for more training in her residency although she already has completed that. She seemed to not get tired of studying. Well, she’s arrogant for a cause; she has everything to brag.”

“Donghae, what did she really answer you when you asked her?”

“Nothing really. She only said that she already ordered for herself.”

“See? She’s really anti-social. Rumor has it, just like her name Luna, she’s actually a Luna-tic.”

There were giggles that erupted around, resonating even though they tried their best to talk only in hushed voices.

“Shush! She might hear us!”

“But still—her nickname has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Luna-tic.”

“Well, maybe Luna-tic because she’s so smart and it’s making her crazy in her pretty little head?”

The gossip of the nurses was cut off, however, when a voice suddenly spoke, “Aren’t you all supposed to be on duty? I don’t think you all could take a break and have the time to chat around with the long line of patients waiting outside,” Everyone raised their heads and saw a particular handsome doctor stopping just in front of their nurses’ station. The doctor lifted a brow at them, face stoic. The nurses apologized and bowed their heads. One, however, was late in doing so as she was too busy being awestruck by the handsome doctor. It is no news that he has the best face amongst all the male doctors in the hospital, earning the title the staff has foolishly made as to the most popular doctor—asides from Doc Moon at that. He nodded his head and turned around, hands stuffed inside his coat’s pockets, but after a few steps, he stopped. “And I also don’t think that any doctor would like it if you gossip about us like that. You should learn how to respect the people above you.”

Ashamed, the gossiping nurses bowed. “We are sorry, Doc.” The handsome doctor didn’t give a response and walked away. The sighs that ensued after he disappeared to his office were a mix of out of relief and swooning.

“Though, even if she’s called Luna-tic and has that scary attitude, handsome doctors like Doc Nam there still flock around her. Argh, she’s so lucky.”

“Well, any person with eyes could see her beauty. Too bad that she’s just ugly inside.”

“True…”

They stopped when the scary Doc Moon came back, now holding a box of pizza with salad and a water bottle, and even if they acted like they weren’t just talking about her behind her back, no one really knows that she hears it.

People are so annoying.

~

She parked her sleek black car behind an old gray Bentley in her garage and left her car with the keys dangling in her finger. She took out another take-out of a box of pizza and entered the house, leaving her coat on the small coat rack like she usually does, along with her shoes that are slightly wet from the drizzle of the rain. The house looks empty, the floors and the living room all clean and neat, as she vaguely remembers that today