On Rotation(70)

“Ah yes, cowgirls,” Nia said wistfully.

“Never anything serious, though,” I reminded her. “Flings only. All of our real love would be reserved for the dogs and each other.”

“The dogs!” Nia laughed. “That’s right. Ten dogs, all big, sweet, dumb mutts. All the dogs at the pound that no one wanted.”

“We were going to give them big human names.” I snorted. “Like Fitzgerald and Beatriz and Napoleon.”

“Maybe we can still do that,” Nia surmised. “All we have to do is convince Shae and Ricky to come along.”

I could picture it in my head. An endless field, fat, grazing cows. Fences that needed mending, a bright red barn that we used for storage and, when the time was right, parties. All four of us sitting on rocking chairs on an expansive veranda, watching the sunset over the horizon.

“That,” I said, nestling into the crook of my best friend’s neck, “would be the dream.”





Twenty




“I’m not a diabetic,” my favorite patient, a lively old woman who insisted on being called Miss Bernice, said to me for the third time today. Never mind the fact that she’d been admitted for a diabetic foot infection and had to have her foot guillotined off four days ago.* Never mind the metric fuck ton of insulin we were pumping into her just to keep her blood from turning into simple syrup. Never mind that she’d been injecting herself with substandard doses of that very same insulin at home for the last fifteen years.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you mean by that?”

The first two times she’d made this declaration, I’d tried my best to assure her that she most certainly was a diabetic, only to be brushed off and told that I didn’t “get it.” This time, I’d clearly given a more satisfactory answer, because she gave me a toothy smile.

“I mean, I’m not a diabetic!” she repeated. “Diabetic is a mindset. It’s a label! And I don’t label myself. Labels aren’t good for anything. All they do is limit you.” She peered at me through narrowed eyes. “You look young. You married?”

I stiffened. She’d changed the subject so suddenly that I got whiplash, though the question wasn’t unfamiliar. A number of little old ladies had already tutted over my decision to prioritize my career over a man. If they liked me, they’d offer up their okay-looking grandsons. If they didn’t, they made some comment about how my youth would leave me soon, and what would I do without a family?

“Um . . . no?” I said.

To my surprise, Miss Bernice clapped her hands together.

“That’s right, baby girl,” Miss Bernice said. “You don’t need to be nobody’s wife! When the boys come around, you take what you want and move on, ’cause that’s what they’ll do to you!”

My eyes widened with amused shock for a split second before I regained control of my face.

“Okay, Miss Bernice,” I said. “Uhhh . . . Thanks for the advice?”

“Just looking out,” Miss Bernice said. She flipped off her sheet, exposing her leg, now sans foot. “You wanted to take a look at this, right? Go ahead, Doc.”

I smiled and took a look at Miss Bernice’s surgical site. I’d long stopped trying to correct Miss Bernice when she called me Doc. When James and I first met her in the Emergency Department, her eyes had gone wide when he introduced me as a medical student.

“You training to be a nurse?” she’d asked.*

“A doctor,” I said automatically, and her smile turned bright.

“A doctor!” she’d said, clapping her hands together. “Oooh, I’m proud of you, baby! You too, sweetie,” she said off-handedly to James, who laughed, understanding. “But you! How long have you got left in school?” When I told her (“A year and a half, ma’am,”) she scoffed. “That’s no time! I’m calling you Doc now!”

I walked out of Miss Bernice’s room with a smile on my face, as I always did, and made for the workroom. I had only an hour and a half left until my dinner date with Ricky. My quick post-op wound check with Miss Bernice had taken ten minutes longer than I had expected, given her line of questioning, but now I had finally finished off my checklist.

To my surprise, when I returned to my apartment, Nia was there, lounging on the sofa. Since our conversation a few days ago, she had been making a concerted effort to be present when and however possible. With her grueling new bakery schedule, I knew that frequent visits weren’t sustainable, but I appreciated them regardless. But at least I had her today to witness my transformation.

Ricky was always brazen in his appreciation of me. All I had to do was stand up from my chair and stretch to get an approving Mm! from him, or a half-lidded, lascivious stare. I caught him looking even when the Ass was clearly out of view, sneaking glances at me from over his laptop. When I was feeling a little saucy, I added some sashay to my step when I walked past him just to watch him gawk.

And so today, with twenty minutes left on the clock, I was going to preen and primp like nothing he’d ever seen. The falsies were coming out, the foundation, the uncomfortable but dazzlingly effective push-up bra. I was not, as one might say, fucking around. If I did this right, my halfhearted vow of chastity didn’t have a chance of making it through the night.