Lucinda nods. “Meemaw and some of the old ladies promised to come over and help out. They’re all pissed at Crazytown for shutting me out.”
I nod approvingly. I don’t love having an entire trailer town up in my business. But a close-knit community like this will undoubtedly come in handy for a single mom.
“Can you tell me where the closest hospital is? I’d like to speak to a doctor over there just in case we need to take you in.”
Lucinda frets her lip.
“I know lack of insurance might make that too expensive for you,” I tell her. “But there are programs that can help keep down delivery costs. If you give me your phone and let me call over there, I could probably figure out how to arrange a costless prenatal exam for you.”
“No, I have insurance,” Lucinda says. “Waylon got it for all of us when he started this town. We’re all on the payroll and making a living wage, too. It's nothing like before when it was just the compound or where I’m from in Columbia. It’s kind of like….what is that word for dream place? It starts with a U?”
“Utopia?” I guess.
Lucinda snaps at me. “Exactly, it is a utopia, except the only people allowed to come in are the ones Waylon chooses.”
“Then why was he so anti-hospital back in Delaware?” I ask.
Lucinda shrugs. “It is a utopia, but the Reapers are still criminals. I am thinking none of them would be willing to show up at a hospital with a gunshot wound.”
Fair enough. Another thought occurs to me. “Are you saying that I’ll get paid a living wage too if I agree to be the town’s nurse practitioner for a while?”
Lucinda shakes her head and looks honestly confused as she answers, “You’re Waylon's woman. Why do you need to get paid? Your money’s no good in this town. And if you can’t get something here, you can just ask him.”
I grit my teeth. “I'm not his woman.”
Lucinda looks to the side. “Are you sure about that? Waylon’s doing a lot for you, and he wouldn’t be doing so much if you weren’t his woman.”
I shake my head. “What exactly do you think he’s doing for me, other than keeping me here against my will?”
Lucinda opens her mouth, but a knock sounds on the door before she can reply.
“Hey, Dr. Amira!” A voice on the other side calls out. “Charlie said you were open for business now. Is that true?”
“That sounds like my friend Scarlett,” Lucinda says. “She’s pregnant too, and I told her you said me and all the other pregnant women needed to come to you for an exam.”
“That’s not exactly what I said,” I answer, even as I go to open the door.
I’m expecting to see this Scarlett, and sure enough, a woman with a pregnancy bump and dark red hair is standing at the top of the trailer's steps. But there’s also a line of ten other people behind her—both women and men.
Scarlett wasn’t the only one Charlie told I was open for business. From what I can tell, over the next few hours, everybody’s overdue for a checkup. Pretty much the whole trailer town has been waiting for what they keep calling a real doctor to get here—no matter how many times I remind them I’m a nurse practitioner.
I spend the entire day seeing patient after patient—none of whom are willing to pay me.
I can’t bring myself to charge the pregnant women. But I mention it to the first biker I treat for a skin rash that’s most likely an allergic reaction.
He looks away guiltily and tells me, “Waylon said we’re not allowed to pay you.”
Unfortunately, I also can’t bring myself not to treat all the patients who come to see me, even though they are unwilling to pay for my services.
Their care has been long overdue enough, and it's not their fault that their town founder is a psycho and a total dick.
Plus, what else do I have to do? Stew in the upstairs room at Meemaw’s house?
Over the next few days, I fall into a new routine of heading out to the medical trailer and seeing patients pretty much non-stop from nine to five.
I never minded the ER, but small-town doctoring is kind of refreshing. Lots of different types of cases, plus time enough to have a friendly conversation without worrying about getting beds turned over and a bunch of insurance paperwork.
Unfortunately, some of those conversations turn into my patients giving me advice I didn’t ask for from them. The figurative old ladies tell me I’m crazy for not living with Waylon in his trailer.
“All he’d have to do is look at me, and I’d leave my man in a second and move in with him,” a woman named Maybelline who’s wondering if she’s got a smoker’s cough and cancer or a regular cough and strep throat tells me during her exam.