Cynda and the City Doctor: 50 Loving States, Missouri

“But some of the people on the list live over two hours away! It doesn’t make any sense to force each of them to come all the way into town, when you can drive out there and hit all the farms on your way back.”

“It doesn’t make financial sense for me to spend the entirety of my Saturday checking on them.” Rhys punctuates his argument with a pointed look. Making it more than clear that he thinks I’m an idiot.

“No, it’s doesn’t make financial sense, but it makes emotional sense. You’re new here. Don’t you want the people of this town to like you?”

He answers with a cold shrug. “I’m the only family practitioner in town. If they don’t like me, they can’t go anywhere else but the very expensive hospital.”

Valid point. And technically that was the real reason my father won acceptance as a Black doctor in this majority White town, but ugh!

I can’t let him just crap out on my dad’s legacy. I try again. “Mavis over at the Coats farm has COPD. She’ll be needing a full check-up before she goes on her road trip to Mexico.”

“Mexico, Missouri or Mexico the country?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. But before I can answer, he holds up his hand to say, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Either way, she should make an appointment.”

“She’s not going to make an appointment. She’s too old and stubborn,” I answer. I’m getting seriously upset.

But then I make myself take a deep breath and reset.

It’s true he’s being a total asshole about this. But it’s also true that Mavis really does need that checkup.

“Please,” I say, my voice much calmer. “Like you said, you’re the only doctor in town. So please can you go see Mavis at least. For me?”

Rhys smiles at me the way he used to.

And my heart soars with hope.

But then he says, “No.”

Chapter Eight

Dammit.

So that’s how I end up back inside, calling everyone on the farms round list while A and E finish making the pancakes.

I tell them, they’ll have to make an appointment if they need anything instead of talking about it with the new doctor as they were probably expecting.

Everyone’s really gracious about it. And no one’s surprised.

“From what I was reading on all my online papers nobody does house calls anymore,” Joe Mueller, a soybean farmer who lived about fifty miles out of town told me. “Your father and Doc Haim was the last of their class. Not surprised this new one decided us farmers ain’t worth it.”

Joe lets me off the hook, but I still feel bad as I make the calls. Another farmer named Harold has a “toe thing” he was hoping to get looked at and I can’t even make him an appointment. Mavis doesn’t answer. On her cell or her landline. And Grady, the Black farmer who always greets us with a lunch made entirely from his crop yields, sounds so down that I’m not working in the office anymore.

“I’ll tell ya, havin’ lunch every month with a Princess Missouri made all the hard fieldwork worth it,” he joked in the harmless way only old Black men can still get away with.

He sighs after he says that, and I find myself sighing too. The plan would have been for me to move to Pittsburgh with the twins at the end of the summer whether I’d been fired or not. But calling up all my old farm patients leaves something hollow in my chest. I’d only come back to Guadalajara out of duty, but I guess I’ve grown attached to my hometown over the last three years.

Life was way slower here than in St. Louis, but I liked the consistency. And most of the people. I’m going to miss it. I really am. Maybe worse than I missed pork fried rice and gravy when I moved away from St. Louis….

THREE YEARS AGO

“Look in the fridge.”

I found the post-it note on my locker about two weeks after my seriously disappointing first visit to Rhys’s apartment.

And I knew exactly who it was from, even though I hadn’t talked to The Fine Prince since I threw up deuces as I was leaving him behind in his apartment with his ridiculously gorgeous fiancée. Especially attractive women made him nervous, my ass.

I didn’t want to look in the fridge. But curiosity can be an evil bitch, and she dogged me until I found myself opening up the refrigerator door as soon as I took lunch in the Emergency department’s break room.

Inside I found a carton of Chinese food with another post-it note attached. “PROPERTY OF NURSE AMERICA” it said.

I pulled the carton out and found another post-it on the back. “I’m sorry. I’ve much to explain. Could we talk?”

“No, we can’t talk,” I answered the note out loud. Only to have the moment ruined when my stomach grumbled.