Rylee turned to the woman and raised a finger. “I swear to god if you ask me which anxiety drug I want, I’m going to get loud and obnoxious.”
“No, ma’am. I’m not.” She pulled her notepad from her pocket and leaned over to write on the same page that held her breath count from earlier. “I’m giving you the name of a friend of mine who went through nursing school with me. She’s now a PA for a neurologist. This is the office phone number and the name of the group. That second name is me. Tell her I gave you the number and that you need to be seen as soon as there’s an opening. Leave a message on her voicemail. And let her know you were diagnosed with ‘anxiety.’ She’ll make you a priority.”
“A woman?” Rylee reached out for the slip of paper and turned it to see fat letters printed neatly in blue ink.
“Yes.” Rose slid the pad and pen back into her pocket.
Rylee fluttered the paper. “Thank you.”
“I hope you get the answers you deserve.” She walked to the door and, in a voice Rylee could barely hear, Rose said, “My kids are in daycare next door. That’s why I work here,” then left, slicking the door closed behind her.
Rylee jumped down from the table, balled up the pink paper, and shoved it in the waste bin.
She sat down and started gathering her fleece-lined leggings with fingers that were warming with her anger.
Yes, Rylee understood that doctors knew very little about female bodies. Researchers were only required to include women in their medical studies since the mid-nineties. Mice models didn’t include female mice until the NIH mandated it in 2015. That meant that when the meds were tested on human females in drug trials, they had previously only been tested in male animal studies. “Here you go, ladies, we have no idea howthis will impact your cute little XX chromosomes, but surely not so different from an XY, hey? We’re pretty sure it’ll be good for the guys, and yeah, you never know, you might get some benefit.”
It was bad to have a female body in today’s global medical landscape.
Only recently had doctors acknowledged that women had nerve endings on their cervix and needed pain meds for surgeries down there. Though, honestly, doctors still needed prodding to issue the prescription.
Yep, in the world of anatomy, women’s bodies were under-researched, and treatment was most likely a blindfolded dart throw. Everything from agreeing that women felt pain and should be given pain medications to men receiving their diagnosis many years before a woman would—more than two years earlier in cancer diagnoses, almost five years earlier for metabolic diseases.
She got that women were medically second-class citizens. Every woman Rylee knew got it.
But come on! She had a family history. She wasn’t looking for them to pull the answer out of their asses; she was simply asking if they believed her when she said she was experiencing unaccounted for symptoms, and then to follow up with diagnostics.
Still, no. Instead, Rylee had found in her clinical notes that “WW” had been added to her presentation of “clean and appropriately communicative.” Rylee had asked her gyno what it meant when that was written down. Her gyno had scowled, “Who did that?”
“Not you. But others.”
“It means ‘whiney woman’. It means that you went to the appointment complaining for no reason other than you wanted attention.”
“People do that?” Rylee was genuinely confused. She would never put herself through the ice-box offices and indignity of the pink napkin unless she genuinely needed help.
And here she was again, the WW.
Yoga. Yep, that should fix things right up.
Rylee dragged on her tights, reached for her dress, and wrestled it over her head. Slipping her feet into her flats, she grabbed up her phone and purse, then scanned the room to make sure that, in her seething fury, she wasn’t leaving anything behind.
Because she never wanted to see this place again. Ever.
Chapter Five
Dakota
Monday
Dakota pushed through the ground-floor door of his office building and back out into the blustery gray day. A glance skyward told him he could leave his umbrella in the messenger bag, hanging crossbody, but he turned up the collar of his suit and hunched against the wind, his hands shoved into his pants pockets.
It smelled like snow.
Benny was right; if anything was in the cards for a lasting relationship between him and Rose, this ten-minute walk would have been hugely convenient. He’d let her know at lunch that they needed some quiet time on the phone to talk things through privately. He wouldn’t bring it up over a public lunch or mid-way through her hectic day.
Rose should finish up with her last patient and take the elevator down to meet him out front in the next few minutes. She only had half an hour to grab a bite, so they agreed to hit the place they’d gone a time or two, a little deli around the corner on the same block as her medical building. Since every eating joint was packed this time of day, Dakota had called in an order that morning for the same sandwich combo Rose had last time. If she wanted that today, that call saved them time. If she was in the mood for something else, he’d take that order home and eat it for dinner; fewer dishes to wash. Win-win.
The lunchtime rush filled the streets with jostling, impatient cars, riding bumper to bumper. Dakota’s gaze searched through their windshields, taking in all the cameras posted on the frontdashboards. Then he turned and scanned the street. How many cameras could he count along this short route?
