I share the space with my medical assistant, Talia. Sassy, Southern-type woman. Bit judgy, but always funny. Our desks are catty-corner to one another, which means we are... quite close.
Talia is twenty-six and, if you ask her, she’s a million weeks pregnant. In reality, she’s almost forty weeks pregnant, and today is her last day of work. I’m inducing her Monday, much to her utter delight. She’s been begging me to deliver this baby since she was thirty weeks becauseit feels like someone jabbed a hunk of coral in my vagina and an evil, insane monkey is playing with a Taser attached to it.
I love her.
Eyeing the Cardi B length nails on her hands—hot pink and bejeweled—I lean toward her. “Can I ask you a question, Tally Boo?”
She looks up from her computer, flipping long hair over her shoulder.
“How do you get anything done with those?”
She rolls her eyes. “Please, Doctor F. A real woman knows how to live life without the tips of her fingers.”
“But, like, how are you going to take care of a newborn?”
Her brazenly flat stare is both insolent and hilarious. Love it. Love her. Ugh. I think I might miss her when she’s gone.
“Mind your business.”
“Mindmybusiness? Didn’t you tell me last week that I needed to settle down and have kids, too?”
She waves her hand. “I want you to share my misery. Besides, aren’t you, like, forty-seven years old?”
“I’m thirty-three. You know this. You’re the one who made me blow out thirty-three trick candles on my last birthday cake.”
A hearty belly laugh bursts from her. “I forgot about that.” She mimics blowing out candles—if the person blowing had the lung capacity of a ninety-year-old.
“Hilarious,” I say, tone dry, as I push back from the desk. “Come on. We have a patient ready.”
She waddles after me, and we enter a patient room to find a silver-haired woman perched on the exam table in her medical gown.
“Hello, Mrs. Mulaney,” I say. “Long time, no see.”
Her tremulous smile lights her whole face. “There’s my Doctor Foley.”
We exchange pleasantries, and she asks aboutMiss Talia’spregnancy. Mrs. Mulaney’s exam is quick, and she chats the entire time, even with her legs spread. The woman treats her yearly exams like a social call.
“You know, I read on the Facebook that it’s in style to go bare again,” she says.
I do everything in my power to keep my eyes from widening. “Uh—”
“Should I wax down there, you think? I do want to fit in at the gym.”
Talia whistles. “Go on, Mrs. Mulaney! You do you.”
The older woman laughs. “You’re right, Miss Talia. Iwilldo me. Full bush.”
I smother my laugh. “Everything looks healthy. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
She pats my cheek like I’m a child. “It’s nothing, really. I made an appointment with Doctor White. I can’t quite hold my urine like I used to.”
She made an appointment with my partner? WithDr. White, the condescending prick? For something I could help her with?
There’s that feeling again. The inadequacy, all cold and heavy.
Really don’t like it.
Visions swirl through my head—patients flocking to my partner, colleagues consulting better doctors, nurses telling patients to see any OB but me.
