Cynda and the City Doctor - Theodora Taylor Page 0,5
more polite than mine.
Until he also says, “You’re fired.”
Chapter Two
Three years ago
“Red Alert! The Fine Prince is here. I repeat. THE FINE PRINCE IS HERE!”
The alert from the Emergency Department Nurses’ text stream came through on the Apple Watch Daddy got me a few Christmases ago. And it was promptly followed by rows of eggplant emojis from several of my fellow ER nurses.
I let out a heavy sigh and rolled my eyes. I liked a hot piece of eye candy just as much as the next overworked nurse. But these heifers were acting so thirsty.
“So you don’t think I should use my Princess South Carolina scholarship money to get a degree in accounting?” a hurt voice asked.
Dangit! I’d forgotten I was on a three-way FaceTime call with my best friends Billie and Gina. Cursing that stupid message for distracting me, I turned back to the phone in my hand.
Billie was staring up at me from her screen, looking self-conscious bordering on crushed. And Gina, who as usual, was decked out in a Beyonce-level blonde weave, was shaking her head at me. I could almost hear her silently asking me, “What the hell? You know how sensitive Billie is!”
I grimaced. I had what my mother used to gently call, “ER Nurse qualities.” I could be way too direct and plainspoken on and off the hospital floor. I’d done my best to cover up all that attitude when my mom was alive. But in the two years since she died of cancer, I’d been reverting more and more to my natural state. The gracious beauty queen had faded away along with my mother and the real me, a tell-like-it-is nurse had taken her place.
But Billie and Gina have been my best friends ever since we all competed in the Queen America pageant two years ago. They’d been the only two other Black women in our class that year, and though none of us had won, we’d always said our instant friendship was worth more than any crown.
We tried to talk on FaceTime at least once a month. And since they were both on East Coast time they went out of their way to accommodate my hectic ER Nurse schedule. Yes, I like to tell it like it is, but I’d never mock either of their dreams.
“Sorry, that eye roll wasn’t meant for you,” I assured Billie. “I got distracted by this stupid text that came through on my watch about this hot doc all the nurses are slobbering over. They call him ‘The Fine Prince’, and everybody’s been acting crazy stupid about him ever since he came through for this fellowship.”
“Ooh, tell us more about The Fine Prince!” Billie demanded. “He sounds a lot more interesting than my accounting degree.”
“No, trust me, it isn’t,” I answer with another eye roll. “I already have to put up with the other nurses talking about him all the time. Let’s talk about accounting. Right Gina?”
“Sorry, Cynda, I’m on Billie’s side,” Gina answered, her southern accent honeyed and sweet. “All of us, including Billie, know she’ll make a great whatever she wants to be.”
“Aw, thanks, Gina!” A bright smile lit up Billie’s entire face.
It’s a sweet friendship-affirming moment for one whole second, but then Gina says, “Now spill the tea on this hot doc of yours.”
“He’s not mine,” I started to answer.
But Gina blew right through my point. “Plus, I want to live vicariously. If I even look sideways at another man, it’s a huge fight with Tommy.”
I frowned. Gina had only started dating Tommy, a sergeant with the Jonesboro PD a few weeks ago, and he was already telling her she shouldn’t look at other men? “How does that work with you being a stripper?”
There was no judgment from me about Gina’s current career. She was doing what she had to put herself the rest of the way through Emory part-time after not winning the America Queen pageant—unfortunately, her Princess Georgia scholarship money hadn’t been nearly enough to cover the prestigious university’s cost.
But I didn’t see how her fledgling relationship would work if this new guy of hers was too jealous to even let her look at other men.
Gina’s gorgeous face crinkles as she waves a perfectly-manicured hand dismissively. “It’s fine. He knows I’m just working when I’m at Magic Peaches—I mean that’s where he met me. But when I’m with him. He wants me to only be with him and not thinking about any other guys. That’s all.”
In the other FaceTime screen, Billie twisted