Lila shook her head. “A gynecological exam from a female isn’t natural? But a male doctor putting her in stirrups and shoving a speculum up to her cervix is?”
Mabel shrugged. “Her words, not mine.”
The door to the clinic opened and a woman walked in, her baby in a sling.
“Hey there, Mabel.” She smiled as she reached the front desk and turned to Lila. “I’m here to see Doc. Hi, I’m Hallie Rayburn. We haven’t met yet. Are you taking over for Mabel? I hadn’t heard Mabel was retiring. Oh, she’s the best. You’ll have big shoes to fill.”
It was becoming brutally obvious that Doc Hamet hadn’t mentioned her at all to his patients. Her patients. “I’m sorry. Doc Hamet is moving into more of an advisory role here at the clinic. I’m taking over. Mabel will stay on in her capacity assisting with the running of the clinic and helping me with patients.”
Hallie’s eyes widened and she shook her head like she couldn’t quite believe the words she’d heard. “Seriously? But Doc’s been here for years. He delivered me. I thought he would deliver all my kids.”
“Contrary to popular belief, the man’s not immortal. He’s getting on up there. He needed a younger person to take over his practice, so I’ll be delivering all the babies. Is this Gracie? I saw from her records that she had a little jaundice when she was born. Let’s see how that light therapy worked. Come on in the back.” She’d spent the morning going over files and making sure she was ready for her appointments. It was a total about-face from her previous job, where she put out fires all day. Literally, sometimes. Now she was the one who would prevent the fires from happening at all.
Hallie took a step back, holding her baby close as though someone was going to snatch her. “I need to think about this. I don’t know anything about you. Is Doc here? Can I talk to him?”
“No. He went fishing.” He hadn’t mentioned that to her, either. He’d simply handed her the keys, laughed maniacally, to her mind, and driven away. He’d promised to sign every report he needed to with the state—provided she filled them all out for him. She had the number for a GP two parishes over who would oversee her if she needed help.
It didn’t look like she was going to need any help at all since she wasn’t going to have any patients.
Mabel was on her feet. “She’s got a bunch of degrees, Hallie. She knows what she’s doing.”
“I’ll talk to my momma.” Hallie practically ran the other way.
Yep, her day was not looking up.
How was she going to live if no one would come to the clinic because she wasn’t one of them? They had to give in at some point, right?
“This is insane.” She dropped the file on top of the others she hadn’t needed. “I can handle a well-baby checkup.”
“I told Doc it might not work.” Mabel was roughly sixty years old with raven-colored curly hair with wispy hints of silver at the temples and a tiny but mighty body, from what Lila could tell. She was dressed in scrubs and hadn’t stopped moving once since they’d opened the clinic at noon. Mabel had answered phones, swept the break room, prepped the two exam rooms, done a thorough inventory of their supplies, and generally made her feel like a slacker. Mabel had done everything except actually help treat a patient.
“Why?” The sheriff had mentioned this could happen. Her sister had mentioned it. She still didn’t get how she was throwing the town into a tizzy.
“First off, we’ve never had a nurse practitioner in here before,” Mabel explained. “They don’t understand that you’re as good as a GP. Now, I think we can fix that, but it’s going to take some time and you’re going to have to let folks get used to you. I know what Hallie’s momma is going to tell her. She’s going to tell her to take that baby into New Orleans.”
“She would rather drive four hours round trip than let me do my job?”
A triumphant look came over Mabel’s face. “And that’s where we’ll get her. She’ll go once or twice. Maybe until the baby is a year old or so, but she’ll get tired of it. And when she has another baby, she definitely won’t like that drive.” Mabel nodded. “And we’ll be here. We’ll be waiting.”
She was missing the salient point. “No, we won’t because if no one comes in we won’t be able to stay open.”
Mabel waved that off. “Oh, this place has never once been financially solvent. Don’t worry about it. Once a year Doc goes fishing with Rene Darois and he funds us for the year. If we need a new piece of equipment, we hold a bake sale. Well, I hold a bake sale. Doc wasn’t good at baking. He was good at poker. We got that ultrasound machine from the casino up the road.”