Page 434 of The Doctors Will See You Now

At a little after six, I’d managed to get a very groggy Doreen and Harry home safely and settled on their couch. The doctor had told me they’d both handled the procedure well, but that it would be wise if someone kept an eye on them for a few hours until the anesthetic had completely worn off.

Standing in the kitchen, I whipped up the easiest meal I could think of—French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon.

I wasn’t the world’s most talented chef, but I knew my way around a breakfast for dinner meal option. And, who doesn’t love eating breakfast for dinner? It was one of the greatest inventions known to man.

Once the last piece of French toast was cooked to a nice golden brown, I started dishing out hearty portions onto everyone’s plates. Obviously, with Harry getting the biggest portions. The man had a huge appetite to begin with, and after twenty-four hours of suffering through a clear liquid diet and colonoscopy prep, I had a feeling he’d need at least five pieces of French toast.

“Hurry up, Char!” Doreen shouted from her cozy spot in the living room. “The show is about to start!”

“Shit,” I muttered to myself. “Be there in a sec!” I called back and quickly finished dropping a few slices of bacon onto everyone’s plates.

In record time, I got Doreen and Harry all set up with their meals and portable dinner trays. They both grinned at me and offered their thanks, and as the credits for the show started to flash across the screen, I plopped myself down onto the love seat across from them and rested my own plate in my lap.

Riveted, I kept my gaze fixated on the screen.

But holy smokes, I was nervous.

Tonight was the first episode of the reality docuseries, The Doctor Is In, that I’d been brave enough to watch. Harper had been watching for weeks, but only spoke about the specifics in hushed tones when she thought I wasn’t listening. Apparently, she understood the pain associated with all things St. Luke’s Hospital.

Nick’s episodes would be the last to air, apparently, but those of his fellow peer in OB/GYN, Will Cummings, were on now. I wasn’t sure why I felt the urge to watch it. Curiosity? Masochism? Or the blind hope of seeing Nick’s face again, even if it was just on the TV?

Or maybe it was a combination of all three?

I honestly had no idea, and instead of dissecting thoughts and emotions, I focused my energy on watching the show.

The opening music continued, a fast tempo with a ton of B-roll footage of the hospital, its halls, and the busy streets of Manhattan. The footage sped up, zooming in the front doors of St. Luke’s Hospital, through the halls, stairwell, and around the corner to the front entrance of Dr. Cummings’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Office.

And then the doors opened, and Will’s face with the words Dr. OB filled the screen.

He introduced himself and his practice and welcomed viewers into his world. So far, it all appeared very normal.

Well, it had, until various, shocking words started to flash across the screen.

Sex.

Scandal.

Intrigue.

Secrets.

Lies.

The graphic for the show filled the screen again, and the words Dr. OB appeared at the bottom. But this time, a ghost of the letters “s-c-e-n-e” filled the space right after.

Dr. Obscene.

Holy hell. They’d give him the name Dr. Obscene.

My jaw all but hit the top of my French toast as my mind digested the information.

Obviously, I didn’t know Will Cummings, but I had a hard time believing he was the kind of man to actually live up to all of those insane words and descriptions the show had just given its viewers.

Not to mention, they’d changed the OB moniker into something that was the opposite of respectable. It was dirty. It was ridiculous. It was a commercial, sensationalized disaster.

My heart started to pound furiously inside of my chest.

If this was what they’d made out of Will’s episodes, what in the hell were they going to do with Nick’s?