Chapter 4 Daisy - A Good Story
DAISY A Good Story
Thick pink frosting on a white Piggly Wiggly sheet cake proclaimed: “Welcome to Cape Carolina, Daisy!” As I looked at Head Nurse Sandy and the other nurses in the break room at Cape Carolina Regional Medical Center, I almost squealed.
It might as well have been one of those wedding cakes that cost as much as a decent used car for how excited that cake made me.
Because I had dreamed of living here, where, when I stepped out the door, everything smelled of the sea, all my life.
Well, twenty-nine years of it at least, since I was five years old and my parents brought me here on vacation.
As a kid from a landlocked small town in North Carolina, I didn’t know that beauty like this existed.
The Cape Carolina beaches were white and smooth, and the moonlight danced through the marsh grass on the sound side like an ephemeral daydream.
But the way my mother acted when she was here is what sold me.
As a little kid, sometimes we can’t reason things out, but we sense them.
And I could sense, snuggled up to my mother on the beach, watching the sun set and the stars dance, that whatever had felt so unsettled in her felt settled here.
I knew then, with all my heart, that I was meant to live in Cape Carolina.
Was it practical? No. But now I was living out my childhood dream.
“Y’all are just too much,” I said, as Sandy handed me a slice of sheet cake.
Sandy was kind but no-nonsense, and everything about her appearance reflected her personality.
Clean white scrubs, pristine black clogs, shoulder-length black hair tucked behind her ears.
She wore small gold stud earrings. No makeup. No perfume.
“Well, things aren’t always quite this sleepy around here,” Sandy said.
“So don’t expect a party every day.” She sounded stern, but she smiled.
We had only two patients right now, so there wasn’t much to do but eat cake, apparently.
Which I did. Say what you want. Try to be fancy.
But there is nothing quite as delicious as a lard-based sheet cake from the Pig.
“The ED girls chipped in too,” Laura, a nurse who looked to be a couple years older than I was, in hot-pink scrubs with Labradors on them and thick, stylish black glasses, said.
“Sandy? Is it okay if I go down and thank the emergency department nurses?”
She swallowed her bite and said, “Sure thing. Not like there’s anything going on here.”
I walked down the back staff staircase and took a deep breath.
It had been a quiet, easy first day. I had totally made the right call.
Money was just money. Quality of life was everything.
This job was going to be a breeze. I made my way into the bright, sunny atrium and over to Bernice, who worked front reception at the hospital.
“Y’all were so sweet to get that cake for me,” I said. “I just feel so—”
Before I could say “welcome,” the automatic doors slid open, and a frantic man screamed, “Someone help us!”
A teenage boy, who also looked panicked but seemed fine physically, was behind him, and, for a second, I thought the man was really overreacting.
Until he got close enough for me to see what was behind his hand.
“Follow me,” I said, immediately taking charge.
There was a story here; there was always a story.
And I loved a good story. But first we saved the patient.
Then we got the story. The elevator doors opened.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
I didn’t know if everything was going to be fine. In fact, I had been reminded all too recently that sometimes, everything was decidedly not fine. But you had to say it anyway. Because sometimes, just believing something can get you halfway there.