Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
She looked up, and I nearly laughed when I saw tears and snot running down her face. Along with a little puke.
“What office?” she asked.
“The medical examiner’s building,” I said. “I can start an IV and get some anti-nausea meds in you.”
“You’re a doctor?” she asked in disbelief.
My brows rose. “Yeah.”
“Really?” she asked.
I could still hear the disbelief in her tone.
“Yeah,” I repeated. “Now, do you want to stop puking or what?”
She frowned.
I held out my hand.
She bent over and puked again.
Eight
Blow me.
—Today’s inspirational quote
Constance
He was a doctor.
An actual doctor.
What in the world was going on?
This man didn’t look like any doctor that I knew!
But he sounded confident, and I was pretty damn desperate at the moment.
I’d been puking for a solid eight hours straight. My head hurt. My throat hurt. My lungs hurt.
I felt like I was about to die.
Anything was better than this feeling.
So I followed him in my dad’s SUV to his office, which happened to be connected to the only doctor’s office in town.
Dr. Pendelton was the town physician, according to everyone that I’d met and asked for pediatrician recommendations.
He was also the town OB/GYN as well as any other medical services that you might need.
Odin unlocked the door to his offices and gestured for me to go inside.
I did, looking around at the weirdly sterile open space.
“Have a seat in my office chair,” he suggested. “I’ll run over to Pendelton’s place and get the shit.”
He left, leaving me to sit at his office desk and look around.
I’d never been in a medical examiner’s office before.
Though I doubted anyone normal would see it until after they’d died.
There was a metal table in the middle of the room, spotlessly clean.
The floors were concrete. The walls were stainless steel. The entire room looked very utilitarian with a side of morbid. The drain in the middle of the concrete floor was the icing on the cake.
Just as I was getting the creeps thinking about what was in those freezers at the back of the room, Odin was back carrying a bag of saline, some packaging holding the tubing for the IV, and a shot of what I hoped was anti-nausea meds.
He looked annoyed.
“What is it?”
“Dr. Pendelton’s son is a fuckin’ psycho,” he grumbled. “I swear to God. If my kid ever turned out like him, I’d give him a mercy killing.”
My brows rose. “He’s a teenager.”
“He’s a psychopath,” he muttered. “Or more accurately, a sociopath.”
“What’s the difference?” I wondered.
“Psychopaths are charming. Pendelton’s kid is certainly not.”
He dropped down on one knee, tossed everything on his desk, and got to work.
Five minutes later I was hooked up and the nausea was abating.
“Gah,” I said, leaning forward on my hand as my elbow planted itself in his desk.
He hung the bag up on the coat rack beside his desk and said, “I’ll be back.”
He came back moments later with his hands washed.
“What’s with that face?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Just wondering when the bitching is going to start.”
I flipped him off, and his mouth turned up at the corner.
“This is my penance for stealing that other sandwich,” I admitted. “I knew that was wrong and did it anyway.”
“It worked out,” he said. “I had some work to do here. I needed the days off.”
I didn’t bother to ask him what his work was that he needed to do.
I’d heard about the young boy that’d taken his own life.
My mom and dad had been talking about it when I’d left this afternoon to go get some Pepto.
He leaned against the desk next to me, his butt sitting on the papers that were scattered across his desk. His torso only a few inches from my face.
“When did you become a doctor?” I asked quietly.
“Been one for going on thirteen years now,” he answered. “Feeling better yet?”
I nodded, not bothering to lift my head up off my hand.
“You’ll feel better once you get that bag into you, too,” he said. “You’re dehydrated.”
I didn’t doubt that for a second.
The silence was slightly oppressive as the IV dripped slowly into my veins.
And to fill that dreaded silence, I started to talk.
“We moved here because my daughter is sick,” I found myself saying.
He twisted slightly so he could see me. “Sick how?”
I told him about the disease, and he went very still. “She has Rh-null blood?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Her father and I shared a lot of fucked up genes with her. She drew the short straw with us.”
He mumbled something that I couldn’t hear, and then, “Genetics are crazy sometimes. It’s not your fault. How would you have known?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Wendy’s doing a lot better, though. Do you talk to Dr. Pendelton much? I wondered who it was that was donating the blood, but Dr. Pendelton said that the donor wished to remain anonymous.”
“I know him okay,” he said. “He’s very protective of his patients, though, and I doubt he’d share that information even with me.”