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.”
