“Ow!” I slap her arm. Then I slap her a second and third time as fresh tears flood my eyes and my vision turns blurry. “Stop hurting me!”
“Had to do it, Chief.” She hands the hairy stick off to Soph and grabs more tissues to plug up my second hole. “If you leave it in too long, you risk it hurting even more.”
“Why are we waxing during work hours?” Soph demands.Loudly. “And why is no one confessing to the smell?”
“The smell is from a DB.” Aubs bounds up from my desk and crosses my office, swinging the door open and riffling around in her top desk drawer for just a second. Gripping whatever she needs, she strides back in again and returns to her spot directly in front of me. “When people die, they decompose. When they decompose in a dumpster for almost a week, baking in the summer heat, they tend to smell a little extra ripe.”
Sophia scrunches her face tight.
“When our illustrious chief M.E. decides to go dumpster diving to collect each individual, disconnected section of a man’s body, then sometimes that stink gets into our pores.”
“That smell is a dead person?” Sophia’s chest bounces with a heave that almost undoes me. “You have dead people on your skin?! Ew!”
“Seriously?” I pull my bloodied tissues away and scowl as a fresh droplet splats onto my black pants. “Dammit.” I look up in search of more, but Aubree’s quick, shoving a whole handful against my face. “You’re Sophia Solomon, and you’re sayingew?” I bring watery, blurry eyes back to the ballerina. “Seriously?”
She studies her hairy wax gift and giggles.Which is better than gagging, I suppose.“I’m just a delicate woman, Doctor Mayet. I dance for a living, am mother to two equally delicate ballerina daughters, and rarely have to deal with anything smelly, since my husband does it all for me.”
“In and out of the home,” I drawl. “Evidently. Don’t you have work to do?” I pointedly look toward my glass wall and, on the other side, Doctor Kirk’s wide, staring eyes.
His breath races, his chest lifts and falls. His hands dangle listlessly by his sides, and yet, he stares. And stares. And stares.
“Go away!”
He startles back with a panicked yelp and crashes into an amused Theo Griffin. At least the second has the good manners not to stare at my bloodied face. Kirk spins and sprints away, his feet noisily slapping the tile in his haste.
“You’re a mean boss,” Soph teases. “Why are we waxing our noses, though?”
“Because I already showered a bunch of times and I still smell!”
“Here.” Aubree peels a plastic wrapper open and presents a crisp white tampon. She steals the tissues from my left hand and slaps the tampon in their place, then she guides my hand up. “Insert.”
“Are you shittin’ me?” Soph loses it, throwing her head back as the sounds of honking laughter fill my office. “Is this real life?” And because she wants to make sure, she brings her eyes down… and falls apart again. “It’s real life!” She tosses my wax stick into the trash and whips her hand around to her back pocket. “I gotta get a photo of thi?—”
I snatch the device away and slam it onto my desk. “Photograph me, and I’ll shove that hammer straight up your nostril until the metal end scrambles your brain.”
“Here.” Aubree takes my second wad of tissues and replaces it with another tampon. She guides my hand up, plugs my leak, and bites the vicious smirk trying ridiculously hard to cross her face. “You don’t look as dumb as you think you do.”
“Yes, she does!” Sophia howls. “She looks like a fucking idiot.” She flicks the dangling strings and makes the ends tickle my chin.
But I don’t scratch.
I can’t.
I refuse.
“Oh my God. I’m actually crying.” She swipes her eyes, her shoulders and chest bouncing with laughter. “I don’t remember the last time I felt this much joy.”
“It’s infusion night, right?” Aubree asks seriously. “And the heat is making you bleed faster.”
“Yeah.” I pull the first tampon out and groan as, in the single second it’s gone, fresh blood trickles to my shirt and lands with a splash.
Unlike my pants, my ivory shirt isnotblack. “Shit.” I shove it back into place. “Remind me never to do this in the summer ever again.”
“Do you need me to get your Factor from home?” She whips my desk drawer open and snatches out a set of car keys, but before her feet even touch the floor, my cell trills and Archer’s name flashes on the screen.
She looks at me. Looks at my phone. Looks at the tampons literally hanging out of my face. Then back to my phone again.
I nod. “You get it.”
