Page 16 of Playing with Fire

Chief Quinn sighed. “Are you done yet?”

Swallowing so I wouldn’t drool, I memorized each and every last inch of him, doubting I’d ever get a second chance for such a spectacular view. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to see if those muscles were as hard and strong as they looked.

“If you take your pants off, you might break her, sir.”

“Perkins!”

Dr. Valleychime chuckled. “Who knew a police chief could be so shy?”

Without bothering to put his clothes back on, Chief Quinn stormed towards the door, gracing me with his equally lovely back. At least this time he didn’t slam the door. “Hey, Perky?”

“Yeah?”

“Instead of the suit or dress uniform model for Christmas, can I have a photograph of him shirtless instead?”

Perky offered me a tissue. “You’re drooling, Gardener.”

Damn, so I was. Oops.

Chapter Five

I cursed him in hoarse, raspy whimpers.

After another round of pneumonia and a two-day stint in ICU on a ventilator, Dr. Valleychime banned all visitation, which meant Chief Quinn and Perky since there was no one else interested in visiting me. It took several doctors and nurses to determine I suffered from a syndrome associated with my lengthy containment within the glass coffin. The neutralizers hadn’t just destroyed the residual gorgon dust in my system; my immune system wasn’t responding to vaccinations or developing antibodies, which put me at high risk of contracting something lethal or crippling.

When they moved me from the ICU ward, they put me in an isolation ward typically reserved for people recovering from chemotherapy. After several days of Dr. Valleychime injecting me with substances meant to revitalize the immune system, he called in someone from Texas who specialized in imprinting and rewiring how bodies handled illness and infection.

I wondered where they found a containment suit for a centaur and what sort of diseases a human could catch from a man mixed with a goat. Dr. Tressman seemed like a pleasant enough fellow, and he didn’t even mind when my raspy coughing fits interrupted his work. After three or four hours of poking and prodding me, he shook his head and called in Dr. Valleychime.

“You’re going to need to call the twins,” the specialist announced.

Dr. Valleychime frowned, and then he sighed, a weary, defeated sound. The two talked, using terms I couldn’t pronounce let alone spell. Dr. Tressman took pity on me and gave me the news in simple words I could understand: the neutralizer hadn’t just wiped out my immune system, it had blown it to bits, and he’d never seen anything like it before. To be safe, they moved me deeper into the ward, and I was treated like a victim of a highly contagious disease. No one came in or out of my room without a suit, which was sprayed down with neutralizer in the doorway.

To purge my body of infections, I was subjected to another round in a glass coffin, a necessity I protested between coughs. We managed to come to a compromise; I’d still go into the glass coffin, I’d still have to wear the mask, but the coffin wouldn’t be sealed. They’d even hook me up to an IV if it took more than a few hours for the magic to do its job and kill off the viruses lingering in my body.

I spent eight hours and twenty-three minutes in the glass coffin, and they sent for Professor Yale to handle stage two recovery. I didn’t complain when he helped, and he didn’t say a word about my inability to sit up. Dr. Valleychime consulted with him, and while my lungs ached and my throat itched from the amount of coughing I’d done, I enjoyed being able to sit up and breathe without the assistance of a machine.

Dr. Valleychime ultimately called in the big guns, faery doctor twins who could do more than just imprint and retrain someone’s immune system. In a three hour procedure, they intended to raise mine back from the dead.

They brought in a set of silver and gold chains etched with runes, which they informed me were required for the operation. Like any sane woman, I fought them, but the pair of eight inch tall men won the battle without any help from Dr. Valleychime or Professor Yale, who watched with interest.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the chains’ purpose. Since the procedure hurt like hell, they kept most of my body immobile while the faery doctors worked. My respiratory system still functioned, so I cursed them until I lost my voice. To add insult to injury, the instant the twin doctors declared they were finished, they gave Professor Yale the go ahead to begin the vaccination process.

I cursed him in hoarse, raspy whimpers while he chuckled and jabbed me with needle after needle.

It took them three weeks to rebuild my immune system. Professor Yale celebrated my recovery by dumping a bucket of gorgon bile over my head and making me clean it up. He also brought some of the CDC’s safer samples to confirm my immunities had survived the procedure.

They had.

Not satisfied with the initial results, Professor Yale took me into custody, helped me deal with the massive stack of discharge papers, and escorted me to the CDC’s NY headquarters. With demonic glee, he ordered me into a hospital gown, led me to the auditorium and locked me in the containment chamber, where he proceeded to test my immunities while his students watched through a thick pane of safety glass.

At least the CDC would pay for my hospital bills—all of them—in exchange for being put on display like some freak of nature. Granted, I was a freak of nature when it came to my immunities, but that wasn’t my fault.

“There are no words to express my level of hatred for you, Professor Yale.” I glared at the man, who stood with his students in the small auditorium. All in all, there were at least a hundred and fifty people watching me get drenched with various formulas, dried off with the containment chamber’s special ventilation system, doused with liquid neutralizer, and dried off again before we repeated the process.

If my immune system kicked the bucket again, I would find a way to make him suffer for an eternity.

“Now that you have seen standard immunities, students, I’m going to show you something rather special. For this demonstration, I will be in the containment chamber with Miss Gardener. While most of our substances can be sprayed into the room with her, the next sample will be given in pill format.”