Page 146 of Salto

After about fifteen minutes, someone called my name.

"Scarlet Hale?"

I looked up.

A woman in navy scrubs smiled at me from the doorway.

"Dr. Morgan will see you now."

I followed her down a quiet hallway. She took my blood pressure and my weight, then led me into an exam room and gestured toward the table.

"He'll be with you in just a minute."

I nodded and climbed up onto the paper-covered table, the crinkling sound making me cringe a little.

The walls were covered in anatomy posters and little skeleton models.

Five minutes later, a soft knock sounded against the door.

A man in his forties stepped inside carrying a tablet tucked beneath one arm. He had a calm expression, a few streaks of gray in his black hair, and wore a bright blue polo beneath his white coat.

"Scarlet?" he asked.

"Hi," I said, giving a small wave and then returning my hands to a tight ball in my lap.

He offered me a small smile and reached out to shake my hand.

"I'm Dr. Morgan. It's nice to meet you."

"You too," I lied.

He released my hand and took a seat in the rolling chair a few feet away. He started tapping on his tablet.

"Alright, so Vanta called me and informed me that you're struggling with PCOS—or, as we more commonly call it now, Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome—PMOS.”

"Yeah," I said lamely.

Here we go, I thought. Another doctor who's going to ask a few questions and then tell me there's not much he can do.

"Start from the beginning."

I looked up, not expecting him to ask that.

"What?"

"Tell me when it began. Everything you remember from the beginning of your diagnosis."

"I've had this since I was a teenager," I said with a short, dry laugh. "It's a long health history."

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back.

"I have nowhere to be."

I found that hard to believe, but when he didn't budge and continued staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell him my story, I sighed.

"Alright, well, it started when I was fourteen..."

It took me almost thirty minutes just to tell him the backstory, and then there was another thirty minutes of him asking about my exact pain and symptoms and writing it all down.