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“Guy?”
She shakes her head. “Oh, sorry. Not my place to ask such questions. I just thought… Never mind.”
“You thought what?”
“That you were, well, very good friends with them,” she says.
“Them, who?”
“The scions of the four Houses. Sindri, Ashton—”
“—Emrys and Jason,” I whisper. I blink.
Why would I be good friends with them?
“But never mind me,” the health officer goes on, grinning widely. “I’m in a good mood. My partner proposed to me just this morning and I’m a bit distracted, as you can imagine.”
“Yeah. Good mood. Got it.” I try to smile back at her but my heart hurts. Like I’ve received bad news to balance out her good luck. The black hole in my mind feels like it’s filled with hot coals.
“So what’s the matter?” She rubs her hands together. “What can I help you with? It doesn’t look like you require stitches, either. Did those mean girls push you around again?”
“I have bullies?” The question bursts out of me before I can swallow it back down and it earns me a curious look.
“Well, the past couple of weeks you didn’t seem to have such trouble with them so I’d hoped you got them off your back. Did they ambush you again?”
“No, I… I’m good. On the bully front, at least. But I can’t remember!”
“What can’t you remember?” She gestures for me to sit on the examination table. I doubt that’s going to help—sitting there, getting examined, when it’s my head that is failing me. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“My memory. It’s patchy. I was sick…” I sit on the edge of the narrow table with a sigh. “Seems that I ran a high fever for a few days. My cousin took care of me.”
“Really? And she didn’t call for me?”
“Put that way, it does sound strange. I guess she knew what to do?” It comes out as a question and I suppress a sigh of frustration. “I mean, she told me that I get these flares sometimes. It’s an autoimmune issue.”
“Which autoimmune issue?”
“I… don’t remember.” I look around, disoriented, because this place feels familiar, too. “That’s why I’m here. I’m confused. There’s a lot I don’t remember, things I should be remembering.”
“Like what?”
“Names… of classmates. The last few days… Or weeks. Not sure. Not sure why I have a stack of books on magic on the desk in my room, or where I got the clothes I’m wearing.”
“That sounds like much more than forgetting a few things.” She frowns, pulls her stool closer to me. “You said you had a fever?”
“Yes. That’s what Ophelia told me.”
“Ophelia is your cousin?”
“Yes. Why?” There’s a crease between the woman’s brows. “Doctor—”
“I’m a paramedic,” she says. “And you know that.”
My turn to frown. “You are? I don’t remember.”
“Okay. Let’s take your temperature.” She puts an electronic thermometer in my ear. When it beeps, she lowers it and checks the numbers. “No, you don’t seem to be running a fever. We should run some tests. It would be useful to know your medical history. Because of the strange way you enrolled, I don’t have it in my files.”
I open my mouth to ask what she means by that—and a memory hits me like a truck.
