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She gapes at me for a second. “Does that mean Reyes is going to break his vows? Can’t say I saw that coming.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But just in case…things got a little heated today, and I don’t want to be caught off guard.”
“Of course,” she says. “Meet me at the clinic later—I’ll get you all figured out.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
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TILDA
I take another day of working on the garden plot before I finally head to the clinic, Peaches in tow. Suyin greets us at the wooden door, and I’m surprised to find a fairly sophisticated facility inside, complete with a medical dock from the old days. This kind of technology used to be able to diagnose people with one sitting, running all diagnostics and figuring out what was wrong faster than a doctor ever good.
“Thanks for seeing me, doc,” I say as Suyin sits me down in the diagnostic chair. She wraps a blood pressure cuff around my arm and slaps a clip on my finger, then puts a thermometer under my tongue. I feel like a test subject, rigged up like she’s going to perform some kind of evil experiment on me.
“This might sting,” she says, reaching toward me with a needle. I don’t flinch as she presses the needle into the crook of my arm, taking a small blood sample. I’ve been shot three times; at this point, my pain tolerance is skewed.
“You should know I’m nottechnicallya doctor,” Suyin murmurs, watching the diagnostic screen as it starts to beep. I think this is one of the only rooms with electricity; the dock is plugged into a wall behind me. “I just got through part of vet school, and now I’m the closest thing these people have to a real physician.”
“Well, that’s…”
“Don’t worry,” Peaches says with a bright smile. “She’s real good. Don’t let her pessimism fool you.”
Suyin raises her brows at Peaches from across the room, but doesn’t remark on anything.
“Do you really need to do all this?” I ask, gesturing my single free hand at the medical rig. “I figured I could just grab some pills and you could send me on my way…like I said, just in case.”
“Can I be honest with you?” Suyin asks.
I nod.
“I just want to make sure you’re actually…you know.Fertile. Before I distribute any birth control, since we have a low supply.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty,” I mumble. “Thanks for letting me know ahead of time, I guess.”
“You never know, especially when patients have experience in combat,” Suyin clarifies. “And with that gunshot wound…I have to assume you sustained at least some damage to major organs, even if they healed thanks to the bite.”
“I still can’t believe everyone just knew and didn’t tell me,” I say.
Peaches shifts uncomfortably while Suyin crosses her arms. “We didn’t know if we could trust you,” Suyin says. “And on top of that, it was a total toss-up how you would react to the bite.”
“Emotionally or physically?”
“Both.” Suyin shrugs. “Now stay still and let the med-dock do its thing.”
I sit still and shut up, watching the other two women. Suyin tidies up the clinic a little, putting supplies away in white cabinets lining the walls, sweeping some dust off the floor.
The dock chimes and Suyin narrows her eyes as she comes closer, flicking through the reports on the screen. She cocks her head in a way that makes me nervous, and I frown. “That bad, huh?”
“Not bad,” she says. “Just…weird. You’re the first human I’ve examined who was infected with low-level lycanthropy secondhand and it’s just a bit strange.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Suyin turns the screen toward me, though I can’t make heads or tails of any of the readings. “This means nothing to me, to be clear,” I say.
“I’ll explain,” Suyin says. “What I’m seeing here is like…a slow, organic version of what the Heavenly Host did to all of us.”
“And it’s still happening?” I ask.
