AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stepped back after a moment and jotted something down on a chart she was keeping. The way she moved, she was in her element here, just like she’d been when she saved Aurelio’s life.
If anyone had been made for a particular calling, it was her.
Watching her from the doorway, she leaned over the boy again, pulling back bandages in a way that didn’t even make the kid flinch. Though that might have had something to do with the steady stream of morphine that was being pumped into his system.
She was talking to him; I couldn’t hear her words at first, so I opened the door further, just enough to slip into the room without drawing her attention.
“After his heart attack,” she was saying, “I knew I could never do that again; to stand there and be useless while someone I cared about slipped away right in front of me…” She paused.
I could hear the shaky inhale and exhale of her breath. Then she shook her head like she was clearing it.
“I started volunteering at the hospital not long after,” she said as she did something to his wounds I couldn’t see from my position. “Academic grades are important, of course, but modern selection committees are looking for more well-rounded applicants,” she explained to the kid.
“Someone like me doesn’t go to medical school, Doc,” the boy replied, his voice slightly sluggish.
She scoffed as she stood up straight again. “Because you’re poor?” she asked. “So was I,” she went on without pausing. “Because there will be hurdles for you to overcome?” She pointed to her ears. “I understand those quite well. Don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Thomas, and don’t be the obstacle that gets in your own way.”
Well, damn, who would have guessed the woman could be a motivational speaker? And who wouldn’t buy whatever motivational shit she was selling when she was a kickass, competent doctor who looked like a dark-haired angel and spoke like British royalty?
For reasons I wasn’t willing to analyze, it was tempting to just stand here and watch her, listen to her, but unfortunately, some things couldn’t wait.
I started to cross the room, but she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and spun around.
She still had her mouth open, like she’d been about to launch back into her motivational speech, but she closed her lips when she spotted me and her cheeks flushed just a little. Not quite embarrassment, but… something.
“Can I speak with you,per favore?” I asked before I got hung up on figuring out exactly what that “something” was.
She looked at me for a moment, then to the boy, then back to me. “Of course.”
She said something quietly to the boy, then followed me out of the room and down the few steps to mine.
I’d intended to dive right in the moment I closed the door behind us, but clearly, there was something on her mind. Her hands fidgeted in front of her, and her teeth were digging into her bottom lip.
“Spit it out,perla,”I said, now fighting the urge to take her place and sink my own teeth into that ridiculously plush lip.
Still, she was silent for a moment while she continued to fidget. Whatever was on her mind, it was taking her a lot to get it out.
She dropped her hands and clasped them together behind her back. “I’d like to ask a favor of you,” she said, prim and proper as fuck.
I could think of about a hundred different ‘favors’ I wouldn’t have minded performing for her at that moment.
“And what favor might that be?” I asked, because maybe it was my lucky day and she had the same kind of favors in mind.
The way she swallowed and her eyes flickered up to me, then away, though, suggested otherwise.
“You have… resources, the means to look into a person—their life, their background, that sort of thing.”
It didn’t sound much like a question, but she looked up at me, waiting for me to respond.
I nodded slowly, not sure where this was going. “I might have that type of resource.”
She swallowed again, licked her lips, then nodded like she was pep-talking herself into continuing.
“According to Mr. Thomas, the living accommodations you found him in were… subpar.”
I scoffed. “That’s one way to put it,” I said, remembering the shithole of an apartment where we’d found him.
Her brow furrowed. “His mother died six months ago. She was struggling to make ends meet at the time, leaving nothing to Mr. Thomas and his seven-year-old sister.”
