Can we please not use the H-word, he thought.
“Guess so.” He took a seat in one of two plastic chairs. “Maybe our luck is changing.”
“Considering your car got wrecked and I’m in a hospital johnny, I think that would be a good thing.”
As he stared at her, he wanted to smooth the loose brunette hair back from her face. “Hopefully the doctor will be in soon.”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said. “I mean, you were worried I’d walk, but I’m all registered and stuff. I’m in the system until they let me out.”
“There’s still a bill involved.” He put up his hands. “If you’d rather me hang out in the waiting room or something—”
Overhead, a canned voice announced: “Dr. Peters, line two. Dr. Peters, line two.”
“No, it’s all right.” Anne fiddled with the blankets some more. “As long as I’m, you know, not naked or anything—”
“Oh, yes. Obviously, I wouldn’t stay when they examine you—”
They both stopped short. Laughed awkwardly. Looked elsewhere.
Darius cleared his throat. “Is there anyone I should call? For you, I mean.”
“No.” The answer was quick. “Thank you.”
“Parents?” he prompted.
She shook her head. “No.”
When she didn’t expand on the details, he was tempted to get into her mind and access the information for himself. But an invasion of privacy was still wrong even if the person didn’t know they’d been violated.
“I’m okay, though,” she tacked on. In the way people did when they were lonely, and a little afraid, and didn’t want anybody to know.
She wasn’t looking to him to solve anything, however. Then again, what was he to her, motor vehicle assaults aside.
While Darius kept staring at her, he wondered whether the red patches on her neck and the side of her face were from the accident… or from the man who had so clearly been chasing after her.
So can I take care of whoever was trying to hurt you? he wondered as the curtain was pushed back.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Robert Bluff—”
The physician who stepped into the bay stopped dead. And he had reason to.
Well, hello there, my friend, Darius thought as he looked at the guy.
Or male, rather.
The vampire in the white coat had hazel eyes and dark hair, and a face with the kind of symmetry and features that equated to a conventional standard of attractiveness. He was also equally surprised to see another member of the species. Meanwhile, Darius didn’t personally recognize him—and surmised for the male to be working here, with whatever degrees and credentialing he had to have to get that “M.D.” stitched after his name, he must be a half-breed who could go out in the sunlight and who had worked his way up the human ranks.
Mind control and manipulation were good tools one-on-one, but they couldn’t be used to snow an entire community of humans over a long period of time.
As the male tried to hide the alarm he was clearly feeling, Darius thought back to the way things had been in the Old Country, when there had been a proper King and court, when there had been a strict division between humans and vampires. Now? In the New World? Standards were more loose, as long as you weren’t a member of the aristocracy.
Maybe the male was antsy because he had blood ties to the glymera? As a half-breed he couldn’t be in it officially, of course, but he was certainly looking like he’d put his foot in a pile out on the proverbial lawn.
The doctor cleared his throat. “Ah…”
Not interested in creating any problems, Darius nodded curtly, acknowledging the fact that, yup, they were both who they were, but nope, he wasn’t going to do anything about it.
The doctor took a deep breath and turned to his patient. After he tugged at the lapels of his white coat, he did another round of throat clearing. “As I was saying, I’m Dr. Bluff and I’m going to take care of you. Do you want to tell me what transpired tonight, Patricia?”
“I go by Anne, actually. It’s my middle name.”
The partial vampire smiled at her without flashing fangs, assuming he had any. “Anne, please call me Rob. Now, what happened? I know you already told triage, and your intake nurse, but I’d like to hear it for myself.”
Anne looked down at where her hands had twisted around themselves. “It was an accident. I crossed the street without looking and it was dark.” She nodded in Darius’s direction. “He wasn’t speeding or anything. It was all my fault.”
Darius frowned, but kept quiet. He wanted to bring up the other half of the truth, that she’d been chased, but he figured the medical types would find all her injuries, even if they didn’t know the why’s of her entry onto the roadway.
“So you were hit by a car.”
“Yes, but as I said, it wasn’t his fault. There’s no reason to get the police involved or anything.”
Dr. Bluff nodded. “And I understand you came in here on your own.”
“Sort of.” Her anxious eyes shot over to Darius. “He carried me in, I think.”
“Okay.” Dr. Bluff got a stethoscope out of his white coat’s pocket. “While I listen to your heart and lungs, and check your pupils, I hate to ask the unoriginal question, but where does it hurt?”
As the male plugged his ears with his instrument and leaned over the bed, Anne started going through the rest of the spiel she’d shared two other times. On the sidelines, Darius closed his eyes and listened to the rise and fall of her voice. The words she spoke were simple ones, rarely anything multi-syllabic, and certainly nothing terribly complicated in terms of translation. They focused him like a laser, however.
On her. And whatever she wanted, needed.
Ordered him to do.
“You’re not going to pass out, are you?”
Darius popped his lids. The other vampire in the room was right in front of him, face banked with panic. Like the last thing he wanted were all of the physical anomalies of the species showing up during the treatment of what was supposed to be just another queasy bystander.
“No, no, I’m fine.”
A knowing look came into the male’s eyes. “I’m going to order some X-rays of her right shoulder and her right lower leg. I’m also going to have to perform a full physical exam. Unless you’d prefer me to have a female doctor do it?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Anne said from over on the bed. “I’m not shy.”
The other vampire didn’t acknowledge his patient’s consent. Instead, he waited for permission to proceed… as was the way when any healer dealt with a bonded male and his female: No one wanted the kind of trouble that arrived swiftly and surely if the protective instinct of a male was triggered.
Clearly, the doctor thought some of the story was a ruse.
And besides, Darius hadn’t bonded.
“Um… hello?” Anne prompted. “You boys finished making decisions for me, or are you expecting me to wait a little longer while you figure out my consent?”
As Darius glanced over to the bed, he couldn’t explain to her why the deference was being paid. And in any event, she wasn’t his mate—
“Yes, a female doctor would be best,” he heard himself say. And then he switched into the Old Language. “And I shall be right on the other side of that thin curtain during the exam.”