Page 61 of Wicked Deeds

Meredith stood by a bank of monitors, looking at the readings and typing numbers into her datapad.

“Is she okay?” I asked, the words almost snapped.

Gwen opened her eyes. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t look fine and she sounded wiped out. Still a few shades too pale underneath the flushed cheeks. Blood loss, surgery, and an adrenaline shot will do that to you.

“She will be fine,” Meredith confirmed, turning away from the monitors. “The allergic reaction is under control. We think it was the antibiotic. Gwen, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions now you’re back with us. I take it you’ve never had xenocylicate before?”

Gwen shook her head. “I never get sick much. And I’ve never had a bad injury. Or surgery.” She gestured at the bandage wrapping her arm.

“I’ve made a note on your medical records, but it’s not a medication many people react to,” Meredith said. “Do you know if your human parent had any allergies? It could come from the Fae side, but it’s not a known contraindication. I’ll need to send a request up through the Cestis to follow up on that.”

“Is that a thing?” I asked.

“Yes. Tanai react differently to some medications,” Meredith said. “But this one should have been safe. It’s synthetic, it doesn’t contain any plant-based material, no iron. Gwen, any family history?”

Gwen closed her eyes again. “I don’t know my father. I don’t even know who he was.”

Meredith shot me a confused look. “Long story,” I mouthed.

Her mouth turned down as though she was all too familiar with that kind of long story. She focused back on Gwen.“Unusual allergies can be inherited. Have you ever had your DNA run?”

Gwen opened her eyes, sitting up a little straighter. “The Cestis in the UK, they did it when I…er…”

“Came out of the realm?” Meredith prompted.

“Yes, that. But they were looking for a parental match, so they could make an information request to try and find my father. Nothing came up. They didn’t say anything to me about medical stuff.”

“Nothing came up in the UK database,” Meredith corrected. “The privacy laws are extremely tight. There’s no automatic sharing beyond the immediate jurisdiction. Those have to be requested additionally and usually there needs to be a good reason before most countries allow searches by non-citizens. If the Cestis thought you were English, they could only run it there. But with a medical reason, we can do it here.”

“How does that work?” I asked. “Running her DNA if she’s tanai?” DNA analysis for medical problems had become a lot more accessible. But as the technology had improved, various companies had failed as their methods became outdated. Then had come a bunch of very expensive lawsuits about who got the data and in the end, in most countries, the databases were now run by the government.

“We have ways,” Meredith said. “The databases the Cestis control pick out only certain genetic information to match against the general population databases. Nothing that stands out as…different. It works.”

That made sense. “And you can search for relatives here because it’s a medical issue?”

These days the legacy DNA sites that people used to trace their genealogy were highly regulated when it came to living people. In cases where a child had been conceived via donation or had proof that a parent who raised them was not theirbiological parent, they were able to get medical history, along with the relevant genetic data for medical issues, if the databases had a match, but they received nothing else about the individual they matched with, unless both parties consented.

“Yes, because it’s an unusual allergy and Gwen doesn’t know her parents, we can request a broader medical history search as well as a parental match,” Meredith said. “If there’s a parental match, then your father would, of course, be informed that there’s a match and that his medical history was accessed, but you don’t have to agree to release any information to him. Of course, neither does he, beyond the medical history.”

Gwen nodded. “Yes, that’s what they told me in London.”

“If your DNA is already on record, this is all fairly simple,” Meredith said, “I make a request from the Cestis’s UK database, they send the profile, and we do the medical history search via the US Annex site—that’s the Cestis-controlled database. Though, if you don’t want to know, we can just check your profile and see if it identifies any of the known allergy markers.”

“No, I’d like to know. If he’s out there. I mean, I’m not sure I want to know who he is, but I’d like to know the medical stuff.”

“It does make things safer.” Meredith pulled up a form on her datapad. “Read this and authorize with a palm scan.”

Gwen read the form, chewing her lip. But she scanned her palm at the end, handing the datapad back.

“Great. We’ll have the medical scan back in a few hours. We’ll see with the history. But, like I said, don’t get your hopes up about any contact.”

Gwen nodded. “I’m not expecting anything from my father at this point. He washed his hands of me when I was born. But that’s okay. I don’t need him.” The defiance in her voice was undercut by the slight quaver. She looked very young. And I knew what it felt like to be young and abandoned or betrayed by everyone who should have protected you.

“No,” I said, gently. “You’ve done fine. You know, my mom was, well, difficult and I still turned out okay. You’ll find a whole different kind of family as you find out what you want to do and where you want to be. It will all work out.”

“And it will work out even better if you know what medications to avoid in the future,” Meredith added cheerfully. “So I’ll get this started and we can check your profile for allergy markers and anything else. Whether or not there’s a match in the database is just a bonus.”

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