Page 42 of Zalis
“Aren’t you a little too young to be a doctor? What happened to the rude doctor?” Gemma asked.
“I can see you now. If you want a medic or a nurse, you must wait.”
“We will not wait. Gemma has internal injuries,” Zalis said.
“What did you do?” Rather than wait for an answer, the intern waved a scanner over her.
“I do nothing, and Zalis did nothing. My stomach is queasy this morning. That’s all,” Gemma said, for all the good it did. No one listened.
“She did not eat breakfast. She had a slice of toast bread and a bowl of porridge,” Zalis told the intern.
“That is not adequate nutrition,” he replied.
“That is what I told her.”
Clearly, they didn’t need her input in this conversation.
Nurse Daisy arrived, taking the scanner away from the intern. “Sorry to keep you waiting. This is Mikah, my ward. He’s training to be a medic. Today he’s shadowing me. Is it all right if he watches silently?” She stressed the last word, giving Mikah a stern look.
“Sure, I guess,” Gemma said.
“My mate has internal injuries,” Zalis repeated. “She will not eat. She must eat to regain lost muscle and repair her fractured bone.”
“Okay, can you tell me what’s going on?” Daisy asked Gemma.
“I didn’t eat a big enough breakfast.” She listed what she ate—buttered toast and a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with dried berries.
“Sounds like a good breakfast to me.”
“It is not enough nutrition—” Zalis started, but the nurse ignored him.
“Scans look good. No internal injuries. Any pain?” Daisy asked, speaking over Zalis.
“The foot and my head hurts.”
“The nonstandard issue translation chip could be the source of your headaches,” Mikah said, looking at a tablet. “When was it installed?”
“Oh, uh, not long ago,” Gemma said. She really didn’t want to say that her abductors had it implanted into her brain—she didn’t want to think about it.
No. She couldn’t ignore it.
“The people who took me, they installed it,” she said.
“Curious,” Mikah said. He stepped into her personal space, pushing back her hair to see the incision.
Daisy batted his hand away. “Ask before touching. What happened to watching and remaining silent?”
“My apologies, nurse.” Mikah stepped back, looking genuinely chagrined.
“Now,” Daisy turned her attention back to Gemma, “may I look at the incision?”
Gemma pulled back her hair, exposing the spot behind her ear.
“No signs of infection. Looks good.”
“Is it safe?” Now that she was thinking about the chip, all she could focus on was what the weasel and his minions put it in her.
“Perfectly.”
