Chapter Thirty-Six #2
“You’re gray,” he says. “And you’re leaning.
” I glance down. The floor isn’t exactly where I left it.
The walls feel a little farther away. Damn him.
I drop down into the chair opposite him before my body makes the choice for me.
The S at my hip pulses, and something in my abdomen answers with a low, greasy twist. You’re fine.
You’re always fine. You don’t get to not be fine.
“You need water,” Cam says. “Food. And to sleep longer than twenty minutes. In any order, as long as the ignore-it part isn’t a part of the plan. ”
“I’ll pencil it in,” I grumble, and another wave of nausea hits me.
Cam gives me a look that says he fully intends to harass me later. Sterling sets a mug in front of me—a cup of tea, steam curling up. Of course, he noticed the way coffee made my face do something it shouldn’t. “Start here,” he says.
“I’m not ninety,” I mutter, my fingers curling around the ceramic anyway. The heat is grounding me.
Cam’s already falling back into the pages, pen moving. Sterling hovers by the counter, pretending to be interested in the kettle he just emptied. Neither of them is looking right at me, but I can feel their lingering eyes.
My brain, the traitor that it is, starts running the math I didn’t ask for—timing, missions, stress, missed…
things. The way every smell has been too loud lately or the way my body’s been slightly off-kilter for days, and I’ve blamed it on everything except the one possibility that I absolutely don’t have room for right now.
No. Hard pass. I stand up too fast, causing the cabin to sway.
The chair scrapes as I push away from the table.
“I’m going to wash off the chapel,” I declare.
“Dust, fake holiness, whatever that mold was. Don’t start the pop quizzes without me. ”
Cam’s eyes flick up long enough to log my exit. “Don’t lock the door.” He clears his throat, “In case you fall.”
“Your concern is touching,” I say, backing toward the hall. “Truly, it is.” Sterling’s watching me more closely. He doesn’t say anything, but his weight shifts, like he’s ready to move if I don’t clear the doorway in one piece.
The bathroom light is too bright. My reflection in the mirror looks wrong—washed out, eyes too big, hair a mess even by my standards.
There’s chapel dust on my neck, a smear of dirt along my jaw.
I turn on the sink, splashing my face, and let it drip down my throat into the collar of my shirt.
My pulse beats against the wet fabric. The rolling in my gut doesn’t care about temperature or logic or the way I tell it this is nothing.
It’s probably nothing; stress can mess with everything. Schedules slip, and bodies misfire. I know this. I’ve seen it in files, in other people. I am not special enough for the universe to pick this exact moment to get creative.
I brace my hands on the counter and stare at myself in the mirror. “Get over it,” I chastise myself. “You’re tired. You’re rattled. You’re not…” The word doesn’t come. I don't let it.
Instead, I reach for the drawer, where we keep all the things that aren’t officially sanctioned but always end up necessary—spare batteries, a burner phone with a cracked corner, and a number I haven’t dialed in months.
My fingers close around cool plastic. Relief hits hard and ugly.
I flip the phone open, thumb pressing the power button.
The screen stutters to life. No network, obviously.
We’re buried too deep. But the encrypted relay Sterling rigged to the nearest tower kicks on after a beat—a sliver of stolen signal.
The contact list is blessedly short. I scroll to the one that matters.
DR. L. No full name. Just a number attached to a woman who once patched me up in a clinic two towns over and told me that if I ever needed discreet medical advice that didn’t end up in a government archive, I should call her and then forget she existed.
I should tell Sterling and loop Cam in, let him run his tests, attach his little electrodes, write it all down.
That’s the healthy, team-approved option.
Instead, I lock the bathroom door. The phone buzzes once it finds enough bars to make the call.
I hit green. It rings twice, then clicks over so fast it feels like she was already waiting.
“Kiera?” The voice questions, voice warm and sharp at the same time, like a blanket with teeth. “You do remember I exist.”
“Hey, Doc.” I sit on the closed toilet before my knees buckle under the weight. “Sorry to ruin your night. I needed a brain that doesn’t report to anyone I work for.”
There’s a rustle on the other end. “You hurt?” she asks—no small talk.
“Define hurt,” I say. “Physically, emotionally, spiritually, existentially…”
“Kiera.” Dr. L’s tone is sharp. Someone’s not in the mood for jokes.
I scrub a hand over my face. “Not a new hurt,” I say. “Just… weird.”
“Weird how?” she asks. “ I need symptoms, not your fucking poetry.”
“Nausea,” I say. “On and off the last few days. Smells are getting to me. Coffee tried to murder me just now. Dizzy sometimes. Tired, but that’s not exactly new.”
“Fever? Any sharp pain anywhere?”
“No fever,” I say. “Achy everywhere. Nothing that feels like I’m about to explode internally.”
“Any chance you picked up bad water, food poisoning, or a virus?” she presses.
“Been living on a steady diet of stress and questionable coffee,” I say. “So possibly. But nothing obvious.”
Dr. L huffs a tiny laugh. “You said smells are off. Everything, or just some?”
“Stronger stuff,” I say. “Coffee. Cleaner. Random mold. And…” I hesitate. “Certain people.”
“Certain people?” she echoes.
“Sterling,” I admit. “His soap. Aftershave. Like someone turned the volume up.”
She’s quiet for a beat. I can practically hear her filing the data away. “Okay,” she says. “Last one, and then you can yell at me. When was your last period?”
My hand tightens on the phone hard enough to make the plastic creak. The mirror shows my face going blank. “I don’t know,” I say.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to say?” she asks, annoyingly calm.
“Both,” I say. “Time’s been… weird. I stopped keeping track.”
“Ballpark it then,” she says gently.
I stare at the grout by the tub and force my brain to work. Missions, moves, and the last time I swore about cramps. The number I land on is bad enough. “Longer than it should be,” I say. “That’s as precise as you’re getting.”
“Okay,” she says. “Listen. Trauma and stress can absolutely throw your cycle, appetite, and equilibrium into chaos. That’s real.
” Relief spikes, then stalls. “But that particular combo you just rattled off?” she adds.
“Nausea, smell sensitivity, dizziness, fatigue, late cycle. It’s not just nothing. ”
I focus on breathing. In. Out. Don’t hurl. “I called you because I don’t want this in any government chart,” I say. “If it’s nothing, great. If it’s not, I need to know before it turns into a group project.”
“Good instinct,” she says. “You don’t need a committee involved in your insides.”
A startled laugh slips out, raw around the edges. “You have a way with reassurance, Doc.”
“Here’s what I can do…I can’t diagnose you over the phone, and I’m not playing guess-the-hormone. You need to be seen in person somewhere that doesn’t log your name in a shared system.”
“My life is a shared system,” I say. “That’s the problem.”
“Then don’t play on their turf,” she says, like it’s obvious. “If you’re anywhere near town, come to my place instead.”
I blink. “Your place.”
“Yeah,” she says. “House. Four walls, a roof, a tragically normal couch. There’s no receptionist, no forms, no one putting your name in a database. You remember the street?”
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “I remember.”
“Good,” she says. “You knock on my back door, I’ll let you in, run with what I’ve got, and we either cross this off the list or don’t. Either way, it stays between us unless you decide otherwise.”
“What if I can’t get away tonight?”
“Then you come when you can,” she says. “Tonight, tomorrow, whenever you can slip out without setting off the alarms. Text me from this number before you head over so I’m actually home and not elbow-deep in someone else’s crisis.”
A humorless smile tugs at my mouth. “You make a compelling sales pitch.”
“I make a safe offer. Whatever this is, you deserve to know without three agencies looking over your shoulder.” She gives me the address again anyway. I file it next to the list of bad ideas I’m probably going to follow through on.
“Thanks, Doc,” I say.
The bathroom feels smaller when the line goes dead. I set the phone on the counter and look at myself in the mirror again—pale, pupils too wide, chapel dust still clinging to my hairline. “You’re allowed to find out,” I tell myself. “Quietly.”
Unlocking the door, I hear cabin noise spill in—Cam’s low voice, the clink of ceramic, Sterling moving around the kitchen.
I step back into the light, tucking the burner into my back pocket like it’s just another bad habit.
Cam looks up as I reappear, like he’d been counting the seconds. “You didn’t face-plant,” he observes.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I say, sliding back into my chair. “Bathroom tile survived another day.”
Sterling’s eyes track me all the way down, like he’s waiting for gravity to change its mind. When I stay upright, his shoulders loosen by half a centimeter. “Eat. Now,” Cam demands, shoving a plate in my direction.
I blink. I didn’t even hear him get up, but there is a full plate in front of me—toast, scrambled eggs, a few apple slices, a shade too green. “When did you…” I start to ask.
“While you were pretending not to pass out in the hall,” he cuts in. “I can multitask.”
“That’s questionable,” I say, but my stomach answers louder than my mouth. I take a cautious bite of toast. Dry, buttery, safe. My body waits, suspicious, then decides not to revolt. Progress.