Chapter 8
The doctor shows up at eight sharp. Early, just like Vincent said.
He's older, silver at the temples, a soft leather bag and a softer voice, and he doesn't ask me a single question that isn't medical.
Discreet. Bought, or close enough. And even if I wanted to appeal to his medical sensibilities and ask him to help me get out of here… we’re not alone.
Vincent stands by the window the whole time, arms folded, that sorting stillness. I'm trying my best to act normal but this has to be the strangest doctor’s visit I’ve attended.
"Let's start simple." The doctor wraps the cuff around my arm, pumps it, watches the dial. His eyebrows tick up. "Hmm. Do you usually run low?"
I nod.
He clears his throat. “Okay. Let me see the hand."
I give him the wrapped one. He unwinds that too, cleans the cut, studies it, humming low. "Who did this one?"
"It was an accident."
"Mm." He doesn't push. But he doesn't believe me either, and by the window I feel Vincent go a shade more still. The doctor re-dresses the cut better than I could, neat and quick. "Keep it dry. It'll scar, but it'll close."
Then the stethoscope. He warms it on his sleeve—a small kindness that undoes me a little, that anyone would bother—and presses it to my chest. "Deep breath.
And out." He moves it. "Again." He moves it again, and this time he doesn't ask me to breathe, he just listen.
His face does the thing I've watched doctors' faces do my whole life, the small downward settle, and he stays there too long.
"How long's it been doing this," he says. Quiet.
"Doing what?" I ask, my eyes down.
"The skipping. The catch." He taps two fingers against his own chest, off-rhythm, a little stumble. "That."
"...Always. It's always done that."
"Has anyone ever told you what it is?"
"No." My voice is careful and even. "Just that I have a bad heart. That I have to take the pills."
"Mm." He sits back, unhooks the stethoscope from his ears, and looks at me for a second like he's decided something. "Stand up for me. Walk to the door and back. Slowly."
I stand. I walk to the door and back—it's nothing, fifteen feet each way, and yesterday I hauled wood for what felt like ten hours. I make it there and back fine and sit down feeling more or less okay.
Maybe that's the trick, I think. Maybe I pass this.
Then he puts the stethoscope back on my chest, and his face changes.
Whatever I feel like, I don't sound like it, I guess. I can see it in him—the way he goes still, the way he listens to my heart scramble to catch up from a walk across a bedroom and clearly does not like what it's telling him.
He listens again, and this time his eyebrows go up, and he sits back.
"Well," he says, mild. "That'll do it." He looks at me over his glasses, not unkindly. "You couldn't walk thirty feet without your heart trying to quit on you. You know that?"
"I know I get tired."
"Tired." He says it flat. "Son, this isn't tired."
He turns to Vincent and I realize my entire diagnosis–every issue I’ve ever had with this stupid heart–is about to be laid bare.
"The medication he's on is decades old. Whatever it is, it's the bare minimum to keep the lights on—no monitoring, no adjustment." He shakes his head. "When's the last time a cardiologist actually laid eyes on him?" He looks back at me. "How long?"
I don't answer.
"How long has it been since a specialist saw you?"
"Never," I say, quiet. "There was never—it was just the pills. From a clinic. She got them."
I don't tell him the rest. But it unspools in my head anyway.
When I was a kid she'd take me to a clinic sometimes.
The walk-in kind, cash, no questions. I'd get seen, and a few days later there'd just be pills, and that was it until they ran out.
And when it got bad—really bad—she'd drop me at an ER and they'd keep me until my heart settled, a night, a few nights, and then they'd let me go and she'd be in the lot waiting, annoyed about the time it took.
That's the whole of it. Clinics and pills and emergency rooms. Nobody ever followed anything up. There was never a plan. There was just getting me back on my feet enough to be less of a problem.
The doctor's mouth thins. "A heart like this needs managing.
Ongoing, careful, a specialist. What it's had instead is enough to keep it beating and not one thing more.
" He squints when he looks at me, but when he speaks, it’s directed at Vincent.
"By rights he should've grown up in and out of cardiology.”
I keep my eyes on my knees. But I hear it—the small sound of Vincent's arms unfolding. When I glance up, his hands are at his sides now, and they're flexing, slow, open and closed, open and closed.
"And I'll want a full history," the doctor goes on, and my stomach drops because I know what's coming.
He looks at Vincent when he says it, level, direct.
"The scarring's old. The weight's a problem, and it's not a new one—he’s been underfed a while.
" A beat. "I don't know how he came to be in your house, and it's not my business.
But he's in it now. Whatever this was before, it stops being that on your watch, or you find someone else to make these calls. Are we clear?"
I keep my eyes on my knees, because I can't look at either of them. It's a strange, awful kind of embarrassment—being talked about like this, having the whole sorry state of me laid out. My face goes hot. I want to disappear into the floor.
For a long moment nobody says anything. Then Vincent speaks, and his voice is quiet and even, and it isn't aimed at me at all.
"Understood."
That's it. One word. But I look up, and his jaw is set, and there's something behind his stillness I haven't seen before—not soft, nothing like soft, but decided. Like he’s set on a decision.
"Whatever he needs," he tells the doctor. "The right medication, the specialist, the monitoring—all of it. Bill it to me. I don't want to hear the word clinic again." A pause. "He's mine to look after now. It gets done properly."
And I don't know what to do with that. He's mine to look after. It should sound like ownership—it is ownership, I'm a thing he's decided to maintain—but part of me hears looked after and goes quiet and stupid and warm.
His to look after.
My eyes flutter shut at the tingly sensation that washes through me.
"Alright, blood," the doctor says, and I stop breathing for real this time. He's already got the little kit out, the tourniquet, the vials. "I want a full panel. Metabolic, cardiac markers, the works. We'll know what we're actually dealing with once it's back."
"I get faint," I tell him. Quiet. "When I give blood. Just so you know."
"Noted." He ties off above my elbow, taps for the vein. "It's a standard panel, nothing dramatic. You'll lie back after and rest until things settle. Look at the wall for me, not the needle."
I look at the wall. I feel the stick, the pull, and I don't watch the vials fill—one, two, three—but I know they're filling. I can feel my blood leaving me, everything I am and everything I've hidden going dark into the glass. There it is, I think. The truth that I’m also an omega. And I’m just giving it up.
"Good," the doctor says, and I feel him press cotton to the crook of my arm. "All done. Bend your arm up." He caps the third vial and labels all three in a neat quick hand and tucks them into the bag like they're nothing—like they're not a lit fuse, driving away to a lab in a couple of hours.
“How long for the results?” Vincent asks.
"I'll run it discreetly, as we discussed.
It's a full panel and I'm sending it out, not to a hospital lab, so figure four or five days before I've got everything back.
" The doctor's packing up. "In the meantime—" he pulls out a pad, writes, tears the sheet off.
"This is what he should've been on all along.
Proper dose, proper drug. I'll call it in now; it'll be ready by early afternoon at the pharmacy on Halsted.
Start it today. And he rests. I mean rests—no exertion, nothing that gets that heart working, until I've seen the numbers and we know how bad it really is. "
Vincent takes the sheet from the Doctor and looks it over.
The Doctor looks at me one more time, and something in his face is almost gentle. "You've been carrying this a long time on your own, haven't you?"
I don’t even know what to say to that. Maybe it does feel like a relief to know my condition is going to get some real treatment after all.
He lets it go. He snaps the bag shut and shakes Vincent's hand, and then sees himself out. Too quickly again it’s just me and Vincent alone in my room.
He turns from the window. "How are you feeling?"
I take a second to check, honestly, and I'm—okay. Wrung out, hollow, but okay. "I'm alright."
"Good." He crosses to the chair where he left his jacket and pulls it on.
"I have to go in. I'll pick up the prescription on my way back, so you'll have it this evening.” He settles the collar, unhurried, and looks at me.
"Calder's here. You'll stay where he can see you—that hasn't changed.
" A beat. "Do you need to stay in bed? Tell me the truth. "
"No. I'm fine. I don't need to."
He studies my face a moment, deciding whether to believe me, and lets it stand. "Alright." He nods at the door. "Come on, then. Let's go see what he's up to."
∞∞∞
Two, maybe three hours after Vincent's car pulls out, Calder and I are in the kitchen. I’m sitting on a stool behind the raised bar and he’s on the other side, hunched over a project.
He's got a toaster in pieces in front of him and a while ago he handed me the row of tiny screws and told me to keep them in order, biggest to smallest. A made-up job, I realize pretty quickly. But it gives my hands something to do and keeps me kind of involved so I’m playing along.
Half the day's gone by like that, slow and quiet: him working, me guarding a line of screws, the radio a low hum.