Chapter 8
Eight
Blow me.
—Today’s inspirational quote
Constance
He was a doctor.
An actual doctor.
What in the world was going on?
This man didn’t look like any doctor that I knew!
But he sounded confident, and I was pretty damn desperate at the moment.
I’d been puking for a solid eight hours straight. My head hurt. My throat hurt. My lungs hurt.
I felt like I was about to die.
Anything was better than this feeling.
So I followed him in my dad’s SUV to his office, which happened to be connected to the only doctor’s office in town.
Dr. Pendelton was the town physician, according to everyone that I’d met and asked for pediatrician recommendations.
He was also the town OB/GYN as well as any other medical services that you might need.
Odin unlocked the door to his offices and gestured for me to go inside.
I did, looking around at the weirdly sterile open space.
“Have a seat in my office chair,” he suggested. “I’ll run over to Pendelton’s place and get the shit.”
He left, leaving me to sit at his office desk and look around.
I’d never been in a medical examiner’s office before.
Though I doubted anyone normal would see it until after they’d died.
There was a metal table in the middle of the room, spotlessly clean.
The floors were concrete. The walls were stainless steel. The entire room looked very utilitarian with a side of morbid. The drain in the middle of the concrete floor was the icing on the cake.
Just as I was getting the creeps thinking about what was in those freezers at the back of the room, Odin was back carrying a bag of saline, some packaging holding the tubing for the IV, and a shot of what I hoped was anti-nausea meds.
He looked annoyed.
“What is it?”
“Dr. Pendelton’s son is a fuckin’ psycho,” he grumbled. “I swear to God. If my kid ever turned out like him, I’d give him a mercy killing.”
My brows rose. “He’s a teenager.”
“He’s a psychopath,” he muttered. “Or more accurately, a sociopath.”
“What’s the difference?” I wondered.
“Psychopaths are charming. Pendelton’s kid is certainly not.”
He dropped down on one knee, tossed everything on his desk, and got to work.
Five minutes later I was hooked up and the nausea was abating.
“Gah,” I said, leaning forward on my hand as my elbow planted itself in his desk.
He hung the bag up on the coat rack beside his desk and said, “I’ll be back.”
He came back moments later with his hands washed.
“What’s with that face?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Just wondering when the bitching is going to start.”
I flipped him off, and his mouth turned up at the corner.
“This is my penance for stealing that other sandwich,” I admitted. “I knew that was wrong and did it anyway.”
“It worked out,” he said. “I had some work to do here. I needed the days off.”
I didn’t bother to ask him what his work was that he needed to do.
I’d heard about the young boy that’d taken his own life.
My mom and dad had been talking about it when I’d left this afternoon to go get some Pepto.
He leaned against the desk next to me, his butt sitting on the papers that were scattered across his desk. His torso only a few inches from my face.
“When did you become a doctor?” I asked quietly.
“Been one for going on thirteen years now,” he answered. “Feeling better yet?”
I nodded, not bothering to lift my head up off my hand.
“You’ll feel better once you get that bag into you, too,” he said. “You’re dehydrated.”
I didn’t doubt that for a second.
The silence was slightly oppressive as the IV dripped slowly into my veins.
And to fill that dreaded silence, I started to talk.
“We moved here because my daughter is sick,” I found myself saying.
He twisted slightly so he could see me. “Sick how?”
I told him about the disease, and he went very still. “She has Rh-null blood?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Her father and I shared a lot of fucked up genes with her. She drew the short straw with us.”
He mumbled something that I couldn’t hear, and then, “Genetics are crazy sometimes. It’s not your fault. How would you have known?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Wendy’s doing a lot better, though. Do you talk to Dr. Pendelton much? I wondered who it was that was donating the blood, but Dr. Pendelton said that the donor wished to remain anonymous.”
“I know him okay,” he said. “He’s very protective of his patients, though, and I doubt he’d share that information even with me.”
I harrumphed. “Dang.”
It wasn’t that I was being nosy or anything. I just wanted to know who was responsible for keeping my child alive.
I felt like I owed them the world.
I wanted to bake them all the cakes. I wanted to pay them. I wanted to shower them with everything that I had to give.
Because they were solely responsible for keeping my child alive. They deserved the world and more.
“I’m sure that they know you’re grateful,” Odin grumbled.
He sounded off.
“I’m more than grateful,” I admitted and found the strength to lift my head to look at the slowly emptying bag. “How long will these meds last?”
“About four hours or so,” he answered. “I have some medication to help with the nausea. Pendelton let me grab some.”
I was feeling too terrible to question him. He could be injecting me with embalming fluid, and I’d take it right now, that’s how bad I felt.
Honestly, if he just punched me to knock me out, I might be okay with that, too.
I sighed in relief. “Thank God.”
Puking was the worst.
My body slowly mellowed, and the constant feeling of needing to throw up took a backseat to the rest of the aches and pains that I was now feeling.
I felt like I’d done a seven-hour abdominal workout.
It hurt to freakin’ breathe at this point.
He took a seat on a chair that was in the corner of his room, crossed his arms over his chest, and studied me carefully.
I was too exhausted to question why he was looking at me so intensely.
“Tell me about your daughter,” he ordered.
I eyed him out of the corner of my eye, then laid my head on top of his desk, closed my eyes, and started to speak.
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you find out that she had the anemia?”
“Well, it started out when she was around four or so,” I muttered, feeling my lips move against the papers on Odin’s desk.
“Just general weakness, dizziness, and other anemic symptoms. She’s always been a sleepy kid.
But at first, I thought it was due to the fact that she was confined a lot.
We were in and out of the hospital visiting her father, and she wasn’t allowed to run around and play like normal kids.
Sure, she got some play time, but nothing too exciting.
It was when I enrolled her in preschool that it really started to show.
She loves to go outside and play, but she got tired super easily. ”
“So, the need for regular blood transfusions had you coming here? Where there’s a local who also has Rh-null blood?”
“Yep,” I confirmed. “I got this email. I was in all kinds of chat rooms, message boards. Reddit. Craig’s List. Everywhere.
I was trying to find a supplier, so to speak.
And with there being less than fifty people in the world who have Rh-null blood, I was getting pretty desperate.
They regulate who knows who has it. It’s like the world’s secret.
And my doctor back home was useless. He kept saying she wasn’t that bad.
But seriously, there were days Wendy couldn’t even find the energy to get out of bed.
She needs the transfusions to function and live a normal life. This wasn’t a hard ask.”
“It’s not,” Odin agreed, watching me. “You feeling better yet?”
I nodded, not bothering to pick my head up off his desk.
His eyes went up to the IV bag and then back down to me. “Do you know who the donor is?”
I shook my head, causing the papers to shift underneath me. “As long as they’re able to give her regular blood transfusions, I will never ask. I’m grateful.”
“You get the transfusions through Pendelton?”
I nodded again.
More papers shifted.
“He’s a good one,” he said. “He’ll keep you stocked.” His eyes narrowed. “Did you ever find out who the email guy is?”
“Nope,” I finally sat up, my eyes drooping.
“I emailed them back right after and got no response. My brother and sister thought I was crazy just getting up and leaving. And my mother and father had been talking about making the move to Wyoming, and well, the opportunity came, and they decided that Montana would work, too. Plus, my mom and dad weren’t too convinced that this was real.
They were worried that it was a hoax, and that I would get here and nothing would be here.
” I sighed. “I pulled into town and got another email. The email had the number of the local game wardens on it that could help my parents find a place to start their business up, and also the name of Dr. Pendelton. I did my own research, though, to make sure he was a good guy.”
“He is,” Odin murmured as he glanced up at the IV bag again.
I looked up too and found it mostly empty.
Satisfied with the improvements in me, he disconnected me from everything, put a Band-Aid on my arm, and cleaned everything up.
I stood up slowly, my feet a bit shaky, and reached for the medication that he’d gotten me.
“Take these once every eight hours,” he said. “I got you four. That should get you through the next day and a half.” He eyed me. “If you feel like you need more, just stop by. But I doubt you’ll need it. It should run its course in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Thank you,” I said.
And meant it.
“Kind of sad seeing you so messed up,” he said. “It’d be like seeing a dying dog on the side of the road and not helping it.”
I snorted. “Thanks for comparing me to a dog.”
He shrugged. “Drink some water.”
I gave him a thumbs-up and headed out the door but stopped once I reached the threshold.
“And thanks for whatever you said to the dealership about my car,” I murmured. “It didn’t work, but it helped.”
His eyes narrowed. “What are they saying?”
I sighed. “That they’re not going to replace it, even though I’ve had it in the shop more than I’ve owned it.”
He grunted. “Go home and get some rest, Constance.”
I smiled. “Bye.”