waiting for any answer, just relieving her of her cases with one hand and using the other to steer the visibly travel-bedraggled doctor somewhere that wouldn’t affect the clinic’s image.
“Your brother is with a patient, so just have a seat in here and I’ll send him shortly.”
She clicked on a light, allowing Erianthe to see the small office she’d been ushered to—and the woman herself. Friendly, but firm, with a touch of something motherly about her—not that Erianthe had much experience with what that was like—and just enough silver hair threaded through her ebony curls to give her gravitas. To make her somehow emanate comfort as she carried on speaking in a calm tone.
Maybe it was just that Erianthe was no longer a spectacle, disrupting the waiting room, but she felt a little better. Less as if the sky was trying to press her into the rocky dirt.
The woman added something about coffee and departed, leaving Erianthe to fold into the closest chair—which happened to be one that spun.
Petra. She’d said her name was Petra.
Goodness, she had to get it together. What kind of doctor took half a minute to process something simple like a person’s name? A name she’d expected to hear, no less. The wonder woman Theo often raved about. Petra. Who had gone to fetch the magical elixir that would sharpen her buzzing senses and keep her from appearing like a bigger catastrophe than the quake had been.
The cool, supple leather of the chair reached through her light linen trousers, giving another tactile wink of comfort, soothing against the heat she’d absorbed, enough for her to notice that her head ached in a way that said it had probably been throbbing for a while.
The office door stood open and she swiveled the chair to watch through the aperture, silently counting breaths until the roar of memories she’d been trying to ignore since Theo’s call faded back a little.
The will that had carried her through those first months after her banishment forced it into something closer to a buzz. No, not a buzz—though it was just as discordant. Like her head was a radio receiver.
She stood as if at the edge of the signal for two overlapping stations—oldies and current hits. Annoying. Distorting. Confusing. Impossible to ignore. Because she knew the old song better, and it broke through the new one just enough that she wasn’t quite sure which song she was actually listening to. She could walk around in the present—she’d learned the lyrics—but the old song she knew by heart.
During the first two years after she’d been gone, the balance had been different. Her days had been filled with the oldies station, but now and then something new had broken through. Eventually she’d forced herself to learn the new words, to sing the song of today, and the balance had gradually shifted. She’d studied harder, because a mind full of calculus and physics had less room to wallow in the terrible injustice and loss of what had happened to her.
A corridor of bright light opened across the floor of the reception area, broken by a lumbering, misshapen shadow as the door swung closed, followed by the sounds of exertion. A call for help came from a rusty voice, and those she could see sitting in Reception turned worried eyes to her through the office door.
No one was out there to help. And they did see her as a doctor, no matter her clumsy, inept, socially awkward arrival.
Strength she’d been faking the whole day appeared, and Erianthe launched herself from the chair and out of the office. A man crouched on the floor beside a pregnant woman who leaned heavily on her left hip as she pressed at the right side of her swollen belly with her other hand. Six months? Seven? Less if it was multiples.
She’d made her occupation treating and helping pregnant women in distress, but when childbirth came unnaturally there was another feeling—something that twisted her insides and made her second-guess her career choice. Just for a second.
Erianthe knelt beside her, introducing herself and asking the man, “Did she fall onto the floor?”
“No. I put her down. You’re the baby doctor?” the man asked, reaching for her arm as if touching her made her more real to him, more of a comfort, and that conveyed all the trust and hope he was putting into her by giving this woman into her care.
The baby doctor. Theo must have told them she was coming.
“Yes. I’m an obstetrician. Tell me what happened.”
Just then Petra came out of somewhere with a mug of something steamy and a plate in her hand—but, seeing Erianthe kneeling beside a patient, she put them down on her reception desk and ran to get a wheelchair.
God bless her, the woman really was the dynamo Theo had promised. How had she forgotten about Petra?
The three of them got the patient transferred to the chair and Petra took control, steering them all toward the office Erianthe had just vacated and leaving them there to get files and supplies.
“You’re having pain?” Erianthe asked the woman, who nodded and pressed on her right side.
“Tell me about the pain. How did it start? Can you describe how it hurts?”
Though it was difficult for the woman to talk, within a couple short sentences Erianthe was able to determine that she was likely not dealing with a normal—if premature—birth situation.
“You were shifted to your left hip on the floor, so does it hurt more when you lie on your right?”
She took the woman’s wrist to track her pulse rate, while listening to the patient describe symptoms she had already expected: increased nausea, but only after the onset of pain, which had coincided with the sudden onset of bowel issues...
Petra returned with a familiar face in tow.
“Cailey!”
Erianthe hadn’t seen her onetime good friend since leaving the island, back when they’d become close because her mother had worked in the Nikolaides household. Cailey was someone Erianthe had always missed but had lost because she hadn’t been able to think of a way to talk to anyone and maintain her secrets back then.
Still couldn’t—not really. The first thing she wanted to do upon seeing her was confess, clear the air, but that kind of confession would only throw more debris around. They’d all choke on it.
It was hardly the time for even a proper greeting, let alone a confession, so Erianthe grabbed Cailey by the shoulders for a quick hug—she’d offer to help with the wedding when they had a few minutes to catch up. Then she got on with it, because that was what the moment demanded.
“I need temperature and blood pressure. She’s presenting with symptoms of appendicitis. Do we have a proper examination room? What about imaging equipment? I’d like to do some tests. There’s a lab, right?”
“Appendicitis?” the man asked, the wobble in his words conveying the worry of a husband and father, not just a friend. Which she should have expected if she’d given it a moment of thought. Mythelios was still quite traditional, even beyond the standards of the rest of Greek culture. And he was a good husband, if the deep furrow of his brows and the amount of lip sweat meant anything.
“That means there is an inflammation in her appendix. We’re going to check it out very well. Then we’ll know more about what we need to do to treat her.
