Cheating Time (31 page)

He nodded.

Things back at the infirmary tent couldn't
have been more awkward between Thorne and me. He led me to his
version of an exam room. It had a cot that was higher off the
ground than the one I slept on. I assumed its height made his
examination easier. On it lay a hospital gown.

"Strip those clothes and put on that gown. I
need to assess all of the wounds," he said, pulling at a curtain
that, when released from its hook, divided the exam room from the
rest of the infirmary (where Rorie was sleeping soundly) and
provided a bare minimum of privacy.

It was as good as it was going to get for me
and I knew it. Rather than act like an immature teenage girl, I
sucked in a deep breath and did exactly as Thorne has asked. A few
minutes later, my clothes were off and folded on the floor in the
corner, and I had the gown on.

I climbed onto the tall stretcher and said,
"I'm ready."

As soon as the words left my mouth, Thorne
pulled the curtain back, stepped through it, and let it fall behind
him. He stood staring at me in a way that made me feel like I had
on less than the thin gown. Nervous, I crossed my arms over my
chest and glanced away from him and his heated stare.

"Are you cold," he asked, grabbing a sheet
from the linen cart against the wall and wrapping it around my
shoulders.

Grateful for the added layer of protection,
I took it.

"Thanks," I murmured.

"You're acting as if I'm going to take
advantage of you, Carles. I've been caring for you for days. I've
done nothing more than treat you as a patient, take care of you,
help you get better," he said.

He's hurt.

"I know. I'm just not a very good patient,
Thorne. Not for anyone. Not even my mother. There's just something
about the thought of someone looking at me that close that makes me
uncomfortable. It has nothing to do with you," I promised.

He nodded. "I can see that. Just know I
won't do anything inappropriate. Right now, I'm your doctor. Not
your fiancé," he said before he took my hand in his. "Do you trust
me, Carles?"

The way he asked told me that my opinion of
him was important.

I rolled my eyes. "Of course, Thorne. I
trust you. I know you wouldn't do anything inappropriate."

"Good. Now… lie back. I'm going to start by
looking at the bites on your legs. I need to make sure they're
healing and that your MicroPharm's antibiotics are working."

There was something about him and the way he
started off the examination by telling me exactly what he was going
to be doing that made me feel better, made me feel more
comfortable.

I followed his directions. After I was laid
back and waiting for the examination to begin, Thorne grabbed
another sheet and covered my legs. Then he uncovered and pulled
from beneath it only the leg he needed to examine. Deciding he
required more light, he slid an examination light from the corner,
turned it on, and directed it toward my legs.

It was blinding. I couldn't see anything he
was doing, but
Dear Lord
, I could
feel it. His touch on my bare leg was gentle. He stroked the area
around each wound. He was inspecting them so intensely that I could
even feel his breath on my legs as he moved from toe to inner
thigh, where apparently—and much to my humiliation—there was at
least one wound.

There was no way for me to hold still when
he made it to that injury. It was too close to a very intimate part
of my body for my comfort.

"I'm sorry, Carles. This wound seems to be
faring the worst. I'm going to need to put some antibiotic ointment
on it, and then I'll need to refill your MicroPharm reserves," he
said, gently stroking the area. In response, a fluttering of
butterflies burst up and tried to escape from my stomach.

Oblivious to my reaction, Thorne glided his
stool from the stretcher over to a cart and opened the top drawer.
It took a second or two of digging, but eventually, he found what
he was looking for. With a full-fledged grin on his face, he turned
back to me, holding a tube similar to the ones Jayden carried in
his bags just in case he was inspired to paint.

Thorne squirted a line of the clear ointment
onto a sterile gauge and dipped his gloved finger into it. There
might have only been one wound that looked like it was getting
infected, but he treated each and every one. He used the same
gentleness applying the medication that he'd used during his
assessment.

While he was busy being my doctor, I focused
on the ceiling of the tent. I studied the pole that soared up the
middle and made a point in the center. During my musings, geared
toward thinking of anything but Thorne and what he was doing, I
decided if the tent's fabric were red and white, it would be more
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey than medical infirmary.

The mere thought of a circus made me smile.
It was a tradition in my family, one that involved me and Dad and
no one else. We'd gone to the circus once a year for every year of
my life. It was the only time I could imagine Dad as a little boy.
He grinned widely and watched every trick with the wonderment of a
child who was seeing it all for the first time.

He and I went early and stayed late. We ate
treats denied us the rest of the year. Because of the
everything-in-moderation
rule,
Aspects weren't allowed to gorge themselves on the sweetness of
air-light cotton candy, the saltiness of buttery popcorn, the
greasiness of meaty corndogs, or the decadence of the powdered
sugar funnel cakes very often.

On the day more special to me than
Christmas, Dad and I did just that, swearing that long before we
could be flagged by the Aspects for our overindulgence and put on
restrictions, we'd flush the remnants of the unhealthy food from
our bodies by drinking gallons of water and enduring several days
of fasting. The days following—with only water to drink and no food
to eat—were absolutely miserable, but nothing, not even our
self-inflicted punishment, was enough to keep us away the next
year.

"What, pray tell, about me treating your
wounds has you grinning like that?" Thorne asked, and when I
glanced down, he was still focusing on the wounds in such a way I
couldn't believe he'd taken one eye off of his job.

I shrugged. "I was just remembering how much
I love circuses."

He stopped, completely stopped, what he was
doing and furrowed his brow. "What about this treatment is making
you think about the circus?"

Thorne had pulled me from my reverie and I
was no longer remembering wonderful times, no longer smiling.
Instead, I was thinking about how much I missed Dad, how much I
missed Mom, Gran, Tawney. I missed my family, and it was bad enough
to make the butterflies that were flitting around in my stomach
earlier grow savage and wild and feel like they were attacking me
from the inside and trying to escape.

I didn't say anything. I just turned my head
to the side and studied the linen cart full of white towels, blue
gowns, and bags for dirty laundry.

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I
was curious. I shouldn't have said anything." Thorne apologized
before refocusing his attention on treating my wounds.

He covered the leg he'd been working on and
uncovered the other. Before I thought it through, I tilted up and
got my own look at my legs. The wounds, the bruising, and the
chance of scarring were exactly as I'd remembered from earlier in
the day.

"Will I ever be able to wear a swimsuit
again?" I groaned.

Thorne's lips quirked to the side. "You
almost died, and that's your biggest concern?"

"No. It's not, but being shallow for just a
few minutes keeps my mind off my family. I'm real worried about
them," I confessed.

He bobbed his head. "If Rorie wasn't with
me, I think I might go crazy. I'd worry about her every
second."

"Yeah. That's what it's like, but you try to
think of other things. You try to pretend it's not bothering you.
Then you look up at the top of a tent and remember how much you
love circuses and how much fun your dad is when you go. Then all of
your defenses drop away and you're back to Crazyville. You're back
worrying about something you have no power over," I murmured.

Thorne reached his hand out for me to take
so I could sit up. There were still plenty more wounds on my arms
and neck for him to assess and treat, and he didn't waste any time
getting to work on them.

"At least now I know where the thoughts of
the circus came from."

"Were you afraid I was losing it?" I asked,
acknowledging once again there was something about Thorne that was
comforting.
And safe.

Healing was definitely his calling. I
planned to be a doctor one day. Only, I wanted my profession to be
more microscopes and research labs than hands-on patient care.
Based on what Thorne had told me, he had a long history of
researchers in his family. I knew how passionate researchers could
be and would be willing to bet they were encouraging him to follow
in their footsteps.

"You're good with patients. Don't ever give
up direct patient care," I blurted.

Thorne chuckled. "I'm glad you think so. You
seem to be all over the map with your thoughts and your emotions.
Can I ask where
that
random thought
came from?"

"I've had a rough week. I'm sorry for the
emotional instability. Though, I've been told being unpredictable
and temperamental is normal for teenagers."

"It's common for the rest of the world.
MicroPharms have made teenage mood swings almost nonexistent. There
are those who consider your mother a hero for that fact alone,"
Thorne said.

"The reason I said you shouldn't give up
patient care is because you're very good at what you do. You have a
talent for making someone comfortable when they're uncomfortable.
You're patient when explaining what you're doing and why. I think
there should be more doctors like you in the world. If there were,
I might not be afraid to see them," I explained.

Humph.
"My
family has other plans for me, Carles. Much the way yours plans for
you to become a famous genealogist. Mine expects me to partner with
you—
in more ways than one
—and have
my family's name associated with the next big thing.
You.
They plan for us to invent
something bigger than MicroPharm. Something bigger than MediTech.
Something bigger than Genetic Aging. My father has demanded
you and I work together to solve the world's
problems through ingenuity and inventiveness
."

I wanted to laugh when Thorne took on his
father's deep baritone and mimicked someone slamming his fist
against an invisible table or desk. As much as I respected Thorne,
I wasn't sure I was going to have the same connection with his
father, not after hearing he wanted to terminate Rorie in utero and
not after seeing him through Thorne's eyes as he mocked him. It
seemed to me that he was hardened, callous, and entirely too hard
on his son. I just didn't get the feeling he was as good of a man
as Thorne.

I shook my head. "Those shoes are too big
for either of us to fill. You do realize that, right?"

"What do you mean? There are so many things
that need to be invented and investigated," he reasoned.

"Like what?"

"You and I could discover the cure for
cancer. Wouldn't it be wonderful? It's eluded researchers for
centuries. What if you and I isolated one of its universal traits,
created a vaccination, and cured cancer?"

Thorne's excited words were sobering because
with them, I remembered Tawney's diagnosis.
Tawney's fate.

I cleared my throat and looked away from
him.

"I-I'd like to be able to one day claim that
as one of my accomplishments, but if Mom and Gran haven't been able
to create a cure, I'm not sure how I'll ever be able to achieve
something that miraculous."

"That's the thing. Together, we can. We were
born and bred to do just that."

Thorne was passionate and emphatic. It was
as if he knew things I didn't, and he wanted to share them with me
so bad that they were about to burst from him. He was simply
waiting for me to be ready.

When I didn't ask questions, he seemed
disappointed but didn't push me. Instead, he reverted back into the
physician caring for me rather than the man born to sell me on a
future where I'm the one changing the world.
Not Mom or Gran.
It wasn't something I could buy
into just yet.

I'm not even seventeen
years old, for goodness sake.

"I need to refill the reservoir of your
MicroPharm. Then I need to scan it for viruses. After that, we'll
be finished and you can get some rest."

"'Kay," I mumbled.

I'd only realized afterward that Thorne
would have to pull the front of my gown down and almost fully
expose my breasts in order to do the refill and then the scan. I
was back to being just as nervous as I'd been at the beginning of
the examination.

"I-I'm sure it still has plenty of
microparticles in it, Thorne. You don't need to do the refill," I
insisted.

"Don't be nervous, Carles. I'm not going to
hurt you or do anything that is in the least bit inappropriate.
Besides, I've refilled it at least three times since you've been
here. I've respected your privacy every single time I've had to do
anything with your MicroPharm. This time won't be any different,"
he reasoned.

I knew I was being silly. Thorne might be an
ethereally beautiful man, but he was decent. He wouldn't dare take
advantage of me or the position he was in as my physician.

"Can you just make it fast so…?" I started
but couldn't really figure out how to say what I was thinking.