Six
Zion
If I’d thought day two of working the day shift was going to get easier, I was so damn wrong. This became more than evident when the gaze of a feverish seven-year-old girl was making me sweat. I squirmed in my chair as she continued to unflinchingly stare at me.
Kids could sense shifters, it was like a sixth sense about them.
Her mom had stepped out to take a phone call that was lasting far too long. I didn’t have kids of my own, so I tried to refrain from judging parents too harshly. Yet, some of them really threw me for a damn loop. This little girl was sick and had a terrible fever, yet her mother saw it more important to put me on hold so that she could run her mouth on the phone. Not only was this rude, I could be needed for another patient at any moment, but it also just seemed careless. I drummed my fingers on my knee as the girl continued to stare at me.
“What’s your name again?” I asked.
The girl blinked with her peaky eyes. “Penny.”
“Penny. Right. Such a pretty name.”
“Then how come you couldn’t remember it?”
It was my turn to blink. Little smarty-pants, I thought to myself. I forced a smile. “Because it’s really early and I should still be sleeping.”
“It’s not early. This is what time I go to school.”
“Well, I haven’t been in school for a very long time, so this hour just isn’t practical for me.”
“How old are you?”
“Old.”
“How old is old?”
“Grown.”
The girl crossed her little arms.
I sighed. “So…do you like stickers, Penny?”
“What kind of stickers?”
“Well, let’s see what we can find here.” I stood from my seat, trying to recall where I’d seen the nurses retrieve stickers from. I knew a stash was kept somewhere in the examining room for the children that came in. However, I had never needed to find the stash before, so I’d never really paid attention to it. In Pediatrics, there was shit everywhere. I never had to look.
“Where’s Mommy?” the girl asked in a slightly sad tone.
My thoughts exactly. “I’m sure she’ll be back any moment now.” I paused in my search for the elusive stickers, and glanced back at the girl. Tears streamed down her face. Upon finding me looking at her, she hastily wiped her eyes. A lump developed in my throat at the sight of her wrists—or the marks on them, rather.
“Penny…?” But before I could say anything more, someone drew back the curtain to our room. For a second, I thought it was the girl’s mother. But instead, Alexis Lewis peeked in at us. Our eyes instantly met for a second that felt like an eternity before Alexis shifted her gaze to the little girl. “How are we doing in here?” she asked.
The little girl was still rubbing her eyes. Alexis’s brow wrinkled; she was still beautiful even with a frown on her face. I stood frozen on the spot as I watched her approach the child and kneel down before her.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Alexis asked.
“I don’t feel good,” she said.
Alexis glanced back at me.
I shook my head and cleared my throat. “Penny has a fever. She’s going to need some antibiotics. We’re just…waiting for her mom to return.”
I saw it this time—the slight flash of panic that appeared on Penny’s face when I mentioned her mother.
“I see,” Alexis said. She met my eye again, and I struggled to figure out how to discreetly indicate the marks on the child’s wrist.
“Penny tells me that she enjoys stickers. I was just trying to find some for her, but they seem to be hiding from us.”
“Is that so?” Alexis said, standing up. “Well, I’m sure those stickers can’t hide from me.” She winked at Penny and crossed the room toward me. “Excuse me, doctor.” I thought I detected the slightest bit of snark in her voice, but there was no time to contemplate it. She brushed past me and our arms just grazed each other. My bear prowled in anticipation. Dammit. This was getting worse by the second.
Behind me, she opened a cabinet I hadn’t made my way to yet. When she opened it, she pulled out a jar that contained not only stickers, but lollipops as well. She turned back towards Penny with a smile on her face as she shook the jar at her. “You see—I told you they couldn’t hide from me!”
Penny giggled through her tears. “He couldn’t find them.”
Alexis glanced at me. “Well, that’s because he’s a boy. You know, boys don’t always know as much as they think they do.”
The significance of her comment wasn’t lost on me and I was forcibly reminded of how rude I’d been to her the day before. “I won’t deny that,” I said. Alexis glanced at me once again, as if she could decipher the thoughts behind my words.
“Here you go, sweetie,” she said, offering the jar to Penny. “Pick whichever ones you want.”
Penny reached into the jar to get a green lollipop and a sticker of some kind of Disney princess.
Alexis gasped.
“What?” Penny said.
But I already knew what had caused Alexis’s reaction; she had spotted the marks on the girl’s wrist as she reached for the sticker.
Alexis cleared her throat. “Oh nothing,” she said. “It’s just…you remind me of someone.”
“Who?”
“A princess, of course. That’s how I knew you were going to pick that sticker.”
Alexis carefully screwed the top back onto the jar and crossed the room to place it back in the cabinet. She met my eye along the way though, and I nodded, letting her know that I too had seen the marks.
“What princess?” Penny asked.
“Well, let me tell you all about her.” Alexis settled down into the seat that I had previously occupied. She then launched into a story.
“There was once a beautiful little girl who didn’t know she was a princess. One day, she woke up not feeling too good. And she was so afraid because she didn’t know what was wrong with her! So she ended up having to go to the doctor. When she got to the doctor, he checked the little girl’s eyes. And he looked into her ears. And then he checked her nose.” Alexis paused to wiggle Penny’s nose, making the girl giggle again. “And then he placed his hand on her forehead, and he jumped. He said, ‘Why little girl, you’re burning up! Do you know what that means?’ The little girl shook her head, because she didn’t know what that meant. So he leaned in and whispered to her, ‘That means someone has put a spell on you.’”
Penny’s eyes widened; she was thoroughly riveted by the story.
I, on the other hand, was thoroughly riveted by Alexis. Her ease at connecting with Penny was astonishing. I could clearly tell that she related with patients on a personal level because she cared so much. I stood there, hating myself for the way I had spoken to her the previous day.
And my god, was she gorgeous. I found myself staring at her lips as she spoke. They were so shapely, and looked so soft, they’d be perfect on mine.
“The little girl asked who in the world could have put a spell on her,” Alexis continued. “And the doctor told her, ‘Someone who is very jealous of you, because you are so young and beautiful and will one day have a handsome prince who wants to take you as his bride!’”
“Yuck!” Penny exclaimed.
Alexis laughed, her face brightening and those impossibly blue eyes of hers sparkling. “Oh, you won’t be saying ‘yuck’ to that in a few years!”
“What happened next?” Penny asked, apparently done considering whether she’d someday want a handsome prince.
“The doctor asked the little girl if she knew anyone who wanted to hurt her, or had tried to hurt her before in the past. And the little girl—she was nervous because she was afraid she would get in trouble if she told the truth. So she decided she would have to keep it a secret. Besides, she wasn’t even sure if the people who had tried to hurt her before could do magic. So she convinced herself that she didn’t have to tell. ‘I don’t know,’ the little girl told the doctor.
“‘I guess I’m just going to have to figure this out for myself,’ the doctor replied. But he knew he couldn’t really do it all alone. So he called a few of his friends and asked if any of them had psychic powers to figure out who had put a spell on this beautiful little girl. But unfortunately, none of them were psychic. So you know what they had to do then?”
“What?” Penny asked.
“They had to play detective!”
“Like Inspector Gadget!”
“Yes! Exactly like Inspector Gadget!”
“Did it work?”
“Well, the doctor and his friends, they searched all around the kingdom, trying to figure out who was casting evil spells. They went from door to door. But they couldn’t find out who did it. So they started to feel discouraged, and feared they would never know who hurt the little girl. And this worried them all a great deal, because they hated seeing such a beautiful little princess feeling bad. They wanted her to be happy and healthy.”
“Did they ever find the bad people?”
Alexis exchanged a quick glance with me, letting me know that she too, had caught on to the fact that the little girl asked about bad people, not a bad person.
“Well, the little princess could see how worried the doctor and his friends were. And she saw how hard they were trying to help her. So she eventually decided that maybe she needed to go ahead and let them know who had tried hurting her before because deep down, the little girl knew that these people probably really were the ones casting spells on her. So after thinking about it for a long time, the little princess finally went up to her doctor and said, ‘I think I know who did it. I remember now!’ And she told the doctor and his friends about the bad people who had been mean to her and hurt her before. She told them that more than likely, these were the people who were jealous of her, and they had probably found ways to cast evil spells meant to hurt her.
“The doctor and his friends were so happy the little princess told them, because she was right! So they found the bad people and made sure the little girl never got hurt again. And then the little girl grew up, met a handsome prince, and lived happily ever after.”
Penny had stopped crying completely now and seemed to consider the story. We all sat in silence for a moment until Alexis spoke again. “Penny, I want you to be brave like the little princess, okay? You have to be brave while Dr. Bradford and I figure out how to make you feel better, and make sure nobody can put any evil spells on you, all right?”
“All right,” Penny said, nodding her head. “Can you open my lollipop for me?”
“Of course.”
Just as Alexis opened the lollipop, the curtain was drawn back once again. This time, it was Penny’s mother.
“Sorry for the wait, doc,” she said in a half-hearted apology. “So, what I miss? What’s wrong with her?”
I glanced at Alexis. “Thank you, Alexis. Can you give us a moment?”
“Sure thing, Dr. Bradford,” she said, and then made her exit.