Page 21 of Princess For All

“I’ll think about that,” I muttered, wondering if I had been looking at it all wrong. Or maybe that I needed to just look at things differently. “Let’s sit in my private dining room away from everyone else and you can tell me whatever is going on that you took the chance.”

“Thank you, Princess.”

“Inez is fine privately. I don’t like the title. I think it’s pretentious and too much, but I’m a female leader, and we both know how people will all dismiss too much if they see others do it.”

“I’m glad you understand that. It protects you and the ones who protect you. It wouldn’t be your fault, but sidestepping issues is the sign of a good leader,” she praised.

I didn’t disagree, but I also wondered if she was buttering me up for something.

It wasn’t quite time for dinner, but the kitchen was always amazing, so they brought in some snacks and drinks. She was excited to have one of the sparkling juice drinks, groaning it was so good.

“How was the trip here with Tian?” I asked.

“The lemon juice helped,” she told me, nodding when I couldn’t hide my skepticism. “It might not for everyone or fix it fully, but lemon juice is something doctors told pregnant women to smell if they had morning sickness. I was recommended it for the motion sickness I had as a child and grew out of.”

“Interesting,” Kristof said as he joined us, leaning in and kissing my cheek. “I thought you weren’t going to let people and issues invade your private time in here?”

“Yes, but I also think I found the right person to start having therapy with, so I’m willing to be a bit lenient with the boundaries we’ve set up to help me,” I explained for both of them. “Also, I have dinner with Branko tonight, so we’re pre-dinner and you can work out the logistics with her when I leave.

“I’m glad you’re putting yourself first,” he praised before making sure we all had what we needed.

She waited until the others joined us and we were all settled with drinks. “My mother died a couple of years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I mumbled, the topic making me uncomfortable.

She frowned, clearly sensing my upset but left it alone. “Not from corrupted. She died from not being able to get the medication she needed. Fort Knox ran out of insulin a long time ago and she couldn’t get her blood pressure medicine either. And the apocalypse is incredibly stressful.”

“I’m sorry, that’s horrible,” Darius said gently. “We’ve made getting medicines to the humans a priority.”

“You have, and you’ve done a good job with it,” she hurried to say. “This is not chastising. This is looking to what comes next and seeing some of the priorities aren’t what they should be.” She met my gaze then. “None of the children born have had access to vitamins. We’ve all been without for years and years now.

“And yes, we’ve been getting more now and the medications you were letting us find or whatever, but they’re all expired. They lose their efficacy then and we can’t accurately prescribe for that. Are expired pills of over five years something I should say would be a pill and a half now? Or two? We just don’t know, and it’s a bandage slapped on a gushing wound.”

“Or one that will gush soon,” Jaxon muttered. “That’s what you’re saying. You see this wound becoming one that will be gushing soon and it will be too late by then.”

Her eyes flashed shock. “Yes, exactly that. We’ve all aged faster because of the apocalypse. My blood pressure is a problem and I need to be on medication and I’m years early from what I assumed given my family history. But I spent years eating whatever was available. You might not understand this, but given where we were at, it’s not the normal at my age.

“Mid-thirties is a bit soon. I could probably handle it other ways but—how? Not in this environment. I don’t control my diet. I can’t take time off to de-stress. And that’s pretty impossible. So more people like me will need more medication to counter the issues we cannot fix like we used to. Plus, there’s the problem medications themselves carry.”

“Wait, you’re going to have to explain that to us,” Jaxon hedged, gesturing between us vampires.

But I already knew the answer having spent time with humans while on my own at different settlements.

“One of the first places I stayed a woman was scared about not getting her medications,” I explained for Vanessa. “The medication she took for her blood sugar issues made her nauseous. So she took something for that but also tended to eat salty foods because that helped. And that gave her high blood pressure early like you’re saying.

“The blood pressure pills made her sleepy and sometimes anxious, so she took anxiety meds, but those or one of the others were hard on her stomach. So she took a fiber supplement for that and it gave her heartburn which was a different pill. Plus, she needed iron for her anemia and bananas for the potassium the blood pressure medication zapped.”

She bobbed her head as I spoke. “You understand this a lot better than I’d thought after hearing you guys don’t get sick. Yes, you’re hitting the nail right on the head. I do need bananas for my potassium now on the medication. I know the signs though as a doctor. We’re not taking blood work from everyone, and others will fall through the cracks.”

“So, you’re asking for more medical facilities to be put back online?” Kristof checked. “The hospital is back online in New Orleans. We have them in Albuquerque as well.”

“You’re going to need more, and we need to start training people,” she said firmly. “You saw first responders and doctors jumping in to help and especially before people understood what was going on. What was the result of that?”

“They normally died,” I answered.

She nodded and studied me for a minute. “That woman you were talking about died, didn’t she?”

I wasn’t the only one who was shocked. I nodded. “She was one of the first people I saw die. They didn’t secure a section of the place and I woke to screams, seeing her get bitten.” I swallowed loudly. “And then I saw her ghost later because she’d asked me to kill her so she didn’t become one of them. She didn’t remember that I’d killed her.”

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