Page 12 of Elanie & the Empath
Groaning, I opened the message in case it was Darius.
Elanie: Hello, Dr. Semson. Can I come see you sooner than next week? Something happened tonight.
Strangely relieved to hear from her, I texted back.
Sem: Are you okay?
she commed.
“I am now,” I muttered to my empty pod, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
I grunted. Not sure why.
she stated, solid as granite.
Swinging my legs over the edge of my bed, I scanned through my schedule in my VC. I’d saved the slot for Mr. Lagerta’s inevitable return. If he fornicated his back out of alignment again, this time, he’d just have to make do with a cryopatch and some anti-nox tabs.
Then, after a beat, she asked,
I sat up straighter, trying to remember the last time anyone had asked me how I was doing and coming up short.It wasn’t a question physicians were routinely asked. Probably because we were too busy asking it first.
The truth was, I wasn’t all right. Not even close. But I couldn’t necessarily tell her that I’d just brought a bionic back from the brink after he’d vented himself into space. I couldn’t tell her that time had stalled from one second to the next when I’d thought the bionic might have been her. I definitely couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t sure I’d been all right for years. Not since the incident. Not since I’d irrevocably changed my life and derailed my career with the push of a button.
All I could tell her was
she commed before I could thank her for asking.
Maybe I was delirious, but when she clicked off the comm, I actually laughed out loud.
5.ELANIE
Dodginga gaggle of one-legged Vorpols hopping down the hallway, I made my way toward the med bay for my appointment with Dr. Semson. Rounding the corner toward his office, I slowed, then stopped, then grumbled.
What were Freddie and Sunny doing outside his office? And why were they openly groping each other in the hall? In the middle of the day?
For a moment, I considered canceling my appointment and going back to work so I could avoid the public display of their perfect relationship. After my disastrous date with Blake last night, watching Sunny and Freddie together, so in love they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, made my jaw clench and my stomach twist into a tight, envious knot.
Deciding my appointment was more important than my annoyance, I commed Sunny. I rolled my eyes when she leaped away from him like he’d poked her with a kurot prod.
I was half a breath away from suggesting they leave the PDA in their pod when I noticed the tears streaming down Sunny’s cheeks. One more thing about non-bionics thatdidn’t compute. How could someone be so sad that they cried, yet still sexually aroused enough to want to make out in a public hallway?
Not knowing how to respond to this Sunny-crying-while-kissing situation, I decided to treat it the same way I treated most things about non-bionics that confounded me, by ignoring it completely. But when I tried to edge past them, Sunny’s arm snapped out, snatching my elbow and holding me back.
“Wait a moment, darling.” She wiped her eyes. “Are you on your way to see Sem again?”
With a fastidious scowl, communicating as efficiently as possible that I didnotwant to talk about it, I answered, “Yes.”
Freddie’s arm was still wrapped around her waist, his gray-blue eyes round and glassy while he stared at her like she’d hung the moons. Like he loved her more than anything or anyone else in the entire Known Universe. Like she was his everything.
What was their secret? What did they have that Blake and I didn’t? What variable in the romance equation had I been failing to solve for?
“What are you doing in the med bay?” I asked, shifting my gaze between them, remembering Sunny’s slightly green face yesterday after our morning meeting, her tears today. Was something wrong with her? Non-bionics were so prone to illness and injury. So fragile. So easily hurt. I didn’t like it at all. “Are you sick?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but my internal lie detection program rated her response as a six: moderate probability of deception.
While I narrowed my eyes at her, Freddie said, “I just needed to pick up some supplies from Sem.” With hiswavering eye contact and the way he ran his hand through his hair, he scored a seven.
