Page 73 of Vicarious

“I feel fine except for a little queasiness from the pain medicine. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Sure,” Eileen says as she sits my breakfast on the nightstand and grabs a blood pressure cuff to take my blood pressure.

The doctor ordered her to do it to get an accurate reading on me because it’s all over the place when a doctor does it. Severe whitecoat syndrome apparently.

“So?” I ask when she’s done.

“Normal.”

“See? All good?”

Eileen shakes her head and says, “We’re still going to let the doctor be the one who determines that later when he reads your bloodwork and urine test.”

She silently leaves the room, which is to say that she’ll hear no argument from me about it, even if I plan to argue later.

I’ve learned a lot about Eileen in the last three weeks, and it’s no wonder she’s so good at dealing with Viper. Eileen makes herself above anything that’s not conducive toward what she needs to get done, including Viper’s violent temper tantrums.

Thinking about her dealing with Viper makes me wonder how Viper’s faring without her, which makes me just wonder how Viper is doing altogether. The last thing Eileen heard was that he sent Phae back to Italy to be with the family she ran from, far out of our hair. Phae didn’t ask for anything. Didn’t even ask if she’d ever be able to see her children one day. Just quietly got on a plane and let herself be escorted back.

Finally, Viper gave Eileen, the person he trusts most outside of me, explicit instructions to watch over me. Then she severed all contact. For all intents and purposes, we’re enemies on opposite ends of a war, and we have to look like it.

I allow myself to sigh. Just when it seems like everything is good and there’s nothing to keep us apart anymore, this had to happen. I suppose it always had to happen. But it was supposed to be on our time. Not to cover up Phae’s meddling.

Eileen comes back to help me to where the doctor is waiting in the personal medical suite on the Uccello estate. A necessity if you don’t want the wrong people nosing into your illegal business when gunshot and stab wounds are just an occupational hazard.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asks when they come in.

“Good,” I say. “Ready to get back to work.”

And there’s a lot of it. Lines to draw in the sand behind the scenes, declarations of territory, how to undermine Pray’s business before he can undermine ours. Making sure our drug supplier can keep a steady supply. Know whose siding with us and who is going to side with Pray after playing the fence secretly for so long. What people we’re going to owe protection to.

Eileen immediately answers, “She said her medicine makes her sick.”

“It’s a common side effect,” I argue.

“I’m sure everyone involved would feel better if your doctor checked it.”

When Eileen says everyone, she means Viper.

“I was going to ask if it did once I read the results of your blood and urine work,” the doctor says.

“Why?”

The doctor looks at Eileen and says, “Would you like to step out the room for me.”

“She can stay. What?” I ask curiously.

The doctor eyes Eileen who only looks at him like she looks at everyone. With a blank expression.

So the doctor shrugs and says, “You bloodwork and your urine tested positive for pregnancy.”

I laugh out loud as soon as the words leave the doctor’s lips.

“Right. I can’t get pregnant. Try again.”

“It’s not uncommon to get a false urine test,” they admit. “But the blood tests never lie for something like that. You are definitely pregnant. We’d have to do an ultrasound to see how far along but…”

I don’t need him to do an ultrasound. It’s not that hard to figure out. My uterus may be damaged, but I’ve never not had a regular cycle. Well. Until now. I likely would have noticed something was up before now if not for this recovery and chalking my late period up to trauma.

---