by Amy Valenti
We should talk after class. More than talk, if you want it.
I slipped the note between the pages of my notepad, resisting the urge to yell at him for coming on to me so blatantly in front of the very people I needed to act ‘normal’ around. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
Before he could respond, the tutor called our attention back to the front of the room, and the moment was shattered. It took all my willpower to listen to the rest of the class, to ignore the pounding of my pulse and the desire to lean over and brush my lips against Scott’s. Slowly, the primal urges faded, and, by the time the tutor asked me what I had come up with during the session, I was able to answer calmly.
The time dragged. I was hyperaware of Scott’s every breath; I could swear I felt the heat radiating from him. There were no clocks in the classroom, and, by the time the tutor dismissed us, I had almost given up hope of the lecture ever ending. Biting back a sigh of relief, I got to my feet as casually as I could.
“See you,” I said to Scott, and escaped into the corridor before he could reply.
Chapter Three
Focused students were allowed to work on the wards, shadowing doctors and nurses for six hours at a time. I’d been shadowing Dr Croft for coming up on three months. She was a stern-faced, sour-lipped cardiologist who didn’t care to explain her every decision to a clueless student, which meant I got to spend a fair amount of time studying patients’ circulatory system holos, trying to figure out a rhyme or reason for each treatment she recommended. It was interesting, but I was pretty sure that, when I qualified as a doctor, I wasn’t going to be a cardiologist.
For some reason, neuroscience drew me. Maybe it was because I needed to know why my suppression procedures had failed, whereas other people’s hadn’t. What made a human brain resistant to the effects of the hormone dams?
I had no idea, but maybe one day I could study my own brain. Maybe I could help third-strike suppression candidates to ‘pass’ their final tests, like my Aunt Leah had done for me.
And maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t alone in all this anymore. Maybe Scott—gorgeous, blue-eyed Scott—knew something I didn’t. Maybe he really wasn’t one of the Focused. Maybe he wanted me.
More than talk, if you want it.
Why had I walked away from such an intriguing proposition? I could be sitting here now with a warm glow in my satisfied cunt, daydreaming about the way Scott had—
“Ms Trent, are you listening to me?”
I startled guiltily and tried to focus. “Yes. Sorry, Dr Croft. I’m listening.”
“Hmm. Then come here, girl, and look at this partial blockage in the aorta…”
I did my best to attend to her mini-lecture, bending over the patient and studying the holomap that was hovering a couple of inches above the man’s skin. He was out cold—a squeamish patient didn’t usually last long when he saw his entire circulatory system, including his beating heart, as if it had been taken out of his body and suspended above it. I was able to get a good look without having to worry about his reaction.
Ah, modern medicine. Able to show you your entire, intricate circulatory system, down to the last capillary, but incapable of making a simple hormone dam stick in twenty per cent of patients’ brains.
“It’s a deeper blockage than nanos can fix,” Dr Croft told me, frowning at the holomap. “See that encrustation to the vessel wall? Caused by the chems used to cut black market medication. This is his own fault, entirely.”
I nodded, staring at the rust-like substance that narrowed the artery. I wasn’t surprised the guy had passed out. “So we operate manually?”
Dr Croft nodded. “Tomorrow, if possible. I’ll bring the patient round and break the news—can you head down to the administration office and ask for a new stack of invasive procedure forms? I used my last one before you turned up.”
“Sure.” I waited until I was halfway down the ward to give a sigh of relief. I really wasn’t at my best today, so any time spent away from the doctors was welcome.
The prospect of witnessing surgery usually had me skipping along in an anticipatory haze. I loved medicine and its various applications, but I would have given anything for an afternoon off. I needed time to think about the implications of Scott’s note, which was still tucked in my satchel, away from prying eyes.
I didn’t know whether to be scared or elated. If the clinic had sent someone to test me, to check whether my procedure had really gone the way my aunt had rigged it, then admitting it hadn’t would put me in deep shit.
But I wanted Scott to be for real. I wanted it so badly that I didn’t trust myself to think about it objectively.
“Ugh,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head. I had to focus. To think about it after my shift, not now—
Wait. What was that?
I slowed my stride as I passed the pharmacy, trying to put the sounds I’d just heard into context.
Surely that wasn’t…?
I turned down the corridor from the nurses’ station and peeked around the corner. Everything seemed calm and fairly deserted—there was just a faint clatter of wheels as an orderly rolled a supply trolley into one of the wards.
Scowling at my overactive imagination, I turned to continue on my way, but then I heard it again—a woman’s muffled cry, followed by a deeper, more masculine murmur. Then the woman’s voice giggled and a shock of curious longing tingled from my scalp all the way down to my toes.
It sounded very much like there was a sexual encounter going on in the pharmaceutical storeroom. But that was bullshit—it had to be. The nurses, the doctors…even the orderlies were Focused here. Either two patients had sneaked out of a ward and were getting it on, or some of the cleaning crew…
Or it’s not just me and Scott who aren’t suppressed.
The faint hope drew me down the corridor to the doorway of the fluorescently lit storeroom. Through the translucent glass pane, I saw the outlines of two people locked in coitus—a man taking a woman over a desk or worktable—and I could hear smothered gasps and cries as the shadows rocked together and apart, over and over, with mounting urgency.
If I didn’t get a better look, I would never know whether they were medical personnel or menials. I had to get closer, for the sake of my own sanity.
My heart pounding, I pushed at the closed door a little, hoping it wouldn’t creak or hiss. It made a faint click, but at the same time the guy groaned something unintelligible, masking the sound.
Holding my breath, I eased the door open a crack and peeped through. The first thing I saw was the rumpled white fabric of a nurse’s tunic, bunched up at the woman’s waist. One of her hands grabbed the edge of the desk, and the blue ring around her wrist was unmistakable.
Then I recognised the man as Dr Evans, a trauma surgeon in his early forties who’d given a couple of lectures to our class before we’d been cleared for the wards. I swallowed a gasp and stepped back, pulling the door all the way closed again and fleeing down the corridor to the ladies’ bathroom.
I knew for a fact that Dr Evans had the wrist tattoos that marked us all as Focused. He was one of the most respected surgeons at the hospital, and to see him having sex with a nurse on hospital grounds…
I locked myself in a stall and tried to calm my racing thoughts, covering my flushed face with my hands. There had to be a reasonable explanation. They could both have been in their heat phases, but I’d heard Dr Evans’ name mentioned when shadow assignments had been given out earlier today. There was no way he could have been working if it was his heat phase—it was forbidden.
This couldn’t be a coincidence. Scott had to have set this up… But how could he have known that I wouldn’t be on the cardiac ward and that I’d be passing at this particular moment?
The only other possible explanation was that Scott was telling the truth. That he’d really been trying to help me. That there were really other unsuppressed medical professionals out there. That I wasn’t alone any more.
I h
ardly dared to hope, but I couldn’t stop the glow of optimism that was growing steadily stronger within my mind.
I needed to find Scott, but first I had to get through my shift.
* * * *
A few more hours of Dr Croft’s company cooled my jets. By the time I had finished my shift, I was hungry, tired, and reeling with all the new information I’d taken in during the day, medical and otherwise.
I headed straight home, grabbing some takeout on the way past the pizza place, and curled up on the couch with the biggest mug of tea I could make.
After the longest night in history, during which I tossed and turned, terrified and turned on and just plain confused, I dragged myself out of bed and slowly began to prepare for another day at the hospital.
Chapter Four
Scott was already in the room we used for pre-shift lectures, and I slid into the seat next to him with a bland smile. “Hi.”
“Hey.” He turned a warm smile my way, and I felt myself melting like ice cream in the sun. “You okay? You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep too well.”
He read the edge to my voice correctly, and raised an eyebrow just a fraction. “Sorry to hear that.”
I bent over my textbook, pretending to be immersed in the section on heart surgery as I scribbled a note to him.
I saw a trauma surgeon and a pharmaceutical nurse together in a storeroom yesterday—the same day you told me you’re not one of the Focused and neither am I. That’s a really big coincidence. Did you expect me to get a GOOD night’s sleep? I don’t even know what to believe anymore. Are you trying to mess with my head? What did I do to deserve that? What the hell is going on?
After a quick glance around to make sure no one else was watching me, I slid the note across to Scott. He went still as he read it, and icy fear washed over me. Had I said too much, given him a definitive confirmation that I wasn’t suppressed?
He wrote something in return and passed it over in a slow, smooth movement that wouldn’t catch the eye of anyone else in the room. I stared down at his sprawling handwriting.
Maybe you just didn’t see it before because you thought it couldn’t happen. Maybe yesterday opened your eyes.
I know somewhere we can talk. Follow me after the lecture—stay a couple of paces behind me.
I glanced over at him, gave a quick nod and concealed the note between two pages in my textbook. He shot me a small, approving smile then turned his attention to the tutor at the front of the room.
The lecture mainly consisted of recapping things we’d studied before, and though my attention wavered I still managed to answer a couple of the tutor’s questions correctly. Towards the end of the session, Scott slid another note across the table to me.
You get the cutest little frown on your face when you’re concentrating.
I tucked the scrap of paper away without looking at him, willing my face into blankness and bending over my textbook. Inside, though, elation rushed through my blood and made me tingle from head to foot.
My fingers itched with the urge to write him a note back, but there was no way I could risk flirting with him. I had to stay on my guard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his lips twitch in a smile, and he wrote something else and slid it over to me.
You can thank me later.
I scowled at the diagram we were meant to be studying. It was the only way I could stop myself from grinning like an idiot.
After the lecture, Scott took his time gathering his possessions. I followed his lead, making sure every pocket of my satchel was meticulously organised and rising to my feet as he made for the door.
Scott led me across the hospital, seeming to make a beeline for the medical library where students studied before and after shifts, but then turning off down a narrow corridor and through a door marked ‘No Admittance’. I wanted to ask him if the rules just plain didn’t apply to him, but, as the door swung closed behind me and I drew level with him, he seemed suddenly closed off, even distracted.
This room was filled with comfortable-looking couches, and in one corner a middle-aged woman sat behind a desk, studying her computer screen. She looked up sharply as we entered, then relaxed at the sight of Scott.
“Beth,” he said in greeting, and indicated me. “Holly Trent.”
I raised a hand in an awkward wave, and Beth gave me a quick smile before entering my name into her computer. “Five and a half months until your first heat phase, correct?”
“Ummm…yes.” I looked from her to Scott with a frown, confused and a little embarrassed.
“You slipped through our net.” She gave me an appraising once-over, then nodded at my companion. “We’ll discuss it another time. I’m sure you have some…talking to do.”
She stood up and headed for the door without any further explanation, and I stared after her, trying to put these strange events into some sort of context. “Scott…”
“I’ll explain.” As the door swung shut after Beth, he took my hand. Startled by the unexpected contact, I almost snatched my arm back, but my self-training kicked in out of habit and I just blinked at him, waiting for the promised explanation to materialise.
He pulled me over to the nearest couch and beckoned for me to sit. Once I did, he sat beside me, so close that his knee brushed my thigh. “I promise you’re safe here, Holly.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” I wanted to relax against him, let him magic all my cares away—but life didn’t work that conveniently, in my experience. “You show up in my class with tattooed wrists and flirt with me, and then you drag me over here to some restricted area of the building, and now you want me to…” I trailed off, realising that my imagination was getting ahead of me. He hadn’t said outright that he planned to kiss me, touch me, fuck—
“Only one way to know for sure.” Sensing my mistrust, he kept his distance, his expression somewhere between curiosity and longing. “It wouldn’t take much to prove to you that I’m not one of the Focused.”
Imagining exactly what that would entail, I closed my eyes, turning my head so he wouldn’t see me bite my lip. Here he was, the guy of my dreams, sitting right here asking me to make out with him…or more. It seemed way too good to be true. It had to be a trick… right?
“Let me guess. You have cameras hidden somewhere in this room, and then you’ll try to blackmail me into giving you all my money.”
Scott stared at me as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. I wanted to believe him. I really, really did. But what if he was an actor, hired to trick me into admitting that I was lying to the university? I couldn’t throw away my dreams just for the sake of a raging libido.
He sat back, holding up his hands as if to prove that he meant no harm. All that achieved was to make me fixate on how they’d feel running up my thighs, and I tried not to squirm.
“Okay, Holly. We’ll do this your way. What do you want to know?”
I wanted to know a lot of things—some of which I didn’t even have coherent thoughts about. Whether he was a good kisser was right at the top of the list, but I couldn’t risk it. “Why haven’t you been in any of my other classes?”
“Because there were delays in my three-strikes treatment. I took a semester out. Between strikes two and three, the committee interceded with one of their own doctors and I got a free ride to the tattoo lab—no questions asked, no procedure attempted.”
“Committee?” There was an organisation that interceded in these things? Where the hell had it been when I’d been going through my treatment?
He glanced towards the door, seeming amused. “You were going through three-strikes and you’ve never heard of them? Beth will be over the moon. She’s always fretting about the university getting wind of the committee’s work.”
“What committee?”
Why didn’t they help me?
I bit back the words, still too cautious to risk saying them aloud.
Sensing my anger, he took my hand without thinking. It was such
a natural response that I started to really believe in him—the Focused were never so quick to use physical contact when comforting someone. “I don’t know what happened in your case, I swear. I didn’t even know you were in my class. All I did know was that you went to the university, and when I checked you out, you checked me out back, even with these.”
He ran his fingers lightly across the underside of my tattooed wrist, and I swallowed a sigh out of habit. He continued stroking softly as he said, “I told Beth about you and she asked me to find you. I planned to stake out the med library after my class, see if you came in. I didn’t know you’d just land in my lap like this.”
More provocative words. He definitely knew what he was doing to me. I risked a look up into his face and his striking blue eyes were intent on mine. Anxious and unspeakably aroused at the same time, I whispered, “Stop it.”
He withdrew his hands immediately and my mind cried out a protest.
Don’t stop!
“A-are there a lot of you? People the committee has saved?”
He shrugged. “Not that many. Enough to count. Just because your body’s resistant to a treatment, that doesn’t mean you can’t focus enough to help people. Thinking that way is just plain stupid.”
I nodded—the first indication I’d given that I agreed with him—and he gave me a slow, irresistibly attractive smile. “Atta girl. We’re gonna help you. You’ve fooled them for this long, and I don’t know how you’ve done it. But one day you’d have slipped up. We can stop that from happening, with a little work.”
“What kind of work?”
Scott took my hand again and, before I could protest, he brushed his lips lightly over my knuckles. “Body language, associative thought patterns, resistance through acclimatisation…” He watched me intently, tracing circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. “That last one can be fun.”