by Wren Weston
“I had an emergency appointment to reverse my CUT.”
The doctor’s face twisted in confusion. “I thought you didn’t want children.”
“I don’t, but I will be prime soon. It requires a functioning womb.”
Helen nearly dropped her mug onto Scout’s head, frightening the dog so much that he retreated into the corner. His collar and tags rattled as he rushed away.
“That information is not to be shared with anyone, not until it’s official.”
“Of course,” Helen said, her mouth still gaping. “Who performed the procedure?”
“Dr. Cristina Rubio.”
Helen nodded. “I was on her hiring committee. She wasn’t my first choice, but our candidates are the best of the best. I’d wager she took good care of you. I don’t understand why your mother didn’t want me to perform the procedure, though. I have far more experience.”
“It wasn’t a slight against your abilities. My mother chose Dr. Rubio so that she could pump me full of fertility drugs afterward without my knowledge and consent. Not only does my mother want Jewel replaced as prime, she also wants a grandchild quickly. Our stock price is dipping.”
Helen leaned back in the cushions, her face strained and furious. “Fertility drugs? No wonder she kept me away. I never would have done that even if you had asked. I refused to give them to your mother, too, not that it stopped her. Those drugs are not to be abused and shouldn’t be given so soon after surgery. It’s all very hard on your body. You should be resting. You didn’t ride here on your motorcycle this morning, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Leave it here. Take a cab home.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Stubborn fool. At least take a nap when you get a chance. You’ll need it,” the doctor said. “Will you go to the Closing Ball tomorrow?”
Lila sipped her hot chocolate.
“I recommended against spending the night with a man so soon after surgery. You might not be in pain tomorrow night, but your body has been through an ordeal. We’ve made a great deal of progress in women’s fertility since the days of tubal ligations, Lila, but your womb isn’t a light switch you can just turn on and off whenever you feel like it.”
“You sound like one of those damn Catholics from the empire,” Lila muttered. If she was supposed to take a man for a whole season, she wanted to try him out before committing. She couldn’t think of anything worse than being forced to spend an entire season with a senator who couldn’t bed her properly. It was rare, but there were a few out there, mostly among the younger senators. She didn’t have the time or desire to train a bedmate. “What if it’s in my best interest for the lights to be on?”
Helen refilled Lila’s cup. “I’ll not give you permission to go against medical advice, child.”
“Child?”
“Yes, I’ll call you a child when you’re acting like one. Are you so starved that you can’t wait for a few days?”
Lila thought guiltily of Tristan. She definitely wasn’t starved.
“There are other concerns,” she said.
“There always are. There always will be.”
“So, what you’re saying is that if I spend the night with someone on the night of the ball, then I will spontaneously combust. I understand now, doctor. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Don’t be flippant. There is a risk of infection.”
“Is that all?”
“Lila, stay away from the senators on Friday night unless you really do want a child. Those drugs are far superior to what your mother used, and the surgery forces you to ovulate. If a senator so much as looks at you with an erection, you will get pregnant.”
“Is that how it works now?”
“Child,” the doctor snapped. She whistled at Scout across the room, and the dog’s ears rose at the sound. “At least you’re keeping the hot chocolate down. How’s your appetite?”
“I ate breakfast for five,” Lila answered, shifting in her seat as Scout hopped up on the sofa, fear of falling mugs forgotten. He curled up between them and rested his chin on the doctor’s thigh. “The surgery wasn’t the only reason why I came here. I have something I need you to look at.”
“It’s not a mole, is it? Everyone always wants me to look at their moles, even at parties.”
Lila shook her head. She explained why her mother had declared her prime in the first place, and pressed the star drive into the doctor’s hand.
Or at least she tried, for Helen refused to take it. “If that’s Senator Dubois’s medical files, then no. I can’t look at the medical records of a patient who is not assigned to me. It’s a violation of patient privacy.”
“It’s medical malpractice and treason if a Bullstow doctor is falsifying medical files on Randolph property. I need to know if we have a doctor working at Randolph General who can be bribed.”
“He’s a Bullstow doctor, Lila. Not one of ours. They rarely practice at the hospital unless it’s during the interns’ fertility testing. This isn’t our problem.”
“Do you trust the media and the public to see the difference?”
“Don’t insult my intelligence. That’s not the reason you want me to look at it.”
“No, it’s not, but it’s a reason you should care about.”
Helen took the star drive from Lila, cursing under her breath as she trudged to her desktop computer. She pored over the records while sipping her hot chocolate. A wagging tail dully thumped against the rug at her feet. “These first results look pretty standard. He wasn’t infertile at eighteen, that’s for sure. He shouldn’t have any problems getting a woman pregnant, assuming normal rates of intercourse.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Like most senators, he’s more fertile than average. I’m surprised Jewel doesn’t have a few kids by now.”
“Could someone else’s test results have been included in Senator Dubois’s file accidentally, or could the doctor have faked this result and lied about his conclusions?”
“Anything is possible, but it’s highly improbable that anything happened by accident or design. There are too many safeguards for that to happen, too many checks in the process for one sample to end up in the wrong file, much less two. Besides, I know the doctor attached to Senator Dubois’s results. He’s thorough. Dr. Vasquez would not stand for any impropriety to touch his work.”
“So the file is honest.”
“I’d count on it. The lab matches each intern’s sample to the DNA stored on file. Still, it’s strange that he could go from healthy to infertile in only a few years. Where’s his most current record?”
Lila pointed out the folder. Helen became quiet while she studied the new information. “If he had an illness or an injury…”
“I’ve seen the man at least once a week for the last few years. He’s never had more than a cold. His only records at the hospital and the clinic consist of yearly physicals and mild illnesses. He isn’t the sort of man to do any drugs, either. He doesn’t even smoke cigars.”
Helen opened his physicals and studied the data, then returned to Senator Dubois’s latest round of testing. After several moments, she chuckled.
“What?”
“It’s nothing. I just had an image of the pretty senator in a set of muddy overalls and a straw hat. Could you imagine?”
“No. Why are you?”
“Because exposure to NAT could do this.”
“NAT?”
Helen clucked her tongue. “I forget sometimes how young you are. NAT was a very popular insecticide several decades ago. It’s nasty stuff. A lot of the farms in Saxony and La Verde didn’t know the risks when they first started using it. They just knew that it was cheap and worked very, very well. It wasn’t too long before reports flooded into the government regulators. It turned out that NAT triggers fertility issu
es in men. It also causes high rates of birth defects in pregnant women, asthma problems in children, breathing problems in the elderly, and a slew of other unpleasantness.
“You can imagine the outcry when the Saxony and La Verde senates engaged scientists to study the problem. The High and Low Council of Judges in Unity banned every farm in the country from using NAT a few years later. That was years ago, of course. I was still at university when it hit the press, but I remember the highborn farming families didn’t argue the issue. Too many of them had seen the effects firsthand. Most of them had already ditched it for what they knew to be safe, either because they were moral enough not to use it or because it was too expensive to pay their slaves’ medical bills. I doubt anyone would touch it these days, since there are safer insecticides that won’t bring the Farmers’ Bureau down on your head for interclass abuse.”
“Where would someone get a hold of NAT today?”
Helen shrugged. “A university? A research center? I’m sure that someone, somewhere, is trying to design a safer alternative. Dr. Rubio would know. She worked with Dr. Ana Rodriguez, the biochemist who first recognized how NAT interacts in the body. Dr. Rubio was part of her team until she switched from grad school to med school. When we interviewed her for the clinic, she told us all about the work she did in Dr. Rodriguez’s lab. Apparently, it prompted her to go into reproductive health. She even brought along several of her journal articles.”
“What were the articles about?”
“Standard stuff. Mouse models. Finding the pathways NAT triggers when it’s absorbed in the body. Logging the frequency of different outcomes on reproductive health. Most of Dr. Rubio’s work was with mice. I bet that girl can perform a rodent autopsy in her sleep.” She chuckled, then glanced at Lila’s face. “Although I doubt that’s the sort of thing you want to hear about a person after they’ve had their hands inside you.”
Lila ignored the mental image, or at least she tried. “I did ask Dr. Rubio about the senator’s file. She was strangely silent about NAT.”
Helen pursed her lips. “Well, who would think that a senator had been exposed to an insecticide?”
“The Massons own a vineyard.”
“Yes, but even if they used NAT illegally, Senator Dubois would have had to work in it for at least a year or two before it affected his fertility. Worked, mind you, not just visited.”
“I didn’t tell Dr. Rubio the file belonged to a senator.”
The doctor ejected the star drive from her computer. “It’s not NAT, Lila. If it was, other symptoms would have shown up in his physical.”
Lila tucked the star drive into her pocket. “What do you think about Dr. Rubio?”
“If you’re referring to her earlier behavior, I find it odd, yet unsurprising, that she followed your mother’s instructions with the fertility shots. It goes against basic medical ethics. There’s no reason to give fertility injections to a woman on the same day that she’s had her CUT reversed, and plenty of reasons not to. Even if Dr. Rubio believed your mother about your supposed fertility issues, then she would be required to do a full workup on you beforehand. I don’t care if she thought her job was on the line—”
“Dr. Rubio is working for my mother. Just say it.”
Helen rubbed at her eyes and nodded. “It’s likely, especially since she was the one to call me about switching shifts. I intend to lodge a formal complaint with the ethics board about your case.”
“Highborn intrigue is not worth the trouble. I should have paid better attention and not put myself in that—”
“She abused her calling, Lila. I won’t stand for it.”
“So you’ll let the press embarrass Senator Dubois?”
Helen drummed her fingers on the table. “Fine. I’ll let you handle it. Find a reason to fire her. I don’t want her working in my clinic.”
“Your clinic?” Lila grinned. “I’ll have to look into her financials to ensure the hospital is not liable for any risk. Her wife’s records too. Who did she marry to get into the family?”
“Emily. They eloped last year. That’s why you don’t remember a wedding. I think Emily did it just to spite Georgina.”
Lila’s jaw dropped, which was something she prided herself on rarely happening. “But she’s—”
“Don’t say old. I swear to the oracles, if you say old, I will punch your nose, prime or not,” Helen promised without taking a breath. “She is my age. She’s mature. She’s experienced, regardless of how silly and vapid she might be, but she’s not old. There is merely an age disparity between the pair that highlights Emily’s maturity.”
“Tell me what you really think.” Lila smirked.
“I think that Dr. Rubio is the ambitious sort. It could be love, or it could be that she found a way into highborn society by playing on Emily’s vanity. Add in her position at the hospital, and you have someone highly intelligent who’s willing to do whatever the chairwoman asks, either for a bit of coin or because she’s in too weak of a position to refuse. Never see her again, child. Not even to treat a splinter.”
Lila could not disagree with Helen’s logic.
Chapter 10
Lila sped down the streets of New Bristol on her Firefly, annoyed at the motorcycle in her rearview. A navy Barracuda had been tailing her since she left Helen’s condo. As Lila was alone, she had decided against provoking a meeting. She also dismissed the idea of returning immediately to the Randolph estate. If she led a stalker back to Sutton and her mother, she might not be allowed to leave the compound without an escort for months.
She’d not allow herself to fall under house arrest, not on top of everything else going on in her life.
Lila escaped the exhaust and fumes of the clogged downtown streets and headed toward the loop. As soon as her tires hit the interstate, she increased her speed to over a hundred and seventy kilometers per hour, then threaded through the spotty traffic. The freezing winds cut through her trousers. She barely felt her fingers inside her gloves.
Green fields and bluebonnets flashed in her peripheral. Scattered lowborn diners, cheap hotels, and shabby gas stations fled from view. Even the cars on the road whipped behind her as she passed, but not the Barracuda. Every time she checked her mirror, the rider hung on behind her, stubbornly chasing. Lila didn’t care whether it was friendly or aggressive. She only wanted it gone.
But it kept following.
Soon Lila gave up, not willing to press her speed or her luck any further. She took the Twelfth Street exit, mindful of the slower cars and trucks that populated the lanes, then zipped through the sluggish traffic. She kept much of her speed, but the cars flowed closer and closer as she progressed, making such movements more and more difficult.
She approached the first intersection, planning to blast through the yellow light and leave the Barracuda far behind. Unfortunately, the light switched to red earlier than expected, and a fleet of three delivery trucks hit the gas, ready to cross.
She would have to stop. Lila only hoped that the rider would not take the opportunity to abandon his bike and approach her.
Lila squeezed the right-hand brake.
It smacked against the grip, offering no resistance at all.
Lila took her eyes off the road. Her frozen fingers shaking, Lila pumped the brake again, her mouth slackening when it didn’t catch.
Her foot brake didn’t, either.
Lila looked up at the delivery trucks accelerating toward the intersection, a moving wall of rubber and steel. The second driver saw that she had failed to slow down, understanding quickly that she would run the red. He beat on his steering wheel, honking in loud squawks, his mouth full of angry threats trapped behind thick glass.
But he braked.
So did the driver next to him. The woman’s curls twisted around her face, and she shook her head in fright as Lila skated before them.
Lila nearly clipped the rear bumper of an oblivious sedan as it sped across in the opposite direction.
The Barracuda followed her across.
It was at that moment that Lila understood the obvious. The Barracuda’s rider had done something to her brakes. It had been following her the entire time just to watch the aftermath. Perhaps the rider had a helmet camera trained on her, all to capture her last bloody moments.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a death tape was leaked to the media. Her stomach dropped as she realized that Pax might see it, re-watching her last few minutes, immortalized in cold pixels. Knowing him, he would watch the morbid scene play out over and over again, obsessing over it, just as he had done with Trevor’s memory.
He couldn’t handle it. Not so soon after losing his friend.
Lila shook her head against the thought. She wouldn’t leave him so unhappy, weeping over a polished casket that no one could open.
Gathering her wits, Lila thumbed the kill switch, her hand shaking so badly that it nearly slid off the handle. She was frightened now of the vibrating beast between her legs as though it might turn its head and strike like Grendel’s dragon. The cold dropped away around her, and her palms began to sweat inside her gloves.
When the motor died, she downshifted into fifth gear, panicked at the thought that the clutch might not function either.
She grinned stupidly when it did.
The motorcycle cruised forward, inertia still pushing her along.
Her speed wasn’t dropping fast enough, though, not for the traffic around her, not enough for the next intersection just a few shops down. The cars might have been slaloms built to hinder her progress, and she knew her luck would soon run out. A wreck loomed with every vehicle she approached.
She dodged the slow-moving cars, her breath coming in hurried gasps.
The green light ahead switched to yellow, a red beacon of death to follow after.
Lila would not be able to speed through the intersection again, but she still zipped forward too quickly to stop.