Authors: Amy Valenti
They’d scheduled a second appointment for the following week and I’d returned home in tears, cursing my body for its resistance to the treatment.
A week later, I’d gone through the whole thing again with the same results. My final appointment had been made for two weeks after that, when they’d have finished studying my physiological map for irregularities. Three strikes and I’d be out. I’d never be a doctor.
A crackly announcement over the PA system jolted me back to the present, and I only just made it to the platform before the train set off again. My good mood a little dampened by the dark memories, I headed out of the station and down the hill towards the university.
* * * *
The room was almost full when I got there, latte in hand and the taste of vanilla on my tongue. I took a seat near the door and cradled the warm cardboard cup, listening to the chatter around me and smiling a little at some of the topics of conversation. A couple of people said hi to me—we were professionals now, though, and social conversation could wait until after the lecture. I just returned the greetings and pulled my notebook out of my bag.
Yeah, maybe I took the Focused act a little too far, sometimes. But only because I was scared. Really scared.
The best thing about pretending to be suppressed, though? If I acted weird, the Focused wouldn’t assume I was turned on, or scared because I wasn’t suppressed—because part of the treatment was to make sexual associations distant. All part of the job. Focus, focus, focus.
Our tutor settled down behind his desk and cleared his throat. Within five seconds, the room was deathly silent. Sometimes I got the feeling it wasn’t just sexual urges that were suppressed during the procedure. Considering that we were students, every now and then we were a little too well behaved. Automatons. It was kind of Orwellian.
As the tutor began to outline what the session was to be about, I felt a disturbance in the air as the door to the room opened. I wanted to look round, but there was the fear again—that no one else would look, that I would stand out.
“You’re late.” The tutor levelled a disapproving gaze at whoever had just come in. I still didn’t dare to look. Instead, I took an oh-so-casual sip of my latte and waited for whatever came next.
“I’m sorry, I really am. I overslept. Won’t happen again.”
That, at least, was still common amongst Focused students. If it wasn’t, I’d be seriously freaked out.
The tutor sighed. “Take a seat.”
The latecomer pulled the chair beside mine away from the desk and sat down. When the tutor started up again, I chanced a glance across at him.
The first thing I noticed were the tattooed bands around his wrists, the ones that marked him as Focused. The second was his identity—the guy I’d been seeing around, the one I’d been thinking about last night when I…
Oh, shit. It had to be
him
, and it had to be today?
I’d be lucky to get through the morning without being hauled into the suppression clinic.
I tried to focus on what the tutor was saying—and make notes that were actually relevant—but every time I breathed in I smelt his understated cologne and an underlying, faint musk that was just him. I wanted to bury my face in his neck and let his scent take over my senses, but somehow I doubted that was acceptable behaviour, even amongst the menials.
The tutor told us to pair up and discuss the relative pros and cons of a good bedside manner. Immediately, the guy beside me turned and offered his hand. “Scott Thorne.”
I couldn’t refuse it without seeming rude. It was just a handshake, after all. “Holly Trent.”
His shake was perfunctory, but there was a warmth in his gaze that I hadn’t expected. Trying not to make too much of it, I withdrew my hand and picked up my notepad and pen. “So… Pros of a good bedside manner.”
The tutor approached us to eavesdrop, and Scott began counting them off on his fingers, perfectly innocent. “Your patients don’t hate you, and less stress means they’ll heal faster.”
“Good point.” I was amused by his words, though I wasn’t sure how much of that was down to my infatuation with him. “Ummm… It makes your working relationships easier.”
“Always one of my priorities.” Had he just
winked
at me? Thank God I’d never been the blushing type. I’d have been found out for sure.
The tutor moved on, and I waited until he was paying attention to another pair of students before giving Scott a proper once-over. His tattoos were real, all right—exactly the same shade and design as mine. Had he escaped the suppression, too? How? And could I trust him with my secret?
“Relax.” His voice was softer now; more intimate. “You’re too tense. If you keep this up, they’ll start to ask themselves why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tried to follow his advice, even though I resented it. Hadn’t I made it through six months of feigned suppression just fine?
“Sure you don’t. Then we can just pretend we’re both Focused and completely concentrating on the question at hand. Got any more pros of a good bedside manner, or shall we move on to cons?”
Making sure my face was tilted away from the rest of the group, I scowled at him. “A good bedside manner means you’re more open to how patients are feeling. It can help with diagnosis.” Lowering my voice, I hissed, “What do you want from me?”
Scott smiled and the lustful, objectifying part of my brain sighed happily. He was more attractive than I’d remembered the night before, especially wearing that half-grin.
“Good one.” He made a note in his notepad before lowering his voice enough to answer my question. “You haven’t been trained to hide it properly. I can help.”
“Cons,” I said decisively, underlining the word in my notepad with a hand that trembled a little. Was I that close to discovery? “What are you suggesting?” I whispered, trying my best to keep my composure.
“You can get too invested in a particular patient,” he said, giving a disadvantage to having a good bedside manner and writing something down. Tearing it out of the notepad, he passed it to me surreptitiously, and my skin tingled as his fingers brushed my palm.
“That’s true.” I stared down at the words written in a scrawl that was almost as bad as mine. We were training to be doctors—it came with the territory.
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?