Tenants and Tyrants (Book 5 of The Warden series) (20 page)

“What’s the matter doc? Don’t you like young love?” Efrat teased trying to flip the channel with the remote.

“Not when I’m too old to remember what it was like.”

“You’re not old,” Hirem mumbled behind his magazine.

“He’s right,” Efrat said. “You’re not even thirty.”

“HA!” Jill blurted out with a cackle to follow. “Please, I appreciate generosity, but you’re just being foolish.”

“Foolish?” Efrat mocked. “You’re thirty-one, don’t pretend your forty.”

“And how do you know that.”

“I have my connections,” Efrat raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you keep trying to change it?” Jill pointed at the remote. “You know it doesn’t work.”

“Buy new batteries.”

“You don’t think I tried that?” She rolled her eyes. “Who’s next?”

“Efrat,” Hirem pointed over to Efrat.

“Okay, Efrat, put out your arm.” Jill sat on the edge of the bed to take his blood. She had spent more time with these two socializing, so she was comfortable getting casual with them.

“Hirem and I are going out for drinks after this, you should join us.” Hirem shot Efrat a glare, which said he either didn’t want her along, or he didn’t want to admit he did.

“You know I can’t, Efrat.”

“Come on, Jill,” Efrat said not cringing at the large needle she inserted into his arm. “You never struck me as the shy type.”

“That’s why I can’t go with you,” she said removing the needle and bending his elbow up on it. “Doctor’s aren’t supposed to get involved with their patients.”

She distributed her blood draw into her vials and labeled them. “Just to be clear, if that were an option, would patients remain in the plural form the entire time.”

Jill laughed. “Efrat, you are an impossible flirt.”

“I’m just saying, Hirem and I haven’t quite worked together in that capacity yet, we may need to get a game plan together before we plan that outing.”

“You can save your brain power, threesomes never work out. Someone is always left wanting more, and it’s usually the woman.” Jill caught a look from Hirem, but she couldn’t tell what it was before he tucked himself behind the magazine again.

“Touché,” Efrat said trying the remote again. “I don’t suppose you have a key to the cage,” he said referring to the plexiglass box over the television that prevented it from being manually changed.

“I did, but I think a badly timed cleaning spree, has put it in the trash.”

“Figures,” Efrat mumbled and sat back while she finished up her tissue sampling. Despite his flirtation, Efrat showed no particular interest in her. She assumed he was just one of those guys that flirted with women in between casual conversation. It was his way of making friends, just like he teased Hirem about being a cowboy and an Indian, despite it being the wrong kind of Indian. Teasing was just non-sexual flirting.

Jill wondered how Efrat would handle a woman he actually wanted to sleep with. She was certain his teasing would fall short and his casual conversation would take over. He might even have better luck with it the other way around, but like rules of young love, you can never be yourself at first.

Jill gave Efrat his urine cup and moved onto Hirem. Before beginning she rolled her neck around. “Something wrong,” he asked putting down his magazine and offering his arm.

“Just my neck. Too much time being slumped over a microscope. Old bones.” She winked at him, and his face sobered.

“You are not old,” he said firmly. She wasn’t sure how to take his offense to her self-depreciation, so she just proceeded with her sampling.

She wished that he didn’t choose to go last so often. She preferred to have Efrat around for conversation while she was working on him. Hirem was a nice man, and far be it from her to shy away from being alone with a man with such a great body, but his verbal skills left something to be desired.

Her bedside manner failed her around him. She couldn’t decide if he liked her and was shy, or he was indifferent and simply had nothing to offer in the way of small talk. Either way she neglected the flirting that she did with Efrat, and only offered him questions relating to his condition.

When Efrat returned with his container, she instructed him to place it in the yellow bin. “I thought you and Hirem were going for drinks?” she asked when she saw Efrat was leaving before she was done with Hirem.

“We are, so don’t keep him too long,” Efrat said as he left.

“I guess he wants to start drinking early,” Jill told Hirem. He nodded and they continued in silence.

She sent Hirem off for his urine sample and she sat down at her “desk” to start logging her samples on her clipboards. Her neck started to kink again and she rolled it around to loosen it up. “May I?” She jumped at the sound of Hirem behind her. She turned to see him. He nodded to her neck. “I have a knack for necks.”

She chuckled even as she realized there wasn’t anything funny about what he said. “Ah, yeah, sure. I hope you washed your hands.” She chuckled.

“I am very hygienic,” Hirem said gravely serious.

“Sorry, stupid joke.” She chuckled again and forced herself to stop since she sounded manic. She was nervous and she didn’t need to be. She knew Hirem was a nice man. He wouldn’t hurt her, but his somberness was throwing her off. She didn’t know if she should match his seriousness or override it with humor. Neither seemed right. “Please,” she motioned to her neck and turned her stool away.

She heard him crack his knuckles and resisted the urge to joke about him supposed to be cracking her not him. He placed his hands on her shoulders where they met her neck. She expected him to crack her neck, but he didn’t.

His hands gently massaged the muscles of her shoulder and neck. At first it felt awkward to receive this much pleasure from strange hands, but she reminded herself that though she didn’t know him personally, she had known him professionally for months. There was no reason she couldn’t allow herself to enjoy this.

She relaxed into his hands with a moan, and laughed at herself for it. “I’m sorry, that sounded cheesy, but you do have a knack for that.”

“It’s alright. It helps me know where to focus my pressure.”

“Okay, so you’re saying, moan freely.” She laughed and she actually heard him laugh too, which made her feel less like a dope.

“Yes,” he answered and she did. At one point she laughed again because the entire scene outside of the room had probably sounded like sex.

She had expected a short massage ending with an awkward, “well, I better get going,” but Hirem let his hands work her muscles for over ten minutes. When he finally stopped it was only after she felt the tension in her neck completely subside.

She turned to him again with a look of amazement. “Thank you so much. That was wonderful.”

“My pleasure.”

She smiled, because she knew he really did mean it. She could feel the moment starting to get weird, but she had her preplanned dialogue involving next week’s schedule for samples and tolerance tests.

“You are beautiful.”

Jill had already opened her mouth to speak. She knew it was still hanging open like a fish, but she didn’t know how to respond to him. He had taken a moment on the cusp of being weird and jumped it up to uncomfortable. “I...um…”

“You’re age makes no difference,” he continued unaffected by the change in her demeanor. “You’re eyes are your best feature. Not just the mossy green in your irises, but your eye lashes too. I’m particularly fond of the tip of your nose. You take great pride in your hair. You rarely wear it up. I image you think you don’t have the ears for an up-do, but you would be wrong in that as well. I might dare compliment your elegant neck, but I’m afraid if I venture any lower you might call for security.”

A moment passed before a tiny little smirk settled into his lips. He was making a joke to lighten the mood of his professed observations. She huffed what might have been a potential laugh, but it just turned into a much needed exhale.

“I better get going,” he said taking a step back. “Efrat will be waiting. I’ll see you next week for our tests.”

She nodded, but didn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say anyway. She watched him back away, still with a smirk on his face. When he finally turned and walked away it was not fast or slow. He was not rushing to be away from her, but yet he was not lingering in the hope that she would stop him.

She stared down at her samples and tried to focus on her work. For the first time since meeting Hirem, she was starting to wonder what that great body of his would feel like pressed against her.

33

There was always time for romance, but never enough time for breaking down the walls of medical science. At least that’s what Jill had always told herself. She reminded herself of that again when she walked into her lab to find all four of her subjects present for their tolerance testing.

Garr and Remi were making out on one of the beds behind the curtain. She could hear their lips smacking and rolled her eyes as she passed. She nodded to Efrat and Hirem on the way by. They each said hello.

She set her files on the “desk” and glanced over at the closed curtain. She was about to holler something to make them snap out of their coquettish bliss, but she was in no hurry to deal with them. “Do you mind if we just start?” She looked at Efrat and Hirem for sympathy.

“Sure, doc, bring on the stimuli,” Efrat said as he leaned back on his bed. Jill rolled the electronic device she had designed for Efrat over. She clamped two devices that looked like pulse monitors to one finger on either hand. “Why do we have to start off at zero every time?”

“In case your tolerance fluctuates down before it goes up. Soon, we may be able to test you daily. You may have slight variations in power that could be caused by stress, sleep patterns, dietary changes, or emotional influences.”

“So if I get horny, I might zap somebody.” He winked at her.

She resisted smiling before her come back. “I hope not, you’ll be zapping people left and right.” Efrat laughed and settled in for his test. “Just let me know when it starts to bother, okay.”

“You got it doc.”

Jillian grabbed another cart and brought it over to Hirem. She had not seen him since his complimentary massage, and she was determined to keep things business as usual. She grabbed the metal batons on her cart and handed them to him.

“How’s your neck?” he asked positioning his grasp on the batons as he liked.

“Ah, better, I think.” She gave her head a subtle shake. She shouldn’t have been thinking it was better, it should simply have been better. Thinking it was better implied that she might still have trouble, and might need another massage. Granted she probably wanted another massage, but that was not appropriate. “I think I’m going to start you a little higher. Most people can handle holding ice, that’s not exactly a super tolerance. If you start to cramp up or if it goes numb again, tell me. The point isn’t to beat the machine. It’s to register when your tolerance is met.”

“Numb hands makes me tolerant of a lot.” He smiled.

He was joking again. Good for him. Jill held his eyes for a moment before forcing herself to get back to work.

“Garr, Remi, I need to get started.” Jill pulled the curtain back. She was vaguely aware that Remi paused to button her top button before leaning back in her bed.

“I don’t know why I have to do this. You’re not even sure your device will detect my power properly,” Remi whined.

Jill hated whining, but for some reason it came with the territory. She figured military trained personnel would be a little more mature, but apparently the military stopped screening for wussies on the same time they stopped screening for homosexuals. “My device will detect moisture. That is really all we need,” Jill assured her before taping the sensors to her hands.

“My power is stupid,” she groused.

“It was either take a water power, or live with man hands. You chose a water power.” Jill moved on before Remi could retort. She probably gave her a searing glare, but she avoided looking at her. The greatest defense against angry looks was not letting the person see that you saw it. It was like parenting 101 with this girl.

Jill dragged a cart over to Garr that was similar to Hirem’s. She placed the metal batons in his hands, and set the temperature to a setting of body temperature. Most humans could tolerate heat well above that, but she didn’t want to rush his temperature change. If Hirem’s hands got too cold, he risked frostbite. If Garr’s hands got to hot, he risked first degree burns.

“Good there?” She asked.

“Yeah, thanks, Dr. Jill.” Garr nodded appreciatively. Everything about him seemed youthful. His voice was an octave too high and his skin had a few too many pimples for an adult man. As much as she hated the display, he put on with Remi, Garr was a good kid, and deserved to be happy.

Jill resisted the urge to ruffle his pale blond hair and moved over to her desk. “Everybody remember to speak up when you feel anything resembling pain, and or a loss of feeling,” she added for Hirem’s benefit.

At once the entire group froze, jumped to their feet and saluted. Jill resisted the urge to cuss and turned to face her guest. “General Clark.”