“Honey, can you hear me? You awake, Mireya?”
A soft feminine voice murmured, “She’s coming around.”
My eyes fluttered open, closed again, opened, blinking in the bright fluorescent lights.
A woman and a man stood over me, looking down with warm smiles on their faces.
“Mom? Dad?”
“Hey kiddo. How’re you feeling?” Dad asked me.
“Good. Where am I?”
“At the doctor’s office, remember? Your checkup?”
“Oh… yeah.”
A groggy recollection of last night’s conversation at dinner floated over me, settling into my brain.
“It’s over? You guys didn’t have to come. I told you I’d be fine.”
“I know—you wanted to walk here yourself from school, but Mom and I decided to meet you and walk you home. Or, we can go have lunch at the commissary if you feel up to it. It’s clam chowder today—your favorite.”
“Um… I don’t know. I don’t feel too hungry right now.” I sat up, the paper on the exam table crinkling beneath me. “Am I done? Can we go?”
“In a minute,” Mom said. “Dr. Rex said he’d be right back.”
As if on cue, the exam room door opened, and my pediatrician entered the room. He greeted my father with a hearty handshake and Mom with a hug then took a seat on the rolling stool opposite the table where I sat.
“Good news. Your daughter is looking perfectly normal for her age. I think you should be very pleased with her state of health.”
Mom’s body slumped in relief. “Normal. Thank God.”
Dad gave the doctor a questioning glance. “And the seizures?”
“Well, she’ll probably always have them, but I think we’ve got it to a point where it’s very much under control. Shouldn’t cause any significant problems from here on out.”
The door opened again, and someone stuck his head into the room. It was a guy in a lab coat—a young guy with bright blue-green eyes.
Remarkable eyes. I’d never seen any like them.
“Dr. Rex—the chart you asked for.”
He handed a holotablet to the doctor and then glanced up to me, meeting my gaze before dropping his again to Dr. Rex.
It lasted only an instant, but the brief eye contact made me feel shivery and warm at the same time, as if I’d stepped into a fire-warmed room on a frigid day.
“Thank you, uh, Milo,” Dr. Rex said. “Go ahead and put the next patient in exam room two, would you please?”
The cute guy nodded and left the room. Dr. Rex smiled at my parents.
“My new assistant. He’s learning the ropes of clinical work.”
The doctor stood and turned to me. “Well, Miss Mireya, unless there are any new complaints, I’ll see you back here in a year for your next annual exam. You be good now, okay?”
“Okay.” I smiled at him.
He extended his hand. I shook it then slid off the exam table, watching him go.
We checked out with the receptionist and were almost at the clinic’s front door, when Dr. Rex’s assistant—Milo, I think he said his name was—ran into the lobby.
“Reya?”
I turned, my heart beating a mile a minute. “It’s Mireya.”
“Right. Sorry. Mireya.” He reached me and opened his hand.
In it was a bottle of pills. Their bright green color showed through the tinted plastic of the bottle.
“Almost let you leave without these.”
He gave a nervous-sounding laugh that seemed to slide down my spine and reach to the tips of my toes.
“It’s a new prescription, so make sure you follow the instructions on the label exactly. That’s very important, okay?”
Looking directly into those incredible eyes was almost mesmerizing, but I managed to get a response out of my tight throat.
“Okay, I will.”
“Good.” Another dazzling smile. “I’ll see you around, then.”
Before he turned to go, the guy gave me a very deliberate wink, and my pulse went wild. I turned away from my parents and hurried toward the exit to hide my instantaneous blush.
“You okay, sweetheart?” Mom asked behind me.
“Fantastic,” I said. “But my appetite just came back with a vengeance. I feel like I haven’t eaten in days. That offer for chowder still good?”
My dad laughed. “Absolutely. There’s my girl.”
For a split second the remark struck me funny. It seemed wrong, somehow. But then, my father had been calling me that all my life, hadn’t he?
Smiling at my own silliness, I opened the clinic door and stepped out to see bright sun shining on the tidy buildings and green lawns of the base, my home, the only one I’d ever known.
I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to leave this place.
