scrubs goggled at Pal and came hurrying over. Her name tag read Arleen Barnes, RN. “Can I help you?”
Pal, put me down.
“I’m sick, got some kind of fever,” I told the nurse as Pal gently set me on the floor. I nodded toward Sara. “What’s that about?”
She followed my gaze, and her face fell. “Oh. Yes. That’s Sara’s husband, Bob. He was taken from us about six months ago, and she hasn’t been right since.”
“So you’re just keeping all these bodies alive in the hopes you can get their souls back somehow?”
Nurse Barnes nodded. “Yes. That’s our job, and we’re doing it the very best we can.” She pulled a digital ear thermometer out of her breast pocket.
“Why the blindfolds and earplugs?” I asked. “Are they sensitive to light and sound?”
“No. We found out the hard way that Miko can use them to spy on us.” The nurse looked uncomfortable at the thought. “Lean down a little so I can get your temperature.”
I did as she asked. The tip of the thermometer was cold and uncomfortable in my ear canal.
“Goodness, you do have a fever,” she said. “It’s 103.5. Come with me, we need to get your temperature down.”
Pal sang himself mastiff-size, and he supported me as I followed the nurse back to a cramped beige examining room that was absolutely filled with mushroomlike fey with tiny butterfly wings. At the nurse’s request, I sat down on the vinyl-upholstered exam table. There wasn’t a sheet of paper covering it; I supposed they’d run out some time ago.
The nurse took hold of my hands, frowning at the angry red marks the straps had left on my wrists. “What’s this all about?”
“I … had a seizure. My friends tied me down to keep me from hurting myself.” I got the feeling that the nurse was already plenty freaked out by Pal, and she didn’t need to know that I was possessed by a devil.
“Do you have seizures often?” She held open my eyelids one by one and shined a penlight in my eyes. “And what’s this thing?” She frowned at my ocularis.
“It’s a makeshift artificial eye,” I replied.
“Did you start getting the seizures after you lost your eye?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie.
She turned away to furiously write notes on a clipboard, looking up only to ask for my name and Social Security number, both of which I gave her.
“What about your rash?” she asked, pen poised above the clipboard.
“Rash?” I looked down at my arms, and sure enough, my skin was covered in itchy-looking red bumps. “Wow. I didn’t even see that. This is new.”
“Have you been exposed to the blood of one of the Taken?” she asked.
I guessed that the medical personnel had been discouraged from using terms like “zombie” to describe Miko’s puppets. “Yes, a couple of them bled all over me yesterday. And … I’ve been recently exposed to hepatitis, but I don’t know if I’ve actually got the disease yet or not.”
The nurse hmmed and wrote more notes. “Well, a lot of people around here have that as well. Dr. Ottaway should be up by now … let me go see if she can take a look at you.” She set the clipboard down, went to a nearby cupboard, and pulled down a big bottle of ibuprofen 800s.
“Do you have any bleeding problems? Are you allergic to Advil or aspirin or tetracycline antibiotics? And are you pregnant?” she asked.
“Nope, nope, and nope.”
“Good.” She filled a paper cup with water from the tiny sink, and handed me one of the ibuprofen horse pills and the cup. “Take this … it should help bring your fever down. We’ll give you more to take back to the dorm with you.”
“Thanks.” I swallowed the medicine.
The nurse left, and a few minutes later she returned with a tired but pleasant-looking woman in a long white doctor’s coat. Her thick graying brown hair was parted in the middle and pulled back from her face; the style reminded me of Frida Kahlo, but wasn’t as severe. I guessed the doctor was just a few years older than Cooper.
She gave a start when she saw Pal crouched attentively on the floor beside me. “Holy smokes, what’s that thing?”
“This is Pal,” I replied. “He’s cool.”
“But what is he?”
I racked my fever-addled brain for a believable response. “He’s a … spider weasel … bear … from … Japan. They’re the hot new pets there these days.”
It had finally occurred to me that although he was a spider in