attitude, clearly past twenty-one years, and seated regal blond woman, clearly past menopause. Both clearly unrelated.
I looked the doctor over, grudgingly approving the sleek fuchsia silk dress glimpsed under her lab coat and the steampunk buckled platform shoes on her feet. Her skin was a glowing negative, an undiluted black like my hair, but her tresses were braided into a cornrow pattern as intricate as a maze. She resembled an ebony version of the famous ancient Egyptian head of Nefertiti, with more Nubian features. She would outclass the ancient vampire sister-pharaoh at the Karnak Hotel in a heartbeat, had both of them been living at the same time.
Meanwhile, Helena had been digging into her over-buckled designer bag to extract a sheaf of papers.
"This is what we hacked out of Dr. Youmans' computer records."
Dr. Torres winced. "You hacked his records? The ethics - "
"Read them," Helena suggested sweetly. Sweet was obviously not her usual modus operandi.
Dr. Torres leaned against the torture table and skimmed them as rapidly as an IRS tax examiner preparing to administer a big fat fine.
Her exquisitely penciled eyebrows went up. And up.
She eyed me with narrowed, incisive black eyes. She looked at Helena, bit her full bottom lip, and nodded. "I see. I'm glad you insisted on getting right in."
"The records don't show the type of IUD used," Helena said.
"The records don't show anything they ought to. You think this ... young woman still has this thing?"
Helena nodded.
"What?" I asked, suspicious of the knowing shorthand these two women exchanged as if they were soul sisters. Ebony and ivory. Like me.
Oooh, Irma crooned in my head. I don't like this conversational trend, either. Cool doc, though. What the hell lipstick color is she wearing? Be sure to ask. Would look even better on us than Midnight Cherry Shimmer does.
Will you please, I told Irma, not remind me of intimate episodes in a clinical house of horrors like this?
I bit my own lip in turn. I'd made such a huge private emotional and sexual leap with Ric these last several weeks I was having trouble regarding myself as a public plumbing problem.
"That would be ... malpractice," Dr. Torres was saying.
"That would be ... obscene," Helena answered, standing.
"You're her mother?" Dr. Torres.
"Here and now, yes."
I let my gaze snap to Helena. I couldn't believe what she'd said. She was ... adopting me.
For the time being.
For a never-adopted child now an adult, that was mind-boggling.
Did even she understand how this would impact me? I veered between choking up and getting furious. Hearing the never-used phrase "her mother" for the first time at twenty-four. Thinking ... too little too late.
This visit to Wichita's medical offices was resurrecting my insecure inner orphan and kick-starting my outer ungrateful bitch. It was giving me emotional whiplash.
"I'm here," I reminded them.
Jeez, it was like Kipling. "When two strong women meet ..." They were east and west and black and white, and both damn scientists.
Helena's faded eyes turned to me. "Don't worry. We don't need more probing, Delilah." She eyed Dr. Torres. "A sonogram."
"And how," I asked, "am I to drape my chic paper sheath for that procedure?"
Dr. Torres's low chuckle escalated into an infectious laugh, making her the woman in the fuchsia dress first and the doctor second. She eyed me with sympathetic warmth. "Girl, my nurses and I will give you such a runway wrap you will want to wear it outa here."
I grasped at her good humor. I could tolerate only so many life-shattering moments at once.
"Do I get a ... a free braiding?" I bargained like a kid. I'd seen Vegas tourists getting that treatment alongside the "beachy" hotel pools. Nobody had ever done my hair for me before, as far back as I could remember.
"Absolutely."
That is how I ended up drinking an awful lot of bottled water while three nurses braided my thick, wavy Irish hair into a magnificent mass of shiny blue-black plaits. The women were so adept they manipulated a couple paper sheaths into a loose Egyptian-style linen gown.
Was I going to come out of this a Macy's Parade balloon, a taco wrap, or a fashion model? While I drank the required water, the familiar fashioned itself into an intricate basket-weave ankle bracelet in slow motion to keep me entertained.
Forty minutes later, a fairly relaxed me was shown into another consulting room, where a computer screen sat beside the examination table. Helena was installed on the visitor's chair.
"I'll be here all the time, Delilah. This is totally external. There's nothing