The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 552

Chapter 552: 552 | I’m Going To Need More Samples

The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and something else I couldn’t place. Something chemical and slightly sweet, like someone had tried to mask the hospital smell with a candle that cost too much and did too little.

I sat on the edge of the examination table in a hospital gown that left approximately nothing to the imagination, waiting for Juno Mak to finish whatever she was doing on the other side of the privacy curtain. The gown was one of those backless nightmares that hospitals seemed to design specifically to remind patients that dignity was a privilege, not a right.

〘 Physical Examination Event Detected. 〙

〘 Medical Personnel: Juno Mak. Temptation Gauge: 0. 〙

〘 The Host is reminded that maintaining cover during medical examination is paramount to continued operation. 〙

Zero. A flat zero on the Temptation Gauge. I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or insulted. Every other woman I’d spent more than five minutes with had at least registered something on the scale, even if it was just the ambient baseline of proximity. Juno Mak looked at me the way a mechanic looked at an engine. Interesting problem. Nothing more.

The curtain pulled back with a sharp rattle of metal rings on metal rod.

Juno stood there with a tablet in one hand and something wrapped in plastic in the other, still chewing. Her dark hair was pulled into those two loose buns that looked like she’d done them in thirty seconds and then forgotten about them entirely. Her medical coat hung open over a band shirt I couldn’t quite read, something with faded lettering and what looked like a cartoon skull. Her eyes swept over me once, top to bottom, with the enthusiasm of someone cataloging inventory.

"You’re healing faster than yesterday."

Not a question. Not a greeting. Just data.

"Good morning to you too."

She crossed to the counter and set down the tablet, still chewing whatever she was eating. Granola bar, from the wrapper sticking out of her coat pocket. "I don’t do mornings. I do patients. You’re a patient. Take off the gown."

I blinked. "The whole gown?"

"The gown is preventing me from seeing your back. Your back is where the interesting data is. Remove the gown." She turned to face me fully, and those half-lidded eyes held absolutely nothing resembling shame or awareness that she’d just told a teenage boy to strip. "Unless there’s something under there I haven’t seen before. I’ve seen a lot. I’m not expecting surprises."

The thing about Juno Mak was that she wasn’t flirting. She wasn’t being coy. She wasn’t even being provocative on purpose. She was being clinical in a way that somehow managed to be more disarming than if she’d been trying to seduce me.

I pulled the gown over my head and dropped it on the table beside me.

She didn’t react. Her eyes tracked to my torso, to the fading marks where my ribs had been broken four days ago, to the shoulder that had been separated and was now just slightly stiff in the morning. Then she circled behind me, and I felt her fingers press against my spine without warning.

"The scarring is minimal. Your epithelial regeneration is tracking at four hundred percent of baseline now." Her fingers moved up, pressing against spots I couldn’t see. "The burn margins are closing faster than the tissue samples suggested they would. Either your body is learning, or there’s a secondary mechanism I haven’t identified yet."

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