The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 553

Chapter 553: 553 | Unrealistic Expectations

"Blood. Tissue. Possibly spinal fluid if the numbers keep trending this direction." She pulled her hand back and made a note on her tablet without looking at it. "Your mother figure agreed to expanded diagnostic access. You’re an interesting problem. I like interesting problems."

"Most people buy me dinner first."

She looked up from the tablet. Her expression didn’t change. "I don’t do dinner. I do patients. You’re a patient." She set the tablet down and reached for something on the counter. "Lie down."

The examination table was cold against my back. The ceiling had one of those drop-tile configurations that existed specifically to give patients something to stare at while doctors did things they didn’t want to watch. I counted tiles. Fourteen by twenty-two. Two hundred and ninety-eight tiles total, assuming the pattern held to the edges.

Juno appeared in my field of vision, looking down at me with those half-lidded eyes that somehow managed to be both bored and intensely focused at the same time. She had a syringe in one hand now. Not small.

"This is going to hurt."

"You’re supposed to say this might pinch a little."

"I don’t lie to patients. Lying to patients creates unrealistic expectations. Unrealistic expectations create trust violations. Trust violations create difficult follow-up appointments." She positioned the needle against the inside of my elbow. "This is going to hurt."

It hurt.

Not the sharp sting of a normal blood draw, but something deeper, like she was pulling something out of me that didn’t want to leave. I watched the vial fill with blood that looked normal enough, red and thick and doing all the things blood was supposed to do.

"Your pain response is dampened."

"What?"

"You should have flinched more. Most patients flinch." She pulled the needle out and pressed a cotton ball against the puncture with her thumb. "Either you have an abnormally high pain tolerance, or you’re suppressing your response deliberately."

"Maybe I’m just tough."

"Maybe." She didn’t sound convinced. "Hold this."

I held the cotton ball while she labeled the vial and set it in a tray beside two others I hadn’t noticed her fill. She’d been busy while I was counting ceiling tiles.

"Turn over."

I turned. The examination table was somehow even colder against my chest and stomach than it had been against my back. I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the missing gown and everything to do with the way Juno Mak looked at me like I was a puzzle she was going to solve whether I cooperated or not.

Her fingers found my spine again, tracing the line of vertebrae from the base of my skull down to where my lower back curved. She stopped at a spot I couldn’t see.

"The burn scarring is almost gone. Four days ago, this tissue was necrotic. Black fire residue in the wound margins, energy signature I still haven’t identified, cellular damage that should have required grafting at minimum." Her voice dropped, and I could hear something that might have been fascination underneath the clinical flatness. "Now it’s pink. Healthy. New. Like the damage never happened."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify