Swaddled in her favorite blanket, head down, and sunglasses on despite the fact that it was an overcast day, Dahlia allowed Cecilia to escort her back to the emergency room.
Solbourne General was a busy hospital that served every type of being living in the city. They handled all sorts of crises every day, most of which were far more serious than whatever illness had sunk its teeth in her.
So it came as something of a surprise when the nurse in charge took one look at her and immediately whisked her away. The lights in her room had to be dimmed before she could bear to take off her glasses, but it didn’t do much good when a nurse shined a pen light into her eyes. Dahlia puked her guts up onto the shiny floor.
She didn’t remember all that much after that. There was a pinch of an IV in her hand, then a flurry of activity as an increasing number of healers, doctors, and nurses moved in andout. They all appeared too busy to talk to her, which was fine. She was too miserable for speech.
She did start to feel a bit like a spectacle, though, when the third cluster of nurses stopped by her door. They whispered to each other and offered her strange, excited smiles before they hustled off.
She wasn’t sure what they put in her IV, but she started feeling a little better. The real improvement came, however, after her blood tests finished.
Her doctor came in with a tablet tucked under one arm and a plain silver bottle in the other. He smiled benignly at her from beneath the shadow of his glasses.
“Well, we just got the results in,” he announced, sounding unsettlingly excited. She wished she’d been assigned a healer instead. They at least had warmth to them, but there were a lot more non-magical doctors around, so she couldn’t be choosy.
“I’ll need to run a couple more tests, but you are absolutely healthy.”
Dahlia looked up at him balefully from the hospital bed. Her stomach had caved in. Her skin was plastered with a film of cold sweat and the reek of illness. Every time she ran her tongue along her upper teeth, they wiggled. And when she dared to touch the roof of her mouth, it felt like a hot lump of lava was about to explode from her soft palate.
Healthywas the last thing she felt.
“There’s no fucking way that’s right,” she croaked, wishing she had the strength to throw the IV bag at the doctor’s smug little face.
The doctor crossed the room. Using some button on the floor, he propped up the head of her bed, forcing her into a sitting position. “I know youfeelawful right now, but that’s perfectly normal. Here, drink this. It should help immensely.”
Dahlia shied away from the warm bottle he tried to put in her hand. A little white straw poked out from the top and spun in a jaunty circle as he forced her fingers around it.
“I can’t keep anything down,” she explained for the tenth time. “Not even water anymore. I can’t drink this.”
“I promise you, you can.” The doctor watched her closely, his expression intent. “Just try one sip. If you really can’t keep it down, we can try something else. But I need you to taste it.”
Grimacing, Dahlia forced herself to put the straw between her lips. She was fully prepared to throw up again — hopefully on the doctor’s clogs — but that didn’t happen.
Glorious, incredible, life-saving flavor burst across her tongue. Rich like toffee, salty like her favorite chips, as perfectly balanced as the luxury coffee she couldn’t afford — she’d never tasted anything like it.
She’d never been so hungry in her life. In an instant, Dahlia became a feral animal. She hunched over the bottle and sucked hard, draining every last drop in a matter of seconds. Bliss was a haze in her mind, blocking out all the pain and discomfort of the last two weeks.
Fullness, perfect and without the churn of bile she’d become used to, settled her stomach at last.
Slumping against the bed, she pressed the empty bottle against her sweaty cheek and breathed, “Oh gods, whatwasthat?”
The doctor let out a strange sort of chuffing sound. His wide smile was lit by the cold glow of his tablet’s screen as he rapidly typed something on the glass. “Incredible. Absolutely incredible. They talk about this in med school, but you never really think you’ll see one — especially in this territory. The odds are astronomical.”
“What are you talking about?”
The doctor glanced up from his screen. “That, Miss McKnight, wassynthblood.”
She was pretty sure her brain short-circuited. It had to, because he couldn’t have said that. She was just so used to the word that she heard it everywhere.
“Huh?”
He nodded glibly. “The transition is always difficult, but it’s made a lot worse if you don’t get proper nutrition in time. No wonder you got so bad. You were starving, and every time you tried to eat regular food, it was like putting regular gasoline in a diesel engine.”
Gasoline in a… What the fuck is he talking about? No one uses gas anymore.
The doctor tapped his screen with a little too much enthusiasm. “But we caught it, so you’ll make a full recovery! We just need to get you on a regular synth diet and perform a minor out-patient procedure. You should start seeing an improvement immediately.”
It was like she sat at the bottom of a pool. Every word he said reached her, but they were all distorted. None of them made any sense.
