Screw it. I’ll call her.
Somewhat surprisingly, she answered immediately with video function engaged. It really was her who’d sent the message.
“Hi, Dr. Ortiz!” she said, brushing a strand of blonde hair away from her face. Though she appeared to be inside a room, her hair and skin gleamed with what looked like natural sunlight pouring in from somewhere nearby. “Did you see my message?”
“I did,” I confirmed. “Though I have to admit that I found it kind of confusing. Do I know anyone who wants to work on a prison planet? Is that right?”
Tasha laughed tiredly and rubbed at her temples.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I left out a lot of context, I guess. Sorry. We are just feeling a little stressed right now. I sent that in a bit of a rush.”
“We?”
Before Tasha could respond, a large, masculine face joined hers in the screen. Vivid orange eyes peered out of a face the precise purple shade of the ube ice cream scoop at the top of my halo-halo cup. A broad-brimmed hat sat atop his head, a shiny badge glinting in the same light that currently illuminated Tasha.
“This is Warden Tenn,” Tasha said.
“I’m also her husband,” he added at once, almost sternly, as if being Tasha’s spouse was the far more important role and he needed to make sure I knew it.
It was extremely fucking cute.
“Oh, congrats!” I said, keeping my voice bright and cheery and not letting stress about my own impending nuptials dampen the moment. “Nice to meet you, Warden…” I paused, feeling my brows pucker. “Like, a prison warden?” My gaze flicked back to Tasha. “So is that where you work now? I thought you were doing some interstellar-liaison-cum-matchmaker thing.”
“I am,” she assured me quickly. “It’s both.”
At my blank look, she launched into a rapid-fire summary of everything that had happened since we’d last spoken. How she’d discovered the true nature of the planet she’d been tasked with sending brides to. How she’d travelled there immediately, only to fall in love with the warden and the planet itself.
“They really are the nicest bunch of convicted murderers you could ever meet,” Tasha said cheerily.
“Well, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear in my lifetime,” I said, half-joking, half-horrified. Tasha seemed so sincere about it too.
“I know. I have WTF moments like that daily,” Tasha replied.
“What is adouble you…what?” Warden Tenn said, his silvery eyebrows coming down hard over his eyes.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tasha said sweetly, patting him on the broad, beefy chest. She turned her attention back to the screen. “Anyway, one of the recent arrivals, Jolene, was pregnant when she came here. Luckily, her husband Zohro is a trained surgeon, and everything turned out just fine for her. But now Darcy, one of the first women to join the bride program, is pregnant. It’s the first human-Zabrian pregnancy we’ve had. Probably the first human-Zabrian pregnancyever. We need an OBGYN to come work on-world. And we’re having a heck of a time with that.”
Whoa. The first pregnancy of its kind? What an opportunity, to work on a case like that. It would be absolutely fascinating.
“Turns out most decent doctors don’t want to up and leave everything behind to come work on a prison planet surrounded by convicted murderers,” Tasha said. “Even if those murderers are of the, er, sweet and slightly dopey variety.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Fair enough. I can’t say any colleagues who’d jump at this chance are currently springing to mind.” I gave my melty halo-halo a quick stir. “I can think about it, though. Put some feelers out for you.”
“Oh, would you?” Tasha looked like she was about to kiss the screen, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you so much. That would be amazing. I really want to make sure Darcy and anyone else who needs human medical treatment is well taken care of.”
There it was. The same thing I’d noticed in her when we’d spoken last. That intense commitment to her work. And not just a professional commitment. It was obvious to me that she truly cared about the people on this prison planet she’d found herself on. She wanted to ensure they were happy and healthy.
I recognized it easily, because it was a characteristic that we shared. My patients were my life.
Had beenmy life.
I didn’t have any patients now.
Just a fiancé.
“It’s no problem,” I said, fighting a sudden bout of envy for Tasha. Which was ridiculous, considering she now lived in a literal prison. “I’ll let you know if I get any bites.”
“Thank you so much,” she said.
