“Kenyon?” she asked as though she might have mistaken me for someone else.
“Are you hurt? Why are you in Medical?” Even as I asked, I surveyed her, finding nothing immediately wrong.
“I didn’t realize you were here. I can just come back another day—”
“No, it’s fine. I’m just filling in since I had nothing else to do. You didn’t come all this way just for the exercise.”
She pursed her lips, and it took me back to thinking about just how she could use those lips, how warm and tight her mouth was.
Get it together, you creep!
She closed the door behind her, her gaze on the floor. “It’s nothing important.”
“If you came all the way down here, it matters. Look, I know we make jokes about me, but I really am a good healer. If I can’t help, I can at least connect you with a doctor who can.”
That seemed to win her over, so she came closer and took a seat on the exam table. I didn’t push her, even if something inside me wanted to. I thought impatience was limited to others, but it seemed I wasn’t entirely immune to the feeling.
After a long moment, her shoulders sagged. “I’m having trouble sleeping. My anxiety is getting worse, too.”
Ah.I recalled the nightmares that kept waking her, the ones I’d woken her from before. We had all stopped mentioning them, given the shame she showed when we brought them up.
“I used to take medicine,” she whispered. “But I don’t have any.”
“Who prescribed it?”
“Kaidan would give it to me.”
I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I didn’t much care for some guide handing out medication like that. He wasn’t a healer or a doctor, so how on earth could he be sure she wasn’t having side effects? How could he make sure it didn’t hurt her?
Then I paused, looking at her. “I don’t remember you taking anything. I would have noticed if your vitals changed. Medication for sleep or anxiety slow the heart rate and cause drops in blood pressure.”
“I knew you’d catch on so I didn’t take any. I left them at the house, too, because I was afraid our things would get searched and I’d have to explain them.” She let her feet swing, making her look almost childlike.
It annoyed me that she’d kept such a secret, but thinking back to the progress that we had made since we’d arrived here to base, well, it made sense. When we’d left the house, we still hadn’t known much about her, and she sure hadn’t trusted us.
“So you came for medication?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I can’t keep losing out on sleep. Between that and guiding…”
I looked at her more carefully, and yeah…her adrenaline was high, her body on alert. The dark circles under her eyes had grown more prevalent and she appeared exhausted. I’d noticed some of that, of course, but hadn’t recognized just how bad it had gotten.
And boy didn’t that make me feel like a failure? Here I was, wasting time volunteering because I was bored whilemyguide suffered? It made me feel useless, like I’d failed the one task that I was supposed to take most seriously.
Worse, I had no idea how to help.
“I can fix direct problems—illnesses, injuries, defects, things like that. I can’t fix anxiety or insomnia.”
She smiled, though the edges drooped, as though to show she didn’t fully feel it. “It’s okay. I understand.”
“I could call in the regular doctor, but all he’ll be able to do is prescribe you some medicine as well, but that might take a while. They don’t keep that sort of stuff on hand, and you’ll have to keep coming back for refills. You could ask Kaidan”—I forced myself to say that even if I really hated the idea—“but you should really have some bloodwork done if you’re going to start up on medication like that.”
She shook her head, the action causing her hair to fall into her face. “No. I don’t really want the Guild poking around in this, you know? With everything else going on, it’s probably not a great idea to give them any more ammunition. In fact, I don’t even know what I came here expecting.”
I clapped my hands together, ending her tirade before she really got into it. “You know what we’ll do? We’ll fix this.”
“How are we going to fix it?” She spoke the slowly, as though giving me time to realize I had no plan.
Too bad for her, I did. “I’m a healer, right? And Shear is a mentalist. If you need a good night’s sleep, we can do that.”
