Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(74)

She knocked on the jamb, and when a cultured voice called out, she went in. Havers’s former office had been a splendid old-world study, filled with antiques and leather-bound books. Now that they were at this new clinic, his private workspace was no different from anyone else’s: white walls, linoleum floor, stainless-steel desk, black rolling chair.

“Ehlena,” he said as he glanced up from the charts he was reviewing. “How fare you?”

“Stephan is where he belongs—”

“My dear, I had no idea you knew him. Catya told me.”

“I…did.” But maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned that to the female.

“Dearest Virgin Scribe, why didn’t you say?”

“Because I wanted to honor him.”

Havers removed his tortoiseshell glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Alas, that is something I can understand. Still, I wish I had known. Dealing with the dead is never easy, but it is especially hard if they are of personal acquaintance.”

“Catya has given me the rest of the shift off—”

“Yes, I told her to. You have had a long night.”

“Well, thank you. Before I leave, though, I want to ask you about another patient.”

Havers put his glasses back on. “Of course. Which one?”

“Rehvenge. He came in last evening.”

“So I recall. Is he having some difficulty with his medications?”

“Did you by any chance see his arm?”

“Arm?”

“The infection in the veins on the right side.”

The race’s physician pushed his tortoiseshell glasses up on his nose. “He didn’t indicate that his arm was giving him bother. If he wants to come back in and see me, I’ll be happy to look at it. But as you know, I can’t prescribe anything without examining him.”

Ehlena opened her mouth to argue when another nurse poked her head in. “Doctor?” the female said. “Your patient is ready in exam room four.”

“Thank you.” Havers looked back at Ehlena. “Now do go home and have a rest.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

She ducked out of his office and watched the race’s physician hurry off and disappear around the corner.

Rehvenge wasn’t coming back in here to see Havers. No way. One, he’d sounded too sick to, and two, he’d already proven he was a hardheaded idiot when he’d deliberately hidden that infection from the doctor.

Stupid. Male.

And she was stupid as well, considering what was banging around in her head.

Generally speaking, ethics were never a problem for her: Doing the right thing didn’t require thought or a negotiation of principles or a cost-and-benefit calculation. For example, it would be wrong to go into the clinic’s supply of penicillin and lift, oh, say, eighty five-hundred-milligram tablets.

Especially if you were giving those tablets to a patient who had not been seen by the doctor for the ailment being treated.

That would just be wrong. All the way around.

The right thing would be to call the patient and persuade him to come into the clinic and get seen by the doctor, and if he wouldn’t get his ass in gear? Then that was that.

Yup, not a lot of complications there.

Ehlena headed for the pharmacy.

She decided to leave it up to fate. And what do you know, it was cigarette-break time. The little BE RIGHT BACK clock read three forty-five.

She checked her watch. Three thirty-three.

Unlatching the counter door, she went into the pharmacy, beelined for the penicillin jugs, and shook out those eighty five-hundred-milligram tablets into the pocket of her uniform—exactly what had been prescribed for a patient with a similar issue three nights ago.

Rehvenge was not going to come back to the clinic anytime soon. So she would bring what he needed to him.

She told herself that she was helping a patient and that was the most important thing. Hell, she was probably saving his life. She also pointed out to her conscience that this was not OxyContin or Valium or morphine. As far as she was aware, no one had ever crushed up some ’cillin and snorted it for a high.

As she went into the locker room and picked up the lunch she’d brought but hadn’t eaten, she didn’t feel guilty. And as she dematerialized home, she felt no shame in going to the kitchen and putting the pills in a Ziploc bag and tucking them into her purse.

This was the course she was choosing. Stephan had been dead by the time she got to him, and the best she’d been able to do was help wrap his cold, stiff limbs in ceremonial linen. Rehvenge was alive. Alive and suffering. And whether he was the cause of it or not, she could still help him.

The outcome was moral even if the method was not.

And sometimes that was the best you could do.





TWENTY-FOUR




By the time Xhex got back to ZeroSum it was three thirty a.m., just in time to close the club. She also had a little work to do on herself, and unlike zeroing out the cash registers and sending the staff and the bouncers off into the night, she couldn’t wait on her personal biz.

Before she’d left Rehv’s Great Camp, she’d gone into a bathroom and put her cilices back on, but the f*ckers weren’t working: She was buzzing. Twitchy with power. Right on the edge. For all the good they were doing, she might as well have been wearing a pair of shoelaces tied around her thighs.