Bloodline(30)

CHAPTER 20

“Dr. Krause will see you, Miss Harken.”

When my lower back muscles relax, I realize how rigidly I’ve been sitting. Despite not including Deck’s name anywhere on the intake form, I’ve been worried that I’d be called Mrs. Schmidt, here of all places, a spot where I desperately need to be seen as my own person.

Clearly, I was silly to obsess. This is a doctor’s office, a professional place of medicine, a neat, sanitary cube of a building that smells like rubbing alcohol and ointment. They may disapprove of me using my maiden name, but they’ll talk about me behind my back rather than to my face, like proper Minnesotans.

The receptionist, an army bunker of a woman, leads me back. “Please change for the examination. There’s a gown behind the curtain. When you’re finished, push this button to let the doctor know you’re ready.”

The modern exam room is a pleasant surprise. The surfaces gleam. And I’ve never visited a doctor’s office with a button you can push once you have yourself in order. It doesn’t cure the discomfort of covering my nakedness with a flimsy piece of open-backed cloth, of spreading my legs for a strange man, but it helps.

As does Dr. Krause’s appearance when he enters the room moments after I press the button. He’s older, his wire-rimmed glasses two perfect circles beneath a shockingly thick swath of white hair. He’s a smaller man, somewhere between Deck and me in size. He carries a clipboard.

“Miss Harken, I’m Dr. Krause. You’re in a family way?”

“Hello, Dr. Krause.” My tone is formal to match his. “Yes. I believe I’m five months along.”

“How are you feeling?” He removes a pen from behind his right ear, poises it above the clipboard.

“Fine. Great, actually. I was worried about morning sickness, but I haven’t had any.” I recall the panic and nausea I felt the other morning. That doesn’t count, as it started before the pregnancy.

He looks me up and down, his glance clinical. “You’re in good shape. Let’s get the nurse in here for your vitals.”

He pushes the same button I did, and the woman who walked me to the exam room returns. Apparently, she’s more than a secretary. I had thought her a large woman, but she seems to shrink around Dr. Krause.

“Cornelia, you should have weighed and measured Miss Harken before I arrived.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes. “Sorry, Dr. Krause.”

“It’s all right,” I say, though I suspect it isn’t, not in Dr. Krause’s eyes. He’s a popular doctor, exactly as the Mothers told Deck (he’d been booked up through the end of the month, but once I gave the receptionist my name, she said she could squeeze me in today), and he runs a tight ship. Coming to the clinic broke the monotony of not being able to track down Paulie—he wasn’t at the motel when I stopped by yesterday or today—but that’s the only good thing I can say about it. I’m no prude, but I don’t know a single woman who enjoys gynecological exams.

Cornelia leads me to a wall with a measuring tape painted onto it and gently pushes me against it. “Five foot six,” she tells the doctor. She then guides me to the scale. “One hundred twenty-one pounds.”

I smile on the inside. I’ve gained only two pounds in five months.

When the nurse leads me back on the table, she takes my blood pressure and checks my pulse. All of it consumes no more than three minutes, and then she disappears.

“I apologize,” Dr. Krause says. “She’s new.”

“It’s all right,” I repeat. I mean it. I also want him to hurry up and get the examination over with.

But rather than having me lie back and insert my feet into the stirrups, he walks over and feels my forehead, and then my neck. “You’ve been sleeping all right?”

“Yes,” I say, stopping just short of adding the “sir” that wanted to line up like a good soldier at the end. “I’ve been sleeping like a lumberjack after a hard day’s work. I’ve always been a good sleeper.”

Dr. Krause grabs both my hands, turns them palms up, then palms down. He’s so near I can smell his aftershave, soapy and spicy. He runs one warm hand up the outside of my right arm, and then my left.

He stops, studying my upper left arm. “This is an unusual erythema multiforme scar,” he murmurs, almost as an afterthought.

I glance at the spot. “My smallpox vaccination?”

“Yes. Almost like a figure eight.”

I rub it, brushing his hand away. “My mom said I had a bad reaction. My boy—my boyfriend, Deck, has one just like it. We sometimes joke it’s what brought us together.” I consider telling him the stories we made up around our matching scars—that we’d escaped an alternate world where everyone was marked and then found each other in this one, that the scar was proof of our royal lineage, or my favorite, that our ragged figure eights mean we are a fated, perfect match.

I don’t think Dr. Krause would find any of them amusing.

“You two are the same age?”

“Deck’s four years younger.” It’s an embarrassing fact I rarely think about, certainly never mention. He’s so mature for his age.

“Then it’s not a bad lot. That happens sometimes. A tainted batch of vaccines goes out, affecting a whole group of children. Four years is too long a span, however.” He clicks his pen. “The Minnesota Department of Health is sending a medical crew through the state. Their primary aim is to collect blood samples in each community, but they’re recording disease immunity, too. You may want to mention the scar you share with the father of your child.”