Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood 7)

But he didn't seem himself as he stood in the corridor, frowning as if confused, rubbing his head like his temples hurt.

"Are you all right, Doctor?" she asked.

He glanced over, his eyes unusually vacant behind his lenses. "Er...yes, thank you." Shaking himself, he handed her a prescription slip from on top of Rehvenge's medical record. "I...ah...Would you be so kind as to bring the dopamine to this patient, as well as two doses of scorpion antivenin? I'd do it myself, but I do believe I need to have something to eat. I am feeling rather hypoglycemic."

"Yes, Doctor. Right away."

Havers nodded and put the patient's file back into the holder beside the door. "Thank you so kindly."

The doctor drifted away as if in a partial trance.

The poor male had to be exhausted. He'd been in the OR for most of the past two nights and days, tending to a birthing female, a male who had been in a car accident, and a small child who had been badly burned when he'd reached for a pot of boiling water on the stove. And that was on top of the fact that he hadn't taken any time off in the two years she'd worked at the clinic. He was always on call, always there.

Kind of like she was with her father.

So, yeah, she knew exactly how tired he must be.

At the pharmacy, she handed the prescription to the pharmacist, who never made small talk and didn't break with tradition today. The male went into the back and returned with six boxes of dopamine bottles and some antivenin.

As he handed the meds to her, he flipped a sign that said, BE BACK IN 15 MINUTES and stepped through the cutout door in the counter.

"Wait," she said, struggling to hold the load. "This can't be right."

The male had his cigarette and his lighter already in his hands. "It is."

"No, this is...Where's the slip?"

Greater wrath faced no female than that she obstruct the path of a smoker finally getting his break. But she didn't give a crap.

"Get me the slip."

The pharmacist grumbled his way back through the counter, and there was an inordinate amount of paper rustling, as if he were hoping maybe to start a fire by rubbing prescriptions together.

"'Dispense six boxes dopamine.'" He flipped the script to face her. "See?"

She leaned in. Sure enough, six boxes, not six vials.

"It's what the doctor always gives this guy. That and the antivenin."

"Always?"

The male's expression was all c'mon-lady-gimme-a-break, and he spoke slowly, as though she weren't fluent in English. "Yes. The doctor usually comes for the order himself. You satisfied or you want to bring this up with Havers?"

"No...and thank you."

"You're so welcome." He tossed the slip back into the pile and beat feet out of there as if he were afraid of her coming up with more bright ideas for research projects.

What the hell kind of condition required 144 doses of dopamine? And antivenin?

Unless Rehvenge was taking a loooooooong trip out of town. To a hostile place that had scorpions like something out of The Mummy.

Ehlena went down the hall to the exam room, playing spinning plate with the boxes: As soon as she corralled one that was slipping free, she had to go after another. She knocked on the door with her foot and then nearly dominoed the load as she turned the knob.

"Is that all of it?" Rehvenge said in a hard tone.

Like he wanted a pallet of the stuff? "Yes."

She let the boxes tumble onto the desk and quickly arranged them. "I should get you a bag."

"That's okay. I'm good."

"Do you need any syringes?"

"I have plenty of those," he said wryly.

He was careful as he got off the exam table and drew that fur coat on, the sable widening the great width of his shoulders until he loomed even from across the room. With his eyes on her, he took his cane and came over slowly, as if he were unsure of his balance...and his reception.

"Thank you," he said.

God, the words were so simple and so commonly spoken, and yet, coming from him, they meant more than she was comfortable with.

Actually, it was less how he expressed himself than his expression: There was a vulnerability in that amethyst stare, buried deep within it.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she was the one feeling vulnerable and was seeking commiseration from the male who had put her in that state. And she was very weak at the moment. As Rehvenge stood close to her, taking the boxes one by one from the table and putting them in hidden pockets within the fur folds, she was naked though uniformed, unmasked though she had had nothing hiding her face.

She looked away and saw only that stare.

"Take care of yourself..." His voice was so deep. "And like I said, thanks. You know, for taking care of me."

"You're welcome," she said to the exam table. "Hope you got what you needed."

"Some of it...at any rate."

Ehlena didn't turn back around until she heard the door click shut. Then, with a curse, she sat down on the chair at the desk and wondered again whether she had any business going on the date tonight. Not just because of her father, but because...

Oh, right. There was some good thinking. Why didn't she push away a sweet, normal guy just because she was attracted to a total no-go from another planet where people wore clothes worth more than cars. Perfect.

If she kept it up she might win the Nobel Prize for stupidity, a life goal she was simply panting to accomplish.

Her eyes drifted around as she pep-talked herself back to reality...until they locked on the wastepaper basket. On top of a Coke can, in an unfurled wad, was a cream-colored business card.

REHVENGE, SON OF REMPOON

There was only a number underneath, no address.

She bent down and picked the thing up, smoothing it flat on the desk. As she ran her palm down the face a couple of times, there was no raised pattern marring the surface, just a slight indent. Engraved. Of course.

Ah, Rempoon. She knew that name, and now Rehvenge's next of kin made sense. Madalina, who was listed, was a fallen Chosen who had taken to spiritually counseling others, a well-loved female of worth whom Ehlena had heard of though never met personally. The female had been mated of Rempoon, a male from one of the oldest and most prominent bloodlines. Mother. Father.

So those sable coats were not just flash cash laid down by a nouveau riche climber. Rehvenge was from where Ehlena and her family used to belong, the glymera-the highest level of vampire civilian society, the arbiters of taste, the bastion of civility...and the cruelest enclave of know-it-alls on the planet, capable of making Manhattan muggers look like people you'd rather have in for dinner.

She wished him well among that bunch. God knew she and her family hadn't had a good time with them: Her father had been double-crossed and kicked to the curb, sacrificed so a more powerful branch of the bloodline could survive financially and socially. And that had been just the start of the ruinations.

As she left the exam room, she tossed the card back into the trash and picked the medical chart out of the holder. After checking in with Catya, Ehlena went to registration to fill in for the nurse on break and to enter Havers's brief notes on Rehvenge and the prescriptions given into the system.

No mention of the underlying disease. But maybe it had been treated for so long it had been in only the earlier records.

Havers didn't trust computers and did all his work on paper, but fortunately, Catya had insisted three years ago that they keep an electronic copy of everything-as well as have a team of doggen transfer the medical files of every single current patient into the server in their entirety. And thank the Virgin Scribe. When they'd moved to this new facility after the raids, all they'd had were the e-files on patients.

On impulse, she scrolled up through the most recent part of Rehvenge's record. The dosage for the dopamine had been increasing over the last couple of years. And the antivenin.

She logged out and settled back in the office chair, crossing her arms over her chest and staring hard at the monitor. When the screen saver kicked in, it went all Millennium Falcon light speed, a sprinkle of stars shooting out from deep inside the monitor.

She was going on that damn date, she decided.

"Ehlena?"

She looked up at Catya. "Yes?"

"We have a patient coming in by ambulance. ETA, two minutes. Drug overdose, unknown substance. Patient intubated and bagged. You and I are assisting."

As another staff member appeared to handle check-ins, Ehlena sprang out of the chair and jogged behind Catya down the corridor to the emergency bays. Havers was already there, quickly finishing what looked like a ham sandwich on rye.