Shattered Bonds (continued)

“Thanks,” Wendy replied softly. “I don’t know why it bothers me so much, though.” She sighed, tapping the tablet lightly against the rim of the desk.

“Because you care?” Mark offered gently. “It’s not a sin.”

Wendy gave a weak chuckle and smiled. “It’s not advised,” she said, her smile widening slightly. “That’s what they taught us in med school: ‘Don’t get too attached to your patients.’”

Mark smiled, but still managed to look solemn. “Isn’t that kind of hard in a small colony like this?”

Wendy nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “But the [aliens] . . .”

“Are kind of like pets?” Mark ventured, clearly not joking. “Cute, fuzzy, and very smart?”

“I suppose,” Wendy conceded thoughtfully. “It’s still hard . . .”

Mark’s fingers tightened slightly on her shoulder. “I know.” He stood watching her a moment, just silently offering his support. “I need to head over,” he told her. “You know how Arken can be if I’m late.”

Wendy gave a faint sound like a laugh, her lips forming a small smile. “Yeah.”

Mark’s eyes shaded with concern. “You going to be all right?”

Wendy stared back up at him, wanting to just lose herself again into those emerald-green eyes. “Sure,” she replied. She forced a little more energy into her smile. “I’ve got plenty of work to do to keep me busy.”

His eyes continued to study her face. “Okay,” he said finally, sounding not entirely convinced. “I’ll see you later.”

“Thanks.” Her smile conveyed her appreciation.

Mark’s hand left her shoulder, brushing along her cheek for a moment. She wanted to gasp as his touch made her skin tingle. He did not seem to notice, or, if he had, he betrayed no sign of it.

Wendy watched him go. As he disappeared through the doorway, her hand went to the small, smooth bulge of her belly. She sighed, caressing it absently, and then turned back to her work.

The morning went slowly. She spent most of it working on reports and recordkeeping. Even in a community as small as this one, the amount of administrative overhead was astonishing. She was grateful that, based on the stories her grandfather had told her, a full-blown legal profession had not yet blossomed here. She could only imagine what that would have done to her workload.

Neither of the patients scheduled for that morning showed up for their appointments. One, Sharon Demarco, she did not surprise her. She was notorious for missing appointments, particularly ones that she did not schedule. Wendy had noted that nearly all of the data in Sharon’s medical records was well over a year old. When the woman declined to answer her inquiries, Wendy has simply scheduled an appointment for her. She would have been amazed if the woman had shown up, but at least now she had it on the record that she had tried and could more easily escalate the matter if necessary.

The second missed appointment bothered her more. Lydia has been vague in her request to see her, but Wendy did not find that, in itself, all that surprising. A lot of people were uncomfortable describing their ailments over a public comm channel, or in an environment where they might be overheard. She made a mental note to contact Lydia later. If necessary, Wendy could stop by the place that Lydia shared with—what was his name? Lance? Lincoln? Laurence?—on her way home.

Her stomach gurgled and she felt a small wave of lightheadedness. Glancing at the clock, she saw that she had managed to work through nearly the entire morning without having some kind of snack.

Bad girl, she scolded herself. That’s the last thing you need, to have some patient find you passed out on the floor . . .”

She stretched and started to rise, surprised at how stiff her muscles had become.

Have I really been sitting there that long? She felt it chiefly in her hips and lower back. And you’re just getting started, she considered unhappily. Just wait until months seven and eight . . .

She wandered over to the table near the front doorway. On it sat a basket of fresh fruit, most of it from the community greenhouses. Ostensibly provided there for her patients, Wendy discovered herself going over to it more and more often during the past few weeks.

There are worse choices, she praised herself. She tried not to admit that she really wanted was chocolate.

Picking through the choices, she pulled out a hybrid nectarine, wiping its skin across her tunic. She bit into it before her resolve weakened, pleasantly surprised by its sweetness.

As with many of the fruits now grown in the colony, it was a carefully bred variety. Most of the fruit-bearing trees from Earth had grown, and even blossomed, here, but they had almost uniformly produced bland-tasting crops. While they still maintained most of their nutritional value, they lacked the variety of sweet and tart flavors that made them palatable. In addition to the almost consistently temperature weather, it appeared that the soil here lacked some of the minerals that contributed to the flavor of the fruit.

Wendy finished it quickly, tossing the pit into the recycling container, wondering how bad it would be to have another one. She was saved from her decision by a shrill chime from her comm unit. Tapping the connect control, she heard a modulating haze of static over the open frequency.

“This is Dr. Aimes,” she finally said when no one at the other end spoke. “Who is this?”

What sounded like words crackled through from the other end, but they made no sense. Wendy checked the comm unit’s status display, but it refused to identify the caller, displaying only: “Connected”.

“Hello?” she tried again. “Can you hear me?”

A series of garbled sounds issued the speaker again, punctuated at intervals by what sounded like high-pitched squeals.

“This is Dr. Aimes,” she repeated. “Can you hear me?” She carefully spaced out the words.

She was answered by two distinct bursts of sound and then the connection went silent. Wendy stared at the now-mute speaker, trying to figure out what to do next.

Jason might be able to trace where the signal had come from by checking the network logs, she thought.

It could have just been a glitched call . . .

Wendy could not let it rest there, though. If someone was in trouble and needed her, time could be critical. If it turned out to be a technical malfunction, then she would know that too and would be able to rest easier.

She punched Jason’s number and waited for him to pick up. Her hand, balled into a tight fist, pounded slowly on the table to the cadence of the chimes. She was about to give up when a female voice answered.

“Yeah?”

Wendy breathed a nearly silent groan, relieved that no one was present to see her expression. Jason was one of the most competent technicians the colony had. That he was also handsome, in an easy and casual sort of way, did not factor into her assessment of his skills—much. He was also more than a decade younger than she was. That, in her mind, put her out of any consideration in his thoughts.

What he saw in Dyna, she could never quite figure out. Well, that was not entirely true. Wendy could understand what he saw. Dyna possessed certain female physical attributes—a pair of them, to be exact—in abundance. It was a trait that drew most men like moths to a flame. Wendy understood the primal, instinctive reasons for it, but that did not make it any easier to observe supposedly civilized males reacting that way. While she was not wholly lacking in that area, Wendy had never believed them to be her best features.

On occasion, she had wondered whether androsexual males judged other men by the same criteria. She had never gotten up the nerve to ask. It not been the first thing that she, personally, noticed about men. But then, she observed wryly, gynosexual individuals had an advantage there: it was not necessary for their counterparts to be naked from the waist down in order to gauge their worthiness as a prospective partner.

Wendy took it as an unfortunate sign of his youth that Jason seemed to hold Dyna’s obvious physical features as one of the chief standards by which to judge her suitability.

He’ll learn soon enough . . .

She also made a mental note to make certain that Dyna was current with her monthly contraceptive injections.

“Is Jason there?” She managed to keep her voice calm and even.

“I’m not sure,” Dyna’s noice replied.

Wendy bit at her lower lip, trying hard not to roll her eyes. She heard Dyna shout for Jason over the comm frequency.

How can she not know? Their place is smaller than mine.

“I don’t think so,” Dyna finally announced.

“Do you know where he might be?”

There was a lengthy pause before Dyna answered. Wendy could almost see the furrows in Dyna’s forehead as she thought about it.

You’re being unfair, she scolded herself, although not very sternly. She might not really know.

“He might be at tech center,” Dyna said, sounding not at all certain. “I think someone called him from there this morning.”

That makes sense, Wendy thought. I should have thought of that.

“Thank you, Dyna,” she offered with sweet politeness. “And I’ll see you next week.”

She could imagine the baffled expression on the young woman’s face even as she ended the call.

Wendy felt just a little smug as she sat back in her chair.

Sure, she considered, that was probably a little petty—and probably more than just a little immature. But be damned, it had felt good!

As her belly continued to bulge during the weeks to come, men would still look at her. They just would not be studying her with the same kind of desire. Certainly Greg had not. He had barely touched her since she had told him of her pregnancy.

Okay . . . that’s not entirely true. He has touched me, but hasn’t even hinted at having sex since then.

She knew that men could be, well, a little uncomfortable about it, possessing an unfounded fear that they might disrupt the pregnancy or damage the fetus. Wendy knew that was fiction, and had tried to explain it to Greg. He had listened, seemed to accept her explanation, but had so far done nothing more than kiss her good-night—and without any particular passionate at that.

I might be pregnant, but I’m still a woman—and damned horny.

Mark, on the other hand, still touched her as if nothing about her had changed. She had felt his touch on her shoulder earlier that morning like a jolt of electric current pulsing through her entire body. Although he had said nothing, she was certain that he had felt it. If he had not, she did not want to know it—not yet.

Focusing once again on the more urgent task at hand, she looked up the number for the tech center and tapped it in. There was only a brief delay before she was connected. When a woman’s voice answered, she was afraid that she might have punched Jason’s home number again. She closed her eyes with relief when she realized that the pitch and inflections came from someone other than Dyna.

“This is Dr. Aimes,” Wendy announced herself. “Is Jason there?”

“I believe so, Doctor,” the woman said. “I think he’s still here. Let me check. Just a moment.”

Several moments later, Jason’s familiar voice sounded over the speaker. “Hey, Doc,” he said cheerily. “What’s going on?”

“I need you to check something for me,” she explained. “It might be urgent. Or it might just be my comm system acting up, but I want to be sure.”

“Sure,” Jason agreed. His tone had become much more serious. “What’s the problem?”

Wendy described the strange call she had received earlier that morning.

“Might just be a glitch,” Jason agreed, not sounding entirely convinced. He was silent for a moment; Wendy could almost hear him thinking. “I’ll look into it. Are you going to be at your office?”

“Yeah,” Wendy replied. “I’m seeing some patients and also working on some research.”

“Great,” Jason said, sound pleased. “I’ll call you once I find out anything.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, Doc.”

The speaker went silent as the connection ended. Wendy fidgeted with her tablet. There really was not a lot more that she could do for now. She could call Wesley and ask him to have his security teams check in on some of her older and more at-risk patients. It would take time to visit them all, by which Jason might have an answer that it was simply a technical malfunction. She and Wesley got along reasonably well, but she knew how he would react if given the impression that any of the colonist viewed the few trained security personnel he had as glorified errand boys.

I’m calling him anyway, she decided.

She was interrupted with her hand halfway to the dialing pad by a voice at her front door.