The nurse eyed both Imogene and her girlfriend, whose name she couldn’t place, and her instinct, honed by decades of listening to teenagers lie, told her that Imogene was telling the truth. Her statement corroborated what she already knew of the boy; he was a good student, a poor athlete, but not a drinker or someone who took drugs. She took off her eyeglasses, held together by a fake-crystal beaded chain that she wore around her neck, and laid them on her formidable breasts. She looked matronly and could be empathetic when necessary, but most often she knew the students preferred she be honest. “He doesn’t have any broken bones or even any bruises, but it looks like he tripped on his way home and possibly suffered a concussion.”
“That’s not that serious, right?” Imogene asked.
“As long as he wakes up, it shouldn’t be,” Mrs. Radcliff said as unemotionally as she could.
Ronan didn’t contradict the false diagnosis, but he knew better. He knew that as long as Nakano hadn’t taken too much blood from Penry, he would be fine. But if Nakano took too much, past the point a human body needed to survive, no amount of science or medicine was going to keep Penry alive. Ronan just couldn’t be sure how far Nakano went, how much of Penry’s blood now flowed through Nakano’s body. Penry was still breathing when he found him, which was a promising sign, but Ronan was concerned that he was still unconscious. Imogene was more than concerned, she was quite scared. “Why won’t he wake up?”
Mrs. Radcliff couldn’t help but smile at the girl. Her personal experience with young love was a distant memory, but thanks to the students, she was reminded of it constantly. “Dr. MacCleery will be able to explain everything once he’s done examining him.”
Her girlfriend gave her hand a gentle squeeze and said softly, “Give the doctor a chance to do his thing.”
Ronan almost laughed; there was nothing for the doctor to do. He himself had healed Penry’s external wounds, but whatever damage Nakano did to Penry internally was already done. It was up to Penry now. Not having the same insight, Mrs. Radcliff offered some hope. “He’s probably a little anemic, that’s all.”
The rest of her words were lost among the onslaught of questions that arose when Lochlan MacCleery came out of the examining room. Unfazed, he did what he always did when faced with a group of concerned and very loud students; he took off his thick glasses, rubbed them with his shirttail, which was always untucked, put his glasses back on, and spoke at a volume louder than the crowd’s. “So who found the boy?”
Michael raised his hand. “I did.”
He must be the American, MacCleery thought. “You’re not in class, son.”
“Sorry.”
Ronan cleared his throat. “Actually, we found him together.”
Should I be surprised? Lochlan ran a hand through his thick bush of grayish-brown hair and massaged his scalp a few times the way he always did when he was searching for the right thing to say. Seven years as resident doctor and he still loved his cushy job, he loved living out here in Eden’s countryside, he even loved dealing with the students on a daily basis. He never had kids of his own; his wife died before they even contemplated trying, so he always figured this was God’s way of making things up to him. Until he met Ronan.
Something wasn’t right with the boy. He had no idea what; maybe it was because he just looked too darned perfect. Lochlan had never been good-looking, so he readily admitted that he could simply be feeling some latent jealousy; he wasn’t above such pettiness. However, he couldn’t shake his suspicions. The way Ronan was looking at him right now, head cocked to the side, voice a bit too steady, yes, he was hiding something, but what? “I’ve run some initial tests and I haven’t found anything to make me concerned. He’s probably anemic and fainted.”
“That’s what I told them,” Mrs. Radcliff announced proudly.
“Did you notice anything unusual when you found him, Ronan?” the doctor asked.
He suspects; he always has. He has no idea what’s behind his suspicions, but he can tell there’s something different about me. Ronan shrugged his shoulders casually. “No. We were just walking and we saw him lying on the ground.”
“Facedown,” Michael interjected, feeling the need to be helpful. “We turned him over. I hope that was okay?”
“Perfectly fine, son, perfectly fine,” the doctor said. “Has anyone informed Hawksbry?”
“I called his office, but his secretary told me he hadn’t come in yet,” Mrs. Radcliff explained.
MacCleery looked at his watch and frowned. “He must’ve slept in for the first time since I’ve known him.”
Imogene couldn’t take it anymore. Why were they all just jabbering when her boyfriend was lying in there dying, or worse, in excruciating pain? “Nothing’s perfectly fine! It won’t be perfectly fine until Penry opens his eyes and wakes up.”
Lochlan suppressed a laugh. This girl was definitely going to give Penry major headaches. A great deal of amusement as well, but headaches nonetheless. “Are you Imogene?”
“Yes.”
“Penry’s been asking about you.”
Stunned, Imogene fought the impulse to thwack the doctor across the side of the head. “He’s talking?! Why didn’t you say so?!”
“Because it’s quite early, lass, and my bedside manner doesn’t click in until I’ve had my morning coffee,” the doctor said wearily, his Scottish brogue deliberately more pronounced. “Would you like to see him?”
Wiping away a few tears, Imogene told the doctor that, yes, she would definitely like to see Penry. “Wait for me,” she told her girlfriend before leaving.
“Of course.”
The doctor gave Penry’s chart to Mrs. Radcliff and told her that he should be fine, but he wanted him to spend the morning resting before he resumed classes. Just before he went in search of his morning coffee, he turned to Ronan. “If you remember anything you think might be important, why don’t you stop by.”
Michael answered for both of them. “Of course, sir, definitely.”
“I should check in on the lovebirds; don’t want Penry getting overexcited,” Mrs. Radcliff said, exiting the room and leaving Ronan and Michael alone with Imogene’s friend.
“I’m Phaedra.”
“Hi, I’m Michael and this is Ronan.”
Ronan smiled and nodded his head. “You go to St. Anne’s?”
“Yes, just transferred from New York.”
A fellow American. Michael surprised himself by getting excited. He wasn’t homesick for Weeping Water, but here, surrounded by so many accents and students of obvious non-American descent, it was nice to meet someone from the same part of the world. Not that Nebraska and New York had much in common, but they were still on the same continent. “Me too. Well, I’m from Nebraska.”
“Never heard of it,” Phaedra said with a laugh. “Actually that’s not that far from the truth. My parents are terrible urban snobs and would be mortified to know that they spent all this money to send me to an exclusive boarding school just so I could hobnob with a country bumpkin. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
Michael smiled. “Well, you can rest easy; my father is from London and rather sophisticated, so you can say I’m only half country bumpkin.”
Interesting, Ronan thought; for the first time since he found Penry, he felt calm. Nakano’s foolish actions, Dr. MacCleery’s pointed comments, the concern he felt about Michael, all of that dissipated when he looked at this girl. Her eyes were extraordinary. Gray-blue, cold-looking like an icicle, but somehow they were warm and inviting. However, she wasn’t telling the whole truth. Ronan could sense that. “You’re not a native New Yorker, are you?”
Phaedra turned to look at Ronan, her dark brown hair, curly and more free-flowing than unkempt, swayed a bit, but her eyes remained clear, precise. “You got me. I was actually born in Mykonos while my parents were attending my grandmother’s funeral. I’m named after her. Phaedra Antonides.”
“I thought I detected a slight accent,” Ronan said.
Her brown eyebrows, not nearly as perfectly plucked as Brania’s, rose about an inch. “I’m impressed. No one usually picks up on that.”
No humans anyway, Ronan thought. “I have a really good ear.”
Regardless of where she was from, Michael liked her too. She didn’t calm him as she did Ronan, but he felt that she was a breath of fresh air. “Well, Phaedra Antonides, I’m Michael Howard and this is Ronan Glynn-Rowley.
