Teddy took a seat and tried to focus on the questionnaire. Once she’d filled in her own health history, the Don’t Know box became her go-to. Paternal history of cancer—Don’t Know. Maternal history of diabetes—Don’t Know. Paternal history of high cholesterol—Don’t Know. Maternal history of infertility—probably not, given her existence, but Teddy checked Don’t Know to be on the safe side. The only information Teddy knew about her birth parents was that they’d died in a car accident when she was a few months old.
Then came the interesting stuff: Paternal and maternal history of schizophrenia. Depression. Bipolar disorder. OCD. Autism. Sliding from there into telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and a host of other psychic terms she barely recognized. Don’t Know. Don’t Know. Scary, though. Did it imply that mental disorders and psychic ability were related? She didn’t know, but she hoped not.
A male doctor wearing a long white lab coat ushered her into a private office. He introduced himself as Dr. Eversley. He took her vitals, then gestured for her to sit while he reviewed her questionnaire. “Epilepsy?” he said, his brows arching in surprise. “How’d you wind up with that diagnosis?”
Teddy described the bombardment of sensations that had overwhelmed her as a child and the seizure-like states she’d fall into in response. The epilepsy medication had been the only thing that blunted her hypersensitivity to touch, movement, sights, and sounds.
“Interesting.” He nodded. “And the last time you took your meds?”
Teddy calculated. “A little over forty-eight hours ago.”
“Any seizures since then?”
“No.”
“And how do you feel now?”
“Sort of . . . seasick.” She described her current symptoms, watching as he recorded them on a notepad.
“So your current discomfort is primarily physical? Nothing mental? Do you feel disoriented? Sometimes that’s an effect of stopping medications cold turkey.”
“I matriculated into a school for psychics, so, yeah, I feel disoriented.”
He didn’t smile. “And since then—no flashes of insight, no sudden knowing, no psychic impressions of any kind?”
Teddy thought back to the image of Molly at the computer. Had that been a flash of insight? It had lasted only a second.
“Psychic abilities manifest differently in different people.” He frowned as he flipped through the rest of her questionnaire. “There’s nothing here about your genetic history.”
“I’m adopted.”
“Ah.” He scrawled a note in her file and closed it, tossing it on his desk. “Unfortunate.”
Teddy stiffened. “What’s unfortunate about being raised by two people who want you around?”
He stood and crossed the room. She heard a rustling of paper as he rummaged through a medical supply cabinet. “I meant unfortunate from a research point of view. It’s difficult to categorically establish a genetic link to psychic ability if we don’t have that information.”
“You think my biological parents were psychic?”
“These abilities tend to run in families. It’s possible that your birth parents were psychic. But the abilities can also manifest in individuals who have no history at all.”
She knew how lucky she was. She’d been raised by parents who were kind and almost relentlessly supportive. Though she didn’t really get their sense of humor and they didn’t get hers (her parents didn’t think Monty Python was funny—who doesn’t think Monty Python is funny?), they loved her and she loved them back.
She’d read once—probably in some guidance-counselor-approved leaflet that her parents had brought home—that many adopted children created elaborate explanations about their biological parents. She had imagined them as world adventurers, zoologists, even corporate executives. But the thought of them being psychic—and perhaps having passed that astonishing trait on to her—was thrilling. It didn’t provide any concrete answers, but it was something.
“So that’s what all these tests are for?”
“We’re trying to gather enough information to prove that a gene marker even exists.” Dr. Eversley returned with a metal tray full of empty vials, rubber stoppers, hypodermic needles, and gauze pads.
Teddy eyed the tray. “Since I don’t know my family history—” she began.
“Doesn’t matter. That’s secondary information.” He swabbed a spot in the crook of her arm. “The research that Hollis Whitfield sponsors makes this team a leader in the human genome field.”
He tied the tourniquet and then slid a needle into her vein. Teddy looked up at the ceiling.
Yesterday Clint Corbett had explained that the Whitfield Institute was a public-private partnership. She’d assumed that meant everything was split down the middle. So the scientific research belonged to Whitfield, while the public-service-bound psychics benefited the government. She supposed that made sense, but she couldn’t help wondering why a nonpsychic billionaire would be interested in psychic research?
“So we’re just science experiments?”
“The more we know about the science of psychicness, the more we can help everyone, psychic or not,” Dr. Eversley said.
“Whitfield’s research—is it public? Published in a medical journal or something?”
“Public?” Dr. Eversley chuckled. “The lab is as high-security as you can get. No one goes in or out without clearance. Don’t worry, the information we collect is perfectly secure.” He withdrew the needle and stoppered the vial, then labeled it, placed it in a numbered slot in a refrigerated cabinet, and locked its door.
“That’s it,” he said, applying a small bandage to her arm. “You’re free to go.”
Teddy stood, but Dr. Eversley stopped her at the door. “One more thing. I’m recommending that you postpone your psychic-ability exam until tomorrow. That will give the epilepsy meds another twenty-four hours to completely vacate your system.”
Teddy’s head felt like it was filled with concrete—she didn’t feel like she could pass an IQ test, let alone a psychic-ability exam. She could have hugged him.
* * *
Outside, Teddy walked across a large campus green, back toward the central courtyard. The grass was cut so she could see the straight lines left by the mower, razor-sharp. Meditation Lawn, a sign read, Please Remove Shoes.
Teddy had tried meditating once before, after a humiliating loss at the poker table. It had been after she had been kicked out of the MGM but before she had
