“What did you do to my magic?”
The doctor took a deep breath through her nose, lifted her gaze to meet the drow halfling’s glowing golden eyes, and raised an eyebrow.
To be sure she made her point, Cheyenne snarled at the woman and jerked on the chains, then she dropped her head back onto the thin pillow with a sigh and closed her eyes. I’m not very intimidating without firepower. Breathe. Think of the deer.
After the few days she’d spent working on slipping in and out of her drow form, Cheyenne figured she had a pretty good handle on it. The memory she’d been using to calm herself and resettle into what made her look human worked like a charm. The heat withered out of her shoulders, neck, and back, and her purple-gray skin and white hair faded. Now she was all pale skin and loose pitch-black curls.
“So.” Cheyenne turned her head on the pillow to gaze at the doctor’s stoic, unchanging expression. “Do I at least get my one phone call?”
Someone knocked on the door, and the doctor turned halfway around. “Enter.”
An orderly in white scrubs stepped into the room pushing a stainless-steel cart. The halfling stared at the man. Looks like someone who works in a mental institution.
Without a word, the man left the tray behind the doctor and turned around to leave. He didn’t acknowledge Cheyenne’s presence in any way, and she snorted. “Yeah, nice talking to you too.”
The door closed behind him, and she eyed the cart. “So, Doc. I put it away. I believe this is the part where you hold up your end of the deal?”
The halfling wiggled the chains for effect. She’d given up fighting until she found out what was happening. And as long as that tray doesn’t have a bunch of torture implements or some kinda drug that’s gonna turn me into a zombie.
With a sigh of either irritation or business-as-usual—Cheyenne couldn’t tell with this one—the doctor pushed buttons on the monitors, read something on the IV bag dripping into the tube taped to the back of the halfling’s hand, and put the tablet on top of the closest monitor. She fished into the pocket on her white lab coat and pulled out two keys attached to a metal ring.
She unlocked the manacles around Cheyenne’s right wrist, performing the action with as much empathy and consideration as she’d give a locked cabinet full of controlled substances. The first manacle popped off the halfling’s wrist with a dull click, and a ribbon of cold, tingling energy flared up Cheyenne’s arm before fading.
What kind of cuffs are those?
Cheyenne watched the doctor step around the hospital bed to unlock the other manacle, and the minute that cold tingle faded, the halfling pushed away from the mattress. The act of sitting up made her head spin, but she fought it and kept her gaze on the doctor’s precise movements.
“Thank you.” She rubbed her sore wrists, chaffed in record time from her flailing, then she stopped herself and put her hands in her lap. “I’d tell you I appreciate it, but I’m guessing there aren’t many people who enjoy being chained up.”
The doctor grabbed the handle of the steel cart and wheeled the thing closer to the bed. She removed a metal lid that looked like a steam pan turned upside down and stuck it on the cart’s bottom shelf.
Cheyenne almost laughed. Well, I guess it’s not traditional torture implements.
On the cart was a plastic cafeteria tray, which held a rectangular plastic plate with square sections of various sizes: mashed potatoes, mashed peas, something that looked like pork that had been chewed up and spit back out, and a wobbling mass of radiation-green Jell-O. Cheyenne reached for the tall plastic cup of what she hoped was water. She wasn’t disappointed.
While she drained half the cup in two gulps, the doctor grabbed the tablet off the monitor and returned to its obviously important data.
“So.” Cheyenne swallowed, more grateful for the cooling relief of water in her parched throat than she expected. “You want me to keep calling you ‘Doc,’ or do you go by something else?”
Nothing.
“Fair enough. How about telling me why I’m here? Or, more specifically, why you had me chained to this bed?”
The woman stepped back and raised her glasses on the bridge of her nose—not by pushing up the nosepiece, but by using the edges of the frames to push them into place.
She’s taking all this pretty seriously.
“You know,” Cheyenne raised her eyebrows, “I’d settle for the time if you have it on that little tablet of yours. It shows the time, right?”
Without looking up from her device, the doctor pointed at the cart beside the bed. “Eat.”
The halfling released a dry huff. “Skipped the section on bedside manner in med school, huh?”
The reply Cheyenne got was a split-second of the doctor’s lips pursing before the woman turned and headed for the exit. It swung open, and the doctor disappeared into whatever lay beyond.
“Okay. Nice talk.” Cheyenne let herself rub her wrists a little, which weren’t too scraped but still stung. She reached for the plastic tray and winced. “What?”
That was when she noticed the paper-thin hospital gown covering her body instead of the baggy black pants with chains and the fishnet shirt she’d been wearing. “I better get those back.”
She had to lean in the opposite direction to tug the edge of the hospital gown—open at the back and tied together with thin strings below the base of her spine—out from under her right thigh. She lifted it to see a thick, square patch of white gauze stuck to her hip with medical tape. An experimental tap on the loose bandage made her grit her teeth. Right. I got shot. Or something.
Cheyenne peeled the tape away and lowered the top half of the gauze for a better look. Sure enough, the raw, red patch of skin was punctuated by twisted, puckered raised flesh the size and
