Page 12 of Before the Bond
Jake chuckled. “The doctors said my condition was… weird. There aren’t exactly any big lab facilities around here. But they think it’s, uh… what do you call it? Auto… imminent?”
“Autoimmune?”
“That’s the word!”
That tracked. Things like lupus didn’t always look the same from patient to patient.
I didn’t get time to discuss it further.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Don’t come in!” Jake said jokingly.
The door opened anyway.
A man stepped through it, a few years older than Jake, dark-haired, with sharper, sterner features than he did. His posture felt distinctly different from Jake, as well. Where Jake wore his ease in every line of his body, that man stood straight, as if he had to be alert for anything and everything.
His eyes landed on me and assessed without softening.
"Donovan," Jake said, with the tone of someone who had been expecting exactly this. "This is Olivia. She's going to sort me out. Olivia, this is my older brother."
Donovan looked at me. "You're the nurse."
"That I am,” I said.
"Good."
Not one for words, I thought.
Donovan crossed his arms and hovered over my chair. He looked at the chart I was holding and murmured.
“Pain level?”
“Four,” Jake answered for me. “Maybe a five when I breathe wrong."
Donovan's jaw moved. His eyes came back to me. "The records we sent — did they cover what you need?"
I set down my pen. "They were sparse."
"They were what they were."
"They were incomplete." I kept my voice level. This wasn’t my first difficult family.
“For a hereditary condition approaching a critical phase, three pages isn’t enough. I can work with what I have, but I want us to be clear that I'm working with gaps."
Donovan’s eyes narrowed. The line of his jaw tightened.
I didn’t back away. However, I could see Jake tense at the periphery of my vision.
"You'll have what you need whenyou need it,” Donovan said.
"That's not reassuring," I said.
Jake made a sound that he quickly redirected into a cough.
"It wasn't meant to be reassuring." Donovan uncrossed his arms. "You're here for Jake. Keep your focus there and we won't have any issues."
He left without waiting for a response. The door closed behind him with a quiet, final click.
