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Their Memoriam: A Reverse Harem Romance (Utopia Inc Book 1) Page 11


  “Hatch…”

  “Nope, I may not be the best guy or even the right guy, but I can work with this.”

  He’d lost me. “What?”

  “I’m something of a problem solver, but I need a problem to solve. You’ve given me one. Which means I’m at your disposal, and I’d like to take you out on a date.”

  My brain hiccupped. “Date?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know our options are limited, but trust me, I can be creative.”

  I’d run away from his anger earlier, then had some wine—maybe too much wine. He came to apologize, then we talked, and he asked me out. What world had I woken up in? “Are you serious?”

  “Tell you what,” he said, dipping his head and this time he pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth. A not-quite kiss that had me curling my toes—and considering it time to give up wine. “You had a long day, and I made it a little bit worse. Take your time and answer me tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow?

  “See you then, sweetheart.” Then he left, and I picked up his still partially full glass and drank it all in one swallow.

  What the hell just happened?

  Day Thirteen

  Finishing the rest of the bottle of wine probably hadn’t been my wisest choice. I’d had two cups of coffee and a small bowl of oatmeal to settle my stomach. As tempting as it was to use an IV bag to hydrate my way out of the well-earned headache, I decided against it. Oz waited for me outside my door. Straightening from where he’d been leaning on the wall, he smiled.

  “Good morning.”

  Not responding to the ease in his smile was impossible. “Hi, I hope you haven’t been waiting here long.”

  “Not long, no, but you’ve been coming out at about the same time each day, and I wanted to catch you before you dove into whatever work you’ve chosen for yourself.”

  I did like my schedule. Hiding in my lab didn’t encourage communication, and I’d failed to work on building bridges with the rest of my team. The lack thereof led to the fight the evening before—then later to the odd invitation for a date from Hatch.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have tuned out the psychology courses when I’d attended university.

  “You were successful in catching me.” I motioned toward the lift. “Did you have something specific to discuss?”

  Falling into step with me, Oz walked half-turned toward me. “First, let me say you look lovely.”

  The compliment surprised me, but I smiled. My limited wardrobe included a couple of brightly colored strapless dresses. I didn’t recall purchasing them, but they were definitely to my taste. The bright blue with floral print would hopefully brighten my mood. “Thank you,” I said as I stepped into the lift. “If I have to spend much more time in that white hell, I might lose my mind.”

  “I hear you,” Oz said with a firm nod. “The sterile atmosphere cannot be conducive to mental health.”

  “Absolutely not. It’s so mono-color it hurts my eyes.” Folding my arms, I fought against the chill in the air. I’d warmed my suite, but everywhere outside the living quarters seemed permanently at 18 degrees Celsius.

  I’d grown up on an island. It was too cold here. If I put on a sweater though, I would have defeated the point of the dress. Maybe I didn’t have answers, but I could still affect my environment.

  “I second that reaction. Maybe one of the others found more items we can add to the suites.” We exited the lift on the floor with my lab and the infirmary. The rec room and kitchen were one level up. Maybe I should have paid attention to what floor he’d selected. “Would you come with me to the infirmary?”

  I wanted to say no. I’d rather go to my lab and lock myself in reviewing my data for the hundredth time. I didn’t, though, because I wasn’t learning what happened when I looked at the DNA. I only stared at the same questions over and over again. “If you’d like. I presume you want to do the MRI and CT Scan?”

  “Among a few other tests.” With a light hand against my back, he guided me to the infirmary doors and they opened automatically. Only a few doors in the facility opened when we approached. Most, like our suites and my lab, required voice or code authorization. The common areas, the garden, and the infirmary, opened upon approach. A pragmatic choice, if there were no restrictions to access.

  “I take it all the pharmaceuticals are secured?” Goosebumps raced over my flesh as we entered the positively icy room. “Computer, warm to 20 degrees centigrade, please.”

  “Does Dr. Morgan concur?” The computer’s request didn’t rankle. The infirmary was his domain.

  “He does, raise the temperature to 20 degrees centigrade.” He crossed the room to where a white coat hung on a hook next to his desk. As he slipped it on over his navy-blue scrubs, the contrast struck me. We hardly needed white lab coats or scrubs to mark ourselves as doctors. They, like the common areas, and choosing to wear an entirely impractical dress to go to my lab in, gave us a semblance of order. “Is there any metal in your dress?”

  He slung a stethoscope around his neck and retrieved a clipboard with paper and a pen. The doctor had a tablet sitting on his desk, and the latest in medical technology all around us, yet he chose something as basic as a pen and paper.

  “No,” I assured him. The dress was all cotton. “I don’t have any metal in my body either.” No pins, screws, or plates—that I knew of.

  “Excellent.” He indicated the bed nearest his desk, and I took a seat on it. “I have the basics for your medical records here, but they are very basic. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I want to make sure I have as full and accurate a picture as I can paint before we do the scans.”

  Crossing one leg over the other, I smoothed the ankle-length skirt. “If you want to show me the medical history you have, this might go faster.”

  “I could, but I’m not in a hurry. Do you have another appointment to get to?” The warmth flaring in his smile chased away the chill in the air. Or maybe the heaters were doing their job.

  “No,” I said, answering his smile with a rueful one of my own. “My plan this morning was to figure out what my plan needed to be.”

  “You mean besides playing Farmer in the Dell with the hotheads?”

  Trying to bite back a smile, I shook my head. “That’s not terribly polite to either Hatch or Dirk.” My gut tightened at the thought of both men. Their fight had been so swift and brutal. Then over with one word from me. Unsettling didn’t begin to cover it.

  “Most people don’t worry about polite unless they are trying to hide their true intentions.” For a doctor with such a warm bedside manner, the suggestion seemed terribly cynical.

  “Why would you need to be impolite to be—honest?” The last word was a guess. Maybe he didn’t mean it that way?

  “Why are we polite?” Answering a question with a question, how very Socratic of him.

  “I am not one of your students, Dr. Morgan. In fact, I completed medical school five years before you did. While we must work together, and I find your manner engaging, please don’t mistake my politeness for permission to be patronizing.”

  Setting aside the clipboard and pen, Oz leaned back in his seat. His tongue peeked between his teeth for the barest moment as he squinted, then he compressed his lips and nodded. “Chastisement accepted. I didn’t intend to try and lecture or give you the impression that I needed to teach you something. Instead, I wanted to ask a question in order to gauge why you place importance on politeness when you clearly have very little use for people in general and are struggling with all of us in specific.”

  I ran my tongue against my teeth, the roughness grounding me as I considered my response. While a non-apology, he had retaliated with a mild rebuke of his own to my reprimand. “Very well, I don’t mind individuals, but I do object to crowds. I am never comfortable with strangers. I am even less comfortable when I have no idea how we all ended up here. If you accept this whole situation without trepidation or reserve, then you are perhaps a more grounded individual than me. As fo
r politeness, it serves no purpose to be rude or contrary in social situations unless the other individual does not respect the same rules of interaction. A framework of civility helps us overcome our reptilian brain.”

  “Duly noted.” Yet he ruined his sober acceptance with a chuckle. “I cannot imagine you ever the subject of your hindbrain.”

  “We all have needs and desires, Dr. Morgan…”

  “Oz.”

  “Dr. Morgan,” I continued. “I simply don’t see the need to advertise or share with just anyone.” If arrogance were a diagnosis, I would be very concerned for Oz. He seemed to have overdosed, though the intelligence in his manner and his eyes also promised he’d earned the right to it.

  “I don’t see anyone forcing you to do anything you don’t want, either.”

  “Unfortunately, my presence here would suggest otherwise.” Sighing, I relaxed my arms and ran my hand over my face. “Dr. Morgan, I came to satisfy our mutual medical curiosity with regard to the health of my brain, not to argue semantics.”

  “Okay,” he said, conceding far too easily. “Maybe you can just indulge me on getting to know you a little better?”

  “Why should I indulge you on anything other than science?” I met his gaze and searched his deep brown eyes for…what? Confirmation? Secrets? “What secrets are you keeping?”

  “I’m a physician, Valda. I took an oath to do no harm and to heal. You’re hurting—you’re a woman who values control and understanding. Currently you have neither, and you’re struggling against the weight of that. I’ll leave the psychology to Andreas, but doctor to doctor? You need to relax a little. Arguing with me let off some steam, didn’t it?”

  The tension along my spine drained away, and I blew out a breath. “Very clever.” He wasn’t wrong, because the wound-up sensation in my gut had alleviated. “You are just as good as your CV promises, Dr. Morgan.”

  When I repeated his formal title and surname again, Oz grinned. “Coming from you, ma’am, I’ll accept that for the compliment it is. Now that we have that bit of business out of the way, let’s see if we can figure out what’s happened to your memory and if there is a physiological cause.”

  “Thank you, Oz.” Accepting his assistance alleviated more pressure. I hadn’t been able to find the answer yet. Maybe with his help, I could. “Let’s tackle your questions.”

  After picking up his clipboard, he nodded. “Let’s start with any childhood illnesses…”

  It took us an hour, but we went over everything I could remember and even a few things I couldn’t. I’d broken my arm when I was twelve, had my tonsils and wisdom teeth removed within a year of each other when I was sixteen. I had my appendix removed the year I graduated medical school, when I was twenty-two. I interned at a hospital in Tokyo, where I’d been exposed to bird flu. As medical histories went, mine wasn’t extensive. “In the interest of full disclosure,” I added as he reviewed his list of questions. “My father was a nuclear physicist who worked around radiation regularly and you know my mother. I was given information…” I wanted to say a few weeks ago, but it was a few years. “A few years ago about a second pandemic, this one having to do with declining population and birthrate associated with the previous pandemic. My research at the time indicated I also suffered from the shedding DNA syndrome, twisted chromosomes which would prevent me from becoming pregnant.”

  “You said you suffered from it, but you don’t anymore?” Smart man, he caught the verbal clues.

  “No. Since waking here, I’ve run three DNA tests on myself, examining all variants. Whatever was wrong has been corrected.” The more I discussed it, the easier it became.

  “I’d like to see the comparisons, if you have them.” When I shook my head, he sighed. “Of course you don’t, because whomever or whatever put us here seems to have been very selective on what they provided.” Rising, he rapped his knuckles against the desk. “Let’s see what answers we can find, shall we?”

  Sliding off the bed, I stood. “More data is always good.”

  With a warm hand on my shoulder, he guided me toward the diagnostic machines in the other room. “It’s going to take about hour to run, and then another hour in the MRI. We’ll do a full body scan, since we’re looking.”

  There went my morning.

  “Pick out some music you’d like to listen to, and when we’re done, why don’t you have lunch with me while we go over the results?”

  “Lunch?”

  “You eat, don’t you?” He smiled as he walked over to the computer and began typing, and that unsettling sensation of the ground shifting beneath my feet hit me all over again. “I like sparring with you, and a good debate requires fortification.”

  “I do eat.”

  “Good,” he grinned. “Go ahead and lie down, and we’ll get you settled.” A few minutes later, he set the cage over my head and rested his hand on my arm. “Comfortable?”

  “Not even a little bit, but I’ll do.” No sense in sugarcoating it with the politeness, as he hadn’t seemed to care for earlier.

  “I’ll be right here,” he reminded me with a squeeze. “You won’t be alone, not even for a moment. Think about our lunch, if it helps.”

  “Think about food?” I tried not to snort. “That will just make me hungry.”

  “Then think about it as a date.” The words hadn’t even sunk in when he pressed the button to slide me into the machine. “First dates can be very distracting.”

  He was out of the room before I could respond, and the air filled with the hum of the machine and some classic rock music.

  What was it with these men and dating?

  Chapter 9

  Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. - Khalil Gibran

  Two hours later, Oz helped me sit up, and I rubbed a hand over my face. “I think I need more coffee.” Water, too.

  “Take a minute,” he advised as he kept a hand on my arm. “You’re cold. Why didn’t you say something? Computer warm the infirmary to 23 degrees centigrade.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “I’m always cold,” I assured him, covering his hand on my arm. He was significantly warmer. “I grew up on an island, remember? I prefer it to be around 29 or warmer.”

  He stripped off his lab coat then pulled it around me. The heavy linen, warm from his body, helped chase away the chill. “Would you prefer to have lunch in your suite then?”

  “Except for the fact it’s still that blinding white? No, we can eat here or in the kitchen or even the common room.” A heaviness pervaded my limbs, but I huddled into the coat. It definitely helped.

  “I’ll grab lunch for us, and we can have it in here.” Food in the infirmary seemed strange, but Oz nodded, then continued as though speaking to himself as well as to me. “I like the idea of having some quiet time, and if we go up to the common area, the others will be there.”

  “Not feeling like another argument?” Self-deprecating or not, I wouldn’t mind seeing Hatch, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for Dirk. His secrets related to me in some way, perhaps even a secret we shared. What would happen if I asked him privately? Would he tell me? What if he didn’t? Or would it be worse if he did?

  All questions I wasn’t certain I wanted answers to, so I would wait.

  “Not even close. I just don’t want to share right now.”

  As I slid off the table, he balanced me until I was steady. “I think I know what I was missing by working alone.”

  “What’s that?” He kept a hand on my lower back as we left the MRI machine.

  “Romantic complications.” Then, because we had enough puzzles, I added, “Hatch asked me for a date this evening.”

  “Did he?” Oz pulled a second chair over to his desk. “How do you take your coffee?”

  Sitting, I slid my arms into the sleeves of the lab coat. The room was warming, but having lain still for so long, I couldn’t shake the cold. “He did, last night after he came to apologize for
losing his temper.” I wasn’t sure what Oz’s opinion was of the disagreement the men had or my revelation—other than he wanted to run some tests—but Hatch’s actions demonstrated a self-awareness and compassion worthy of respect.

  “Good to know.” Leaving me at the desk, he crossed to a small coffeemaker I hadn’t noticed. Yet, he poured me two mugs from a French press. “I prefer to take my time on things, but I thought you might want some coffee after the session in the MRI.”

  “Did you find anything?” His screen was dark, and it would be presumptuous to activate it.

  After doctoring both drinks with two teaspoons of sugar for him, and cream for both, he returned to his desk and set the mugs down, turning the handle of my mug to me. “I need to study them further, but I did notice a small lesion on your hippocampus.” He tugged his chair closer then sat, activating the screen on his computer with one touch.

  The image was the MRI of my brain. Different areas were highlighted, showing the electrical activity. Wrapping my hands on the mug, I studied the image as he touched one of his elegantly tapered finger to the screen. A square formed around a smaller area on the screen, then it enlarged.

  “Memory disorders differ not only in their effect, but also their underlying causes. Structural changes are difficult to notice in the earliest stages, and some cause change in function without structural damage.”

  I appreciated the attention to detail. “So, the presence of a lesion?” Neuroscience was not my area of study.

  “The hippocampus is not a simple structure; it’s more of a circuit. The lesion is here.” He increased the magnification on the screen. Leaving me with a blue blur, faintly marred by a tiny dot of gray. “It’s not large, nor does it cover a significant area.”

  “Is it permanent?” What disorders caused this kind of damage? The memory loss had been disconcerting enough. Now I had brain damage?

  “I don’t know,” Oz said, blowing out a breath. “I know it’s there. Now I do some research on the possible causes. We haven’t made great strides in neuroscience the last fifty years. Research has been exceptionally limited.”