Page 85 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

No, but I didn't see Janice the way I pictured myself. I had been—what? Debased. Shamed. Humiliated.

The rush came so fast I staggered. No. Not that.

I don't know how long I stood there with my hand over my own mouth like a woman in a film.

"Morning, Dr. Bonds." I startled as if I'd been deep in thought about a diagnosis.

"Morning, Kelly."

My voice sounded odd to me, but Kelly didn't seem to notice.

I made it to the staff bathroom and looked in the mirror, which was a mistake. No tears. Just a face I couldn't place—flushed high on the cheeks, mouth slack, pupils blown.

Who is that? What kind of woman wants…

I looked away, cursing my clit for throbbing in the middle of my despair.

One more. One more and then I can deal with this.

Manuel had the new consult, and he should have been done. I let myself into the exam room quietly, meaning to stand at the back and listen. The whole room turned to look at me, so I stepped forward instead.

"Good morning. I'm Dr. Lacey Bonds." I put my hand out to the boy on the table. Fifteen, long-limbed, doing his best to look bored. "You must be Antony."

"Hi. Yeah, I go by Tony."

"Well, Tony, I'll let Manuel bring me up to speed."

"Tony's fifteen, four episodes of palpitations now," Manuel said. "He describes it as his heart going crazy, like it's trying to jump out of his chest. They last around thirty minutes. No syncope, a little lightheaded. He's got an Apple Watch—rate spiked to two hundred—so the parents took him in, and the ER captured a regular narrow-complex tachycardia. Imaging shows a structurally normal heart."

Good presentation. Clean, in order, nothing padded.

I felt like some kind of pervert sitting behind the eyes of a real doctor. Stop it.

I handed him the EKG I'd kept back before he took the history. "Diagnosis?"

"SVT."

"Good, but what's the mechanism?"

And Manuel stopped.

He looked at the tracing longer than he needed to. Tony's mother watched him too. Then she looked at Tony's father. Then Tony, who had been performing boredom for ten minutes, sat up half an inch.

If I had been together, I would have stepped in much faster. My mind was circling something else instead. Finally the alarm went off in my mind. I cleared my throat.

"There are two ways a heart does this," I said. "They look identical on an Apple Watch, but they don't look identical here." I turned the tracing so the parents could see it, and put my finger on the upstroke. "This tells us which one Tony has, and it's the one we can fix permanently."

Somebody behind me let out a breath they'd been sitting on.

Tony's mother said, "Fix it how?" and I heard the whole shape of her year change in three words. I explained it—the accessory pathway, the choices, when to go back to the ER, the referral for ablation. Reassurance. Everything would be okay.

I wanted to be them, wanted someone to tell me everything would be okay.

A light clicked, way back. Something…

My phone buzzed. Dammit!

Janice again.