Chapter 100: THE CLINIC
KEISHA’S POV
Taking coffee didn’t help like I expected.
I stood at the break room counter with the cup in both hands, drank it and waited for something to shift but nothing shifted.
My eyes were heavy and my head felt like it was full of something dense and I had been staring at the same log on my screen for twenty minutes without actually reading it.
I went back to my desk, sat down, opened the log and then closed it again.
"You look terrible." Evelyn said from across the room.
"Thank you." I didn’t look up.
"I mean it in a concerned way." She said.
"I know." I finally turned to her for a second.
I reached into my bag and found the small pill packet I had been carrying for two weeks — iron supplements from Dr. Fenn’s prenatal folder, disguised in a plain packet that didn’t say anything identifying on the outside — and took two with the last of my coffee and told myself to focus.
The log was a cross reference between two inter-pack correspondence threads from last month. It was straightforward. I had done this exact type of work a hundred times. All I had to do was read it.
I read the first line three times before Nadia appeared at my shoulder. "Have you eaten today?"
"This morning." I nodded.
"What did you eat?" She asked, coming around my table.
"Things." I said.
"Keisha." She rolled her eyes.
"I’m fine." I said. "Go back to your desk."
She looked at me for a moment with those eyes and then went back to her desk and I turned back to the screen.
I stood up to get more water and the room tilted.
Not too much though. Just shifted slightly, the way things shifted when the ground wasn’t entirely where you expected it to be.
I put my hand on the desk and waited for it to right itself but it didn’t right itself fast enough and then the floor was coming up and someone was saying Keisha very loudly and then I was on the floor with my head spinning.
Oh.
Shit.
Did I just pass out?
The ceiling of the communications office looked exactly like you would expect a ceiling to look. Fluorescent light. Slightly yellowed tile. A small crack in the corner near the window that I had never noticed from the angle of my desk.
Sera was over me. Then Evelyn. Then Nadia’s face blocking out the ceiling entirely, her expression doing several things at once. "Keisha." Her voice was filled with fear and concern. "Hey. Hey, look at me."
"I’m fine." I groaned.
"You’re on the floor." She hissed.
"I’m aware." I took a deep breath, trying to get myself conscious fully.
"Don’t move." She said. "Stay there."
"Nadia I’m—"
"Stay there." She said more firmly.
I stayed there.
They got me into a car within ten minutes. I spent the drive telling them I was fine and that I wanted to go home and that a clinic was completely unnecessary but nobody listened to a single word I said which was genuinely offensive.
"I didn’t even fully lose consciousness." I muttered.
"You were on the floor." Nadia dead panned from beside me in the back seat.
"For a moment." I looked out the window.
"A moment is enough to be concerning." She said.
"I’m pregnant." I almost said. The word was right there, sitting in my mouth fully formed. I pressed my lips together and looked out the window instead.
The clinic came into view.
We pulled up and Nadia was out before the car fully stopped and I was helped out and walked inside and that was when I looked up and saw Callum.
Oh fuck.
He was standing in the corridor near the reception desk and he looked up when we came in and his eyes went directly to me and I saw confusion and panic flash across his expression.
"What happened?" He asked, looking at me. Not Nadia. Me.
"She collapsed at the office." Nadia said. "She’s been looking off all day and she—"
"I’m fine." I immediately said. "I fainted. It happens."
"It doesn’t just happen." Callum cut me off sternly.
"Are you hurt?" Dane appeared from further down the corridor and came toward us, his steps quick.
You have to be kidding me. Why were they both here?
"I’m not hurt." I said. "I stood up too fast. My blood pressure dropped. It’s completely—"
"Will you please?" Nadia said. "Just let them check you. Five minutes."
I looked at both men standing in the clinic corridor looking at me like I had done something to them personally by fainting and felt the strange embarrassing warmth of being worried about and also felt terrified because Dr. Fenn was somewhere in this building and she knew things and I needed to get to her before anyone else did.
"Fine." I nodded. "Five minutes."
They took me to a room and Dr. Fenn came in and she looked at me while the nurse was taking my blood pressure.
I caught her eye and shook my head very slightly.
She looked at my face for a moment. Then at the door where Callum and Dane were both visible through the glass standing in the corridor with Nadia talking to them.
She gave me the smallest nod.
The blood pressure came back low. Not dangerously low to be concerning but low enough to explain the fainting. Dr. Fenn asked me questions about sleep and eating and stress and I answered all of them partially truthfully while she made notes and asked the nurse to get me water and juice before she then looked at me again.
"Everything looks fine." She said to the room,loudly enough to carry through the glass. "Low blood pressure, likely from stress and not eating adequately. Rest and fluids."
The door opened.
Callum came in without knocking which was very him. "Two days." He suddenly said.
I looked at him. "What?"
"Rest." He said. "Two days."
"I have work—"
"Two days." He said again. "I’ll inform the supervisor."
"You can’t just—" I started.
"Keisha." He said quietly.
I stopped and looked at him. At Dane in the doorway behind him. At Nadia hovering behind Dane with her arms folded looking at me with the expression that said she agreed with every word Callum had just said.
"Fine." I agreed for the second time today.
Fine, I would stay home and take care of myself.