Page 401 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

"Hell yeah I was. Well. Heck yeah. Don't tell your mom I said the other thing."

The kid's mother is sitting three chairs away, watching with relief as Whiskey keeps him occupied. She glances at me, and her eyes catch on my face for a moment too long before she looks away.

Maybe wondering if I'm what her son might look like in twenty years if the surgeries don't go well and the grafts don't take.

The block tower collapses loudly enough to make several waiting patients look up. Whiskey cries out in anguish like his entire world just ended, and the kid shrieks with laughter, kicking the rubble across the carpet.

"AGAIN!" the kid demands.

"Okay, okay, we gotta go taller this time. We're buildin' superhero headquarters here."

"Belmont?" a staff member calls from the doorway.

Ivy stands immediately, pulling on my hand. I tower over her by two feet, but somehow she's the one leading me. She bumps her hip against my thigh as we walk toward the hall.

"We've got this," she whispers to me.

Whiskey looks up from his block tower and gives me a thumbs-up with both hands, grinning.

It's a different exam room today. This one just has a cot and a few stools. No medical tray covered in syringes and other torture implements. I lower myself onto the edge of the cot and Ivy scoots her rolling stool right up against my leg.

Dr. Jackson enters a few minutes later.

"Wraith." She smiles over her glasses. Hot pink today, matching her shoes as always. "Good to see you. And good to see you, Ivy."

"Hi, Doctor," Ivy says.

She pulls up her stool and sets the clipboard on the counter. "How are we feeling? Scale of one to ten, pain at rest."

I hold up two fingers.

Her eyebrows lift. She writes it down. "And with the hood up like this? When the fabric brushes your scars?"

Three fingers.

"That's significantly better than last time. How are you managing without masks?"

I hesitate.

In some ways, even most ways, it's been torture.

But with Ivy by my side…

I guess I've been doing okay, I sign.

I can see Ivy's smile even without looking directly at her.

My doctor nods, satisfied, and leans forward to peer at the exposed lower half of my face. "May I?"

I nod.

Always hate this, but I feel less miserably fucking panicked about it than usual as she presses along the nerves behind my ears, pausing lightly every few touches. I brace for the lightning strike of pain that usually follows.

There's a low ache of soreness, but that's all.

"Hmm." She tilts my chin to the left. Then right. Presses along the hinge of my jaw, where it used to make my vision white out. "Any episodes since the last injections?"

I shake my head.