Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97134 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97134 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Carter pursed his lips in thought. “Okay, but someone needs to be in there with me if I’m with a patient.”
I stared at him. “I don’t think they’re going to sue you for inappropriate touching, Duchess.”
“It’s not about a lawsuit, Mr. Riggs. It’s about making patients, especially female patients, feel comfortable when they’re at their most vulnerable. Maybe we can get a female volunteer to help. Eriko said he’s sending someone.”
I schlepped all the boxes back out of the storage room and into the bedroom, leaving only enough room on the floor for the “pallet,” which turned out to be literally two wooden pallets covered by the kind of long cushion my grandma used to put on her screened-in porch chaise lounge. I eyed it with distaste.
“Aw. Someone looks like he’s having a grumpy day,” Carter remarked with fake sympathy as he passed me. “What’s wrong, Mr. Riggs? Not enough box carrying for you?”
“Just thinking that this pallet looks like it’s going to hurt your back.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Might consider hitting up the med cabinet before hitting the hay, Duchess.”
Carter didn’t even turn around and look at me. He simply said, “Duchesses don’t sleep on pallets, Mr. Riggs. This is well-known. In fact, I’m pretty sure there would be something in my grandfather’s contract about that. If he knew you were implying otherwise, that is.”
I glanced at the double bed in the room. Honestly, it didn’t look much better. It had a very obvious crater in the middle of it, which was going to wreak havoc on the doctor’s spine tonight. The bottom line was both of us were going to be in hell.
You’ve slept in worse conditions.
I tried not remembering some of the worst. Instead, I buckled down and finished organizing supplies so we were ready for tomorrow.
“You have an awful lot of bandages here,” I noticed. It reminded me of the med kit I’d had as a medic in the Marines.
He looked at me like I’d said something odd. “What do you think people come to medical clinics for?”
“Sickness. Pills,” I said. Shrapnel wounds.
“Sprains, strains, cuts, scrapes, rashes. Sometimes broken bones. Sometimes upper-respiratory infections or gastro complaints. Definitely the mosquito-borne illnesses. Dengue, malaria, chikungunya. And the vaccine-preventable ones like measles, yellow fever, and even diphtheria. Hopefully we can make a dent in the local population’s risk with some of the vaccine supply we brought, but we’ll really have to work hard to convince them to let us vaccinate as many people as we can.”
For some reason, hearing him speak like a doctor settled the agitation in my gut. He sounded intelligent and capable.
However, I really didn’t want to like Dr. Carter Rogers, so I quickly changed the subject. “I didn’t figure you for a gamer,” I said, after noticing him playing a handheld game on the flight to Caracas.
He glanced up from the stack of papers he was organizing at the old metal desk that would double as the reception desk and the “office.” When Eriko had apologized for the inconsistent Wi-Fi and the spotty cell reception, Carter had assured him we’d brought everything in paper anyway. “I learned that lesson the hard way in Eritrea,” he’d said with a wide smile as if anything was easy in a place like Eritrea. Just picturing the clean-cut doctor there made me low-key nervous. He was lucky to have gotten out of there safely, especially if he’d been in the more dangerous areas where programs like this operated.
“I wouldn’t call myself a gamer,” Carter said. “Why do you ask?”
I picked up the bucket of cleaning solution and began wiping down a folding table. “I saw your sparkly purple game thing on the plane. Looked like you were into it.”
He barked out a laugh. “Game thing? That’s a Horn. As in, Horn of Glory? The game everyone in the world is into right now?”
I bit back a sigh. Of course it was. It figured that stupid game had followed me all the way to South America. “I’ve definitely heard of it, but I wouldn’t know what it looks like. I’m not a gamer.”
He snorted. “You don’t have to be a gamer to be into Horn of Glory. Even grandmas play that game. It was created by someone from Licking Thicket. Did you know that? The company runs out of that big tech building on the edge of town, and it’s brought in executives and developers from all over the southeast. The company has had a huge economic impact on the Thicket. I would have thought Champion Security would have heard of them.”
I wasn’t about to explain my company’s history with HOG Corporate, especially after Champ had reminded me never to speak about clients to anyone. I shifted the conversation. “I thought it was like some kind of silly game where you pick apples off a tree and put them in a basket or something.”