Free The Second Heart by K. K. Eaton Page A

the nurse prepared a syringe. “Is there any chance you could
be pregnant?” she asked.
    “Definitely not,” Meredith responded.
    The nurse scrutinized her face, as if trying
to decide whether Meredith told the truth. After a brief pause, she
said, “I’m going to give you morphine, which will probably affect
you one of two ways.”
    Meredith nodded, waiting for the nurse to
continue.
    “Either way, you’ll feel a lot better. Some
people who take it get very chatty, and others get pretty
nauseated. Let’s hope you’re the chatty type. Just in case you’re
not though, I’m going to give you some anti-nausea medication to go
with it. Do you have any allergies to medication that you know
of?”
    “No,” Meredith said. The nurse’s nametag
said, Eleanor .
    “Okay, then.” Eleanor held the syringe up at
eye level and tapped it before pushing out the air bubbles. A small
amount of the clear liquid squirted out of the syringe and onto the
tile floor. “I’m gonna put this in your thigh, so I need you to
pull the leg of your shorts up. You’ll feel a poke, okay? But
nothing like those stomach cramps. Ready?”
    Meredith did as she was told and tried to
focus on something other than the needle that was being shoved into
her leg. As Eleanor bent over, Meredith caught a glimpse of a
necklace that the nurse was wearing under her shirt. It had an
unusual red stone pendant that was about the size of an acorn. The
stone was a deep scarlet, with even darker veins of burgundy
throughout. The setting was simple, a plain silver chain with a
delicate claw that curled around the polished stone.
    “All done,” Eleanor said gruffly, handing
Meredith a little paper cup of water and a second paper cup with a
pill in it. “Now take this for the nausea, and when you’re ready
you can head back out to the waiting room.”
    “That’s an interesting necklace you have on,”
Meredith said. “What kind of stone is that?”
    Eleanor’s steely gray eyes met Meredith’s
cool blue ones. The nurse regarded her curiously for a moment
before saying, “I wouldn’t know. I found it at a garage sale.”
Eleanor gestured to the cups in Meredith’s hands. “Now, bottoms
up.” With that she gathered up her paperwork and left Meredith
alone in the exam room.
    Meredith downed the nausea medication just as
another cramp came on. She lay down on the exam table until it had
passed, and then she went back out to the waiting room. Rob had
joined Amelia next to the wall, and they both looked at her
expectantly when she walked up to them.
    “They gave me some morphine, but it hasn’t
kicked in yet,” Meredith told them.
    “Well give it twenty minutes. Hopefully by
then you’ll be a new woman and we can figure out what’s going on,”
Rob said.
    As Rob predicted, once the medicine started
working on her, Meredith found the cramps uncomfortable but
manageable. As they sat waiting in the crowded lobby, the sun’s
rays started to peek through the glass double doors at the
entrance. Slowly, seats started to empty as patients were seen, and
Meredith and her parents were able to relocate from the floor to a
small bank of seats in a corner next to a stack of outdated gossip
magazines and a fake ficus tree.
    Meredith wished that she had remembered to
grab her cell phone before leaving the house; playing games would
have helped to pass the time. She couldn’t even call Vi to let her
know where they were, since she didn’t know her friend’s phone
number by heart. She sat quietly, playing with one of the plastic
leaves that had fallen from the ficus tree. She twirled it around
in her fingers and folded it in a number of different ways. It
always sprang back into its original shape.
    Next to her, Amelia thumbed through one of
the magazines. She let out a surprised gasp when she read that a
well-known actress had gotten married, showing the story to
Meredith.
    “And then she got divorced, six months ago,”
Meredith updated her.
    “Oh,” Amelia