Miracle - Chapter 38: Chapter 38

Consciousness returned, accompanied by the sound of my sister in a full blown rage.
"Fuck you, you motherfucking shit-eating cocksucker prick! Connor volunteered to die for you! He got laser flogged for you, and you do this to him?! I'm gonna cut your dick off and chop it into little pieces and stuff every last one of them up your filthy pedo ass!"
"Ms. Hayes, remain in the hall." The nurse was disproportionately calm, as if she was used to dealing with girls in hysterics. "He's in here, Mekas."
Shit. What do I do?! Should I try telling Ezra to go away? That wasn't likely to work a second time. But how was I going to face him like this? He'd be mad when he found out I'd hidden my illness. More importantly, I didn't have the strength to look him in the eyes right now.
I pretended I was still unconscious.
"You're sure it's rectal bleeding, nurse?" Ezra's voice was so low that he was hard to hear.
"Yes, I did the external exam you requested. Redness and irritation in the area, but no visible lacerations. The blood loss is significant, as you can see from his clothing. Gave the students quite a fright."
"Fever, too?"
"Yes, a low-grade one. Blood oxygenation is low, heart rate elevated. Maybe an infection?"
His big hand slid over mine, and he took a sharp breath. "He's in pain. Do you have Vicodin?"
"Sure, one moment."
"Connor."
Ah, crap. He was in my head, so he knew I was awake.
"Connor, I know you don't want to talk to me right now. But you have to tell me..." his voice cut out a little, "who did this."
I opened my eyes, and the sight of his beautiful face just inches from mine dissolved what little resolve I had. "Nobody did anything."
He moved closer. His irises were flickering strangely, backlit with dark flames of fury, even though his expression was carefully controlled.
"Whoever it was," each word was deadly as a bullet, "he won't touch you again. Was it the Swan? One of his clients? Someone at the institute? Who?"
"Nobody," I repeated, a little frustrated. "I got sick."
"Connor, you're bleeding. You have an infection. If someone— If you were..." He closed his eyes, wrapping my hand between his, and leaned in so his forehead was touching my knuckles. "I have to know."
Oh God, he thinks somebody raped me.
And fuck, so does everyone else! No wonder Maddy's losing her shit.
Resentment swept through me. Ezra had been fine with sending me to the Swan two days ago. Sure, I'd been okay at his house, but it easily could have gone sideways. Yet Ezra was upset about it now?
I pulled away. "I wasn't raped, goddammit! I don't know what's happening, but it's not that!" To my dismay, tears started swimming across my vision.
"Vicodin," said the nurse, nudging Ezra's shoulder. He levitated me from the table, which made me realize I was dressed in a hospital gown. Awkwardly breezy in the back. The nurse must have taken my clothes off while I was conked out.
I was turned upright, but Ezra didn't set me down. He kept his touch steady and light on my arm, kept my feet hovering above the floor, while putting the medicine in my hand.
I fisted the pills, glaring.
"Please take them." He was giving me a look that said he knew how much I was hurting. But no amount of Vicodin was going to fix the real pain, the stuff he couldn't feel just by borrowing my senses.
When the nurse handed me a cup of water, I swallowed the meds sullenly. Ezra scooped up my backpack from the floor and swept the blood-spotted towel from the exam table, wrapping it around my waist and floating me into his arms at the same time.
"Thank you, nurse." He started carrying me toward the exit.
"Where are we going?"
"The Institute."
The second he opened the infirmary door Maddy flew at us, screaming her head off. He passed by her, grim-faced, but she followed us down the hall spewing obscenities that would have put a locker room of construction workers to shame. At the top of the stairs our Chemistry teacher grabbed her, and she started fighting. She was going to hurt someone.
I thumped Ezra's chest with my palm, in spite of the pain. "Ezra, stop, let me talk to her."
His jaw clenched, but he turned us around. Maddy was bright red, a sheen of rage-sweat making her short blond hair stick to her face. She clawed at the arms of her teachers—there were two of them trying to hold her now—and shrieked my name.
"Maddy, Ezra didn't do this, okay? It's not what you think."
"Bullshit!"
"I swear it's the truth. He's not going to hurt me." Not like that, anyway.
"We have to go," Ezra said quietly.
"Even if it wasn't you, it's still your fault," Maddy snarled. "You're supposed to be taking care of Connor, what the hell are you doing?! This is your fault!"
"I know."
Maddy stared at him with abject loathing. I tried to give her a reassuring smile as he carried me off, down the stairs. It might have been more of a grimace, though, because damn did I hurt.
As soon as he set foot outside the building, he levitated. The gravel path went into a blur as he sped us to his motorcycle outside the gates. He dropped onto it, still holding me to his chest, and the entire bike went up in the air. In less than sixty seconds, we were touching down in the Elioud Biogenesis parking lot.
I was kind of breathless.
And scared. He'd never moved us that fast before. Was I in that bad of shape?
"What are we doing here?"
"Our equipment is better than the school's. I'm going to find out the truth." We were levitating into the building now, and over to the elevators.
"I told you the truth. Why won't you listen to me?"
He didn't answer. We rode the elevator to the second floor, the one where the physicians had their exam rooms and offices. Dr. Sarias was waiting for us.
"Room four," he said, and that's where we went. It looked a lot like the one where he'd given me that first physical. Cabinets, sink, and paper-covered exam table... with stirrups.
Ezra set me down on the table and reached for my ankles. When I realized what he intended, I kicked as hard as I could. "No! Don't, I don't want you to!"
"Connor, we have to examine you if we're going to treat you." He moved my feet into the stirrups and I kicked again, trying to keep my legs together.
"Stop it! No!"
"We can always sedate you," Dr. Sarias huffed with impatience. "Either way, it's going to happen."
"I don't want him to do it!" I yelled in desperation, kicking some more as I tried to pull out of Ezra's grasp. The thought of Ezra getting between my legs and looking at my bloodied private parts was horrible. He'd already exiled me for kissing him, and for letting him touch me while he slept. If he had to get nose-level with my dirty junk he'd probably never speak to me again.
Ezra's head came up, and he stopped trying to separate my feet. "Connor..."
"Let Dr. Sarias do it. Just him, I don't want you here." If I passed gas or pooped in Dr. Sarias' face, it didn't matter. But if it was Ezra, I'd die of humiliation.
He held my eyes, and I held my breath. Please, please go away.
He let go and backed up, glancing between Dr. Sarias and me. "Only if you wear the watch."
"What's the matter, Ez, don't trust me?"
Ezra responded to his friend's jibe with a glare that raised goosebumps on my arms.
"Fine," I said quickly. My knees were still squeezed together. "Put it on me and get out."
He found the watch in my backpack and strapped it to my wrist with gentle fingers, in spite of the hard set of his jaw. "Bo...?"
I suspected they were communicating silently, which was confirmed when Dr. Sarias nodded.
"You'll be the first to know, buddy."
Ezra left. The door thunked closed behind him, and a weight lifted from my chest.
Dr. Sarias smirked. "Guess he isn't the favorite anymore, huh? Lucky me." He clicked on a lamp, settled on the stool in front of my legs, rolled up his sleeves and tapped my calf. "Open up, kid, let's see what we've got."
"I wasn't raped," I said. It was a conscious effort to relax my muscles enough to put my feet in the stirrups.
"Yeah, well, Ez still wants a rape kit done. He's going to find out who you got busy with, so you ought to tell him yourself if you don't want your lover to lose his balls. Not to mention his head."
"I didn't sleep with anybody! I got sick at the Swan's house. My stomach hurt and I couldn't stop shitting for like a whole day, but that was all."
There were weird tickling sensations going on in my nether regions. "Well, sex isn't the only thing that can cause rectal bleeding. Maybe you have cancer."
If he was joking, it wasn't funny.
"Huh," he said.
"What?"
"There's quite a bit of clotting. Usually means the blood's been pooled inside for a while." All of a sudden, the tickling turned into the feeling of something sliding inside me. It wasn't painful, but it took me by surprise. "Agh! What's that?"
"Swab," Dr. Sarias said, holding up a Q-tip stained with blood. "Gonna do two more, then we're doing saliva and cheek cell samples."
But before he did that, he ran a metal comb roughly through my pubic hair. That hurt. Then he left my legs propped open as he came around to swab my mouth and stab the inside of my elbow for a blood sample. He stuck the assorted swabs into a strange box-like machine attached to a digital display. He put a few drops of my blood in a tiny dish and slid that into the box too. There was even an insert for the comb. After tapping some on screen buttons, the equipment started whirring.
For a good five minutes, he sat on his stool by the machine, tapped away on his tablet, and sipped from his coffee mug. As if he didn't have a half-naked kid spread eagled on the table a couple feet away.
"Are we done?" I asked. He ignored me.
At least the Vicodin had taken the edge off. I could still feel my insides churning, but it was only giving me a hazy, seasick feeling, instead of intestines-in-a-blender. My eyeballs didn't feel like they were melting with fever, either. I did occasionally feel stuff dripping out of me, and that was gross. Whatever was going on, I hoped they'd be able to stop it.
The box gave a long, high pitched beep. Dr. Sarias stood up to examine the display. He tapped it here and there, rubbed his chin, swiped his finger more rapidly. "What the hell?"
"What the hell what?" I asked anxiously.
"Too high, too high, way too low, completely absurd... this makes no sense."
"What doesn't?" I demanded.
"I keep assuming these hormone levels are off because you're a male Eljo, but I can't for the life of me explain it. The anomalies are off the charts right now." He straightened up and turned to me. "Well, at any rate, you've got an infection for sure. Elevated white blood cell count, lots of aggressive bacterial activity. But, there's no foreign seminal material, no suspicious DNA, no sexually transmitted pathogens, either human or Nephilim. You haven't had sex. That's good, at least Ez won't be killing anybody."
A glove snapped into place around his wrist. "But now, to diagnose the bleeding we'll have to do a rectal exam."
I barely had time to process that statement before he'd scooted his stool back between my legs. There was a splurting sound, the warmth and weight of one of his hands on my inner thigh, and then...
I hissed, and my legs tensed up.
"Ugh, bearing down makes it harder on both of us. Relax."
Easy for you to say, I thought as my face scrunched. Was it really necessary to push so hard? "I'm going to pee," I grunted.
"Go ahead, if you need to."
Was he serious? I grunted as he twisted around in there. Bit my lip, and tried not to cry out. Did the smartwatch mean Ezra was feeling this? Crap, I shouldn't have let him put the watch back on.
Finally Dr. Sarias withdrew his finger, and I panted in relief. He stood up, his face emerging above the hospital gown that draped my knees. "I don't feel any fissures and the prostate's normal, as far as I can tell. But there's something... I don't know what to make of it. Stay here a minute, I'm going to get the ultrasound cart."
Hah, it's not like I planned to go prancing around the halls with my ass hanging out of this hospital gown. I laid back on the table and closed my eyes, trying not to think about how scared I was.
My watch thumped with a text message from Ezra. I'm sorry I didn't believe you.
I snorted and thought back, On the bright side, I might have cancer.
Thump. Unlikely.
Thump. Whatever this is, we'll figure it out.
Thump. Don't be afraid.
Dr. Sarias came back, wheeling a large metal cart topped with a machine that had a big monitor, multiple dials, and corded attachments. Underneath were stacked trays of sterile supplies.
He closed the door, donned a fresh pair of gloves. Then he slid something like a condom over the end of a long wand-looking thing.
I swallowed. "What's that for?"
He raised a dark eyebrow. "What do you think?"
"Can't I get into one of those scan tubes instead?"
"They're not precise enough. I'll be able to see all I need with this baby."
I gasped as the cold, hard probe was pushed inside me without further preamble, and found myself gritting my teeth and gripping the sides of the exam table. "Jesus, fuck!"
"I told you, relax."
"Fuck you!"
Dr. Sarias chuckled, his attention absorbed in the monitor. "Little more..." He tipped the probe into a harsher angle, sending shooting pain through my pelvis. "Let's see what... whoa."
He bent closer to the screen. "Are you kidding me? What the..."
He looked at me, at the screen, and back at me again, and wiggled that damn probe without the slightest bit of concern for the faces I was making. "No fucking way. Sweet Samyaza and all his cherubim, this is..."
"What?!" I was getting really fed up with all those half sentences. "What, what?"
"Ez, you need to get in here." Dr. Sarias didn't shout, but I guess he'd sent the thought out as he said it, because the door opened and Ezra stepped in.
"What is it?" Ezra asked.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
Ezra gave me a cautious look, and I turned my head to avoid eye contact. He moved in front of the monitor as Dr. Sarias wiggled the probe around some more. I worked to hold back whimpers.
I watched Ezra's eyebrows rise up his forehead. His lips parted, and slowly his jaw dropped. "Oh my God."
"So you didn't know?"
"Of course not."
"Have you ever seen this before?"
"No. I read a case study once, but..."
"Look here." Dr Sarias jammed the probe to the left. I cried out, and Ezra bristled.
"Goddamnit, Bo! Take it easy, or the next place that wand is going is up your back end." He went to reach for my hand, then seemed to think I wouldn't want him to and just gave me an apologetic nod. "You're doing great, Connor, hold on a little longer."
"Will somebody tell me what's wrong?" I pleaded. "Am I dying or what?"
"Not dying," Dr. Sarias said, staring at the screen in fascination. "At least, not yet, though we're going to have to do something about that hematoma before it turns any more septic."
"What?"
Ezra pivoted the screen around to show an orangey 3-D image. Mostly lumps and bumps. "Have you ever seen an ultrasound before?"
"No."
"Okay, well, this coiled up area is the small intestine." The image dissolved into a light-colored, roundish blob as the probe moved. "There's the bladder, and that's the prostate."
Another shift, this time kind of painful. A smaller blob appeared. Ezra tapped something on the machine and the picture changed to a two dimensional, black and white image. A white, irregular oval outlined several smaller black blobs. I wrinkled my nose, trying to make sense of it.
"And that," Ezra said softly, "is an ovary."
I blinked. A what, now?
Dr. Sarias swung the wand to the other side, though I was too shellshocked to complain about the discomfort. "There's ovary number two," he announced.
"This dark place in between," Ezra said, circling the screen with a fingertip, "is a uterus. It's misshapen because it's currently engorged with blood."
I couldn't move. Couldn't even put together an articulated thought.
"If you look down here..." Dr. Sarias moved the wand again. "See this passage connecting the cervical opening to the rectum? That's what I was feeling in the manual exam. I don't know what to call it, in standard anatomy that would be the vaginal canal, but here it's more of a sinus. Too narrow for the uterine lining to flush properly. That's probably two or three cycles' worth of menstrual material trapped in there, festering away. Explains the fever, and the bleeding. All the crazy hormone readings too.
"You're having periods, kid. But the blood hasn't had a way to escape until today. I'm betting the sinus formed as your body's attempt to clean itself out." For the first time ever, he actually looked at me with sympathy. "I bet that hurts like a bitch."
I still couldn't say anything. I just stared at the screen. I was trying to make sense of words like ovaries, and uterine linings, and periods, in the context of my body.
"The condition's called intersex," Dr. Sarias continued. He finally removed the wand, and went about stripping the condom off as he rambled. "Happens when an embryo doesn't get the usual balance of sex differentiation hormones in utero. Traits of both sexes end up developing, and there's a wide range of variation in the end results. It's actually quite a common human phenomenon. About as prevalent as, say, red hair. Sometimes there are outward effects, but many live their whole lives without knowing they're a bit different inside.
"A fully dual case like this is extremely rare, though. We'll have to do some testing, but it looks like you have two separate, independently functioning reproductive systems. It's incredible! I think there's only been a handful of recorded cases like this in modern human medical history."
"I..." The strange images on the monitor were making my head hurt.
"Of course, we're going to have to do surgery," he added. "Drain the hematoma, enlarge the sinus so the uterus can drain properly. Maybe implant a catheter for stability."
"Bo," Ezra interrupted. "Slow down."
"What for? If we don't do it soon the kid's going to go into septic shock. I can check but I'm sure we've got at least one open OR tonight. We should talk to Levi, he's our best surgeon and I bet he'd love to get his hands on this—"
"Bo!"
Dr. Sarias and I jumped at the same time. Ezra had grabbed the front of his friend's lab coat. His features had contracted so much he looked downright dangerous.
"Listen to me very carefully," he grated.
And then he said nothing. He stared into Dr. Sarias' eyes with an utterly murderous expression.
I wished I could hear what he was saying, because Dr. Sarias' usual flippancy drained out of his face until he was pale as a corpse. He looked like he was about to piss himself, and he glanced over at me anxiously.
"Shit, man, okay! I thought we were friends!"
Ezra's glare didn't change.
"I get it. I won't say anything to anyone, all right?"
Ezra let go of his coat slowly. Dr. Sarias licked his lips and looked like he was trying to recover his breath. "But look... the kid still needs to be fixed up or his condition will kill him. How many more cycles do you think he'll survive? And you're no surgeon."
Ezra's black eyes flicked over to me.
"You need me," Dr. Sarias pressed. "Who else is going to help you hide this from the big bosses? If the Institute had its way, your little Eljo would be pinned open on the wall like a dissected frog. And that's without them even knowing his real value. I'm going to be your best asset from here on out."
Ezra might not have been listening. He had developed worry lines across his forehead, looking at me. Maybe I looked as traumatized as I felt.
"Connor," this time he did take my hand, "are you all right?"
My heart was still beating, if that's what he meant. My lungs were still drawing air every few seconds. My eyelids could still close and open. So sure. No problem. Me and my newly discovered uterus were just peachy.
"Let's leave him for a while," Dr. Sarias said. "He probably wants time to think. We can go to my office and work out the plan."
Ezra squeezed my hand slightly before letting go. "There are clean clothes in your backpack," he slid it off his shoulder, "and in that cabinet you'll find sanitary pads. Keep the watch on, and if the pain gets any worse, call for me. I won't be far."
The door clicked closed behind them, and I was left to stare at my own gown-clad knees.