Asleep. She says it like I just dozed off. But I hold still while she unbuckles the strap and helps me to sit up. She then props up the bed behind me so I can recline.
“Logan?”
“He’s right there. Look. He’s fine.” I see him almost near enough to touch, on a tiny stretcher that looks just like mine. I slowly register the noise around me, the rhythmic pulsing that fills the tiny, cramped space. We’re still in the helicopter.
“I’m Audra,” the voice says, pulling my eyes back to her.
I startle at the sight. She’s … she’s a girl. Younger than me. Maybe fifteen.
“And this is Glenn and Christina. We’re doctors with the Curatoria.”
Doctors. Curatoria. I don’t know what to think. I notice now that they’re wearing light-colored scrubs, and I vaguely remember seeing the feather and flame. Doctors. Curatoria. What have I done?
I’m still considering whether we may have jumped from the frying pan into the proverbial fire when I glance again at Audra. “Doctor?” I say, the question popping from my lips in a scratchy croak.
She catches the look of skepticism I can’t hide and laughs. “Yes, I’m a doctor,” she says. “And yes, I’m fifteen. I actually have been a doctor for several lifetimes now and was lucky enough to have my memories restored almost three years ago.”
An Earthbound then. “That’s amazing,” I say, still staring at her and trying to comprehend that this girl—younger than I am—could already have the knowledge and maturity of a long-practicing physician.
“We can talk later. They wanted you patched up by the time we reach Curatoria headquarters.”
“How long will that take?” I ask. They’re all crowded close around me because of the tiny space, and the rhythmic beat of the helicopter blades makes everything feel a little ominous.
Maybe it’s just because I’m in the air again for the first time since the plane crash.
Oh gods, don’t think about that.
Audra peeks at her watch. “Oh, uh, probably within the next fifteen minutes or so.” She looks up at the other two doctors for confirmation, and they give her a tight-lipped nod. “Your partner’s not yet awake, so we’ll start with you.”
“He hasn’t remembered,” I warn. “The name ‘Curatoria’ won’t mean anything to him. He’ll be panicked and terrified.” I don’t know why I’m telling them that. Because I’m afraid he’ll freak out? Because I don’t want them to throw a whole bunch of new information at him before the two of us have had a chance to talk? Maybe some of both.
Audra gives me a wan smile. “At least he’s here. We’ll find a spark for him. Now, where are you hurt? We didn’t want to invade your privacy without your consent by doing a full-body examination.” She gingerly lifts my swollen wrist that is now one huge purple bruise. “This looks pretty bad though.”
“Is it broken?” I ask.
“Let’s see.” She smears my wrist with jelly and slides some kind of plastic piece of machinery over it. The other two doctors—a middle-aged woman and a man sporting gray hair and thick glasses—set their fingers on the side of my wrist. They all look at a screen flashing weird black and white images.
“This shouldn’t hurt,” the man says. “But it will feel strange.”
I brace myself—after surviving major brain surgery, I’ve learned never to trust doctors when they say it won’t hurt—but he’s right. I suck in a breath as I feel like everything in my wrist is collapsing in on itself. Then, like a gear slipping into place, everything returns to normal.
Like normal normal. All the pain is gone.
“What did you do?” I ask as they release my arm. I flex it back and forth. The bruising isn’t totally gone, but almost—merely a few smudges of purple here and there. The swelling, meanwhile, has disappeared completely. “It feels better than it did before I injured it.”
“That was the intention,” Audra replies, a hint of fifteen-year-old smugness coming through.
The woman called Christina tilts her head at her colleague. “It was broken,” she explains matter-of-factly. “Though not badly. We—well, Glenn—removed the damaged cells, the inflammation, the blood that leaked from your veins and made the bruises, and then I replaced the bones cells with new.”
“You can do that?” I say with wonder.
“Oh yes,” she says. “We used to have to cut into you to do it, but with our EB scanner—”
“Earthbound scanner,” Audra interrupts with a smirk. “Although we’ll make up something else when we release it to the public. Like the CAT scan. I’ll give you one guess at what the C originally stood for, and it rhymes with Muratoria.”
“Thank you for that,” Christina says dryly. “Anyway, with this scanner we can see what needs to be done and make the switch without doing anything invasive.”
“It’s basically a combination ultrasound and X-ray, with some MRI functions,” Audra says.
And is apparently small enough to take on a freaking helicopter.
Audra gives me another once-over. “What else?” she asks, as though she hadn’t just told me about a completely revolutionary piece of medical equipment.
“My shoulder.”
I spend the next few minutes in awe as my injuries are quite literally erased.
“What about your leg?” Audra asks as I’m fingering my lip made whole again.
“My leg is fine.” I’m half distracted as I swing my shoulder around, stretching it. I’d gotten so used to the ache I almost forgot what it was like not to have it.
“I was told you were limping quite badly when they rescued you.”
“Oh.” I understand. “That … that’s an old injury.”
“No reason we can’t fix it,” she says. She glances over at Logan and shares a silent message with the person watching over him. “Your partner is just starting to stir. We have a few more minutes.”
“I guess,” I say, not certain why I’m so nervous.
I’m wearing jeans, but the fabric across my thigh disappears with a glance from Glenn. More jelly and then Audra is sliding the probe over my leg and peering at the screen.
“Titanium plates,” Glenn says. “Those’ll have to go.”
Go?
“And extensive scar tissue in the muscles here and here,” Audra says, pointing. “No wonder it’s not healing well.”
I close my eyes. I don’t want to watch.
The same weird feelings take over my thigh, but this time it is a little uncomfortable. “Sorry,” Glenn says. I must have grimaced. “Christina will fix it in a moment.”
No titles, not calling each other “Dr. So-and-So.” As though we are all equals here. “We’re finished,” Christina says softly, rubbing goop off her hands.
I look down, and it’s like the plane wreck never happened. The staple marks are gone; the skin on my thigh is smooth and new and … looks rather exfoliated to boot.
“Good?” Christina asks.
I nod dumbly, and right before my eyes the missing piece of my jeans reappears as though it had never vanished. I’m not sure why this all makes me so uncomfortable. I mean, it’s a good thing, but it’s like they erased not only my scar