Dark Cure is releasing next week!
I’ve shared the first scene from the first chapter. You can read that here: http://tasteofcyn.com/?p=6639
Today, I’m sharing the final scene.
As soon as the doors closed behind him, Gisella locked them. She pocketed the gun. “Get the restraints and tie down all of our patient’s hands.”
When he regained consciousness, he would likely be as aggressive as his brother. The girl looked through the compartments hidden in the walls, found the restraints. Gisella helped her bind the male.
“Do you have any injuries?” Her protégé’s health was her next concern.
The girl’s head bowed. “No, but I could have been hurt.”
“Yes, you could have been hurt, perhaps killed.” That would have been partially her fault. Pono was hers to train, hers to protect. “What mistake did you make?”
“I moved too close to a Palavian.” Her protégé recited that rule. “They’re dangerous and should be restrained before they’re treated.”
“Most males and all warriors should be restrained.” They only entered the medic bay when they were seriously injured. Wounded beings often lost the ability to reason.
“The Chamele leader wouldn’t have to be restrained.” Pono’s eyes glowed. “I heard the Ruler. He’s a good male. He tried to save the girl.”
“You will restrain him also if he seeks healing.” Gisella doubted that would happen. The visiting Chamele warriors had instigated numerous fights, causing many other males to visit the medic bay, yet had never entered the structure themselves.
The damn barbarians must not utilize medics. The Chameles were like most warrior species she’d encountered. They exhausted all of their resources on battle, leaving nothing for healing.
Kralj, the Ruler of the Refuge, was a rare exception to that way of thinking. He valued medics, ensured she had the most advanced equipment, a modern, clean structure in which to treat patients.
Her lips flattened. Never again would she be forced to watch helplessly as a baby orphaned and wounded by war slowly died in her arms, his high-pitched cries of agony ringing in her ears, all of the pain inhibitors exhausted by previous patients.
“Tie down all warriors. There are no exceptions.” She didn’t want her protégé to take unnecessary risks. “Clean the patient while I scan him.”
She extracted that device from her jacket pocket. It was a top-of-the-line handheld, could detect illnesses and injuries her eyes couldn’t.
Pono wrinkled her brown-and-green striped nose as she ran cleaning cloths over the patient’s exposed skin. She flicked the fabric squares to refresh them, converting dirt into oxygen.
Gisella scanned the male and looked at the small screen. Her heart squeezed.
She scanned him a second time. The results were the same.
Fuck. The male had a wasting disease similar to the one that had killed her mother. The growth in his stomach was advanced, was reaching upward in his body, creeping toward his heart.
If the black mass encompassed that organ, the male would die.
That wouldn’t happen. She now had the equipment and the skills to eliminate all traces of the disease. The Palavian wouldn’t suffer the same fate as her mother. She would save him.
Gisella displayed a limited number of readings on the wall’s main viewscreen, intent on slowly walking her protégé through interpreting them. “Tell me what you see.”
The girl studied the readings. “The patient has an unusually high blood fermented beverage concentration. He also has low blood albumin levels. Which means…” Her forehead furrowed. “He has been substituting fermented beverage for all other nourishment?”
That was true but it wasn’t the entire diagnosis. “What do you prescribe?”
“Give him nutrients and beverage.” Pono took her bait. “Monitor him until he regains consciousness.”
“And?” Gisella prompted.
The girl winced. “And send him to his domicile to rest?”
“You’d send him to his domicile to die.” She displayed the rest of the scan.
Her protégé sucked in her breath.
“It’s easy to mistake symptoms for causes.” Gisella relayed that important lesson to the girl. “Many patients in the Refuge will try to treat their pain with fermented beverage or other means.” Just as her mother had used pain inhibitors to hide her growth. “It’s your responsibility to look past that. Not investigating would have condemned this patient to an agonizing death.”
She, at least, had spared her mother that fate, administering pain inhibitors in increasingly large dosages, while they waited for help that never arrived.
Bitterness coated her mouth. Her warrior father had ventured through enemy space again and again to reach the frontlines and the fighting. He always seemed capable of doing that. But he had failed to bring Gisella the machinery she required to save his mate’s lifespan.
Because he was a warrior and battle was his priority.
Saving beings was her focus.
“What is the recommended treatment?” She continued to guide her protégé.
“We extract the growth.” The girl nibbled on her bottom lip. “That will stress the patient’s body. The growth is very large.”
It would stress the medic’s body also. Gisella touched her aching wrist. Neither of them was ready for that task. “The patient isn’t able to tolerate that level of stress at the moment.”
“At the moment.” Pono repeated her words. “We’ll give him nutrients and beverage, force him to rest first. Then we’ll extract the growth.”
“That’s very good.” She nodded and the girl beamed. “The only change I’d make to your treatment is we’ll hold him for observation for a couple of planet rotations after the extraction. We want to ensure the growth doesn’t return.”
“He’ll be our patient for a while.” Pono didn’t appear happy with that prospect.
Gisella wasn’t happy with it either. “What does that mean?”
“We should remove his garments and clean him.” The girl recited that rule. Cleaning longer-term patients reduced the risk of disease spreading.
While Pono tended to the Palavian, Gisella filled out their patient’s information, entering the little they knew into the databases.
Her wrist continued to throb. She’d need a fermented beverage herself after this shift, something to take the edge off her own pain, allow her to sleep.
“Lead Medic?” Pono asked. “If we can’t save this patient’s life—”
“We’ll save his life.” She had the equipment necessary to do that. “We never tell the family that because there’s uncertainty with any treatment and we don’t want to make promises we can’t keep. But this patient will live.”
The girl plucked at her jacket, her expression doubtful. “In my culture, white is the color of death.”
“We’ve talked about this.” The medics Gisella trained came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Many of them had beliefs about death. “Healing is science, not superstition, and the science states we will save this male’s life.”
“But if we can’t save his life.” Pono persisted. “Do you think his brother will kill you?”
“He’ll try.” She didn’t doubt that. Grief pushed beings to extremes and Palavians already lived on the edge of violence.
“Stars.” The girl muttered her words. “Being a medic is dangerous.”
The role was dangerous but it was needed. And Gisella was damn good at it, had always had an interest in healing, a natural ability to mend others. It was her calling in this universe, like designing ships had been her mother’s calling.
Unlike her mother, she wouldn’t allow anyone to interfere with it. Ever.
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A warrior seeking forever faces a medic living in the moment.
Gisella, the Refuge’s medic, is dedicated to her role. She doesn’t have the space in her lifespan for love, a mate, or children. Healing is her entire focus.
But she’s also a female in her prime. She has needs, wants, cravings…especially for a scarred, long-haired barbarian warrior temporarily residing in the settlement. One fierce, soul-blasting, passion-filled encounter is all she is willing to give him before she returns to her duties.
Oghul, a Chamele Warlord’s Second-In-Command, has waited his entire lifespan to find his gerel, the being fated to be his. He’s thrilled to discover she wants him as savagely as he yearns for her.
His little human medic appeals to his primitive possessive side. Greatly. He wants to stamp his ownership all over her bountiful curves, take her back to his home planet, claim his fiery female permanently.
When Carinae E’s solitary sun rises, two determined beings with very different desires find their lifespans entwined. Their battle for emotional supremacy will span systems and alter destinies.
The universe will never be the same.
Dark Cure is a STANDALONE SciFi Romance set in a gritty, dark world.
Buy Now:
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HCTHN27
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07HCTHN27
Apple/iTunes : https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dark-cure/id1436359104
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-cure-cynthia-sax/1129542129
