Anterograde Read Online Free Page A

here?”
    “Got
you aspirin like I said. Sit up.”
    Ca l den did sit up,
and he took the glass and pill Eli was handing him, but he sounded—and looked—downright
confused. “Like you said? What? When?”
    Eli
frowned. “When I was here earlier. Don’t you remember? I called you an as s hole and a big
baby?”
    Ca l den was beyond
confused now and well into mystified territory. “ You called me what?” he swallowed the pill, chasing it down with the
glass of water. “ God, but my—”
    His
body froze, his mouth becoming slack, the empty glass sliding from his grasp
and onto the cushion next to him.
    “Ca l den?”
    Eli’s
eyes widened. He had to fight his instinct to shake Ca l den by the
shoulders and grabbed his wrist instead. He took his pulse while leaning in
close enough to watch his pupils; they weren’t dilated to the same degree, one
a small dot in an ocean, the other wide enough to swallow most of the blue.
    “Ca l den! Can you
hear me?”
    “—head
hurts,” Ca l den said, blinking once, then again when he realized how close Eli was.
“What… Eli?”
    “You
just had an absence seizure,” Eli said, releasing his wrist. “I’m taking you to
the hospital. Don’t even think about arguing with me.”
    The
fact that Ca l den did not try to argue only added to Eli’s worry. Ca l den hated being
in a hospital as a patient and would do or say anything to avoid that
situation. His passivity now was disturbing, and he barely said a word when Eli
went to find some clothes up in his bedroom and helped him into them.
    When
Calden had another absence seizure in the car, Eli drove a little faster,
beginning to regret not having called an ambulance. The city wasn’t under
attack at the moment, which meant that the streets were busy, small electric
cars like Eli’s weaving around each other in near silence and making the ride
to the hospital that much longer. There were talks of restricting traffic to
preserve resources now that the demon attacks were becoming more frequent and
making the supply roads unsafe.
    Finally
parking his car by the emergency entrance, Eli told Calden to wait in the car
while he went to get a wheelchair. The fact that Calden actually listened to him
didn’t bode well. As he wheeled Calden inside, Eli mentally reviewed the staff
schedule. Being in charge of it, he knew who was on duty at the moment.
    Doctor
Bonneville was their neurologist, but she only had a few years of experience.
Doctor Samford, an emergency doctor and surgeon, had been practicing longer
than anyone else and still had the steadiest hands in the hospital, except for
Calden. There was also the fact that she was one of the few people Calden
didn’t try to antagonize on sight.
    The
nurse at the admission desk tried to insist they fill in the obligatory
paperwork, but Eli gave her an icy look and found a room for Calden himself.
    Within
minutes, Samford was coming down to the ER from her office upstairs. Her eyes
widened in surprise when she saw Calden was her patient, but she recovered
quickly and listened to Eli’s description of Calden’s symptoms.
    “He
was complaining about a headache yesterday,” she said thoughtfully as she took
Calden’s vitals. “I thought he was trying to get out of a routine appendectomy.
You know how he is. But maybe it was more than that.”
    Calden’s
eyes were open, and he appeared to be listening, but he didn’t react in the
slightest to Samford’s quiet words; Eli’s worry climbed higher.
    “What
do you think?” Eli asked, although he knew it was much too early for her to
have a definite diagnosis.
    Samford
refused to say what she had in mind. Instead, with a gentle smile, she took
Eli’s good arm and guided him out of the room, relegating him to the waiting room . She’d have let a colleague stay if he hadn’t known their patient, but
he was there as Calden’s friend, so she kicked him out with a reminder that
he’d need family permission to get access to records.