"Where do you hurt?" she asked, leaning over him anxiously.
"Hurt?" he asked stupidly.
At last she recognized his dazed look. "Oh, you," she said, popping him on the chest, hard, with her fist.
And then she was gone, turning, skirt flaring to show lovely thighs.
"Miss, miss," Lex wailed, seeing her back retreating from him. She paused, turned. "Don't go, please don't go."
"There's nothing wrong with you," she said.
"I'm hurting. The fall."
She approached his bed warily. She looked at him with her big eyes squinted. "I can give you a shot." "I don't hurt anymore," he said. "Don't go," he said, as she turned.
"Look," she said. "I have work to do." "Give me the shot," he said. "You don't need a shot." "I need to—look at you." "You can do that every day when I make the rounds." She smiled, the skies opening up after a dark,
northern storm. "No extra charge for looking." Her name, he discovered, was Riddent. In Old English that meant "laughing." It was, he felt, a beautiful name, a descriptive name, for just seeing her made him want to laugh, to sing, to do things like leaping on
an airors and gunning it to all-out and making low passes at the hills. And there were no rings on her fingers. Not even a promise ring. "Riddent?" "Yes?" Patient. Eyes so large, so deep. "Don't go." His hip tingling from another shot. With perverse female joy, she seemed to like punching him with
needles. "I have work to do." Another day. "Riddent, have lunch with me." "Sorry, I have a date." He sneaked into the dining hall, ambulatory to a limited extent, to see her lunching with a doctor, a
youngish doctor, but old enough to be her father. He guessed her age at eighteen.
"He's too old for you," he said, next time she rolled him onto his stomach. She slapped his bare hip, drove the needle ouchingly deep into his flesh, and then wiped the sting with a cool, damp something. "Who?" "That man. The doctor." "That's none of your business." But as she left the room, she turned, gave him a pixie grin. "He's my father." And, another day, the rain clouds rolling down from the big northern emptiness, gusty winds making
themselves heard inside the room, fat drops running down the glass. "I'm a San Ann girl. Grew up in the shadow of the hospital."
"And you wanted to become a doctor?" "Not a doctor. Yeeech. Cutting into people." "You shouldn't have any qualms about cutting people the way you drive that needle into me." "For that, smart ass, I'm going to put laxative in your afternoon milk." And she did. "Damn, Riddent," he complained. "Well, it was doctor's orders." "And you just doubled the dosage." She grinned. "No. You do me an injustice." "Well, I'm sorry." "I tripled it," she said, fluffing his pillow and smiling so sweetly that he forgave her immediately, even as
his stomach cramped again and he went white, sweat popping out on his brow as he tried to wait until
she was gone. Recovered, emptied, he watched her, next morning, come through the doorway with his breakfast, a big,
sweet-limbed Texas girl with a mouth which opened wide when she smiled. Her hair was pulled into a
neat mass at the back of her head. Her ears were delicately formed. "Something wrong?" she asked, as she saw him following her every move avidly. "No." "You're still angry about the laxative." "Not angry, but you're going to have to make retribution." "It was a dirty trick, wasn't it?" she asked, with a girlish giggle. "Filthy." "Horrid." "Terrible." "What can I do, sir, to make it up to you?" she asked, not very seriously. "Marry me," she heard him say.
"Not a chance."
"You owe me that much," he said. "Come back in five years." "You'll be old and out of shape, past your prime." "Tough," she said. "If you don't marry me I'll tell your father you poisoned me. A good nurse doesn't poison her patients." "It's hospital fever. All patients fall in love with their nurses. You're getting out tomorrow. You'll go ;;way
and find another girl and," she was hamming it up, making her voice tragic, "you'll forget all about me."
"You won't marry me?"
"Not today."
"Why not?"
"You've got too many holes in your hide from needles and your insides will all run out, leaving only an
almost empty husk. I don't want to marry a husk, co you?"
"If you won't marry me, go swimming with me."
"OK."
"Tomorrow?"
"Sorry."
"When?"
"I'm off Saturday."
"That's five days away," Lex said. "I can't stand it."
"Tough."
"I'll have a relapse and stay here until Saturday."
"You do and I'll give you twelve shots a day."
"I'll come back Saturday."
She gave him her comnum. He hadn't touched her, except when she helped him get back into bed the day he fell with his pajamas down around his knees. He reached out and put one finger on the back of her hand. It was delicately veined, warm. She looked down at his finger making a little white indentation in her brown skin.
"I shouldn't go with you," she said.
"Why?"
"You're a man of experience."
"You're—"
"No," she said, "I was at the port when you came back, with her."
"Oh," Lex said.
"But since I won't marry you, I don't care. Just don't think—"
"I wouldn't dare," Lex said, grinning. "Saturday?"
"Against my better judgment," she said, leaving him.