Viv saw me staring at them. “Weird location to treat patients, I know, but there’s too much natural light out here to let it go to waste.” She tossed the keys onto a counter. “The back rooms are used when privacy is needed. All but one have windows to let some light in, and we’ll fire up the lanterns if we need them.” She motioned me to follow her. “Luckily, we haven’t had to use them too often. With Daemon here, he can take care of most of the injuries, and now Luc. It will cut back on the stuff that makes me feel like my head is about to slip underwater.”
“Are there no other Luxen here that can heal?” I asked.
“There are a few who can do minor injuries, but nothing like what happened to Spencer. If Luc couldn’t keep him stable, Daemon wouldn’t have been able to, either.”
“I’ve been told that all Luxen can heal, but to varying degrees.” I followed her along a narrow hall. Most of the doors we passed were closed.
“Yep. It seems like those who were most skilled at healing, well, they didn’t make it here.”
Anything could’ve happened to them, but I had a feeling that the Daedalus was more than just a little responsible. Those who could heal virtual strangers would’ve made excellent candidates for mutations.
“Here is the supply stash.” Viv opened the door to what must’ve been a small laboratory before. Natural light shone in through the windows, casting a soft glow over the metal shelves lining the walls. My gaze roamed the room, and all I could think of was those kids and the grandma who died from a freaking cut on the hand. Right in front of me were several things that would’ve saved her life. There were boxes of bandages and latex gloves, cases of needles and bundled IV bags, row after row of pill bottles, numerous pieces of medical equipment, and stacked first-aid kits chock-full of everything needed to disinfect a cut.
“We were running low on a few things—namely, inhalers. Got a few people here with pretty bad asthma, and they’re about to run out and—”
The bell above the door jiggled, signaling that someone was here.
“Coming!” Viv called out before raising her brows at me. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
What turned out to be going on was a human man and Baby Wonder Woman—the little girl Ashley had made fly on the playground. The little girl was covered in an oozing, angry red rash that turned out to be poison ivy, much to the father’s relief. Calamine lotion was given out, along with an oral antihistamine and a stern warning to not scratch, which the little girl promised not to do seconds before scratching at her arm as if she were trying to take it off. On the way out, the little girl had waved goodbye, and the father had nodded in my direction. That was the only time he really acknowledged my existence.
After that, there was the cutest elderly couple. The husband was worried about his wife. She’d been having chest pains, and after a brief examination that included taking the woman’s pulse, blood pressure, and asking numerous questions, Viv was fairly certain it wasn’t anything serious, but she recommended that the woman come in at any time if she experienced shortness of breath or nausea. Neither of them paid much mind to me, not even when Viv showed me how to use a blood pressure cuff.
When they left, Viv sat down on the rolling stool, shoulders lowered as she watched them shuffle toward the market. “She might be having heart failure,” she said after several moments.
Pressure clamped around my chest. I didn’t have to ask. The Luxen couldn’t heal something like that. Not even Luc. “There’s nothing that can be done.”
Viv shook her head sadly. “No. Not here. We don’t have the diagnostic capability to even test for it, and we can’t blindly prescribe medication that could do more harm than good.”
“That’s got to be hard knowing that there may be something serious and not being able to do anything.”
“There are a few things we can do.” Viv toed herself around. “Last year, we suspected that one of the guys had cancer. He’d had it before, and all his symptoms pointed toward a cancer of the pancreas or liver, and that’s something we can’t treat here. We offered to escort him out to one of our outposts. We’d provide him with identification and some money. Without insurance, it would be a crapshoot, but it was still something.”
“Did he take it?”
Viv gave me a tight-lipped smile. “No. I’ll never forget this, but he’d said he knew all the treatment in the world wouldn’t make a difference and that he would rather stay here. We can’t force anyone, and something like the pancreas doesn’t show recognizable symptoms until it’s often too late. He was right. In less than a month, he was gone. Treatment might’ve extended his life, but it might not have been the best extra months given to him.”