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"TWELVE YEARS TO young people your age," Helena Troy Burnside told Ric and me with a rueful smile, "may seem like an eternity Luckily, it’s just a little over a decade for us old folks"
She flashed the printout of a Wichitato pick her up for the drive to where I’d been sent twelve years ago for a e twelve
"We have the sa to you, Delilah, as a patient, but as a reporter you knohat that rimly "They knohat happened to me there, and why"
I didn’t add that I’d been freshly armed with several dire hints from my mirror twin Why hadn’t I ever told Ric about Lilith, the last secret I’d kept from him beside my internal invisible friend, Ir The Three Faces of Eve, even if he’s too young to have ever seen that old movie on multiple personalities?
Of course, I was firhtly weird add-ons Soe" Before and after the Millennium Revelation, some folks called that "haunts"
Ric rubbed the nape ofa shared inti my inner "chica"
"We’ll be with you," he promised
Yeah That’s what rass had requisitioned Quicksilver again While Ric and I were delving the personal side ofa bead on the area’s powerful paranormal and criet et back in the field with the crihters
Ric drove us to another bland three-story building I was beginning to long for the soaring hubris of Vegas with its gouts of spot-lit fire and water and neon spitting up at the cloudless sky
The office waiting rooazine racks, with a huge fish tank fraic trio of clown fish
Helena accoh an actual print edition of Modern Mother and Infant featuring Madonna and her latest adopted Third World child on the cover Menopausal adoptions were the new "Follywood" superstar rage
"Hmm" The receptionist frowned "I don’t find a ‘Delilah Street’ in the records You’ve been here before?" she asked, her gaze darting between Helena and ynecologist’s office
"It was o," Helena said so briskly the receptionist almost saluted "Dr Youmans was the physician" She nodded to the door behind us, which read YOUMANS, HORTON, AND FLIEDERBACH
"And you are Miss Street?" she asked, her flicking glance settling on ah to carry an offbeat name like Delilah
I nodded
"First visit, virtually," the receptionist said "The doctor ant to do a thorough exam"
"So e," Helena said sweetly
We went to sit with Ric, where his foster e This coas in a h the dark of Kansas nights
"They won’t let you in," Helena told him "You’re not related"
Ric was cool with it "I’ll wait until I hear the doctor going into the consultation rooht in"
"Ric," Helena said "This is women’s business Did it occur to you that Delilah would prefer to keep it private from you?"
"Yeah," he said, "and I hate to intrude behind those pink doors, but we don’t have much private from each other, and she knows I can take it"
And he knew I’d seen his soul stripped bare Turnabout, fair play
Helena shook her seneration Philip would sooner be waterboarded than set foot in a gynecologist’s office"
Ric grinned "You "
She shrugged and smiled to herself
Thenroom to hear
"Delilah Street"
Helena accoh the door I saw Ric station hih to keep an eye on the action in the hall and consulting rooe?" Helena asked after ere shown into a rooht side chairs I eyed the rolling stool near the sink counter, and the recliner lounge with the metal stirrups at the foot and a paper cloth down the center It sat against one wall like a bizarre sacrificial altar
"I wouldn’t know," I said "I’ve never been in such a place before"
"You mean this specific place, in your memory"
"I ical appointe, or after?"
"My … phobia"
"But … you’re in yourflustered
"I’m on the Pill for severe e"
"You had to have had a pelvic exaround places where you can get all sorts of pills"
And I’d ed to avoid such routine school inspections for years A what a determined etting tired of apologizing forphobia and my monthly pain and my apparently abnormal history