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"Ivie?"

She refocused Havers was staring at her expectantly, as if he’d asked her a question and aiting a reply

Ivie got to her feet "I appreciate your advice, but I can’t be professional on this case It’s impossible I love him He is my mate And there is no way I will sit on the sidelines while he suffers and dies and not fight that fate with everything I’ve got I’o wherever I have to, do whatever it takes, but the one thing I will not worry about is who I piss off in the process If the love of your life was dying, ould you do?"

On that note, she turned away and went to the door She didn’t bother with a goodbye or anything like that

She had probably just huffed herself out of a job and certainly out of a good reference

But Silas was the only thing she cared about And that was a great short-ter, Ivie left the Audience House around nine p careful to shut the heavy door behind herself and as for ainto the pockets of her parka Looking around, she sahole lot of stately-Wayne-Manor, the other houses in the neighborhood just as grand as the Federal showcase she had just come out of Not a lot of traffic on the street, but when she’d de on down the lane

Yeah, a Mercedes was probably considered too co her own ass, she went forward, proceeding all the way down to the sidewalk Without oing, her footfalls even and slow, her boots giving her traction on the snowpack, the cold air that whistled through her hair and circulated around her body, clearing her hts, which had been spinning since she had gone to see Havers the night before, finally got quieter They were replaced, however, by a series of postcards fro as he tried to have a bowelhis teeth as the ht the need to take another dose Vo bile into a pink, kidney-shaped plastic dish

She re up in a panic from a bad dream--which quickly became a morphine-induced hallucination she had had to talk his, tubes and wires hanging off of hi in the shower to wash his hair

Whereupon he’d becoet a wheelchair to help him back to the bed

It was all stuff she’d had to help patients with before--and she tried to re In her heart, though, she was a family member, not a nurse…a mate, not a clinically trained professional

Which was kind of the issue Havers had tried to discuss with her

God, bodily ly You didn’t stop and think, when you were healthy, exactly how s your corporeal form took care of on its own, the orderly systems of intake and exit and routinebut the occasional, temporary hiccup And as a nurse, her primary purpose was to try to reproduce the stasis of health through artificialdifficulty

But in situations such as Silas’s, that was like fixing a flat tire with a toaster oven and a beach ball

And holy hell was he failing faster than she could ever have iave her an idea of how ether Strong, so strong--but eventually, the brain’s er perforap forever

Meeting with the King just now had been surreal She had left a et appoint to see Wrath, son of Wrath, sooner rather than later She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but the last thing had been a text within two hours telling her to show up at eight-thirty sharp

They’d given her the first appointht, and conferenced in a female named Doc Jane who had proue to see if there were any options outside of the race Ivie had been both grateful and disappointed