My Alien Warrior (3 page)

Doctor Kayla Abernathy knew that better than anyone, and it was one of the reasons why there was an industrial sized bucket of lollipops in her office, ready to be dipped into when necessary.

Though young, she had plenty of experience and was one of the most beloved doctors the clinic had seen, popular with children and adults alike.

On Monday morning, the clinic was already packed, and she let herself in through the front door, stopping to greet her receptionist and the patients in the front room with smiles and kind words as she headed through.

Christina, one of the nurses, followed her, charts already in her hands. “It’s gonna be a busy morning,” she said, leaning against the door frame as Kayla changed into her work attire. “Waiting room’s already packed and there’s more appointments for the afternoon.”

Kayla smiled at her. “Sounds like a Monday. Everyone built their issues up in their heads over the weekend, and now they’ve got to know what’s wrong with them.”

“And seven times out of ten there’s nothing wrong with them at all.”

“That’s not fair. It’s more like six times out of ten, and you know it.”

The two women laughed, and Christina pushed her hair out of her face. The choppy red bob suited her, but it seemed to always be in her way. “Amanda Broughton is in room six,” Christina said, handing Kayla a chart. “Her mother’s fit to be tied, too.”

“So same as usual, then.” Amanda was eight years old, and her mother was one of the most overbearing parents Kayla had ever met, a fact which seemed to make her daughter even more rambunctious and apt to get into trouble than a normal eight year old. When she looked at the chart, it appeared that this time was no different. “Dog bite,” she murmured under her breath. “Fantastic. Wish me luck, Chris.”

The nurse laughed and waved her off. “You don’t need luck. You’ve got that charm that makes all the parents love you instantly.”

It was an exaggeration, but Kayla couldn’t deny that she did have a way with patients. Her bedside manner had been commented on by everyone who’d ever supervised her, and she was proud of it.

Remembering her lessons, she took a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face, and let herself into room six.

The sight inside was familiar. Amanda sitting up on the exam table, little legs swinging, while her mother paced back and forth in the small room, expression grave.

As soon as Kayla walked in, she looked up, relief in her features. “Oh. Dr. Abernathy, thank god,” she said. “I have no
idea
what possessed her, but Amanda has gone and gotten herself bitten by the neighbor’s dog, even though I have told her time and time
again
to leave the beast alone. The thing is massive and
dirty
, and they promise he’s had all his shots, but you never can tell, can you? I certainly wasn’t going to take any chances on the thing having rabies or some other kind of disease.”

“Is that so?” Kayla asked, pretending to be absorbed in her chart before looking up and giving Amanda a little wink. “Well, I highly doubt he was a rabid dog, but I will definitely have a look, Mrs. Broughton. You did the right thing by bringing her here.”

Mrs. Broughton looked mollified by that, and she stepped back and let Kayla move in.

“Good morning, Amanda,” she continued with a smile for the little girl, who grinned, showing off gaps where she was missing teeth.

“Morning, Doctor Kayla,” she said back. “I got bit.”

“So I hear. Why don’t you let me take a look at him, so we can make sure you won’t get sick or anything?”

The fact that the girl was smiling and not crying or writing with pain made her pretty sure that there was nothing wrong, but she had to do her job properly. Amanda held out her arm, and there was indeed a red, raised area where a set of teeth could have been.

Kayla put on her gloves and poked at it with gentle fingers, asking Amanda to tell her where or when it hurt. The discomfort seemed mild, and definitely didn’t give off any sign of infection.

“Good news, Mrs. Broughton,” Kayla said, crossing to one of the cabinets to pull down a few things. “According to Nurse Elliot’s notes here, Amanda shows no sign of a fever, and there aren’t any signs of infection around the wound either. I’m going to give it a good disinfecting and bandage it, but be sure to keep an eye on her. If she starts feeling feverish or the wound gets discolored or hot, take her to the hospital immediately.”

“Of course I will, thank you,” Mrs. Broughton said, hand flying up over her chest.

It was easy work to clean and disinfect the small bite mark and then cover it with gauze. The whole time she was working, Amanda looked at her hopefully, and when Kayla produced three different flavored lollipops and told her to pick one, her little face lit up.

By the time they were leaving, Amanda was sucking on a bright blue lollipop and getting a lecture from her mother, and that was how Kayla’s Monday began.

There was hardly time to rest or relax until lunch time rolled around. The waiting room was empty, finally, and she had an hour and a half to herself before she had to attend to the next appointment.

After sending the nurses to get their lunches, she went into her office and dropped into her chair with a low exhale.

She’d packed her own lunch that day, leftovers from dinner the night before, and she took a breather and time to rest her feet before digging out the tupperware and going to heat up the casserole in the microwave.

It didn’t take long before the nurses were coming back with their lunches, food bought from the fast food places around the clinic, and Kayla debated for a bit before going to join them in the small lounge in the back.

“I swear if Tobias Hendricks tries to bite me one more time,” Christina complained, digging into her lunch. “I don’t know what his mother thinks she’s doing, but half the time she’s probably encouraging the little brat.”

“Whatever happened to doctor patient confidentiality?” asked Hayley.

“I’m not talking about what was wrong with him,” Christina insisted. “Just that something
is
wrong with him.”

They all laughed at that. Kayla mostly listened to them talk, enjoying the chatter as she ate and washed down her food with a can of soda. They were easy company, and since she lived alone and didn’t have much time to see people with how busy work kept her most of the time, it was nice to be able to sit and socialize, even if she wasn’t the one talking.

“So,” Christina said, and Kayla could feel that her eyes were on her as she hunted in her tupperware for a piece of chicken in the casserole.

“So what?” she asked, wariness entering her tone. She didn’t really like the eager look on the nurse’s face.

“You know the man who just opened that flower shop across the street?”

Kayla knew of him. She passed his shop on the way in and out of the parking lot of the clinic every day, after all. “What about him?”

“Well, I did some digging, and--”

She groaned, cutting Christina off. “I already don’t like where this going, Chris. Digging sounds profoundly like being nosy.”

“I wasn’t being nosy!” she insisted. “I went in there to get some flowers for my mom, and we just got to talking, you know how it is.”

Kayla was pretty sure she didn’t know how it was, but she let Christina continue. “He’s new in town, and he was a florist in Chicago before he moved here. His name in Dean, and he’s got some really nice arrangements, if you know what I mean.” The laughter pretty much proved that they all knew what she meant. “You should go in there, Kayla.”

“I don’t need any flowers, though.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “And you don’t need to be in there looking for flowers anyway. Look at
him.
I saw him this morning when I got in, and girl, he is fine. Dark hair, light eyes, nice body. If I weren’t dating someone, I’d go in there and arrange something for myself. But you’re single and beautiful, and he would be lucky to have you.”

Kayla smiled at the compliment. Beautiful was probably a strong word for what she was. She knew she was attractive enough with her golden skin and masses of black curls, showing her mixed heritage. She was average height and had plain brown eyes, though, and her face was nice looking, but there were plenty of women who were far more lovely than she was.

Some of them were sitting in the room with her at that very moment, actually. If Nina were to go in there and try to flirt with Dean, he’d probably fall for her in a minute flat, and Kayla just didn’t anticipate those kinds of results for herself.

She knew they meant well, really she did. They thought she was lonely and wanted her to be happy, but the thought of going in there and trying to get the florist to… to what? To go out with her? Whatever she was meant to try and do sounded embarrassing.

And it wasn’t like Kayla
needed
a date anyway. She was fine as she was. Yes, some nights she was lonely, and sometimes she wished that she could have someone to cuddle up to at night, but with the hours she worked and the time she had to devote to her job and keeping up with the other things she needed to do, there just weren’t enough hours in the day to let her be a good partner for someone.

Every relationship she’d ever been in had ended because the man ended up feeling neglected, and there wasn’t much Kayla could do about that.

In school, her studies had come first, and now her job was her main priority. Her mother had often told her that she was going to work the best years of her life away and then wake up one morning and be old and alone if she didn’t make some changes, but it wasn’t like she could just
stop
working.

So really, she didn’t know what she was supposed to do to fix it. Not that it needed fixing because it was most definitely
not a problem.

If she was going to be with someone, then she’d want it to be someone who cared about her and was there for her. Not someone she’d just met randomly. The thing about it was that she wasn’t just looking to get laid or have someone be there. She wanted an actual
partner,
and as she’d told her friends time and time again, she just didn’t have the time to cultivate that kind of relationship right then.

But, as always, they went on without her, making plans for how she could go introduce herself to Dean the florist. As the lunch hour went on, the ideas got more and more outlandish, and once they’d got to trying to get him to come into the clinic to get a check up from her “if you know what I mean”, Kayla had decided that she’d had enough.

She had patients to see starting soon, and a little extra prep had never hurt anyone.

The rest of the day went as usual, and the clinic closed at eight. Twelve hour days were brutal, but until they got another doctor to help with the workload, it was going to be Kayla's version of normal.

By the time she got home, the last thing she really wanted to do was make dinner and clean up, but she was hungry and hadn’t had time to tidy after breakfast before she’d had to leave and go to work. Her instinct was to just order a pizza and leave the mess for later, but she knew that was a vicious cycle that just ended up with her having no clean dishes and spending more money than she need to.

She’d gone grocery shopping for a reason, and she was going to use the stuff she’d bought.

Charlie, her large, fluffy Samoyed dog was waiting by the door when she came in, barking his head off. Kayla let him out into the yard to run around and do his business, leaving the door open for him while she washed dishes and got some chicken cooking.

It was a peaceful way to wind down after the long day she’d had, and if her house was a little too quiet and she wished that she had someone to chat with while she worked, well. That was fine. Charlie was good company, and he sat at her feet while she made rice to go with her chicken, begging for scraps.

He curled up at her feet in the living room while she ate and watched television, flicking through the channels and then loading up a movie on Netflix to watch until she was tired enough to go shower and head for bed.

In the morning, she’d have to do it all over again anyway, and sleep was important.

Kayla didn’t glance at her empty bed as she made her way to the shower, and when she got out, wrapped in her bathrobe, Charlie was there at the foot of the bed, tongue lolling out as he waited for her.

So she wasn’t completely alone, and she was fine.

She was fine.

“Snap out of it,” she chided herself as she punched her pillow and made herself comfortable in the bed. “You have your health and a job you love and you have friends, kind of. There’s no reason to feel sorry for yourself.”

And talking to herself wasn’t a sign that something was wrong either.

Kayla rolled her eyes and then closed them, doing her deep breathing exercises to slow her mind down and make herself relax. The last thing she needed was a twelve hour day on not enough sleep.

Chapter 3: The Champion

“You’re so lucky you don’t have to work,” Kasha sighed as she passed Khaos on the stairs. “Some of us have to go stare at holo screens all day and keep track of loads of boring information.”

“Excuse me,” Khaos said with a grin. “I have to keep myself in peak physical condition. I have to have medics prod at me every week to make sure I’m healthy,
and
if I start losing for some reason, then I have to join the rest of you in staring at screens all day. It’s not all sunshine for me, Kasha.”

She rolled her eyes at him and flipped him a rude gesture as she headed out the door.

It was true that since he was a well ranked arena fighter, he didn’t have to hold down a normal job like most other people did.

The capital put out a stipend for arena fighters since their work in the arena technically counted as entertainment. Putting on a good show was important, and they wanted the fighters to be focused on fighting and little else. If he had to ride a desk or stare at a screen or collect information all day, Khaos was pretty sure he’d go insane.

Some people got to scout out other worlds, and that seemed alright. Missions went out to other planets all the time, coming back with amazing finds and new information about the galaxy. He supposed if he had to do a job other than fight, that would be where he’d look, even if he was probably too old to start learning how to do that.