Dark Heart (DARC Ops Book 3) Read Free

returned to the hand with a cotton swab, rubbing alcohol over Marva’s fingertip. “Okay,” she said calmly. “You know the drill with this, right?”
    “Unfortunately,” Marva said, opening her eyes to watch Fiona handling the gun-shaped glucose reader. “You tell me it’s not going to hurt, but it always does.”
    “Just a little prick,” said Fiona, applying the sharp metal tip of the device to the end of Marva’s index finger.
    “Oh, Lord, I hate this damn thing.”
    Fiona shushed her quietly, and then started counting down from three.
    “Lord have mercy.”
    “Two . . .”
    Fiona steadied the device and placed her finger on the injector button.
    “One.”
    Snap .
    Marva’s body squirmed in discomfort as Fiona drew the device away. “Good Lord,” Marva said with disapproval.
    “You’ll get used to this,” said Fiona cheerfully. “It’ll be just like brushing your teeth.”
    Marva didn’t say anything. She probably wasn’t buying it. They never did.
    Fiona checked back to the device, waiting a moment for the glucose reading to appear. Still nothing. Her patient, meanwhile, was inspecting the latest little sore on her finger as if it was some gruesome injury. “You okay?” asked Fiona.
    She kept rubbing her thumb over the wound that had already sealed.
    “Okay,” said Fiona, reading her blood sugar number. Ninety-one. “Everything looks good.”
    “Yeah,” Marva said, unimpressed. She was still looking at her finger. “Is there any way that I won’t have to do that? Lord knows I hate needles.”
    “I know, I know.” Fiona said it in as apologetic a tone as possible. No matter the wrong choices, she really did feel bad for Marva. She put the detector away, out of Marva’s sight. “I can talk to the doctor about that if you want.”
    “Oh, yes,” Marva said, perking up. “I want that very much.”
    That was the good news, there being an option aside from getting pricked with a needle every few hours. The bad news, of course, was that the option was not cheap.
    “What’s your medical coverage like, by the way?”
    Marva mustered a little snorting laugh. “What coverage?”
    “You don’t have coverage?”
    Her laughter died as quickly as it started. “Well, it’s not too good. Why? Is it expensive?”
    Fiona smiled warmly. “We’ll see what we can do, okay?”
    What they could do, maybe, if she could afford it, or if some miracle happened, was supply Marva with an insulin pump. Fewer pricks on the finger. No more constant monitoring. The device would take care of all that, offering real-time blood readings and administering automatic insulin injections. When Fiona explained all this, her patient’s eyes widened with a hope she’d never seen before. Her face lit up as if she’d just been told that her diabetes was cured.
    “But you’ll still have to watch what you eat very carefully,” warned Fiona.
    “Oh, of course. I know.”
    “It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t get rid of—”
    “I know, I know,” Marva interrupted, emphatically denying any possibility of slipping back into her old, unhealthy ways. Of course not. Of course she wouldn’t. “I just don’t want all those finger sticks. I’ll be happy with that, by God.”
    “You’ll be happy when you feel better. When you can walk.”
    “Oh, yes, that too.”
    Fiona had realized that what the woman really needed was a therapist. Not just a dietician, but a psychologist, someone to undo a lifetime’s amount of mental conditioning. To that end, maybe the finger pricks were a good thing. As a punishment to keep her reminded. To keep her honest.
    The old woman closed her eyes again. She took a deep breath. “Thank you, Fiona.”
    She immediately felt guilty for having wished this poor old lady punishment. Hell, at her age, after raising six children and surviving brain cancer, she deserved ice cream and whatever else she wanted.
    It was unfair, actually.
    But Fiona couldn’t let her patient get a whiff