“Anyway,” Anya said, breaking the silence. “My point is that, even though it was a different situation, you shouldn’t let anyone who mistreated you in the past have control of your future. There are a lot of good doctors out there in the Seven Galaxies who can help you. You’re missing out on some great friendships and probably on some awesome collaborations too.”
“You’re right. Now that I’ve finally admitted to myself how ridiculous it was to try to do this all on my own, I’m completely embarrassed by my actions. I hope the people of Zocrone can forgive me. I hope you can forgive me.”
He looked over at Anya, meeting her eyes and waiting to see how she would react. When she smiled at him, the warmth in her eyes seemed to reach all the way to his very core. He felt a stiffening between his legs again as he thought about how beautiful she looked right now, and about how much he wished he could take her in his arms and kiss her, then strip her down right here and make love to her. There were far too many people in the room, though. And besides, he doubted she was interested in sleeping with him after he’d treated her the way he had. The most he could hope for was friendship. Maybe someday, after he’d proven that he did know how to act like something other than a jerk toward her, he might have a chance to be with her. But today, her smile was enough. Just knowing that she didn’t completely hate him was enough.
“I forgive you,” she said. “I understand why you acted so ridiculous. I still think it was ridiculous, yes. But I understand.”
“Thank you,” Kromin said in a voice barely above a whisper. The warmth in his core was now spreading throughout his entire body. He tried to get a hold of the emotions rushing through him, but he couldn’t quite stop the passion that insisted on snaking its way into every last cell.
He wanted Anya. Wanted her badly. And yet, how could he even hope that she might feel the same about him? He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had slapped him in the face when he tried to apologize. He had a long way to go to become a man worthy of love from a woman like her. Oh sure, he was a good-looking guy, and he had a good career. He could be nice when he wanted to be, or even funny. Many girls over the years had tried to chase him down, and now he understood why none of them had ever sparked any interest in him.
He’d been waiting for Anya. Watching her now, some part of him that had never truly been alive suddenly came to life. His body grew warmer and warmer until the heat felt like a fire coursing through his veins. His dick grew stiffer and stiffer until it was a solid rod between his legs. There was no hiding it this time. No turning quickly to walk away so she couldn’t see it. She had already seen it, and was staring down at it with a wide-eyed expression on her face.
“Anya,” he whispered in a husky voice.
At the sound of his voice, she turned to look at him, confusion etched across her face. “But you hate me,” she said, glancing back and forth between his erection and his face.
“Oh, Jupiter, no. I don’t hate you. I’ve been hopelessly attracted to you for a long time. It’s part of why I’ve been so distant. I didn’t want anyone working at the hospital, but especially not you. How was I supposed to focus on anything when you were around, with that pretty little ass always in my view, and those perfect, round breasts always pushing out against your scrubs?”
Anya’s mouth had parted slightly, and she moved her lips like she was trying to say something, but no words came out. Kromin leaned in closer to her, moving slowly so she had no doubts what his intentions were. With one hand, he gripped the bottle of Eiwort tightly so that it wouldn’t fall over. With the other hand, he reached for Anya’s hand. He laced his fingers with hers and leaned in closer, inch by inch.
To his relief and amazement, she did not pull away. Instead, when he had only about an inch left, she leaned in as well and closed the remaining distance between them.
Her lips were like fire on his. They were the softest, warmest, and absolute sweetest thing he had ever tasted. She let out a slight moan, and for the briefest moment Kromin remembered that they were sitting within full view of anyone who happened to be walking through the supply room right then. But Kromin decided he didn’t care. Let every last miner in here see him kissing Anya. Let them start all the crazy gossip they wanted to. All that mattered to Kromin was that for that moment, Anya was his. His erection throbbed between his legs, and he wished then that there was a private room for them to go to. A kiss was such a tease. It only left him wanting more.
All too soon, though, Anya pulled back. She seemed to have remembered where they were as well, because she looked nervously around.
“Kromin, we shouldn’t.”
“Why not? There’s no rule against a man and woman who are attracted to each other enjoying a little kiss.”
“But everyone will stare at us. And I’m not sure I’m ready to be churned through the Zocronian gossip mill just yet.”
Kromin sighed. He wasn’t going to push Anya into something she was uncomfortable doing. As much as he would have loved to growl at her and tell her she was going to kiss him no matter what, he knew that wasn’t the gentlemanly thing to do. And after being a jerk for so long, he was determined to at least make an attempt at being a gentleman.
“Fine,” he said, forcing himself to sit back against the wall. “We’ll take it easy for now. But that wasn’t the end of this conversation.”
He winked at her and sat back, taking another swig of the Eiwort. To his delight, she reached over and laced her hand back through his.
“No,” she said, her voice so soft that he could barely hear it. “That definitely wasn’t the end of that.”
Kromin felt a fresh rush of fire shoot through him, and he hoped with every fiber of his being that the storm would let up soon so that he could get back to the city dome with Anya and take her somewhere private. He’d been waiting his whole life for a feeling like this.
Chapter Eight
Three days later, Anya stepped into Zocrone’s one and only hospital with a new spring in her step. This was the first time she’d shown up for work here without dreading how things would go when she saw Kromin. The man had turned over a completely new side of himself, and she could hardly believe that he was the same man who had caused her so much trouble over her first week on the job.
She wasn’t sure the exact moment that things had changed. But she knew that somewhere during the surgery for the injured miner, Kromin had realized that he couldn’t do this alone. That surgery would have been a disaster without her assisting him. Not only that, but the day that Kromin had had to deal with an appendectomy and a heart surgery on the same day would have been a disaster without her. How many other days had he barely made it through before she came along? She was thankful, not only for her sake but also for the sake of the Zocronian people, that Kromin had finally opened his eyes to the need for more help in the hospital.
But Kromin’s viewpoint on hiring more help wasn’t the only thing that had changed. When they had kissed back in the mines’ supply room, they had admitted to each other and to themselves that what they felt for each other went much, much further than friendship, or than just mutual respect for each other as colleagues. They were attracted to each other, but how far would they take that attraction? Was this going to turn into something permanent?
There hadn’t been a good opportunity to explore these sorts of questions while they were stuck in the mines. There were always people around, and Anya didn’t want everyone listening in while she tried to figure out what her feelings meant. The storm had raged on for three days, though, and waiting that long in the mines had been torture. Last night, in the dead of the night, the storm had finally broken. The miners hadn’t cared about the late hour. They had all piled into rovers and made the trek back to the city dome. By the time they got there, Anya knew it was too late to have a serious conversation. She could feel the exhaustion in her bones, and she would need to be up early the next morning to come work at the hospital. Kromin had agreed that it was best to leave any serious
conversations until they were more rested, and he had left her in the lobby of her apartment building with a simple kiss on the lips.
Now, as Anya walked toward the break room of the hospital, she nervously chewed her lip. What would it be like to work with Kromin today, now that so much had changed between them? She wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but she had a feeling it would be good.
When she opened the door to the break room, though, she was surprised to find that Kromin was not alone in there. Daxar, Jarmuk, and Toryx—Kromin’s three best friends and the three most influential men in the Zocronian government—were all sitting around one of the tables with Kromin. All four of the men had grave expressions on their faces. They were sipping tea and looking down at some sort of spreadsheets on their e-assistants. No one had even noticed Anya walking in, so she loudly and awkwardly cleared her throat. They all looked up, startled. Kromin smiled at her, but he was the only one. The other ones weren’t being unfriendly, exactly. They just looked concerned, like they’d just heard news that their favorite pet might have been run over by a bus but no one knew for sure.
“Everything okay?” Anya asked.
Daxar let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Not exactly. But it’s nothing you have to worry about.”
“Oh, come on, Dax. She’s basically second in charge at the hospital now. It’s important for her to know what’s going on.”
Anya couldn’t help but smile, even though Kromin’s words sounded slightly ominous. It felt good to have him sticking up for her.
Daxar shrugged under Kromin’s pointed gaze. “I suppose you’re right. Anya, grab yourself a drink if you want one and then come sit down.”
Anya didn’t bother getting herself a drink. Her stomach was tightening up with nerves, and the thought of eating or drinking something made her feel a little queasy. Something was very wrong here. The last time she’d seen Jarmuk and Toryx look this upset had been when Daxar had gone to try to save Nova from a basestos explosion.
“What’s going on?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from sounding hopelessly shaky.
“To put it simply,” Daxar said, “The storms have cut off our supply lines.”
Anya frowned. “Our supply lines for what?”
“Pretty much everything,” Toryx said. “There hasn’t been more than a half day break in the storms in the last two weeks, and from the forecasts it looks like the next few weeks are going to be just as bad.”
Jarmuk nodded. “Just as bad, if not worse. That means we can’t get any sort of outside shipments in. It’s unsafe for any ship to travel through the atmosphere. Hell, Evie almost crashed the Starburst on her way back from dropping you and Kromin off at the mines. The whole thing was just a little too close for comfort.”
Anya winced. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Evie since getting back to the city dome, but she had assumed that the flight back had been fine since she hadn’t heard otherwise. Evie was one of the best pilots in the Seven Galaxies at flying through stormy weather. If even she was having trouble with Zocrone’s stormy atmosphere, then things were really bad. Anya hadn’t thought much about it, but she did remember now that it had been storming once again when she left her house for work this morning. The storms had become so nonstop that it was almost like she didn’t notice them anymore as they constantly raged outside the city dome.
“Okay,” Anya said slowly, trying to process all of the information she’d been given. “So what does the break in supply shipments mean for Zocrone?”
“Well, we don’t know what the exact impact will be,” Kromin said. “It depends on how much longer the storms last. But right now we’re starting to get worried. We’re running low on a lot of crucial supplies here at the hospital, and other industries are running low as well. The food markets haven’t had any fresh meat ship in for weeks, and we’re running out of staples like flour and eggs.”
“I see,” Anya said. Zocrone itself was pretty much a wasteland of a planet. It had nothing to offer in terms of useful plants or animals outside the city dome, and even water was scarce on the planet. Its one major resource was Zekkardite, the toughest and yet most flexible material in the Seven Galaxies. Zekkardite brought huge amounts of income to Zocrone, and that income was used to pay to ship in pretty much everything else that the Zocronians needed.
Daxar rubbed his forehead, looking weary. He hadn’t faced many crises like this during his time as Chief. Thankfully, long delays in shipments were relatively rare. But when something like this did happen, it could be devastating to Zocrone. As Chief, Daxar had to make sure that the city dome didn’t run out of vital supplies like water and food. And as his advisors, Jarmuk, Toryx, and Kromin were responsible for helping him enforce rations when supplies were low. As Anya had expected, Daxar began talking about the ration procedures with his next sentence. “We’re instituting level three food and water control procedures. Any exceptions to level three protocol must be approved by myself or one of our military commanders. With these kinds of precautions in place, Zocrone should be able to comfortably last at least six more months without any water shipments. By that time, the stormy season will be over, and we should have had a break in the storms long enough for some shipments to come in. Food is a little trickier to preserve than water, but as long as we still have fruit growing on our trees and turq birds for meat, we should be okay. We also have a good supply of food bars in the government vaults. Not the tastiest of meals, but enough to keep people from starving to death, at least.”
“The more worrisome problem is the hospital supplies,” Kromin said. “Unfortunately, we’re running quite low on some staples like skinsealer and pain meds. Our anesthesia supply is also dwindling. If we need to do a lot of surgeries between now and the next supply shipments, we could be in trouble.”
Anya frowned, confused. “But it’s only been a few weeks without shipments, and there haven’t been that many surgeries, have there?”
Kromin looked down at his hands, his ridged, blue forehead crinkling up even more than normal. Anya had never seen him look more distressed or more vulnerable. Before he spoke, though, he raised his head to look her in the eyes. “I screwed up, Anya. I’ve never kept emergency rations of medical supplies. I should have done that, but it never occurred to me. And I was so busy trying to keep up with everything around here on my own that I only ordered supplies when it became absolutely critical.”
Anya sat back in her seat, stunned. So Kromin had been operating for years on a “barely enough” supply chain plan. Not the smartest idea, to be sure. But Anya didn’t need to explain that to him. From the expression on his face, and the pain in his eyes, he knew he’d screwed up.
“Well,” Anya said brightly. “At least now you know that that’s a very bad idea.”
His expression didn’t change much, but Anya could see the gratefulness in his eyes. He gave her a half smile, then spoke again. “I’ve already told Daxar that you’ll be staying on permanently, and that I’m planning to hire more doctors and personnel to help out around here.”
“You are?” Anya was happy to hear that. She’d been hoping to convince Kromin to at least hire some receptionists, but she hadn’t wanted to dump too many demands on him at once. Now that he’d realized his folly of trying to do it all alone, though, he was making a complete turnaround in the hospital.
“Yes, I’m hiring support personnel,” he repeated. “Going forward, I’ll have someone who is specially trained on how to keep supplies stocked, and their primary job will be to make sure we have enough of everything on hand. I’ll also be looking for more doctors, although I’ll have to look outside of Zocrone for that. No one here except me has gone to medical school for a few decades.”
“No one?” Anya could hardly believe it. Surely someone had wanted to follow in Kromin’s footsteps.
“I’m afraid that’s my fault,” Daxar spoke up. “When I closed the planet off to outsiders, our people lost interest in going away from here for a few years to lean a skill.
”
“But since those restrictions were lifted, there’s been a lot of renewed interest in travel, and in learning more about the outside world,” Kromin said. “My plan is to campaign among the younger people here and encourage many of them to head off to medical school. Then we’ll build a pipeline of young professionals to shore up the hospital. In the meantime, you and I will do the best we can. Of course, hiring receptionists will help.”
“And the low supplies?” Anya asked.
A shadow passed over Kromin’s face again. “We’ll do the best we can. We’ll only use what we absolutely have to, and hope that we have no major emergencies before we get more. The most urgent is the skinsealer. We tend to use a lot of that, and we just severely diminished our supply by treating the injured miner. That took quite a bit more skinsealer than usual.”
“Well, it was worth it, because he’s recovering nicely from what I hear,” Toryx piped in.
Kromin nodded. “Yeah. He’s gonna have a sludging ton of scars, but other than that he should be fine.”
Daxar drained what was left of his tea and started to stand. “Alright, you all know what’s going on, and you all know we need to be careful of what we’re using. I’ll be making a citywide announcement in a few hours about the rations. It won’t be easy, but we’ll make it work. We’ve been through hard times before, and we’ve proven that our water preservation and rationing works. We can do this.”
Jarmuk and Toryx stood as well. “We’re going with the Chief, Kromin,” Jarmuk said. “Let us know if there’s anything else you need from us.”
Kromin and Anya bid goodbye to the other three men as they left, and a minute later they found themselves sitting alone in the quiet break room. The silence between them hung heavy for a few moments. Kromin nursed his tea, and stared off into the distance. Finally, he turned to look at Anya with regret in his eyes. “I guess you must think I’m a pretty big sludge-up,” he said, his voice sounding more tired than she’d ever heard it.
Chosen by the Alien Doctor Page 6
