Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic by Laurence E Dahners Read Free Book Online Page B

doesn’t mean you need to start calling me ‘Mizz!’
    “Sorry Denny, Eva insists that we be very polite to our patients. She says that when you’re sick you have enough problems without our being disrespectful.”
    Denny glanced around the big room, sizing up the crowd. She turned back to Tarc, “Do you think it will be a lot longer before she has enough time for me? You know the business here a lot better than I do.”
    Tarc looked the room over as well. Daussie was coming their way and he looked up at her, “Daussie, are there still a lot of people waiting for orders?”
    Daussie shook her head, looking irritated. However, just then the tavern door opened and six more men came in. Tarc turned back to Denny and shrugged helplessly, “Those six will hold things up quite a bit.”
    Denny sighed, “I’ll wait. Everybody says y our mom’s the best. But I’d better run back out to the outhouse.” She started to get up.
    Tarc tensed, but he knew what his mother would want him to do. “Well, that’s the thing. Mom’s training me to be a healer too. While you’re waiting she sent me out to talk to you and see if I could start figuring out what’s wrong.”
    Denny’s eyes flashed wide and she blushed. Quietly she said, “I don’t know if I could talk to you about this !”
    Tarc shrugged, feeling relieved. “That’s okay. Most things can wait a little bit.”
    Denny buried her face in her hands a moment ; then spread her fingers to peer out between them at Tarc. Somehow looking both mortified and determined, she said, “Sorry, I suppose you can’t possibly learn if nobody will talk to you about their illnesses…” She took a deep breath, “When I pee, it feels like I’m on fire… down there.” She glanced downwards but didn’t point, “Even worse, I have to pee all the time. Then when I do pee, hardly anything comes out.”
    Horrified, Tarc realized that it sounded like it might be a ‘female problem’ of some kind. Hoping his dismay didn’t show on his face, Tarc did his best to speak calmly like his mother had taught. “Do you think you have a fever?” he asked reaching out to touch her forehead with the back of his hand. He noted with some relief that she didn’t feel very hot.
    Denny said, “I’m not sure, sometimes I feel kind of warm, but Joe says he doesn’t think I’ve got a fever.”
    “Is your appetite okay?”
    “Appetite?”
    “Do you get hungry?”
    “Oh, yeah. But maybe not as hungry as I usually am. It’s the burning that’s really driving me crazy though. That, and the fact that I have to pee all the time!”
    Tarc resisted the impulse to frown and tell her that she’d already told him that. Eva often said that sometimes the only thing they could do was to listen compassionately while their patients complained. When Denny launched into a further description of just how bad she’d been feeling; Tarc realized he could use that time to send out his ghost senses. As they entered her lower abdomen though, he suddenly realized that he hadn’t studied that part of the anatomy atlas yet. Worse, there weren’t going to be left and right versions of things down there and , he blinked, she was a woman and he was a man. He couldn’t make a comparison between her parts down there and his own because there were certainly going to be some male—female differences. In fact, he didn’t know if anything was the same between men and women in that region! Then he wondered if he was allowed to feel around down there. He felt certain that he wasn’t allowed to touch women down there with his hands !
    Denny kept talking. Tarc resisted the impulse to look downwards where his ghost was traveling. He kept his eyes on hers, but realized that he wasn’t really hearing anything she was saying. He hoped it wasn’t important. He quickly explored his own lower abdomen with his ghost senses. With a sense of panic he realized that things were indeed significantly different down inside there