"Let me have the bag." Nick said to me as he stretched his hand toward me.
I nodded, already sliding the bag off my shoulder, although my eyes were still stuck on the little boy who seemed to be in some kind of agony. His mother stood at the far corner of the room, darting her eyes between us and her son.
Shouldn't she be sitting closer to him? I thought, whilst stretching the medical bag to Nick.
I stretched the bag towards him, but before he could collect it, a loud voice boomed across the room, causing me to shudder and drop the bag to the floor.
"Who let in a dirty slave near my son?"
Immediately, I shut my eyes tightly, partly from the fear of what would happen next, and the consequences of the crack sound I had heard when the bag had fallen to the floor. Something had broken, and I felt so guilty and afraid.
I was sure that Nick would have my head for whatever it was. So much for concentration.
"Stop bellowing Mark. You have frightened the girl into dropping my medicine bag. Let's just hope that whatever had broken wasn't necessary for the treatment of your son, although I highly doubt that." I heard Nick say, and let out a sigh of relief. He wasn't shouting at me; well, at least, not yet.
"I wouldn't have shouted if you hadn't brought in a goddamned slave into my house. You know I don't accept those unfortunate folks in here. They breed bad luck. Who knows if they had been responsible for my son's sickness?" The Mark said, although in a gentler tone, probably because he knew that any wrong statement might hinder his son's treatment for the day.
"You know that's not true. We have been suffering from this particular plague for five years now, two years before the ensued order of slaves. And you also know that this is its relegated season. Let's hope that the medicine I've been working on these past months would be able to cure your son. If not, we would have to quarantine him till…well…you know the whole story." Nick stated.
Plague?
There was a plague in this pack?
Oh my God! I screamed in my mind. This was a whole new different case. If I had known this was a plague, I would never had come inside here. I didn't want to suffer like this. I thought, as I opened my eyes and cast a glance at the boy writhing in pains on the bed.
No wonder his mother had stayed at the far corner of the room, instead of sitting on the bed close to her son. He has been plagurized.
"I'm sorry. You can go ahead and do your thing. But what is she doing here?" I heard the man called Mark, ask.
I was sure that he was the boy's father.
"Well, she is my apprentice. Meet Olivera. She will be working with me from now on." Nick said, and I couldn't help the gasp that escaped from my mouth.
An apprentice? Was this man trying to kill me?
For Pete's sake, I don't know any freaking thing about herbs and medicines!
I have no healing spirt or aura or whatever it is called.
I'm just a slave girl with no hope, okay well, a tiny hope of surviving.
"Apprentice? You know you would have to pass that through the Alpha, right?" Mark asked. I could feel his gaze on me. And I was sure whatever it is that he had seen, he didn't like it.
Because in the next minute, he exploded, especially since Nick's silence was the only reply he got to his question.
"Nick, you can't seriously be thinking about this! We have more capable hands which could help you in your good work, not some slave in hot rags! What do you think the Alpha would say about this?" He asked, shrugging away his mate who had tried to calm him down by the placement of her hand on his left arm.
Well, at least he admitted that the gown I was wearing was damn hot for a doctor's apprentice.
"Mark, calm down." His mate finally said. I was now sure that this had been the reason why she had been a bit reluctant to approve the doctor's decision of me following him to her house.
"Our son needs to be attended to if there is a possibility for a cure. You can talk out your differences later. But our son comes first." She added in a firm voice, before gesturing Nick with her hands to do his thing.
"The Alpha must hear this." I heard the man mutter, before turning around and walking away.
"Please don't mind him. Just do your work." The woman said, and Nick nodded at her before turning aside to face me.
"Now, this is a very critical case. You have to be strong and focus." He said.
He actually looked like he wanted to say more than that, but it seemed that he was wary of the woman's presence.
"I would leave you to work on him. I have something to do in the kitchen." The woman said, and immediately left the room, not even waiting for Nick's reply. If I hadn't seen her care for her son earlier, I would have said that her love was conditional and a bit fake like my sister's.
"Good she left. Now listen to me…" Nick said, dropping his voice to a whisper.
"If you want to survive here, you would have to play along with me. Do whatever I ask you do without hesitation. We have to make this look real. Do you understand?" He asked.
"Yes…but..." I wanted to say something more, something about why he was helping me out and why he thought I would be able to pull this off, and then I also wanted to thank him; but he cut me off the next second, before I even started the epistle.
"We will talk when we get back to my house." He said, and I nodded, understanding that we had work to do.