“Kids are resilient,” I said. “And I’ll be quiet like a mouse. They’ll never know I was there.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied, “but I am not amenable to random investigators wandering the grounds.”
I nodded seriously. “Okay. In that case, I’ll report to Dr. Pounder that you refused to allow her duly appointed representative to see her son, and that I cannot confirm his well-being. At which point I am confident that she will either radio for a plane to pick her up from her dig site, or else backpack her way out. I think the good doctor will view this with alarm and engage considerable maternal protective instinct.” I squinted at Fabio. “Have you actually met Dr. Pounder?”
He scowled at me.
“She’s about yay tall,” I said, putting a hand at the level of my temples. “And she works outdoors for a living. She looks like she could wrestle a Sasquatch.” Heh. Among other things.
“Are you threatening me?” Dr. Fabio asked.
I smiled. “I’m telling you that I’m way less of a disruption than Mama Bear will be. She’ll be a headache for weeks. Give me half an hour, and then I’m gone.”
Fabio glowered at me.
ST. MARK’S INFIRMARY was a spotless, well-ordered place, located immediately adjacent to its athletics building. I was walked there by a young man named Steve, who wore a spotless, well-ordered security uniform.
Steve rapped his knuckles on the frame of the open doorway and said, “Visitor to see Mr. Pounder.”
A young woman who looked entirely too nice for the likes of Dr. Fabio and Steve glanced up from a crossword puzzle. She had chestnut-colored hair, rimless glasses, and a body that could be readily appreciated even through her cheerfully patterned scrubs.
“Well,” I said. “Hello, Nurse.”
“I can’t think of a sexier first impression than a man quoting Yakko and Wakko Warner,” she said, her tone dry.
I sauntered in and offered her my hand. “Me neither. Harry Dresden, PI.”
“Jen Gerard. There are some letters that go after, but I used them all on the crossword.” She shook my hand and eyed Steve. “Everyone calls me Nurse Jen. The flying monkeys let you in, eh?”
Steve looked professionally neutral. He folded his arms.
Nurse Jen flipped her wrists at him. “Shoo, shoo. If I’m suddenly attacked, I’ll scream like a girl.”
“No visitors without a security presence,” Steve said firmly.
“Unless they’re richer than a guy in a cheap suit,” Nurse Jen said archly. She smiled sweetly at Steve and shut the infirmary door. It all but bumped the end of his nose. She turned back to me and said, “Dr. Pounder sent you?”
“She’s at a remote location,” I said. “She wanted someone to get eyes on her son and make sure he was okay. And, for the record, it wasn’t cheap.”
Nurse Jen snorted and said, “Yeah, I guess a guy your height doesn’t get to shop off the rack, does he?” She led me across the first room of the infirmary, which had a first-aid station and an examination table, neither of which looked as though they got a lot of use. There were a couple of rooms attached. One was a bathroom. The other held what looked like the full gear of a hospital’s intensive-care ward, including an automated bed.
Bigfoot Irwin lay asleep on the bed. It had been a few years since I’d seen him, but I recognized him. He was fourteen years old and over six feet tall, filling the length of the bed, and he had the scrawny look of young things that aren’t done growing.
Nurse Jen went to his side and shook his shoulder gently. The kid blinked his eyes open and muttered something. Then he looked at me.
“Harry,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“’Sup, kid,” I said. “I heard you were sick. Your mom asked me to stop by.”
He smiled faintly. “Yeah. This is what I get for staying in Chicago instead of going up to British Columbia with her.”
“And think of all the Spam you missed eating.”
Irwin snorted, closed his eyes, and said, “Tell her I’m fine. Just need to rest.” Then he apparently started doing exactly that.
Nurse Jen eased silently out of the room and herded me gently away. Then she spread her hands. “He’s been like that. Sleeping maybe twenty hours a day.”
“Is that normal for mono?” I asked.
“Not so much,” Nurse Jen said. She shook her head. “Though it’s not completely unheard-of. That’s just a preliminary diagnosis based on his symptoms. He needs some lab work to be sure.”
“Fabio isn’t allowing it,” I said.
She waggled a hand. “He isn’t paying for it. The state of the economy, the school’s earnings last quarter, et cetera. And the doctor was sure it was mono.”
“You didn’t tell his mom about that?” I asked.
“I never spoke to her. Dr. Fabio handles all of the communication with the parents. Gives it that personal touch. Besides, I’m just the nurse practitioner. The official physician said mono, so, behold, it is mono.”
I grunted. “Is the boy in danger?”
She shook her head. “If I thought that, to hell with Fabio and the winged monkeys. I’d drive the kid to a hospital myself. But just because he isn’t in danger now doesn’t mean he won’t be if nothing is done. It’s probably mono. But.”
“But you don’t take chances with a kid’s health,” I said.
She folded her arms. “Exactly. Especially when his mother is so far away. There’s an issue of trust here.”
I nodded. Then I said, “How invasive are the tests?”
“Blood samples. Fairly straightforward.”
I chewed that one over for a moment. Irwin’s blood was unlikely to be exactly the same as human blood, though who knew how intensively they would have to test it to realize that. Scions of mortal and supernatural pairings had created no enormous splash in the scientific community, and they’d been around for as long as humanity itself, which suggested that any differences weren’t easy to spot. It seemed like a reasonable risk to take, all things considered, especially if River Shoulders was maybe wrong about Irwin’s immunity to disease.
And besides. I needed some time alone to work.
“Do the tests, on my authority. Assuming the kid is willing, I mean.”
Nurse Jen frowned as I began to speak, then nodded at the second sentence. “Okay.”
NURSE JEN WOKE up Irwin long enough to explain the tests, make sure he was okay with them, and take a couple of little vials of blood from his arm. She left to take the vials to a nearby lab and left me sitting with Irwin.
“How’s life, kid?” I asked him. “Any more bully problems?”
Irwin snorted weakly. “No, not really. Though they don’t use their fists for that here. And there’s a lot more of them.”
“That’s what they call civilization,” I said. “It’s still better than the other way.”
“One thing’s the same. You show them you aren’t afraid, they leave you alone.”
“They do,” I said. “Coward’s a coward, whether he’s throwing punches or words.”
Irwin smiled and closed his eyes again.
I gave the kid a few minutes to be sound asleep before I got to work.
River Shoulders hadn’t asked for my help because I was the only decent person in Chicago. The last time Irwin had problems, they’d had their roots in the supernatural side of reality. Clearly, the giant thought that this problem was similar, and he was smarter than the vast majority of human beings, including me. I’d be a fool to discount his concerns. I didn’t think there was anything more troublesome than a childhood illness at hand, but I was going to cover my bases. That’s what being professional means.
I’d brought what I needed in the pockets of my suit. I took out a small baggie of powdered quartz crystal and a piece of paper inscribed with runes written in ink infused with the same powder and folded into a fan. I stood over Irwin and took a moment to focus my thoughts, both on the spell I was about to work and on the physical coordination it would require.