Finally, after they were done, and the nurses had exited the room, a pretty doctor who’d entered the room in the midst of the activity approached my side and cracked a smile as she glanced at the tablet she’d been given.

“Acuminate, huh?” she asked as she drew her eyes up and looked at me.

I tried to smile back, and answered, “Acuminous if you want it as an adjective.”

She pretended to frown but her eyes remained gentle and humorous. “I’m Doctor Brooks, by the way.   And there aren’t many patients … or doctors, for that matter … who’d describe pain that way,” she batted back.

“I’ve got other words I could use to impress you with,” I answered, realizing that, in the midst of the activity earlier, the fog in my brain had steadily cleared, and I could articulate my thoughts much more quickly.

I was apparently also getting in touch with other things. What is this? Am I flirting with the pretty doctor?

“I’m sure you could, Aerin,” she started to say, as she wrote something on the tablet.

“Lancinating,” I cut in, and was about to continue when she interrupted me with a devastating wink. “Enough with the Latin-based words, ok? I’m suitably impressed.”

I felt a blush spread slowly around my face.

“So what is the pain narrowing to?” she asked after a beat. “You said the pain was acuminous … to?”

“As I told the other doctor,” I looked over her shoulder at the other doctor. She had her arms crossed in front of her, and was not as friendly as the one who was now asking me questions. “My head, my arms and shoulders, and my shin. I thought earlier, when I woke, that the pain was spread out, but I figured out that they were coming from those specific areas.”

The pretty doctor nodded, and started scribbling something again on the surface of the tablet.

She didn’t say anything else as she and the other doctor started exchanging a few words that sounded medical and scientific … and ominous.

They both looked at me with slightly more worried faces.

“So what’s the prognosis?” I asked after a few seconds. This time, the beeping of the machines was getting to me as I grew anxious.