The doctor smiled kindly. “A pretty name for a very pretty girl. I like it.”
She giggled, but then her face fell flat. “What’s wrong with me, Dr. Dale?”
My heart broke at her words as Trey came over to sit next to me. He eased himself onto the couch and patted my knee, but he didn’t move his hand. So, instead of combatting against him for once, I took the hint and stayed seated, allowing the doctor to interact with Aurora without hovering around her. And as if Trey felt my nervousness, he took my hand in his and started stroking his finger against my skin. Almost as if to comfort me.
“Well, that’s what I’m here to find out, Miss Aurora. Do you remember much about what happened with the procedure we did the last time you were here?”
I swallowed hard as Rori shook her head. “No, sir.”
He smiled. “Well, when they were working on you to make you healthy again, they found a little pea lodged in your air sac in your lungs. Remember that?”
Recognition washed over her face. “Oh, yeah! From the shepherd’s pie that we ate.”
He chuckled. “Right, from the shepherd’s pie you ate. But that wasn’t the real issue going on. That was just that issue. Make sense?”
She wrinkled her nose. “So, this is a different issue?”
He nodded. “Exactly. And that’s where I come in. Want to know what I specialize in?”
“What?” I asked from across the room.
The doctor chuckled and peered over his shoulder. “I’m an allergist. People come to me when they have allergic reactions to something, but they don’t know what it is.”
Rori took the reins. “So, I’m gonna have an allergy test done?”
The doctor nodded. “Right, you are. I won’t make it hard on you, either. We’re going to start with one right on your upper arm, and it’ll be a series of pin-pricks that have certain things on the tips of them. After we touch your skin with them, we watch and see if any of them get raised or welted or red or itchy, or generally irritated. And if they don’t, you’re not allergic.”
She nodded slowly. “But if they do… that’s what’s wrong with me?”
The doctor patted her arm. “That’s the gist of it. It’s a good place to start, especially since your recurring episodes point in the direction of being exposed to something that creates this reaction. So, what do you say? Ready to take the first test?”
The hours passed by in a blur. One test morphed into two, and when they still didn’t have an answer after the second test, they let Rori sleep before the tests were continued. Two at a time, with five hours of downtime in between to sleep and rest. And not once did any of the common triggers, or even uncommon triggers, give her any sort of reaction to explain what was happening.
Then, the fifth test happened.
“Well, there’s a reaction,” the doctor said.
I rushed from the bathroom and right to my daughter’s side. “What is it?”
Rori whimpered. “Mommy, it’s itchy.”
Trey cupped her hands. “You don’t want to touch it. Just let the doctor look, okay?”
I saw the doctor quickly switch over the little slider of things he was using before he exchanged needles as well. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but when he started pin-pricking Rori again, her skin lit up like wildfire. She wiggled around, and Trey had to hold her hands to keep her from scratching. And by the time that swatch was done, my poor daughter’s arm was lit up like a fucking red stop sign.
“Can I itch now?” Rori asked with tears in her eyes.
The doctor pulled out a white cream. “Give me three seconds with this stuff, okay? This should help.” And the second he started slathering it against her skin, Rori relaxed. “Better?” Dr. Dale asked.
She nodded. “Much better.”
I shook my head. “What in the world is going on? She’s obviously allergic to something, so what is it?”
The doctor finished lathering up my daughter’s arm before he smiled. “Dust.”
I blinked. “Sorry, what?”
He capped off the salve and put it away. “Dust mites, actually, and everything that comes with them. She’s deathly allergic, and that explains just about everything that’s going on with her.”
