Yaya stared at the lined paper. She had no appointment and filled in her name, wrote ASAP for the time, and question marks in the physician column.

“And can I see your insurance card?” Jessie asked, teeth peeking behind her smile.

What was with the third degree? No one at the Sibs station ever asked Yaya anything beyond her name and card. ABP workers and doctors didn’t like questions, giving or getting, and she’d figured it was the same for everyone else.

Controlling as ABP was, they handled everything.

“Miss?” Jessie grasped the clipboard’s corner and pulled it into her shadow.

“Do you even have an appointment?”

“Do I need one?” Yaya asked. “You got to take walk-ins sometimes, yeah?

For surprises.”

Jessie adjusted herself. She had to spend half her evenings benching parked cars.

Yaya was nothing in this shadow.

A weird pulse ate down her abdomen. She’d never felt cramps this strange, usually more knife-like than itchy and squirming. Her hormones had to be protesting the change of scene. They wanted their usual Sibs station.

Jessie’s customer service smile shrank. “Insurance?”

Yaya reached into her purse and withdrew her red and white ABP card. A clinician swiped that little plastic rectangle each month when she came and went from the Sibs station. Swiping it here would probably send the bill to ABP, and they could bounce it back and forth with Sunnyside while someone actually helped Yaya for a change. ABP’s apathy had surrendered their say. They wouldn’t kill her for getting a second opinion once in her life.

But Jessie didn’t swipe the card. She wouldn’t touch it. “You’re one of those chimeras?”

“Chimeras, double-zeroes, freaks—your preference,” Yaya said. The itchy squirming slid down her arms and legs. Her nails begged to tear skin, but she gripped the reception desk instead. “That a problem?”

“You’re supposed to go to those stations for the cute zygote thing,” Jessie said.

“Acute zygote manifestation syndrome.” Yaya leaned over the counter.

Jessie didn’t lean back, but there was a shift. The itch sank between Yaya’s legs, as if to remind her why she would bother with Sunnyside at all. “There was a complication, and I needed help pronto. Don’t you ever have down-there complications?”

“You have no appointment, no insurance, and a genetic condition that no one in normal medicine studies for.” Jessie tapped the desk beside the ABP card.

“If you have an emergency, head to the ER.”

“It’s not an emergency; it’s a complication,” Yaya said through gritted teeth. A hot flare shot up her spine. “Look, I just need to know if I got cancer in my cooch, or if it’s Sibs coming home to roost, or some new STD, okay? I’m not asking much. Can someone here please take pity on me for all of two minutes?”

A door opened behind the reception desk, and a harrowed-looking woman in white coat and blue scrubs leaned through. She handed a manila folder to Jessie and took the clipboard. “Yolanda?” she asked.