“It’s - probably a good idea to wait until we can go over everything at home, yeah. I can handle it if you give me the lab orders." 

She has no idea what Iomedae or Alfirin are rounding off the concept of bloodwork or urine tests to. Some sort of bizarre local superstition from their home country? She does think that once Iomedae gets the concept of vaccines, she'll be incited to delightedly praise God and Costco. Vaccines are clearly something God would approve of. 

(...Maybe. Or maybe Iomedae won't bring it up, maybe she's - decided to stop doing that, because Emily or Claudette told her it would come across as weird. Which Evelyn has mixed feelings about. It does come across as pretty weird, and she had been pre-emptively dreading Iomedae being bullied over it once she starts high school, but - she'll miss it, if Iomedae stops bringing God up at home too.) 

"Sure thing." He writes them out and hands them to her. "All right. All of you take care, and come right back in if you do have any problems."

"Of course. Thank you." 

Evelyn smiles at the two girls, and does not ask how it went. Hopefully well? Her doctor tends to have especially good rapport with teenagers. (It's easier for him, Evelyn thinks, when he's breezing into their lives to be unexpectedly chill and respectful about their life choices, and he's not the one dealing with fights and messy rooms and refusal to do homework day in and day out. But it's possible he's also just...better with teenagers than she is, in some way. Not that Iomedae or Alfirin are typical.) 

...She sort of wishes she'd had more time to coach the girls on the behavioral health interview, or at least warn them what to expect, but honestly she has no idea where to start. It's absolutely the kind of topic that explodes into a hundred tentacles of miscommunication and teenage indignence at completely unexpected aspects. 

The nurse is back about twenty minutes later. "All right. We do have to split the girls up for the behavioral health interview, it's not appropriate for them to hear each others' answers. They can have mom in the room if they want."

"My mother is not here but Evelyn in the room is better than not." Evelyn is more honorable than the nurse. 

"I never ask foster children to call me Mom," Evelyn confirms, less because this is going to make any difference whatsoever - this is just how health care professionals are, the doctor only avoids it because she's been bringing her foster kids here for a decade and some of them have MUCH angrier responses to implications that she's their mom - and more because she wants Iomedae to know that she, also, noticed. "Are we going to do them one at a time? Alfirin, do you want me there as well for yours?" 

(It's probably better for her to be there, even if she's going to spend the entire time extremely tense.) 

"You can not in both rooms same time, you stay with Iomedae if they do both same time? I not need you with me."

Alfirin will pass her behavioral health interview with flying colors. Alfirin can lie. 

"We can do them one at a time if you both want your m- uh, your foster mom," the nurse says.

"- You can talk about it in Taldane for a moment if you want," Evelyn says quickly. If the nurse looks unhappy about them doing this then she can get politely glared at. 

There's not actually much to discuss. Making Americans feel good about enslaving you doesn't seem hard if you are allowed to mislead them. It's just pretty obviously impossible if you aren't.

Oh, she gets it now, this nurse will not understand literally anything a "child" says the first time.

"I do not need Evelyn there" she says again.

"All right, then! Evelyn, why don't you and Yomeday come with me back to the other room."

Iomedae will obey. 

(There is some kind of subtext here and Evelyn is pretty sure that she's completely failing to read it correctly. Alfirin - has less trust and rapport with Evelyn and so wouldn't find her presence useful? That wouldn't be surprising, Alfirin has been there for half the time that Iomedae has, but it doesn't feel right. Alfirin seems less worried about this than Iomedae is, and Evelyn doesn't get that part at all. Maybe Iomedae is just still shaken from the incredibly awkward interaction about her ritual scarification, and wants Evelyn to be a buffer in case that comes up again and she's put on the spot? That...still feels incomplete, like Evelyn is missing some element that both Alfirin and Iomedae agree on.) 

...It's not an answer either of them owes her, though. She will smile pleasantly at the nurse. 

"Now, you can make yourself comfortable," says the nurse, "we're not going to be doing any more physical exams. We're just going to be talking about the feelings and stresses you may be going through right now. If anything I ask doesn't make sense, please feel free to stop me or ask questions. 

Now, all of these questions are about how you have been feeling in the last two weeks. We'll ask later about mental health history - how you felt before that - but this first screening is just to get a snapshot of where you are right now. 

In the last two weeks, have you had thoughts like that you wish that you were dead, or that you would be better off dead, or that other people would be better off if you were dead?"

" - of course I would be better off dead. I do not know if other people would be better off if I were dead. I think maybe my friends would be better off if I had died instead of finding them to travel with, but Evelyn think maybe la migra would have come anyway. But it maybe my fault, so maybe better for them if I had been dead. But if I died now that would not help them, only if I had died before I tell the law about Martin."

....Yep Evelyn is very glad to be here for this. 

"She was living with a migrant camp of undocumented workers," she says quickly. "There was an ICE raid shortly after she came to CPS attention, which may or may not have been related but Iomedae is concerned it was. Martin is the man who attempted to assault her, she brought him in for medical attention afterward."

Evelyn is so calm and not worried and - well, maybe indirectly implying that anyone would be devastated after that, and teenagers can be dramatic, it's not a useful thread to keep yanking on. Evelyn does not expect that to work to get the nurse to leave it alone - the doctor would, and come back to it later - but she can at least convey to Iomedae that saying that is not something Evelyn will get mad at her over.  

Also Iomedae believes in AFTERLIVES - like, harder than Evelyn does? Evelyn believes in Heaven but she's still pretty sure Iomedae believes in it differently. Evelyn is not at all sure that's useful to insert here. The nurse already knows that Iomedae is very religious and can hopefully make that inference? ...She'll wait and see where the nurse goes from here. 

"How many times in the last few weeks would you say you have had these feelings about being better off dead, or other people being better off if you were dead?"

"...I do not understand."

She repeats herself more slowly. 

Iomedae looks hopelessly at Evelyn. "I do not have - guesses about what I did wrong - a number of times? I know them always."

"...I think there's a bit of a miscommunication about the question," Evelyn says very carefully, looking at Iomedae and not the nurse. "The question that the doctor is worried about, here, is - sometimes people who are very sad about something that happened, or - feel like something bad was their fault and it means they're a bad person - end up having a lot of thoughts about wishing they were dead, or thinking about ways they could hurt themselves. And that's - something the doctor would want to help a person with, if they were feeling that way, because usually there are ways for someone to feel better, even if the things that happened really are sad." 

Evelyn isn't sure if that's a better way to communicate it, but - she would be pretty surprised, if Iomedae were having intrusive suicidal thoughts. She...might have the thought that being in foster care sucks, and Heaven sort of definitionally does not suck, and selfishly she would be happier in Heaven, but Evelyn has a hard time imagining Iomedae acting on that or really even wanting to. Earth is where people need her help. And, as she already pointed out, it wouldn't help her friends for her to die now. 

"Like they can give my friends they children back?" It would not be more baffling than anything else about America if they'll give her friends their children back because she is sad.

...Evelyn is maybe going to be a coward and let the nurse field that one because she is busy being really mad about ICE again.

(It's one thing to take kids into foster care against their protests because their parents hit them and spend all their money on drugs. It's a tragedy, but - the situation was already a tragedy, and sometimes it does result in giving the parents some breathing space to put their lives back together. But it's - Evelyn had never really thought about the difference, before, but these weren't parents who were neglectful or abusive. Iomedae wouldn't have been okay with that. They were parents who loved their children and were trying to give them a better life and future in the only way they saw how, and their crime was having been born in a poorer country, and Evelyn is - pretty mad about that, it turns out, once she's had it repeatedly brought to her attention how unfair it is, even if she's also sort of grumpy about having it repeatedly brought to her attention when she genuinely can't do anything about it.)