The doctor was younger than she'd expected, though young doctors weren't unheard of. Garcia Pharmaceuticals had many scholarships to fast-track promising applicants and keep people in-house as early as possible, and Dr. Connolly from the CDC had been only a little older than Maggie herself was. It gave her a slight advantage, she thought, in that at least she wouldn't be talked down to by someone who imagined that age gave them a leg up on her.
"Two things," Maggie said, holding up two fingers. Her hands were covered in heavy-duty polyurethane gloves, always important for any animal owner to have, even though teacup bulldogs were below amplification threshold. "First and foremost, I have a highly infectious virus called Kellis-Amberlee. I doubt you've heard of it. I want tests done immediately to determine whether or not it's currently present in my saliva. I can guarantee you that it will be present in my blood, so you can use that as a control. I hope you have an excellent BSL-4 lab, because I'm not kidding when I say that it's highly infectious and that you probably don't want it." She smiled sweetly, though the expression was somewhat hidden by the scarf. "And I'm willing to pay however much you want for you to show the results only to me.
"Secondly," she continued briskly, "though this is contingent on results from the tests, I'm currently recovering from a gunshot wound. Abdominal through-and-through, liver trauma, all repaired. Assuming it's safe, I'd like to check on the progress of my healing."