Chapter 9: The Wolf Doctor
#9 of Fallen Angel
This bit is fairly short, just a stepping-stone to the next. It's also a little melodramatic, a little poetic--a bit away from the feel of the rest of the tale. It should fall into place next chapter. Apologies for the long wait!
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The sun was slipping toward midmorning when the dark gray van slipped into the drive.
The wolfdogs on the estate hesitated, then left the vehicle alone; there had been much coming and going by strangers the last few days, and their master had been nowhere in sight... and anyway, one of the men in the van they knew as friendly.
Another wolf--this one a Furr: tall, lanky, rangy... Doctor Rook, it was; this wolf stepped from the van, blinking in the light, looking around him with some unease. The lawn around this place was huge, dark green, framed by the looming blackness of the trees. The wolf doctor--still hungover from last night's ill-advised get-together--grunted and shaded his golden eyes with one pale grey arm, peering into the woods.
For a moment, time slowed... The wolf lifted his muzzle slightly and flared his nostrils, inhaling the rich scent of cool pine forests; he felt the chilly breeze ruffle through his fur, and something tugged at some distant ancestral memory. Then the man beside him was pulling at his arm, and he looked away, shifting his attention, and the moment was gone.
The next minutes rushed by in the confused hustle of an emergency room. The doctor was whisked through a shattered door, down a hallway soaked with blood. He turned, half-expecting corpses to be lining some dungeon-style room--this place was, after all, practically a goddamned castle--and found only a pink-tinged white cat standing tall before him, green eyes shining.
He hesitated. She looked like a lioness, and the pink stains on her fur were obviously blood. They'd said a feline attack, and this female did not look hurt, after all...
"Doc," the human grunted, insistently. Obviously he was not concerned about this powerful pink-white lioness standing silently in the thick pink-white carpet...
The doctor turned to his patient, but for just an instant, he had the unshakeable feeling that he was in some primeval jungle, that the sunlight shafting down was coming not through windows and skylights but through fronds of ferns and palms, and that the cool ground squelching beneath his feet was not damp from blood, but rather from dripping rainwater...
And that this cat before him, fixing him silently with an unreadable stare, was some predator who he had clumsily stumbled upon in the wilds.
He blinked.
The black cat below him was shredded, and badly. He had a long slice across his abdomen, and smaller, deeper wounds spread over both arms. His throat, even, had bad wounds. All of this had, Rook noted with some surprise, already been sutured shut--it was a poor job to be sure, but it had stopped the bleeding.
Rook gestured to the stitches. Whoever had done them, though they'd been done raggedly, had done them in single professional knots, so the "stitcher" knew a thing or two about emergency medicine. "Who did this?"
"Does it matter?" the human in the suit asked, looking irritated.
"I mean the stitches," Rook replied shortly.
"Oh," and here the human looked apologetic; he began to clumsily search for words, but the white lioness spoke.
"I did," she replied. "I know they aren't great," she added as Rook opened his mouth to speak, "but these guys said 'no hospital' so it was the best I could do for him."
Rook looked up at the human and flashed him his best doctors'-only look of professional reproach. The human cringed, knowing what was coming, and he was right.
"If you'd brought him straight to medical care he'd be fine right now." Rook turned to the white feline femme. "I'm Doctor Rook. I need to know exactly what happened and what's already been done."
"Veronica," the lioness replied; after a thoughtful pause, she gave him a clear and concise explanation. "This is Xavier, he's healthy as far as I know, got mauled by a feral lion Furr. I tried to sterilize him as best I could, shaved some of the fur around the worse wounds, sutured up where I could. I emptied his bladder this morning--his urine is dark orange."
Rook nodded. This was all good information. "That's all?"
The lioness nodded back.
From there it was fairly straightforward. In silence, aside from the occasional softly-barked order, the wolf worked on the fallen panther.
He had Xavier moved to a bed in a guest bedroom. There he catheterized the panther (while the human looked away) and applied an IV to rehydrate the cat. He removed one set of sutures and resewed the flesh; the rest he left, because they were good enough and he didn't want to further damage the skin. He again flushed the wounds with antibiotic mixtures, applied ointments and bandages, and finished by rechecking the cat's blood pressure, heart rate and temperature.
"How is he?" Veronica said softly, interuppting his thoughts--he'd been sitting still for some time, measuring the black feline's pulse for the umpteenth time.
The doctor glanced up and moved his stethoscope away from his ears.
"His pulse is a bit faint, but strong enough. Blood pressure's a bit low. But his lungs are clear, and the heartbeat steady, and his temperature is back around normal. It might take a few days but I think he'll come around." He took a breath.
"It wasn't the blood loss, I don't think, or I'd have been searching for a donor by now. This might be a bit hard to hear," he warned her, "but I think he's in this state because he was in shock for so long. You kept him warm?"
Veronica nodded. "Me and--one of his dogs. We laid by him all night, kept him covered."
Rook looked at her thoughtfully, then nodded. "Good. What you did saved his life," he continued, "but obviously he'd be a lot better off if those men had brought him to a damn hospital right away."
The large white cat bit her lip and leaned back against the door frame. She crossed her arms and looked off into the wall, ears flicking back. She looked like she might cry.
"You look lost," Rook blurted--and immediately wished he hadn't. She glanced at him, and he felt relieved at once--she hadn't taken offense.
"You know," she replied quietly, "for the first time, I was starting to feel like maybe I wasn't." Then she gave him a small, sad smile, and left the room, paws padding silently into the hall.
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When Xavier finally opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was not Veronica. He'd forgotten her, actually--forgotten everything, in one of those brief moments of clear emptiness your mind feels when you first awaken after a long sleep.
The first thing the winged black panther saw was moonlight--pale silver light shifting through the trees, playing on the wrought-iron windowsill and across the lace curtains in a show of dark and silent grace.
He blinked, breathing deep, smelling the scents of all the medicines and creams that had been used here in the last couple of days--he felt the catheter, and saw the IV, and groaned inside his mind.
What had happened?
Where was he, why wasn't he in his own bed? This looked like home, but...
"You're okay." The voice was relieved, but brought some authority too. He glanced over, realizing through a haze that he was drugged, and saw Veronica standing at the foot of his bed. Shining white, fur positively glowing in the moonlight; she was smiling down at him with pleasure.
"What..." He tried to lean up, but fell back with a grunt of pain.
"Relax, you're safe now," she soothed him, leaning down and taking his hand in her own soft one. "You were attacked pretty bad, caught unawares by some lion you were after. Your men brought you back here. A doctor's been to see you every day, and he says you'll be just fine."
It took Xavier three tries, and the whole time the earnestness, the pain that showed in his face (not physical pain, but the painful need to get something said) made Veronica lean close and grip his pawhand tightly.
Finally, he managed it though, and when he did, she smiled and leaned into him gently with a tear in her eye.
"I love you too," she replied softly.
Outside, the moonlight continued to dance.