One
Luke
Normally, I wouldn’t have even considered closing up shop at five-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon, but it had been a terribly boring, slow day and I was ready to be done with it. I thought it might be too early to try my hand at picking up a woman in the next town over, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
Then again, I could always go home, shower, and veg out in front of the TV. That’s something I’d been doing more and more lately as I resigned myself to the curse.
Which is still a ridiculous name for it if you asked me. But I couldn’t deny that it kind of felt like a curse when I was staring it in the face. My kind — bear shifters — all have the same instinctive urges to mate. And when we mate, we mate for life. It’s almost a supernatural connection, what a bear has with his mate, and if he doesn’t find it that connection before his forty-fifth birthday, the bear went wild, the man crazy.
It wasn’t something I was particularly looking forward to, but at that point, I almost didn’t see a way out of it. At forty-four, I still hadn’t found someone to spend my life with and I’d given up years ago.
In the beginning, when I was younger, I told myself I should wait. Wait until after college. Then until after med school. Then I didn’t want to try to commit until I finished my residency. And by the time I got my position at Mountain Hospital, all I cared about was working towards opening a private practice. Once that was done, then I could think about a mate.
Only that took way longer than I thought it would. Now I had the practice, but I was on borrowed time. I’d wasted so much time working for a goal and I wasn’t going to get to enjoy the fruits of my labor because I’d lost sight of what was really important.
Served me right.
For a while, I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter. I had good control over my bear and he never seemed inclined to mate. We had a good time with random girls from bars and conferences, but it never went beyond fun. Maybe he wouldn’t lose his shit. Maybe we’d be fine.
But as the fateful date grew closer, I felt him getting more restless and I knew. I knew that I’d made a terrible mistake.
So sue me if I wanted to wallow a bit in my own stupidity. I deserved to close the office early. I hadn’t had a patient since that morning. But the phone cut off my train of thought and I reluctantly answered it.
“Dr. Bradford.”
“Oh, Dr. Bradford, I’m so glad you answered! Muffin’s foot is bleeding and I can’t get it to stop, I was hoping you’d be able to take a look at it?”
I sighed.
“Mrs. Vanderburg, I’ve told you, I’m not a vet. I’m not trained to treat cats.”
“Oh but it’s just a little thing, and you’re so good with your hands. It’s four hours down the mountain to the vet. Please?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed away from the phone. Why me?
“Fine. But I can’t keep doing this, I mean it.”
“I know,” she said, almost sounding contrite if I didn’t know any better. “Apple or cherry?”
“No blackberry?”
“You’ll have to wait ‘til Friday for blackberry.”
“Hm. Apple then.”
“I’ll just bring you one of each. Thank you so much Dr. Bradford!”
She hung up the phone before I could say anything else, but there wasn’t anything else that needed to be said. I could probably have refused one of those pies, but who was I kidding? I’d eat them both. That week. Never underestimate the appetite of a bear.
But now I couldn’t leave like I’d been hoping to. Now I was stuck at the office for at least another two hours. Probably three. One hour for old Mrs. Vanderburg to get her mint green sixties bronco down the mountain, twenty minutes to bandage the cat, and another hour to an hour and a half to get her to stop chatting my ear off whilst simultaneously shamelessly flirting with me.
I really shouldn’t keep letting her bring her cat in, but those pies were damn good. And what bear can resist pie?
Besides, it wasn’t like I was drowning in business. I could use all the patients I could get, even if they did come with a couple extra legs.
By the time Mrs. Vanderburg got to the office, I was actually happy to see her. I’d been bored out of my mind with nothing to keep me company but old Reader’s Digest magazines in the waiting room and the world’s slowest internet in my office.
I headed out to her old bronco to find her juggling her cat Muffin over her shoulder while trying to balance my pies.
“Let me help you with that,” I said, swooping in to grab the pies. She could keep Muffin. I really wished she’d at least bring him in a carrier. It was bad enough to be treating a cat at my clinic, but to have one running around unrestrained seemed to be inviting trouble.
But Muffin didn’t run away before we got inside and once we did, I could see the thing was terrified, clutching to Mrs. Vanderburg with his claws buried in her.
“He hates that bumpy mountain road,” she said, cooing at the scraggly cat. He’d definitely seen better days. His coat was a dull, dusty gray, thinning on his head especially. He had the thin, gaunt look of a cat well into his teens and the perpetually grumpy expression that warned away everyone except Mrs. Vanderburg. And me, I guess.
“Muffin, you have to let go of Mommy so the doctor can take a look at you,” she said, wrestling with the cat whose claws were still buried in her. I winced, but didn’t offer to help. I knew that would just make him freak out more.
Eventually, she managed to separate her cat from her, but it wasn’t him I was worried about.
“How bad did he get you?” I asked, already seeing the bloom of red under her shirt.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, waving me off. “It’s his paw, you see?” She lifted up Muffin’s paw, and sure enough, there was a cut on one of the pads, still bleeding slowly.
“All right. I’ll bandage him up, but then you’ve got to let me clean up those scratches, deal?”
She gave me a girlish giggle despite being old enough to be my grandmother and nudged me flirtatiously. “You cad. You just want to see me without my top on, don’t you?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, smiling at her. She knew as well as I did that that wasn’t the case, but I’d found long ago that playing along with these types went over much better than forced professionalism. “Caught me red-handed.”
“Do you always flirt with women old enough to be your mother?” she teases, fluttering her lashes at me as I wrestled Muffin to the table. Of course, I didn’t have any of the normal equipment to be treating a cat, so it was easier said than done. I managed to trick him into letting me clean the cut, and then laid out enough bandages that he’d have to step on one and then quickly burritoed his foot before he could scratch me too bad.
“Only the repeat customers,” I said, once Muffin was bandaged and off in a shadowed corner cleaning himself. I needed to remember to do an extra round of cleaning to get all the cat hairs up before someone came in and had an allergy attack.
“Now, let me see those scratches,” I said, gingerly peeling her shirt back from the neckline. There were a few shallow scratches on her shoulder, but the surrounding skin was already blooming angry and red. “Does it burn?”
“A little,” she said with a shrug.
I washed my hands quickly and then started cleaning the cuts gingerly before applying a topical antihistamine.
“Take this allergy pill when you get home. But not before the drive. It’ll make you sleepy,” I said, giving her an over-the-counter tablet.
“I’ve never been allergic to my Muffin,” she said, not taking the pill.
“I don’t doubt it, but their claws and saliva have different proteins that can bring up symptoms in people that have never had them before. If nothing else, it’ll help with the inflammation and give me some peace of mind. Please?”
Her expression went from defending her pet’s honor to completely smitten in a minute. She grinned at me and took the tablet.
“Well, I could never deny you, Doctor,” she said, practically giggling.
“Thank you.”
“How much do I owe you?” she asked, pulling a checkbook out of her huge purse. I waved her off.
“The pies are enough, really.”
“I’ll bring you a blackberry this weekend, then,” she said firmly, and I could tell there would be no arguing with her.
“You know I’ll eat it,” is all I said, grinning. If I gave her any openings, she’d be there all damn night and I really wanted to close up shop. I was pretty sure at this point that I wasn’t going to go out trolling for women, but I was ready to leave the office and relax with a drink in front of the TV. Exciting night, I know, but it sounded pretty good to me.
“Muffin, come on sweetie, we need to leave Dr. Bradford to his other patients,” Mrs. Vanderburg said, crouching down to entice the grumpy old cat. He narrowed his eyes at her and swished his tail menacingly before going back to cleaning his uninjured paws. She sighed. “He’s always so headstrong.”
If I wasn’t so eager to get out of there, I’d probably mention that I don’t exactly have other patients waiting to see me, but I wasn’t going to do anything to encourage her to stay any longer. I knew from experience how much she liked to overstay her welcome.
Muffin yowled as she scooped him into her arms and I winced as I watched his claws extend into her flesh again, but Mrs. Vanderburg didn’t seem to notice at all and I wasn’t going to say anything. It’s her cat after all.
“Thanks for seeing us on such short notice,” she said as I held the door open for her.
“Happy to help. And remember to take that pill when you get home, okay?”
“Anything for you,” she said, giggling girlishly again. Luckily, she was already getting into her old bronco, so she didn’t see me rolling my eyes as I closed the door behind her.
After I watched her pull out of my parking lot, I swept the floor again and started shutting down all the computers to actually leave for the night. It wasn’t too early now — I was supposed to be open until seven and it was five after at that point.
I turned off all the lights and grabbed my bag just in time to see headlights sweeping through the tree line, illuminating the drive up to my office. They were coming up fast, bouncing along the gravel road almost recklessly, and I tensed, already out the door. Whoever it was, they would just have to wait until morning or head down the mountain to the hospital.
I locked the door and unlocked my car just as the strange vehicle skidded to a stop, sending up dust and gravel into the air. Up on the mountain, it was already dark at this time of night, and so it was only the headlights of the vehicle illuminating the parking lot as a woman hurried around to the door, carrying a little girl in her arms.