Chapter Two

Blake Renoir rolled over and tried to pretend like he couldn’t hear the noise coming from his front door. It was warm and comfortable in his bed, and the rest of the house was cold. He buried his head in the pillow and prayed to any deity listening that the person would give up and go bother some other veterinarian somewhere else. Whoever was knocking and ringing the doorbell wasn’t going away, and he knew what that probably meant, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it. He glanced at his phone and saw that several calls had come in from his main office in town, but he had forgotten to turn the ringer up, and the sound of the phone buzzing wasn’t enough to wake him up.

After almost two minutes of banging, he finally gave in to the inevitable and got out of bed. His bad hip and leg were sore from checking on cattle for the last two days, so he grabbed the cane by the bed and hobbled down the stairs and into the foyer.

He peered through the window next to the door to see Deputy Green, Angela Dell, and a man in his late twenties or early thirties that Blake thought might work with Angela, though he’d never spoken with him. The man was holding a box wrapped in old coats and looking uncertain, where the two women just looked determined and maybe a little annoyed.

Blake sighed and opened the door.

“Jeanie—”

“Blake, I know it’s late, and I’m sorry, but we have a cockatoo that we need someone to look at, and you’re the only vet in the area that will look at exotics.” Her expression was pleading. “He looks sick, and I don’t think there’s any way to get him down to Denver or Ft. Collins in this weather safely.”

“Fuck. All right, come in.” He moved aside, and the three of them entered, stomping snow off their boots on the rug. “Where the hell did you get a cockatoo?”

“Someone taped it up in a box and left it outside my café right before closing!” Angie replied, yanking her boots off. “In this weather! The poor thing could have frozen to death if Jens hadn’t noticed it!”

“Why the fuck would someone leave a cockatoo outside a café?” Blake asked, taken aback. “The police station would make sense, but a café?”

“That’s a mystery we’re going to try to solve, but first we need you to look at the bird. It looks like it’s panting, and it whistles when it breathes,” Jeanie sounded caught between panic and exasperation.

Blake sighed. “Let me get some gloves. You know I’m really not equipped to handle exotic birds here? I do chickens and ducks in a pinch, but that’s usually it.” He turned to lead them into the parlor area that usually functioned as his in-home office, and then through the double doors at the back into the dining room he now used as an examination room. He hadn’t run the practice out of his house full-time in years, and his office in town had the much better equipment. He gestured for them to set the box down on the exam table while he switched on the lights and rummaged around in the cabinets for a pair of welder’s gloves.

“I know this is a big ask, and I am sorry.” Jeanie carefully opened the box.

Finally, Blake found the gloves and pulled them on. He turned around to peer into the box and saw a pathetic-looking Moluccan cockatoo peering at him with the most pleading expression he had ever seen on a bird. All of its feathers looked ratty and dull, and it had discharge around its beak and eyes that told him the bird was not healthy at all.

“Hey bird…” he murmured softly. “Can you step up?” he put his hand in the box slowly, and to his surprise, the bird lifted one gray foot, gripped the side of his hand in the glove, and carefully stepped up.

“Wow…didn’t expect that,” Angie said quietly. “He tried to bite me when I put that bowl of mush in his box.”

“He’s just scared, aren’t you buddy?” Blake murmured. He used his other hand to gently stroke the bird’s head, and the bird, still with mouth open and panting, leaned into the contact. “Who’s a sweet bird?” He looked at the bird’s nose on the top of its beak and got his ear as close as he dared until he could clearly hear the whistling.

He looked back at the other three humans in the room. “He probably has a respiratory infection. There’s gunk caked around his nares, but I don’t want to maltreat him too much and traumatize him any further. I can give him a dose of oral antibiotics and keep him here until morning. Then someone can drive him to Ft. Collins. The vet school there can help him.”

Angie and Jeanie nodded. The man was mesmerized by the bird and didn’t seem to be listening.

“I didn’t know they were so friendly…” He stated after a few moments.

Blake looked down at the bird, who had climbed along his arm until it could burrow in the flannel shirt he had on over his t-shirt. “Moluccans are really sweet animals. I’m not a bird person, but if I were, I’d want a Moluccan.”

“Why would anyone dump it like that?” Jeanie asked. “It seems so sweet.”

“Probably because it plucked all its feathers out and was screaming. My bet is they just put it in a cage and left it out like a decoration. They’re social creatures, and they’re incredibly smart. You can’t just treat them like a houseplant.” He was still petting the bird’s head, trying not to let the sadness of the situation overwhelm him. “They aren’t good pets. Not really. More like children that never grow up.” He sighed and looked at the bird. “I’m going to give him some meds, try to get a few more diagnostics, and then put him in an oxygen cage. He’ll be okay until morning, I think. You don’t want to try to get him to Ft. Collins in this weather either way and at least if he doesn’t make it through the night, he won’t have been in a fucking box on a sidewalk. I’m not even going to attempt to draw blood. Not without an assistant here.”

“One of us could help?” Jeanie offered.

Blake just shook his head. “I’m not going to traumatize him. Or her.” He continued to pet the bird. “Someone just needs to show up bright and early tomorrow morning to get him down to Ft. Collins.”

“I’ll do it. I have tomorrow off, and my car has snow tires,” the man replied. “I’m Jensen, by the way. I work with Angie.”

Blake looked more carefully at the man in the corner. He was much shorter than Blake’s own six feet, and his hair was shockingly red. He could have been anywhere between twenty-five and forty, though Blake would guess mid to early thirties if someone put a gun to his head. The guy’s cheekbones could have cut glass, though his freckles softened the effect a little.

Blake had turned forty not long ago, and he knew he looked older than that. The limp didn’t help make him look younger. He had brown hair already going gray from stress and blue eyes. One eye was just slightly lazy, and most people didn’t notice it at first, but it didn’t help his looks any.

He brought himself back to the present. “All right, come by around 8AM and I’ll have the bird packed up, Jensen.” He sounded gruffer than he meant to, but there was a pang of something like longing in his chest, and he didn’t want to dwell on it too much. He hadn’t been this attracted to another man in years, and it was a strange and unpleasant feeling to have it happen now with a complete stranger.

“Sounds good, Dr. Renoir.”

“Blake. Call me Blake.”

Jensen gave him a tiny half smile at that. “All right, Blake.”

Blake felt his stomach flip a little at that smile. He wanted to believe it was a little flirty, but he also couldn’t imagine that it was. He was at least ten years older than this guy and looked older than that. Even if the cute redhead did happen to be gay, that didn’t mean he was going to have any interest in a weird, old veterinarian with a bad limp and no social skills.

Plans made, the three of them headed back to town, and Blake put the bird into a heated cage with some oxygen and plenty of food and water. He filled a syringe with antibiotics, hoping he wouldn’t have to wrestle the bird alone to take them. The cockatoo eyed the syringe for a second, then beaked it, black tongue flicking around the end. Blake syringed the liquid into its mouth, and the cockatoo swallowed without complaint, then went back to his food.

“What kind of hell were you living in, buddy?” Blake asked, petting the bird’s head again.

The bird cooed but didn’t answer. It was awfully calm and cooperative for a sick animal, and especially for a sick parrot. His experience with sick parrots usually involved a lot of very painful bites.

Blake sighed, closed the cage up, shut the lights off, and went to bed.