Chapter Seventy-Seven
The White Flower
The gray light of the crescent moon shone dully down upon the earth. Its usual shading of clear white dirtied by the thin clouds which hung as a wide sheet. The world beneath was turned monochrome to shades of gray and bleak blue.
Chief Bogo glanced up the many stories to one of the few windows, which were still lit of the apartment block above. He grunted softly, twisting the car's key in the lock and pulling the door open, consequently, reaching out across the driver's seat, gearbox and to the glove compartment.
After rooting around for a few moments, the buffalo withdrew himself with the object in his hoof: a small, black box with an SD card inside... the card he had taken from the interrogation room's recording device... the one which had recorded the 'event' between Nick and the fennec criminal.
He sighed deeply as he stood, looking at the small, black box as it shone in the dull light. He threw the car door shut again and twisted the car key as to lock the door. His feet shifted, and he went back towards the entrance of the apartment block, while a dark cloud dripped above his head in the gloom of the day's calamities.
...
Amidst the continual noise and activity of the city hospital, Nurse Flo stepped closer to the figure of the sleeping wolf. She observed him noiselessly, the room dark and weakly lit from outside, his scent and the sound of his breathing warm in the air.
A thought came to her head — a deep thought from a part of herself which had, for a long time, been denied permission for her to acknowledge what she knew he wanted her to be for him. The idea of just leaning close to the wolf and feel his warmth against her, it was nothing sexual, and it was nothing romantic either, really. Just the deep instinct to seek out this new sensation, to understand what he was and what he was starting to mean to her.
She knew what romantic relationships were and had studied the psychology in depth several times. She'd never even once considered the idea of herself being in a romance someday — always having observed the 'phenomenon' in a completely objective way — but, now...
She reached out a paw towards him and slipped it into his fingers. She felt the thickness of his fur and the pads of his paw, and the slight touch of his claws upon her. She moved her paw lower and took his wrist, raising it up a few inches and touching on his main vein with two fingers from her other paw. Her curiosity reached his face, and she glanced down at his arm in her paw, back to his face, huffed impatiently and suddenly gave his arm a sharp tug.
Wolfard 'expressed his surprise' in the form of a high-pitched yelp, his eyes widening with a moment of panic, before, he caught the scent of a Rose and turned towards her, noticing her just after she had hid her smirk for an impassive expression, and had gone back to trying to look exactly as though she was just there to take his pulse.
"Heart rate seems to be accelerated," she noted, impartially, as the wolf fought to catch his breath after the suddenness of his awakening.
"Hard to imagine why," he muttered.
"Apologies. I didn't intend to wake you." Jim glanced towards her and held her expression for a few moments as he rubbed his paw across his face. "Buuut, now you're awake," she added, lightly, "I suppose I could stay for just a short while... just to make sure you're feeling well. How're your bruises?"
"Painful, and breathing's been a little hard, but I'm okay. How did the examination go?"
"Oh, as well as it could have. She seems to be in a stable condition, her brain damage appears to be minimal, as far as we can make out from the CT scan. And the bones and lacerations are all corrected... Was that all you wanted to ask about?"
Wolfard sighed distantly. A part of him realized Rose had come here wanting to talk about this 'thing' that had happened between them, but he also knew it would have to be him who would bring it up. "Look, Flo, I know it's probably too early to be having this discussion with you, and if you were anyone else, I'd leave it for later on. But I know how, you know, logical and objective you are about these things, and I think it'd just be better to talk with you about it now."
"Tell me anything, Wolfard. I won't judge you."
...
A white foot stepped upon the cold concrete floor. The blood-spattered figure with a broken jaw and milky eye slugged silently through the narrow corridor, following this long, deep and decorationless path as he made towards the bright, shining light which emanated from the end.
He stopped upon reaching the end of the gray corridor, at a point where the walls turned to a sharp turn which widened into a much larger room. He made silently through the apparently abandoned complex of concrete chambers — which carried a similar sense of bland desolation as a nuclear fallout bunker — and to another door.
Reaching out, the wolf pushed open the metal door and a wave of slowly moving, ice-cold steam gently drifted out. His lips pulled back in a slight grimace as he stepped inside, the intense cold of the room inside enough to trigger a pain response — an indicator that the coldness of the room he stepped into would easily be enough to kill him. Wulf ignored the disgruntling sensation, and made deeper into the cold steam-filled room. The floor and walls were layered in a thin sheet of ice; the air sharp and damaging to the lungs; the ceiling and shelves and tables decorated with enumerable, tiny stalactites of ice.
A hooded figure stood hunched beside the far table, his gloved hooves at work upon small jars and hermetically sealed boxes. The wolf came closer, coming only feet away from the onager, and reached out a paw to his back.
The donkey didn't react, unable to feel the wolf's touch through the several inches of insulated material, and with his vision blocked by a hood and a full-face mask which provided his lungs with warmed air — the air in the room itself being far too cold for most people to breathe without quickly succumbing to injury or long-term disabilities and illness.
The wolf growled softly, and his gaze turned to the long pipes which led away from the back of the electrically heated suit. Leaning down towards them, he picked up one of the pipes and tugged on it, sharply.
"Urh!" cried the startled onager, dropping his tools and turning — shuffling slowly about as he fought against the thick padding which impeded movement. "Arh, Wulfey. Boss send you back so soon? You are..." The orient donkey's lips cleared as he took in Wulf's condition… "Who beat you up so bad? Your eye, your jaw and bullet holes? Oh. Come, it too cold here; too cold here for you. I take you to next room and make operate." Slvelt made slowly through the frozen room of synthetically cooled air.
The next room they entered into was not much warmer, but at least was not being synthetically cooled to below zero degrees. The onager didn't disrobe from his garments — only removing his visor, lowering his hood and doffing his gloves.
"Down you lie, in the chair. Now, my tools." The onager turned and pulled open a stiff, metal container and took out a box from within. Undoing the clasp, he opened it up to reveal a variety of medical tools within; talking in a continual mutter to the wolf as he lay on his back on the chair.
"How life been with you? I been working on your speech, Wulfey. I haven't not... no, no I have not, the haven't is already— bah... I haven't told boss yet, but I think he be very pweased to hear it when it's done. I have already temporary injection but it won't work on its own. I do more research before telling him, I say."
Placing his tools down on a small table that he pulled over beside the appropriated chair, he reached across Wulf's body and picked up the first of the many metal straps. He pulled it across the wolf's figure, locking it tight in place before moving to the next, continuing to chatter to the wolf as he worked.
The chair resembled those which could be found at dentists, but looked far cruder and more medieval. There were a dozen large straps going from feet to neck, made from leather and reinforced with metal chains, and each was done up tight by the onager, who double-checked each and every one before moving to the next.
"Now, let's make start." Pulling over his table of tools and leaning towards the wolf's chained-down body, he picked up a scalpel and a pair of tweezers, and leaned towards the white mammal's wounds without a flicker of hesitance or disturbance of what was to come next.
...
"Flo... Rose, I'm— I'm so glad you're willing to give this a shot with me, I really am. I do honestly want to be in a relationship with you, but…" Jim trailed off, sighing uneasily.
Flo smiled understandingly, her brow raising as she gazed down at the floor below her. "There would be a 'but'," she commented, flatly.
"I just," Wolfard explained, carefully... "I— all I want, is for you to start being more open with me, more honest about things."
Gazing to the side, the hare raised a paw and stroked back one of her large, black-tipped ears. "'Honesty?' Well, that's a new word."
"We have to trust each other, Flo. And to trust each other, we have to be open with one another."
Shrugging impassively, the hare's eyes aimed off at nothing. "Anything specific? Or are these just general ground rules?"
"What's the truth about your university thing, your PhD? You said you had one, bu—"
Shaking her head, the hare leveled her gaze with his. "No, Wolfard, I never directly said I had a PhD."
"Wha'?"
"You asked me 'do I have a PhD'. I said nothing at all but simply indicated the medical equipment around me. Looking back, I see how you came to the conclusion you did, but my intention was to point out the fact I was nursing you, not 'doctoring' you."
"Then... why didn't you—"
"I saw no reason to correct you."
Wolfard's furrowed brow cleared. He looked flatly at the hare for a brief moment, and then his head dropped into his paw with a mutter to the room, "This is going to be a challenge, dating you… sarcasm and abstinence mixed with persistent logic. This is gonna be a touchy one."
Flo didn't react; she just kept her eyes at Jim. A few moments passed, and then a small smile appeared on her being. "Don't worry," she assured, her voice a tone softer and more comforting, "I'm sure I'll warm up. I'm not used to being in a romance. It's not my fault I don't know how to act."
"Besides, surely it's better not to treat you differently because we're in a 'new relationship'. Psychologically, it's far better for both of us and our relationship if we just treat each other normally, without giving into the short-term emotional satisfaction and relying on that, only to find it wears off after a few months."
Wolfard nodded with acceptance. He saw the hare's point, and he wasn't at all regretting his decision to ask her out — but it did dawn on him now, at last, that it was going to take a lot of time and effort to 'bring Flo's affection out of her'. He returned himself to the moment, his head cocking as he considered at her. "So, what is the truth about your PhD? Did you not take one?"
"Oh, yes, I didn't lie about that. I did spend five years working towards it… it's just the Board of Examiners refused to accept it when it was finished."
"So all those years? Just wasted?"
"Yepp," she dryly answered as she sat down on the side of the bed. "Not that it was wasted. The knowledge and experience I gained in that time is still within my mind, and has been invaluable to me in my role as a paramedic or EMT." Clearing her throat, Flo's eyes moved down. "Though, obviously, that's just my sub-consciousness trying to rationalize the fact I wasted eight-damn-years of university for nothing."
"And... why was it refused?"
"Okay, PhDs, one-oh-one: the point of the first few years of university is aimed towards getting a Master's Degree. You write a dissociation about a subject you've researched to prove you have a deep understanding of it. In the last five-or-so years, however, you research, compile data for and investigate a far larger and more in-depth dissertation about something no one has ever covered before. You make up a new field of research or a new way of doing something: a new computer algorithm for rendering light; a new surgical procedure; a new filtration system for a car exhaust. The point is it's something the world has never seen before. And that is what gives you the right to have a PhD. You've created something people all across the world can use to save money, time or lives. That is what getting a PhD is about."
"Yeah, I— I kind of remember what you said you took. Something about reproduction, and—"
"Reproductive Pathology–The Effects of Hormones on Ovulation and the Menstrual Cycle. That was, in truth, what my Master's dissertation was on. That went through fine, and displayed to the examiners I have, and I quote: 'a remarkably deep knowledge of the subject of reproduction and the hormonal system, alongside an added breadth of knowledge it was not required she know in the fields of neurological sciences, the circulatory systems and mammal anatomy.'"
Sighing heavily, Flo turned herself around on the bed, lying close beside the wolf and leaning back heavily against the wall. "My PhD dissertation was just as deep and well-planned and thought out, and could well have reshaped the way society looks at things. It really had the chance," she added, raising her paws with her fingers grasping the air, "a real chance to make a gigantic and wonderful change to how people of different species interact with one another. And it would've been a truly remarkable step closer in ending cross-species prejudices in Zootopia and throughout the rest of the world."
The wolf gazed dumbfounded at the hare, his breath taken away not only by the sheer grandness of whatever it was she had made, but at the blazing fire of passion which had suddenly sprung up in her voice. "Wow, that... that sounds really incredible, Flo. It really does. What was it on?"
Flo's blue eyes locked with Wolfard's oaks... and her cobalts held the wolf's too long for it to just be incidental. The tip of her tongue appeared as she licked at her lips, uncomfortably — her gaze drifting away as she truthfully answered, "Chemical Disinhibitors for Bigenus Reproduction–A PhD Dissertation by Roseline Flo."
"Okay..." he wondered, slowly, "and what does that mean?"
Flo chuckled softly, gazing fondly towards the wolf. "You'll understand when you're older, Jim. I'll just say, if you break it down into what it really means, it is currently not the most socially acceptable idea. The examiners decided to refuse it on a matter of principle, rather than fault with the science itself."
Jim held her expression — somewhat sadly — for a few long moments, and then Flo's face brightened into a soft beam as she followed with, "I think this is enough for tonight."
Slipping down, the hare started to make quietly from the room. His eyes catching the light as she moved, the wolf reached out quickly and took her paw by the wrist. "W— will I see you? Can I see you again?" For once, the hare's body didn't freeze up. She turned slowly over her shoulder at him, her expression thoughtful as she considered.
"I work from midday to almost midnight. From twelve to twenty-two. I'm already long into overtime tonight and I'll be heading off home after I've finished talking to you. I won't be coming back in until midday tomorrow. But you'll be told you can leave far earlier than that."
Wolfard nodded, slowly. "So, heh... what do you want to do?"
Rose's mouth tightened as she considered her position — as she considered the merits and drawbacks of what this wolf seemed to be offering, and whether or not it was something she really wanted. "Oh, damn you," she decided quickly, turning to the small end table and pulling out her pen. "Damn you to hell and back..."
Wolfard watched silently as she scribbled something down on a slip of paper. She returned the pen to her pocket, stood smartly and pushed the note into the wolf's paws, hence, shifting sharply and marching away with an agile slip out of the room.
"Bye…" The wolf's eyes went to the slip of paper and to the short string of numbers written upon it. His brows gave confusion for a moment and then they went up in understanding, while a wide grin started appearing on his expression, and his head aimed at the door she had left from.
"You fox."
Author's notes:
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Grooms decision thus chosen blind.
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