Chapter 3 Summary:

Doctor Hugo Weidii works with his neighbors Meredith and Dale to save Judy from the effects of hypothermia and exposure. Sleeping soundly after her experience, Hugo writes Judy a note and goes to sleep himself. She wakes early in the morning, and is moved to tears by the fact that she has been found by the last mammal on earth she ever expected to meet again. The next morning over a simple breakfast, she agrees to go to the Tundra Town Free Clinic with them for further medical care related to her ordeal.

* * * Late Monday Night in Snowy Hills. * * *

As Hugo pulled into his driveway, he could that the lights were on in his house. Bueno. That meant Meredith was already there, and hopefully she had set things up already. He drove his SUV into the garage, and parked it. At least his pants and shirt had mostly dried in the drive over, so he wasn't going to get chilled himself carrying her in. He got out and walked around to open the passenger side, and bent in to pick up Judy.

"Oi, Doc! Let me get her. Go wash up. Meredith is waiting for ya inside." Dale loomed behind him, and half glowered down at him. Surprised and just a little embarrassed, Hugo felt his ears go back, and he smiled a little guilty smile. "Okay" he managed not to squeak. Maldición! He was so preoccupied with his patient that he never managed to hear Dale open the door and come up behind him.

He walked inside, and turned to the kitchen where he heard a noise. Meredith stood at the counter besides the sink, warming a couple of saline packs in a large bowl of warm water. She turned towards him, and shook her tongs at him. "Oi, you're a mess. You need to go get changed and washed up before anything else." He nodded at her suggestion and walked down to his bed room. There he pulled his damp clothes off and replaced them with some of his spare scrubs. He returned to the kitchen to wash his paws in the sink.

"Have you ever dealt with hypothermia, luv?" Meredith asked him.

"Um, I had two cases where I assisted with brain aneurysm repairs where the surgical team had induced hypothermia in the patient. But that is about it. I had done my initial trauma rotation over at Sahara Square Central Hospital – we didn't get many hypothermia or frostbite cases when I was there," he explained to her. "And you?"

"I dealt with three or four during my last trauma rotation, but we lost two due to complications, poor dears."

He looked at the bowls of water, and asked her, "Should I go fill the bath?"

She shook her head, "Oh, no. No, no, no… That can lead to thermal shock and a cardiac arrest. The temperature difference between the limbs and the core body can strain the heart too much, and lead to shock. It's much better to just warm the body slowly and naturally. Blankets and warm IVs, that's the business."

"Alright," he replied, shaking his hands dry.

"What you could do for me, instead, is go find me a good vein to poke and shave the fur off it? Please?" She asked him.

Hugo stepped past her, and walked out to the living room. Dale had laid Judy down on the couch, and was standing behind it, watching over her. "How is she doing? Any changes from in the car?" Hugo asked him.

"Not really. Her nose is twitching like she's smelling everything but she's still sleeping as far as I can tell." Dale replied back.

Hugo picked up a pair of gloves, and slipped them on his paws. Putting on a fresh surgical mask on over his face, he handed another one to Dale. While Dale fumbled with that, Hugo pulled back the blankets and coat over her torso and arms so that he could examine her in the light.

"Oh damn!" Dale looked down at her, his eyes widening in concern. "I'm sorry I snapped at ya, mate. You were right to wake us. She's in bad shape. She certainly needs help."

Hugo looked up at him, humor alight in his eyes, accepting the apology. "It's alright," he assured Dale, and turned his attention back to Judy. He ran his paws over her arms and torso, feeling through her fur the condition of her muscles and skeleton. So very thin. Wait, t here, on the back of her left paw. A vein, pulsing just under the skin.

He reached back to the coffee table and picked up the shaver/vacuum. He turned it on, and shaved the back of her paw clean. She twitched a couple of times, but didn't wake up. He cleaned the bare skin with an alcohol pad.

"Looking good, Doctor!" Meredith observed from behind him. Hugo twitched just a bit himself as she startled him. Damn arctic hares and their soft padded feet, always sneaking up on him.

Meredith went over to Dale, and hung a warm towel around his neck. Over that she hung two IV bags, and hooked them together with a Y-tube. "There you go, dear. You can be the bag warmer for tonight, just like you do for my paws." Dale rolled his eyes, and sighed dramatically in response to her teasing.

She slipped on a pair of gloves herself, and nudged Hugo with her hip. "Move over, luv. I'll do the stick now." She picked up a sterile catheter pack, tore it open, and extracted the needle. Using her other paw to slightly pinch the vein on the much smaller paw, she slid the needle in with one smooth motion, and then covered it up with surgical tape. Judy never even flinched. She connected the rest of the tubing up, and set the drip. "There we go!"

"Nicely done." Hugo complimented her.

"Thank you, dear. I work with babies all day. They really don't appreciate getting stuck multiple times while you hunt for a vein. They tend to get a bit fussy about it all. So either get it right the first time, or find somebody else to do it the second time."

"Should we also set up a glucose pack, maybe feed her intravenously?" Hugo asked her next.

"I don't know. Actually, I don't think we should, not without running some blood work to tell us what her blood sugar and insulin levels actually are first. We get that wrong, and we could stress her heart even more."

"Well, I don't have the ability do that test here, so I guess that will have to wait to ask a nutritionist or small mammal doctor in the morning." Hugo frowned.

"Are you thinking TTH, or someplace else?" Meredith inquired of him.

"She's not keen on hospitals, which I quite understand, considering all of her years stuck at the hell that was Cliffside. No, I was thinking the Tundra Town Free Clinic. She looks like she's been living on the street for at least the past few years. TTFC deals with a lot of the street people who can't afford medical care elsewhere. They have a nutritionist on staff that can advise us, and their small mammal doctor there, Victoria, owes me a favor or two. It shouldn't be a problem getting her in for an exam and treatment. If Judy doesn't mind, we can go there first thing in the morning."

Dale yawned, looking bored at his post as a post. Hugo grinned up at the larger male, his smile hidden behind his mask.

"Ah, well, not much else I can do tonight. We'll go back home, and come back in the morning? Maybe we could bring her some breakfast, and some clothes for her to change into?" Meredith offered to Hugo.

"Yes, please. I don't have anything for a rabbit her size here."

"Will do!" Meredith replied as she lifted the bags from Dale, and reattached them to an IV pole. "Come on, luv, let's go to bed," she turned Dale towards the door and gave him a gentle push. "Remember to clean up your mess, before going to sleep yourself, Doctor!" she reminded him as they slipped out the door.

"But I thought that was what nurses were for," he replied, but she was already gone. He smiled as he took off his mask. He was going to have to do something nice for them to thank them for helping tonight. Probable invite them over to dinner later in the week.

He picked up the rest of the medical supplies, and took them back to his office. Coming back down the hall, he turned up the heat for the night, so that Judy wouldn't get a chill, and stripped off his gloves and scrub top. He rearranged the blankets around her, and thought of what else he might be missing? He got a bottle of water, and set that within reach of her paws. Maybe a note, explaining the situation, just in case she woke up before he did?

He sat down to write her one.

* * * Early Tuesday Morning in Snowy Hills * * *

Wakefulness came slowly.

She slowly blinked a couple of times, pulling on the dried crusts gluing her eyelashes together. She rubbed a paw slowly across her face, trying to clear them out. When she opened her eyes again it was to a darkened living room. Out the large bay window she could see the light of the coming dawn, which was enough for even her lupin eyes to start to make sense of the outlines. She sniffed, and she smelled not only antiseptic and saline, but also the scents of pine trees and mountain flowers. And rabbits? That scent was weaker, overlaid by the stronger scent of a feline. But she didn't feel any fear from smelling that scent, and she had to ask herself why?

Looking down at herself, she took stock of herself. She wasn't dead, that at least was obvious to her. She should be, though. She had desperately wanted to be, strangely enough. She had been so tired of this nightmare of a life that was filled with so much heart rending grief.

A memory, or maybe a vision, of last night came to her as she stared into the lightly graying dark. A vision of a dark and damp alleyway, and the specter of Death striding towards her through a brilliant halo of cold light. Lord Jaguar had risen from the Realm of the Dead to come and personally collect her weary and overdue soul.

The Divines had promised her suffering, and after she had seen Nick's happiness, she could finally take no more pain and had run off into the stormy night. She ran blindly, consumed by her grief, and desperately sought a release that had been long denied her. She wandered without purpose, weary, lost in time and place, and the echoes of her own mind. She had somehow ended up passing under the climate barrier mountains, and was thrust out upon the cold embrace of Tundra Town.

So when Lord Jaguar had come to her, wrapped her in the warmth of his cloak, and bade her to go with him, she was ready. So very ready. She had closed her eyes as he bent down to her and she breathed in deeply of him. She smelled his musk, a warm and safe scent, and had submitted willingly to his warm embrace when he offered it.

As she slid into exhaustion, she felt him root his nose between her ears, just like Nick used to. Or did do, or would do, in another life. She missed Nick, but he was gone. He was with his family now, bonded to a mate, and even had a kit. But it wasn't her kit. That life was forever denied to her.

The next thing she knew, she was being carried into a car. She looked up, but Lord Jaguar was gone, replaced by a smaller, more delicate feline face. Still handsome though, his eyes were kind, filled with sorrow and worry. He had set her on his lap, and unwrapped his coat from around her. She shivered and glared at him.

Damn him! That was cold!

He wanted to take off her clothes. It wasn't that the request was so unusual to her experience, but that he seemed to be in such a damn hurry. As he ripped her blouse off, all she could think of was about how she was supposed to get home now? He better pay for that! She thought. He should know that she charged more for that rough and kinky shit, and she had liked that blouse, damn it!

But he wasn't feeling her up, rather he was just rubbing her down with a towel? Her fur was soaking wet. Why was she wet? But that question could wait, as he tossed her blouse away, and pulled her back into his warm fur. She dug her paw pads into that fur, and breathed in his musk, the scent of jungle loam and passion flowers.

Her pants were gone now, but his touch remained gentle. He must be one of those clients that just liked to cuddle and touch, and wasn't there for the sex. Which was too bad, she thought, because she hadn't had sex with a gentle male in far too long.

He wanted to take her to a hospital, and suddenly she was back at Cliffside, trying to out run the orderlies. Hide! They would make her to take the blue pills. She hated those blue pills! They made her feel weird, like her fur was drifting away from her skin, and made everybody talk funny. But he wouldn't make her take those blue pills. He would let her draw, and he would listen to her. He was the nice doctor. He was her favorite doctor.

The vision slowly ended, and she stared down at her paws. In the dawning light from the windows she saw that there was a line coming from the back of her paw. She traced that line up to a bag hanging from a pole - an IV line. She could barely feel the needle going into the vein under the shaved fur on her paw. Somebody know what they were doing when they had stuck it in, unlike those palsy-handed idiots at Cliffside. Pulling her paw up, she could smell the light scent of a female hare on the tape, certainly not her own rabbit scent, but a welcomed scent none the less.

Beside her head, on a low coffee table was a bottle of water, a phone, and a pad of paper with writing on it. She couldn't read it from her spot on the couch, so she threw back her covers, and slowly sat up. Her head swam a moment, but eventually the room stopped rocking, and when she looked up she could see him.

He lay across the room from her, asleep in a recliner with a quilt thrown across his legs as he softly snored. Her doctor. Of all the places she had ever dreamed that she would see him again, it had never been like this. She looked back down at the pad of paper, but she couldn't read the whole note written on it. But she could read the name at the top, though. Her birth name.

Gingerly sliding off the couch, she grabbed the IV pole to stabilize herself. Picking up the pad with her other paw, she slow walked over to the windows, keeping one eye and one ear turned to his direction.

Holding up the pad up to the light, she quietly read off the note:

Dear Jud ith Laverne Hopps,

My name is Doctor Hugo Wiedii, originally from the Orinoco river on the Southern Continent, and I am a neurologist here in Zootopia. I found you last night wandering the alleyways of Tundra Town, suffering from exposure and hypothermia. I brought you back to my house here in the Snowy Hills, where my neighbor Meredith and I took care of you last night.

You may not remember me, but I was your doctor for a short while some thirteen years ago at Cliffside. I had heard from one of my other former Cliffside patients that you had moved out west, but they had lost track of you before I could reach out to you . While I am surprised to see you here and now in Zootopia, I am truly glad. I have been searching for you for a very, very long time.

You owe me nothing for last night's care, and are free to go if you wish. But I would hope that you would stay, for I believe that you and I have so very much to talk about.

I f you don't feel comfortable with this situation, or have any concerns for your personal safety, please call the ZPD from the phone in front of you. You may tell them my name and that the address here is 1123 Gooseberry Way, Snowy Hills .

Sincerely,

Dr Hugo Wiedii

P.S. I am a very sound sleeper during the morning. If you need to wake me, please put a claw in to my ear.

She stared at the note in disbelief, her paw shaking, and moisture glinting upon her eyes.

Judy wept as a new dawn broke over Zootopia with glad and golden exclamation.

Judy sniffed, and wiped her tears away. Turning back to look at Hugo, she realized two things: she needed to use the bathroom, and that she was very hungry.

She carefully walked back over to his recliner, and stood beside the headrest. Softly, she called, "Dr. Wiedii, Dr. Wiedii? Hello? Wake up, please!" Nothing. So, looking again at the post script at the bottom of the note, she reached up and sank a claw in the tip of his ear closest to her. The reaction was immediate!

He shot upright and out of the chair, belting out "Estoy despierto, Abuela!*" He looked around in a panic. (*I'm awake, Grandma!)

Judy dissolved into a ball of snorting giggles.

"Morning, Luvs!" Meredith breezed in through the door, bearing a duffel bag and a paper sack of groceries. She stopped to take in the scene before her: Hugo contritely looking like a cub caught with his hand in the snack jar, and Judy doubled over in laughter. "Should I come back later?" she asked the room.

But Judy's laughter quickly turned into a wheezing and coughing fit. Meredith set down her packages on the table, and rushed over to Judy. "Hugo, get the oxygen!" she ordered, continuing with more loving, "Dale, be a good dear and shut the door, please". The two males jumped to action at the note of command in her voice, the sound of a head nurse taking action. She lead Judy back to the couch and sat her down.

Calmed by the larger female's presence, Judy tried to get her coughing under control as Hugo wheeled up the little tank to their side. Meredith looked at the gauges, then handed the mask to Judy and stated, "Just take in normal breaths in through the mask, and you'll be fine in a moment or two." Judy smiled from behind the mask, and nodded.

Hugo motioned to Meredith "Judy, as you could probably tell from the no nonsense nurse's voice that this here is Meredith, and her husband over there by the door is Dale."

Judy shy smiled at Meredith, and then turned to wave at Dale and mumbled around the mask a muffled "Hi." He just snorted and turned back to the door to take off his coat.

"Would you like some breakfast, dear?" Meredith ask her.

Judy nodded and added "I need to use the bathroom, too."

"Okay, let me unhook and cap your IV, and I'll show you where it's at." Meredith stood and took up her paw in paw, and lead her into the back of the house.

At the mention of breakfast, Dale dug through the grocery bag, laying out a light plate of spinach, cucumber, and tofu with a small bottle of children's electrolytes for Judy. Hugo took care of himself by popping a frozen shrimp arepa in the microwave, and wandered off to get dressed for the day.

They all returned to the table for a spot of breakfast for Hugo and Judy, and tea for Dale and Meredith. Meredith had apparently raided her grandchildren's clothes, because she had dressed Judy in this bright pink hoodie with strange four legged flying cartoon creatures on it's back and a matching pair of sweat pants. 'Friendship is Magic', indeed!

Hugo finished his corn cake, and turned to Judy who was happily munching on spinach leaves. Addressing her, he began with "Judy, it is good to see you eating. We were all quite concerned yesterday that you might indeed be needing hospitalization to address your hypothermia and malnutrition issues. However, you are plainly doing better now, but I would be remiss in my responsibilities as a doctor to point out that Meredith and I are probably not the best equipped medical professionals to deal with your situation. By trade and training, I am a neurologist who currently specializes in brain trauma and Meredith here is the head nurse in a maternity ward. We can do the basics, but I believe you could benefit from the services of professionals who more often see these kinds of cases. I know you are wary of considering a hospital, and as such would you consider other alternatives to your medical care?"

Judy paused momentarily on her cucumber slice, tilted her head at him, and replied, "I just want to avoid anyplace with a connection to psych wards."

Hugo nodded "Knowing your past history as I do, I can certainly sympathize with that. What I was actually thinking of instead was the Tundra Town Free Clinic. The doctors and nurses there are quite used to meeting the medical needs of the mammals who live on the streets. And from the looks of things, I would guess that you have been living on the streets of Zootopia for at least some time, at least a year or so?" He left the question hanging.

Judy swallowed, "About three, actually." she answered, embarrassed.

Hugo tried to reassure her, "It's okay. I'm not passing any judgments here, I just want to make sure that you get the best care I can find. I've done a lot of pro-bono work over the years for the Free Clinics here in Zootopia, most of it for the TTFC. Lots of icy streets and sidewalks lead to street mammals slipping and falling on their heads. The TTFC doctors treat a lot of concussions and other head injuries, and they like to call me in to consult." He paused and looked at her, "Were you living in Tundra town?" He asked the question and left unsaid the obvious statement that she had not been dressed for it, at least in his opinion.

"No," she replied, "I mostly lived over in the Rainforest district. Lots of sheltered places there to sleep and hide in, and more things to eat." She slightly emphasized the word "hide", Hugo noticed, but he decided to file the next questions in his mind for later. Who was she running from? Who was she hiding from? Why were you in Tundra town, so far from the Rain Forest districts? What was chasing you? So many unanswered questions that crowded together awaiting their time to breathe.

He nodded sagely and continued, "I can set you up an appointment this morning with Dr. Victoria Longs, who is the small mammal doctor there. But as Victoria is a stoat, if you would prefer a small mammal doctor who's not a predator I am afraid we will have to go to different clinic."

Judy shook her head, "I don't mind having a predator for a doctor."

"You don't?" Meredith sat up and glanced at her. "I thought the bunnies from Bunny Burrow were quite particular about strange predators."

"I think you will find that Judy is made from sterner stuff than your average Bunny Burrow rabbit. The other thing for you to remember is that street people assess risk differently then the average member of the public. Another rabbit is just as capable of killing you for your sleeping bag as a wolf is. And in fact they are more likely to, since the sleeping bag won't fit the wolf." Hugo explained to her. She's certainly not running or hiding from predators. She may even prefer their company to that of prey species? he wondered to himself.

Judy shook her head in agreement, and then turned her head to the larger doe, "Although... could you come with me, Meredith? Please? I just want somebody familiar there I know that can explain it all to me."

Meredith looked at Hugo, who replied "That is up to you. I would certainly appreciate it. I could sit in with Judy, but I know that the other staff there will most likely drag me off to demand my medical advice the moment I show up."

Meredith blinked, and then agreed "Oh, okay. Dale, do you mind if I spend the morning with Judy? I should be done well before the concert tonight."

Dale shook his head "Nah. It's fine. I'll just go raid the woodworking shops. Give me a jingle on the mobile when you want to be picked up." Dale took a case out of his coat pocket, pulled a stick out of it, and stuck it in between his teeth. Judy sniffed and perked up. Dale looked over at her, and held the case out to her. "Want one? They're applewood."

"Yes, please." Judy smiled, and shyly plucked one out for her to chew on. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Dale's eyes crinkled as he smiled back down at the younger doe.