AN: Jiminy Christmas this took way longer than it should have. It was the chapter that did not want to end.
Thank you to all the reviewers, I have read and loved each and every one of them, and I hope you continue to enjoy the show!
Disclaimer:
I own nothing you recognise. This is all completely un-beta'd and totally fresh off the top of my brain!
The morning, when it arrived, was heralded by Pavel deciding it was up time and climbing up the bed, 'patting' his paw on the back of Magdalena's head. The 'patting' was more like 'punching' due to the delightfully pointy nature of said paws. Regardless of the definition, it had its intended effect of waking Magd up. She groaned and shoved Pavel, but he just used her arms to align himself to flop down on her chest, stomach and legs, and throw his head back into her face. A further groan and she shifted over so Pavel was no longer applying pressure to her rather full bladder. He just wriggled more and sniffed her ear.
"Jesus christ on a broomstick, fine, we're getting up," she growled, wriggling her way out from between the dogs. Dancer was far too dignified to engage in morning play-time. Pavel, on the other hand, had little dignity remaining. He stood up and jiggled excitedly for a moment before leaping off the bed and skidding on the wood floor to the door. Magd stumbled to the bathroom in her undies and emerged with a much lighter bladder and a singlet top on. Then out into the kitchen, open the door for the pups to go out and relieve themselves and start the kettle for an instant-sachet-mocha. She got as far as opening the fridge door before she realised everything was wrong.
The door to the crate was wide open, both dogs fixated and staring at the bench top, the small area between the microwave and the wall. There lurked her missing patient, huddled into the darkness. A glint of light off metal and she realised there was a knife in there with him. A second more and she realised he was holding the knife directly at Dancer and Pavel.
"OUT," she howled, throwing herself between the benchtop and the borzoi, legs splayed and arms out to block the dogs. She caught the eyes of her patient and stared him down, relieved when she heard the scrabble of claws on tile as both dogs exited as quickly as they possibly could. She reached behind her and snagged the door shut without taking her eyes off the small form in the corner of her bench. She stood her ground, just out of reach of the knife (she hoped). "Now," she began, "I would like you to please put down the knife and allow me to check you over to make sure nothing has slipped or reopened."
"Why should I trust you?" came the raspy voice from the corner. Her brain stumbled and fell. "You could be one of them, you had me in a cage," it snarled.
"What the fuck," she breathed, legs turning to jelly beneath her. Her patients had never spoken to her before. In fact, that was one of the reasons she was a vet. Her patients didn't talk back. That didn't stop her from talking to them, but this was different. He could talk to her. "What happened to you?" she asked, stepping forward. A snarl from the corner, emphasised by a swirl of the knife, halted her steps. "I'm not here to hurt you," she said slowly and carefully. "I'm a vet, a healer, and I'm here to help you."
"Right, and I'm a monkey's uncle, you drugged me!" He came out of the shadows now, and stood up to his full height, which had him towering over her with his standing height advantage.
"I didn't know you were sentient! I gave you a general anaesthetic so you wouldn't move while I splinted your arm and cleaned your back, and after that I gave you painkillers so you wouldn't hurt quite as much. You're due for your next dose now, and as you've moved about far too enthusiastically I need to check you over to make sure you haven't done more damage." Magd threw her arms up in the air and looked askance of the ceiling. "And I'm explaining myself to an animal. I have officially gone 'round the bend."
"Look, I," he seemed to deflate a bit, knife hanging loosely from his paw. The right paw, fortunately.
"Why don't you just come with me to the table and let me check you haven't undone anything, and we can take it from there, okay?" Magd pleaded. "You can leave any time you like after that, but I would really like to get some x-rays done on your arm and the metal bits to see what else I can do, and you're going to need medication." He eyeballed her for a moment, but the fight had gone out of him. His ears and whiskers had drooped with his shoulders, a peculiar mix of animal and human body language that set Magd's brain whirring. "Please?" That seemed to do it. He placed the knife down carefully and shimmied down from the bench, hissing with pain as he did so.
Fortunately, Magd had left her vet kit out last night, knowing it would be useful to have it on hand this morning. She dragged it out from under the table. "Please, would you sit on this chair, and I'll explain everything I'm doing. You'll be able to see what I'm taking out of the kit as well."
"How do I know you're not hiding anything?" came his caustic response. Magd just hitched an eyebrow.
"Do I look like I have pockets?" she said, gesturing to her underpants and singlet top. The furry creature took a moment to take her in, really take her in, and blinked, pursed his lips. "I'm not going to hurt you, and I will keep telling you that and showing you that until you believe me," she continued, a little more gently. He reluctantly hopped up onto the chair, where she asked him to. She pulled up a chair of her own in front of him and bent forward.
This close and in better lighting, Magd couldn't believe she'd mistaken him for a dog or a cat. The muzzle and facial structure were far too different to be either canid or felid. The muck on him made it difficult to decide what colour he really was. When she'd cleared away patches last night, his fur had cleaned up a smokey grey-black.
"Okay," she said, hands reaching slowly for his arm. His body recoiled even as his arm remained in place. "I'm going to just feel the area around the break to see if anything has shifted. I really need to get a good x-ray in so that I can make sure the bone ends line up properly." He just nodded, and her fingers began their careful probe. In her periphery she could see his face scrunch up, lips baring long and pointed teeth in agony as she felt the fracture around her splints. "I would really like to give you some more painkillers. You don't have to be in this much pain," she said, not raising her eyes to his. He snorted but it came out half-strangled as she hit the fracture itself.
She sat back and placed her hands on her knees. "Well, your break seems to be aligned. Like I said, I really need to get a good x-ray in to ensure that, but I am okay with that sitting as it is for now." She frowned down at her little patient who glared up in response. "I'm going to inspect your claws to see how they're healing," she said, reaching forwards again to take one tiny paw in her own hands. He flinched. She waited, fingers loosely touching his paw. At the tiniest relaxation in his fingers, she continued her examination, carefully not looking at his face. They were all red and sore, but not inflamed, nor did any look infected. A quick check of all other nails produced the same result.
She reached into her kit and pulled out her blunt-nosed scissors. "Now I'm going to cut off the bandages around your chest to inspect your back and shoulders," she said, leaning forwards again and very carefully inserting the lower jaw of the scissors between skin and bandage.
Every muscle in the little guy's body was tense, his eyes showing the whites as he held himself very still. He twitched at the first snip. By the time she was half-way up his chest, he had lost the terror, but was still watching her with keen and wary eyes. He hadn't relaxed a single muscle. She made the last snips across his shoulders and stood up, moving around to slowly, carefully, peel the bandages from his back.
They were already soaked through with red, the gouges around the largest of the metal implants weeping sluggishly. "You did reopen them," she explained quietly, placing the scissors off to one side and picking up her saline squirty-bottle and a sterile swab pack. "I'm going to clean the ones on your back again and then we'll strap them up." She paused, bottle clutched in hand. "Are you sure I can't give you ..." He cut her off.
"No. Don't want nothing." His teeth were clenched, the words forced through them. She sighed and continued, carefully bathing the area and cleaning systematically, wincing at every flinch and twitch. It was a relief when she was done and could re-apply the dressings, the less painful portion of the process.
"Would you please hold your arms away from your body so I can wrap this up?" she asked gently, scooping up her roll of pink-pawed self-adhesive bandages. He complied slowly and, careful not to touch him or crowd him, Magd began to bind him back up, going around his chest, over his shoulders and under his arms. Once done, she tucked the end in and sat back. "Now, can I offer you a shower and some food?" He immediately bristled and jumped off the chair, skittering away from her.
"No shower, not that," he snarled, ears back and teeth bared. She held her hands up and pulled herself back, trying to remain as non-threatening as possible.
"Okay," she said levelly. "I can fill the basin with some water and we can get a bit of that dirt off you. You'll feel a lot better clean and fed." After a moment of contemplation, his ears lose their flattened look and begin to lift and turn sideways. "We'll do it just over here, on the kitchen bench, where you were before. You'll be able to see the whole room from there, and the window is just there and open enough if you need to get out." His ears settle for a perplexed flap and his shoulders relaxed. He grunted his belligerent consent. Magd beamed.
A quick trip to the laundry later and she had a pile of old towels and face cloths stacked up on the kitchen bench with her wee patient sitting on the edge of the smaller of the two kitchen sinks, the larger now filled with warm water.
"I'm going to help you with this, as you've only got one arm and I don't want to get your bandages wet, okay?" he nodded once, lips tight and ears flattened again. So, carefully, she picked up one of the hand towels and wet it, taking his un-damaged arm and just gently sponged his hand. The water that fell into the sink was a muddy brown. She rinsed the hand towel and brought it out dripping, trickling it over his arm. Rinse and repeat. Soon the muddy water turned clear, and she moved on to his head. "I'm going to put a couple of towels around your shoulders to soak up any moisture that does dribble down, mmkay?" She didn't wait for a response, but rather lifted one of her fluffier towels and wrapped it over him loosely, leaving his neck and head free for wiping.
For his face, she squeezed out the majority of the moisture before carefully starting around his muzzle, mindful of his whiskers, up along his zygomatic arches and across his brow. As she cleaned, the distinctive pale muzzle and black mask of an utterly foreign mammal started to show. She finished up his ears and the back of his head before unswaddling him from the towel and turning to his legs. She would not think about the fact that she was currently bathing a talking raccoon.
Shit would get real weird real quick if she started thinking about that.
His back paws were in better shape than his fronts. His legs didn't have anywhere near the level of muck, and his tail was scraggly with bald patches from where it had been shaved off. A gentle towel down and he was looking, if not more relaxed, certainly a lot cleaner.
"Right, now, how about some food," Magd said as she cleaned away the sink, the raccoon hopping down from the bench and tottering over to inspect the cushioned window seat and the pile of books thereon.
"What're these?" he asked, pointing at the books.
"They're books," she explained, walking over to him. He looked at them, puzzled. She picked one up and opened it, showing it to him. "They're words written down, this one tells a story, I've just about finished it." His fingers brushed the page, curious and tactile. His whiskers pulled back against his face and his lips firmed, fingers retracting. Steeling himself. "Now, what would you like for breakfast?" Magd asked gently as she returned the book to its pile.
"That stuff before was nice, what's that?"
"That was cat food," she replied flatly. "I'm not feeding you cat food, especially not now I'm talking to you."
"Why not? It was better than I used to got given."
"Get, and no. We'll have some poached eggs. Anyway, you need feeding up," she tutted, turning back to the kitchen. One poached egg maker (best Christmas present to herself ever) on the gas hob with water promptly heating to the boil. Four eggs into the poacher, two pieces of Vogels bread in the toaster – she wasn't going to test an unknown gastric system on foods she wouldn't feed her own dogs, so she'd be the only one eating toast. Two plates clinked on the benchtop, a bag of mesclun salad opened and liberal amounts of greenery distributed across both plates. Toast popped, butter came out to spread over it and eggs topped off each browned slice. Two more eggs popped to one side of a large pile of young leaves on the second plate. A quick grab through the cupboards revealed some walnuts, which she sprinkled on top.
The raccoon watched her all the while, narrowed eyes taking in every twitch, every unconscious shrug.
When she turned back with two plates full of food and two forks, he was sitting on the chair, toes dangling over the edge and tail swinging lazily. Magd smiled broadly and stepped up to the table, placing one plate in front of her patient – the one with no toast – and the other directly opposite. Each plate got a fork, and she quickly moved around to push his chair in before tending to her own.
She was suddenly thankful she'd bought a low table, herself being quite diminutive, or this could have been an awful lot more awkward than it was. As it was, he reached for his food with his hands and face, and Magd really couldn't fault him for it too much. She mashed her poached egg into a mess on one piece of toast and picked it up, leaning on her elbows while she slowly ate and observed her little acquaintance.
He was ravenous, that much was obvious. The first egg was slurped up in seconds, nothing left but white flecks on whiskers. The second egg took a few seconds longer, but not by much. She was only half way through her first egg-on-toast when he began eyeing up her remaining poached egg. She snorted and shoved her plate over until he could reach it. Given the look of heartbreakingly blissful thanks he gave her, it was the right thing to do.
He needed it a damn sight more than she did.
The green stuff went down slower, as he had to actually chew it, but he would hold the pieces in his hands and angle them into his molars. But before long, his plate was clean and he was starting to droop. Ears and whiskers and eyelids and shoulders were sagging, heavy with a full stomach and a body in full recovery mode.
"If you'd like to have a nap I have a spare bedroom," Magd said, finishing off the last of her salad. The raccoon jerked awake, eyes narrowing at her.
"Don't need to sleep," he growled out.
"The door locks from the inside, and it's easy enough to leave the window unlatched so you can just push it open," she cajoled, standing up from the table and gathering up their plates, shoving them in the sink with the rest of the cooking implements to soak in hot water. Egg was a bitch to get off once it had dried. "And I'll have more food ready for you when you wake up." His ears perked at that.
"More of those things we just eated?"
"Ate, and yes, if you'd like. And some more nuts, too." She began down the hallway, and the biped raccoon followed after her. She opened the door to a large room with massive, vertical-hinged windows and a single bed tucked in beneath it. "You can lock the door behind me, and if you really need to that window is a short drop to the ground. The dogs can't get there, so you'll be safe from them. But when you wake up, if you open that door and come out, I'll have food waiting for you." Magd smiled reassuringly as he stepped into the room and began to explore. He looked back at her and nodded, once. It wasn't a promise but rather an acknowledgement that he would take it under advisement. She left and shut the door. She was nearly back in the kitchen when she heard the lock snick shut.
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