Chapter 3: Recovery

The pain in his chest that had been a constant presence, even in his unconsciousness, stopped abruptly, and Kirby woke with a start. As he tried to sit up, small hands pushed him down without seeming to expend much effort. He lay there, trying to gather the strength to lift his eyelids. He felt an I.V. needle in his left arm, but it did not sound or smell like he was in a hospital.

Opening his eyes, he saw a slender Asian woman with a boy’s haircut, leaning over him. She studied him. He was in a big, soft bed and it felt like he was floating. Not a hospital bed. He reached towards the wound on his chest. She stopped him. He noticed that his right hand had been bandaged, completely wrapped in gauze.

“No, dude,” said the woman. “Mustn’t touch!” She pushed his arm back down by his side. Turning over her shoulder, she said, “Tell Miss Adelaide that her guest is awake.”

He heard an unseen someone moving behind the woman. A door opened, then closed. She turned back to him. “I’m Doctor Lau. Miss Adelaide called me.”

“Where?” was all he could get out.

“You’re at Miss Adelaide’s home,” Dr. Lau explained. “Do you remember what happened to you last night?”

He was not sure how to answer that. He was weak and slightly groggy, but he remembered. “Lady had a blowout. Tried to help. Got attacked…by a dog. Big goddamned dog.”

The doctor nodded. “That sounds about right. Hold on a sec. Let me get this taped down.”

As she finished taping the gauze pad over the wound in his chest, he noticed that someone, presumably the doctor herself, had shaved his coarse chest hair in a large square around the wound. That’s gonna itch when it grows back. He saw scabs in parallel lines, where the claws of the thing’s forepaws had raked him. A few of the places where the lines intersected were shaved and sutured. Wide swaths around the lines were painted the familiar yellow-brown color of Betadine.

The door opened again and the woman he had met last night, the driver of the yellow Coupe de Ville, greeted him. “Jeffrey,” she exclaimed. Her smile was brilliant. “You’re awake! Thank goodness! How do you feel? Can we get you anything?”

“Um...Miss Adelaide, I presume?”

“What? Oh, yes. Where are my manners? You gave me your name last night and I didn't return the favor. I’m Adelaide McCann.”

He nodded. “What...what happened last night, Adelaide?”

“Jeffrey already explained to me,” interrupted Dr. Lau, “that he remembers being attacked by a big dog.” She nodded to the other woman as she spoke, in the universal way unsubtle people do when they want someone to agree without questions to the story they’re telling.

Stolen story; please report.

“Yes, Amy,” she said to the doctor. “I’m sure he does.”

“I mean what really happened?” he insisted.

“You had quite the ordeal last night, Mr. Kirby,” said the doctor. “Maybe you should get some rest now.”

“And maybe you,” he countered, “should give me a few minutes to discuss things with Mrs. McCann privately.”

“I don’t think—” began the doctor.

“It’s alright, Amy. Jeffrey has some questions and he deserves some answers.”

“Should I step out, then?” asked Dr. Lau.

“I don’t see why,” said his host. “Jeffrey, Amy—Dr. Lau—knows quite a lot about the answers to the questions you might ask.”

He gave the older woman a look that asked, Are you sure? And she nodded.

“So,” he said. “You had a blowout and I tried to help you fix your tire.”

“Correct,” Adelaide nodded.

“Then, that thing—that black wolf-thing—attacked,” he continued.

“Yes,” she said. “And Jeffrey, you were marvelous. So brave!” To the doctor she said, “He put himself in harm’s way to protect me. He stepped between me and the Abyssal wolf, Amy.”

“The what?” he asked weakly.

She turned back to him. “The black wolf-thing that attacked us. I am very impressed with you, young man.”

“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like that thing,” he stated, the plea for information obvious.

“I’d be shocked if you had,” said the doctor.

“Indeed,” agreed Adelaide, “not many have—and now you are one of the lucky few.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” was the only response he could give.

“Perhaps not,” agreed Adelaide. “One of the unlucky few, then.”

Kirby, sensing a hesitation of some sort on the women’s part to let the information he wanted flow freely, to explain the situation in a way that did not make him suspicious. “What time is it? Why am I not in a hospital? What is going on?” Each question was a short, angry bark.

“It is nearly four in the afternoon, Jeffrey,” Adelaide replied, entirely unaffected by his tone. “You aren’t in a hospital because no hospital could have saved you from your wounds. In my judgment, only Amy could help. You’re still alive, so…”

“For whatever you’ve done for me, I’m grateful. But what’s going on here, Adelaide,” he said with as much forcefulness as he could muster. “Something is more than odd here and, normally, I could just mind my own business, ignore it, but I got attacked last night, by a…an abysmal wolf you called it—”

“Abyssal, Jeffrey,” Adelaide interrupted, “an Abyssal wolf. And you killed it. You were magnificent.”

“Whatever the hell that means,” he growled. “That thing wasn’t natural. It wasn’t real. What the hell was it?”

“Oh, you’re right when you say it wasn’t natural, Jeffrey,” agreed Adelaide.

“But you’re absolutely wrong when you say it wasn’t real,” added Dr. Lau. “If it weren’t real, you’d still have two nipples.”

“What?!” He sat up violently and reached for the gauze bandage on his left pectoral.

Dr. Lau grabbed his wrist in both of her hands and said, “No! Leave it be! I did nice work on that and I don’t want you messing it up. You can look tomorrow when I change the dressing.”

“It bit me.” His voice nearly broke into a sob. He shuddered with the memory. “It ripped a piece of me off and ate it. It... swallowed a... a piece of me!” He could hear his voice, could hear his control unraveling. He hated this feeling of losing control. He tried to clamp down the lid on his emotions, but more kept welling up, forcing their way out. The terror and the dread. Horror as the thing swallowed his flesh. The desperate hatred as he drove the steel rod of the tire iron down its throat. The…

His eyes closed. He opened them, but they closed again. They stayed closed as he sank into unconsciousness.

----------------------------------------