My patient whimpers but doesn’t move, aside from the instinctive flinch from discomfort.
“Oh my god, you were shot.” The words come out sharper than I intended, but still, the fox doesn’t react. Right now, getting bitten by this injured fox isn’t what worries me. I haven’t seen another person since setting up camp, but there’s obviously someone in the vicinity. Either a hunter, if that’s even legal in this area, or just a cruel human being. All I can hope is that they’ve moved on.
“Okay, I have two options here. I can carry you down the mountain to my car, then into town to a veterinary clinic to have a doctor remove the bullet, or I can remove it here andthentake you to a clinic. I don’t love the idea of digging it out of your hindquarter in the middle of a forest, but I think moving you with the bullet in place might be worse. I have to be honest, though, little friend. I can’t guarantee you’re going to survive, no matter what I do.”
The fox lifts its head, though barely, and looks me in the eye, as if it understood every word. Its long muzzle opens enough to emit a soft chatter. Then its head drops to the ground, its eyes closing with what feels to me like defeated resolution.
“I’m going to try,” I say, prepping the area and grimacing at the little yips from my patient before opening a disposable sterile scalpel. “This is going to hurt like hell, and I’m sorry.”
Thank god for everything I’ve learned while assisting in surgeries, but this is not how I ever imagined putting that knowledge to practical firsthand use. Mercifully, the bullet isn’t deep. Once it’s out, I clean the wound, apply suture strips from my kit as well as I can because of the fur I lack the tools to shave, then wrap the area.
“That’s step one done, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” I say, gently stroking the fox’s head.
Its eyes open, and it chatters again.
“Okay, now I’m going to pick you up and—” A sharp inhalation of air replaces the rest of my words. Still kneeling,I scramble backward into the surrounding brush as the impossible happens before my eyes.
The fox stops being a fox. Small becomes large. Fur becomes skin. Paws become hands and feet. Muzzle becomes a nose and mouth with human lips that part to say, “Don’t be scared, I’m not going to hurt you.”
My words, repeated back at me. “You…you’re a…but you were just a…” I pinch my eyes closed and shake my head. When I open them, he’s still there. A naked man with reddish-brown hair and eyes the color of single malt Scotch whisky. “This isn’t real. Maybe Idideat those questionable berries and I’m hallucinating.”
“This is all very real. I was a fox, and now I’m a man. I’m a fox shifter, and you just saved my life.” His eyebrows pull together when all I do in response is continue to gape. “You didn’t eat berries from a plant about seventy centimeters high with deeply lobed, coarsely toothed leaflets and a stalk with a grouping of red or white berries at the top, did you?”
“What? No. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
The man—or fox, or whatever impossible thing he is—nods once. “Good. If you see them in the future, don’t eat them. Baneberries are poisonous to humans.”
“What about to foxes who morph into humans?”
“Yes, they can be mildly toxic to us, too.”
I want to cackle at the insanity of this moment, but the proof is directly in front of me, less than two meters away. “Your wound is open and bleeding.” I nod at the upper portion of his leg. “The suture strips must have come off when you…when you…”
“Shifted,” he finishes for me. “Yes. My humanoid form is significantly larger than my fox form.”
“Right. Well.” I clear my throat and crawl to my medical kit. “I should probably disinfect it again and put fresh suture stripson there so we can, um, get you to a hospital for additional care. A regular hospital, not a veterinary clinic, now that you’re a man, and not…a fox.”
“I’ll be eternally grateful that you saved my life, but I can’t go to a hospital there.” Raising an arm, he points toward the downward slope. “I appear human, but my physiology is different. There would be questions I can’t answer. Details that, if documented, would put my kind at risk.”
“This is a lot to take in.” Yet, as soon as I reach into my medical kit and enter professional mode, my hands stop shaking and my pulse evens out. All that matters is the patient, even if he is something out of a storybook. “Sorry, this is going to sting. Again.”
“I appreciate your assistance more than you can know.” He motions for me to go ahead, barely showing discomfort while I clean and close the wound for the second time.
I take another look at our surroundings. Trees as far as the eye can see. No visible signs of life. “Do you live somewhere nearby? I can help you get there, then leave the disinfectant and bandages with you if you don’t have any.”
“Your offer is very generous, but it is quite a distance to my home.”
“Any chance it’s a downward distance?” I ask, glancing at the incline ahead. I don’t want to renege on my offer, but I’m not even sure I can find my way back to my campsite from here, and if I go any farther, I may be the one who dies alone in these woods, not my patient.
When he manages to stand only to immediately buckle and drop to the ground with his first attempted step, my sense of direction and getting back to camp become a problem for later.
“I’ll help you,” I say, dipping into my backpack and coming up with my spare t-shirt, which I lightly toss and he catches in one hand. “Maybe you can stretch or rip the neckline to fit yourwaist and wear it as a skirt? It’d be less awkward for me if you weren’t completely naked while leaning on me. Not that I’m a prude. Just…”
“I understand. Shifters are very comfortable with nudity, for obvious reasons.”
Shifters. Notfoxshifters. Did he just leave “fox” out casually, or are there other kinds of shifters too? A question I never could’ve imagined wondering. Not in reality. The reality I believed until moments ago has been blown to hell, yet somehow, I’m okay with the replacement. I have a lot of thoughts to unpack when I get back to my camp.IfI get back.
Despite his serious injury and blood loss, he has no issue stretching the neckline wide, the sound of stitching and fabric ripping sharp against the silence. He pulls the t-shirt over his head and pushes it down his body to his waist. “Feels snug enough that it’ll stay in place.”
