“Do you miss him?” I ask, swallowing my second bite.
“Every day, darlin’, every day,” she whispers toward her hands. “Like Dr. Drake was telling me, he lost his battle because they didn’t have the surgery Dr. Stein wants to offer you. Why won’t you take the chance? My Horus was an old man with grown kids and a dried-up wife when he was hospitalized—”
“Dried up? You’re more lively and fabulous than most werewomen my age.”
“I’ll take the flattery, but menopause should be called pruning. Not because they cut my branches, but because it dries you out…like a prune…making certain activities need…well…you’ll figure it out.”
Oh. Oh dear. I guess lubrication must be hard to find in her human realm…
“You should see your face, darlin’! You look like someone cut the string to your balloon, when in reality, you have your whole life ahead of you. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-eight,” I reply with a shrug. “But I’ve been so sheltered, I haven’t done half the things I want in life. According to Leader Grant, I should be mated and having pups, but I haven’t found my other half. I haven’t had time to look between flares…and dodging complaints about my flares.”
“What if the surgery gives you a new life? If you weren’t sick, I bet you’d be a better advocate for yourself and earn some freedom from the pack.”
“It's kind of like the old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg,” I start, twisting my fingers with anxiety. “I can visit the human world after I’m better, but the human worldhas other interventions that could make me better if I visited when I was sick. There are alternatives to the surgery on the human’s internet that I want to try first.”
“Like what?”
“Well, there are low-inflammatory diets, like being gluten-free—”
“Says the lady who just inhaled a piece of sugary pie, but go ahead,” she says with a squeeze to my hands to stop fidgeting. “I’m sure your werewolf family eats mostly game meat, so that shouldn’t be an issue.”
“The holistic approach is more than diet; it’s medications, vitamins, meditations, and other stuff. I read about chiropractic care. It’s when a wizard moves your body into magical alignment. The videos were fascinating, and nobody was carved to bits.”
“Magical, fascinating, wizards? These aren’t words I’d use when gambling with my health. Trust me—”
“I’m probably explaining it wrong,” I reply with a sigh. “I don’t know the words because I haven’t learned about them—us—me.”
“What about those notes you pass back and forth to Dr. Stein?”
“You got me there,” I say with a sigh. “They say I have more flares than I thought, with more pain than I thought. Even with my half-attempt at changing my diet and habits, I’m growing worse. I still haven’t tried the human pharmaceuticals. Mrs. M, all I want is a chance.”
“You know how many times I yelled at the stars that I wanted one more chance with my Horus? One more time to listen to him gripe about something. One more time watchinghim play with our kids. There are days I even miss cleaning his bathroom after he destroyed it. You get the surgery, and you get your chance to visit the human world. Hey, you can stay with my little Kimberly—she lives in New York City. That town holds a cross section of humanity!”
“That sounds heavenly,” I say with a little bitterness. I don’t want a carrot dangling between me and the surgery, even if a trip to New York City would be a dream come true. I want something real. A life like Mrs. M and Horus had, with a house, family, and vocation. Mrs. M is a mothlady, yet she still runs the environmental center she built with Horus.
“Because, dear, some things are worth living uncomfortably for,” she says, handing me a note. I recognize the large, boxy handwriting through the folds of the paper.
“Is he giving up on me?” I whisper as I take the note.
The top of the paper has the logo of Haunted Health, and beneath it indicates that it is from the desk of Dr. Frank Stein. I envision him, hunched over his desk, painstakingly crafting each letter with his hand tools. The brief message, meet me in the butterfly garden, must have taken him away from his busy surgical schedule…as will the meeting itself. Yet when I look up, there he sits outside Mrs. M’s window. He’s probably been there the whole time I’ve been whining to her about going to the human realm. Guilt squeezes my heart as I watch the breeze ruffle the hair on the back of his head.
“I would say quite the opposite,” Mrs. M says, biting her lip. “When I ask that you give him a chance…I don’t just mean the chance to save your life.”
“Mrs. M, are you trying to match me with a monster?”
“Oh no, Dr. Stein is no monster,” she says with a chuckle. “He’s just a prickly man of science—like My Horus. They are adifferent type of monster than those who sport claws and fangs. Men of Science are held hostage by their brilliance and need a softness to counterbalance their logical minds, to remind them they have a heart. I was that reminder for Horus, and together, I believe we made the world a better place. Dr. Stein…well…”
“He just wants to cut me open. There’s no—”
“Just hear him out,” she says, sipping from her Styrofoam cup of ice water. “Really hear him. The surgeon wants to save you…but so does the man.”
“The man who traded his human life for surgical instrument hands.”
“Far be it from me to push you, dear,” she says when I shoot her a glare. “But maybe the humanity that your heart longs to embrace isn’t as far as it seems. What you seek may be right under your nose.”
Chapter 7
