Page 34 of The Cajun Doctor

There were three other cats, Garfield, Felix, and Max, rambling around her large home, tough-as-nails, indoor/outdoor critters. They were a Maine coon breed, who came in when they chose, not when she directed. These were recent entries into her home which she’d thought would have been adopted by now. She wondered idly, the blasted dream still lingering in her mind, whether the LeDeux brothers might not need mousers at their new home on Bayou Black. A bleepin’ plantation, for heaven’s sake! Hadn’t Tante Lulu mentioned the possibility of the twins sheltering animals in some of their outbuildings?

Maybe, she thought with a grin, she ought to put bows on them, and take them for a housewarming gift to the brooding Daniel. He needed something to lighten him up.

Or maybe she ought to take others from her menagerie. A good choice would be Clarence, the foul-mouthed cockatoo whose lone vocabulary was “Holy shit!” usually said at the most inappropriate times. Or Emily, the small potbellied pig with a serious case of depression due to a broken heart. (Yes, a depressed pig. And small only compared to other pigs. Emily weighed in at about sixty pounds.) Or how about the goat? Oh, Lord, would she like to unload Grumpy! And, yes, he and Doctor Grumpy would get along just great. There were also a few ducks, one goose, and an honest-to-God miniature llama in the middle of the Big Easy. Thankfully, she’d been able to get rid of the two peacocks she’d gotten originally from the rescue farm. Her neighbors had complained, with good reason, about the peacocks’ screeching cries. She expected the same fate for the llama, ducks, goose, and goat, and she’d warned the rescue center, “No more outdoor animals!”

Over the past two years, she’d probably fostered two hundred different animals in her home. The worst had been a monkey named Eli. He’d thrown food and feces at her or anyone who got near his cage, and masturbated constantly. Eew! Never again! She’d also drawn the line at snakes and rodents.

Her family thought she was crazy and said she was compensating for lack of a real family.

Well, yeah!

The daughter of wealthy divorced parents, she’d never really had a normal family life, just boarding schools. Her father was on his fifth wife . . . six if you counted the brief five-day marriage to that Bourbon Street stripper. Her mother, a quintessential jet-setter, lived in the South of France, and supported one boy toy after another.

Neither parent had ever had much time for her. As a result, Samantha had always yearned for a large family of her own. A man who loved her, with at least three, maybe five children. And that’s exactly what Nick had promised her. Turns out, he’d never wanted children, despite his promises before their marriage. In fact, he’d had a vasectomy without telling her.

She could only imagine what Daniel would say if he knew her pathetic life story, or if he saw her current “family.” His sarcasm would be unavoidable.

Ah, well, Samantha thought, as she got out of bed and padded down the stairs and out to the kitchen where she opened the door for Axel to go out and do his business. She put on the coffeepot, and began the lengthy process of feeding her own personal zoo. It was a Sunday; so, she wouldn’t be going into the office, but she planned to do some work as the director of the Hope Foundation, a growing operation founded by Starr Foods after that horrible hurricane devastated her town, and which expanded a few years ago to take the LeDeux family’s Jude’s Angels under its umbrella, mostly at the instigation of Tante Lulu.

To her annoyance, the erotic dream stayed with her for a long time. While she drank her coffee. While she fed the animals. While she studied her budget and put together an agenda for the next board meeting. While she took a shower and dressed for the day.

Good thing she was the only one who knew about it.

It was her dirty little secret.

The Awakening, non-Kate Chopin style . . .

Daniel awakened in his garconniére bedroom, sunlight streaming through the open windows, more contented than he’d felt in years.

Hell! Who wouldn’t be contented after the wet dream of the century? And with stone-cold Samantha Starr, of all people, who wouldn’t touch his cock with a ten-foot pole. Man, he thought with a smile, wouldn’t he enjoy telling her about the dream? She’d probably faint with disgust.

With a wide yawn, he went into the bathroom up here on the third floor. In the past month, he, Aaron, and a small team of high-priced contractors, plumbers, and electricians . . . who knew plumbers earned more than doctors? . . . had done some basic restoration work. New plumbing and electricity in the big house and the garconniére, as well as replastering and painting one bedroom and one sitting room in each structure for Aaron and Daniel, and rudimentary kitchen appliances, like a coffeemaker. Just enough for them to live on-site.

This morning Daniel was going to paint the walls on the first floor, which very well might be a medical office at some point in the future. Oh, not an office open to the public. More a place he could set up his medical library and supplies. Do research. Maybe even ease back into part-time practice at some Louisiana facility. George Laroche had been begging him to join the staff of his oncology center in Houma, even promising him his own pediatric unit.

It was just something Daniel was thinking about at this point. He hadn’t even discussed it with Aaron. Face it, Daniel had been burned out by medicine, big-time. Working with terminally ill children did that to a body. But he could feel himself healing. Maybe he was ready to take back his life again. Maybe.

He’d begun the process of applying for a Louisiana medical license. Not because he had any immediate plans, but Tante Lulu kept nagging him about it, for some strange reason, probably because she wanted him “to get off his lazy ass.” There was no such thing as a national medical license. In the U.S., it was state by state, which sometimes posed a problem for physicians who practiced in multiple states. Although, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when there was such a dire need for trained medical personnel, the legislature had passed a law allowing doctors from other states to write prescriptions and order tests for treatment.

So, he’d filled out the cumbersome forms, just to shut her up, and soon he would take the exam. The question was what to do with the license once he obtained it . . . or whether he wanted to do anything with it.

For now, he would content himself with work around the plantation. After painting, he planned to go help Aaron with some sanding, of which there was enough work for an army. A landscaping firm would arrive this afternoon to begin clearing away more of the jungle.

A half hour later he walked down the narrow steps to the first floor, cup of coffee in hand, when he glanced out the window, then did a double take. There was a line of about fifteen people sitting on the ground outside the garconniére, as if they were waiting for something. Or someone.

He frowned. Me?

Setting his coffee cup down on a windowsill, he opened the door and said, “Can I help you?”

“Are you Doctor LeDeux?” a woman in front of the line, holding an infant, asked.

“Yeeees,” he answered hesitantly.

“We’re here to see you.”

And all the others piped in:

“My Sally has the whoopin’ cough.”