Page 17 of Full Moon Frenzy

She did not spare another look back as she left the exam room. It had taken less than ten minutes. If the majority of the patients waiting in the room beyond were that easy, she’d have the board cleared well before break. After all, no one currently in the waiting area appeared urgent to her eyes.

A blue-skinned woman was pleading with two web-fingered tweens to stop fighting over the tablet they were meant to share, while across from them, an elderly faunish couple shook their heads judgmentally. There was an orcish middle schooler with a terrible cough, a college-aged goblin sitting with a bag of frozen peas on her knee, and a mottled grey mothman, holding his elbow, scowling at the rest of the room.

It had only taken a day or two to understand that the staff she’d inherited from the general practice upstairs had never been introduced to the concept of urgency, an attitude, she discovered, that carried over to the patients, despite the name over the clinic’s doors. Unlike the frenetic pace she was accustomed to, her first week at Healers Urgent Care Clinic had passed with a plodding domesticity, crucial minutes wasted on meandering conversations from the coffee machine to the reception desk, extending into the examination rooms.

It would take time to break them of the habit, Adriana reminded herself, looking over the chart for exam room three, her hand already resting on the door handle. Anyone could be trained, and the staff here was no exception. And once the staff understands, the patients will stop expecting every appointment to be a social hour.

“Deneen will check you out at the front, Ms. Hemming. I really do hope the bread is worth it,” Sora, the trollish nurse practitioner, laughed, just two doors down, standing in the open doorway of an exam room.

Adriana felt the icy finger up her spine again, intuition forcing her to turn slowly, preparing herself for the sight of his wife coming out of the room . . . but the dark-haired she-wolf who passed the troll was not the same werewolf she remembered from med school.

“Oh, it had better be! A little blood in the batter is just extra protein, right?”

“Let me guess — mandoline injury?”

Adriana startled when she realized she had asked the question, unable to help herself, forcing the werewolf to turn.

“I should have known better,” the dark-haired young woman laughed, facing her at last. Short, choppy hair with a thick magenta streak, a ring in her nose, a tattoo up her neck, nothing at all like her poised and perfect former classmate. “The zucchini was calling to me. I should have resisted!”

“I’m Doctor Brunelli.” That voice was still coming from her own mouth, her hand extending to shake the wolf’s, and Adriana felt utterly left out of the decision-making process, watching like a spectator.

“Oh yeah, I heard we were getting a new doctor! Rina Hemming. Nice to meet you. I’d offer to drop off some bread for the staff, but I’m not sure it’ll meet safety regulations. I wouldn’t want my cousin to issue a citation.”

Sora and Shileen laughed, and Adriana watched as the young woman disappeared, slumping in relief, slotting the names together in an order that made the most sense. Rina. Her cousin was the commissioner at the fair. Sandi was maybe a mother or a sister. She had a feeling this was his extended family, the resemblance too strong, but she was safe. You can stop spooking every time you hear the name now.

The goblin and her bag of peas proved to be no more than a deep bruise, while the orcish middle schooler’s rapid strep test was positive before the reagent had fully climbed the strip. She was tapping in a prescription for an antibiotic, checking and double-checking her math to ensure the proper dosing for the species, when the errant medical assistant turned into the central desk.

“Exam four,” Adriana handed off a streptococcus information sheet. “Let them know an oral antibiotic is being called into the pharmacy. Twice a day for ten days, instructions are on the order.”

“Oh! Oh-okay! They can go? You don’t want to talk to them again?”

“They can go once you give them the orders and they check out up front.”

The goblin exchanged a fast look with the nurse coming from behind the counter, but Adriana was already moving down the hall, turning into the next room.

The mothman within, despite acting as though he’d sustained a catastrophic injury and needed to be transferred to the trauma ward next door, had merely banged his funny bone.

“It’s an unprotected nerve, and I know it hurts,” she assured him after reviewing his chart and hearing, in his words, how he’d injured himself. “But you said this happened close to two hours ago. Does it still hurt?”

She had already assessed the area — no damage to the humerus or cubital joint, no reaction as she probed. Adriana was certain he’d not even have a bruise in the morning. His scowl told her everything she needed to know, pulling his arm away as if she’d stabbed him, harumphing as he stood when she held the door open.

The board was halfway cleared, and she hadn’t even broken a sweat yet.

She was crushing it. This is how you train them — by setting the example. If they’re keeping up with you, they’re not wasting time that could be spent in the next exam room.

She still felt as though she were playacting in every interaction in town, every trip to the coffee shop, the completely overwhelming and shockingly expensive grocery store . . . but this she was good at. At this, she was the best they could ask for.

***

It was a conversation that wasn’t meant for outside ears. She could tell that immediately from the way the woman silently slipped through the shop’s door, phone already held to her ear, her face grim.

The shop was empty, save Adriana, with not even a visible clerk. Leathergoods, she realized once she’d stepped over the threshold, a small powder blue journal sitting in the window having caught her eye from the street, pulling her in like a reeled fish. Her therapist had mentioned journaling would be an excellent way to relieve stress and process her emotions, and the pretty blue journal would look right at home on the tiny antique secretary’s desk she’d had since childhood, a hand-me-down from her grandmother’s house.

Eighty-four dollars. For a notebook.

Her hand retreated. Not because she couldn’t afford it. That, perhaps more than anything else, remained the part her brain still had trouble working out. Price tags no longer represented impossibility, only permission she still had a hard time granting herself. For a notebook?!

It was then that the woman slipped into the shop, her eyes tight.