Page 8 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part One

Deciding to let him rest and then wander off on his own, I turned around and marched inside. I needed to get ready for work, anyway.

It was a bit of a surreal experience trying to ignore the dire-wolf-shaped problem I had hanging out in my greenhouse, but I did my best. It helped that apparently chaos wanted to reign, because while I was gone, Mudpie had decided to bully Goober away from his food bowl. Was the gray cat twice her size? Yes. Did that matter? Absolutely not.

I gave her a quick spritz with the spray bottle to tell her to back off, then coaxed Goober out of the half bath. I put him in front of his bowl and made sure he ate his bigger portion. The other two likely thought it was unfair that he got double their servings, but he needed it.

Once I got Goober settled, Fork decided, in all of his orangeness, that he wanted to fall asleep in Mudpie’s food bowl. Not eat what was left of her food, just lie on it, which was just greatin his thick fur.

“Fork, get up from there right now,” I told him firmly after shushing Mudpie, who was sitting next to him and screaming her little kitty lungs out. “And you better hope none of that is stuck in your coat, because Iwillgive you a bath.”

At that, Fork abandoned his perishable mattress and sauntered off, no doubt to do more orangey things. I had no doubt his food was already inhaled. Even with a food mat to slow him down, Fork preferred to eat everything with the same speed as an unrelenting black hole.

Things calmed down a bit after that, so I got ready and headed to work. Once more, I was struck by the dissonance of it all, biking to go spend eight hours of my life at a grocery store while a wounded wolf was chilling in my greenhouse. It simply wasn’t a situation I found myself in all that often.

Should I call the rangers? I would if the wolf was still there when I got home. After all, I would be gone for ten hours total. Plenty of time for him to sleep and move right along. It wasn’t like he could get into my house. I’d locked it up tightly to make sure my kitties were safe. If anything ever happened to them, I wouldn’t survive it—a sobering thought, and one I tried not to return to.

Instead, I focused on my work, which was much easier to do before Tiffany sauntered up to me, looking like the cat that ate the cream. I’d worked with her long enough to know exactly what that meant, and I braced myself for whatever bullshit she was about to lay on me.

“Hey, Venny girl!”

“It’s Ven,” I corrected tersely. We had this conversation at least twice a week, yet Tiffany always came up with new and annoying ways to butcher my nickname. I didn’t need any other nicknames. I had one. And while I didn’t mind some people being a little informal, Tiffany wasn’t coming from that direction. She never was.

“Righty-o. Hey, listen, there was a major blowout in the men’s bathroom.”

“You’re on bathroom duty today,” I said, already seeing exactly where the conversation was going.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m going on lunch, so I can’t do it. Need you to cover for me.”

“No—” I started, but she was already bounding off.

“Thank you so much for your help. See you later! Toodles!”

I stood, fuming, and figured I had two options. One, I could do it, and it would be handled, and the entire front of the store wouldn’t stink. Two, I could not do it, wait for Tiffany to get back from her lunch break, cause a whole bunch of drama with her, have the front area of the store stink for goodness knows how long, then get in trouble for not being a team player,

Life was really fucking unfair sometimes.

Grumbling to myself, I got the cleaning supplies and trudged into the men’s bathroom.Blow outwasn’t an exaggeration. I had no idea how we had grown adults coming into our store who didn’t know how to use the bathroom, but I did my best to breathe slowly through my mask and not think about it too hard.

Who knew, maybe the guy had gotten sick unexpectedly? Or maybe his coffee had hit on the wrong way. I always tried to look for the best in people, but more often than not, the best in people wasn’t all that great to begin with.

At least I got to listen to my music. I couldn’t do that when stocking the shelves because then I wouldn’t hear customers approaching, so my ears were perpetually tortured with the tinny oldies playing on the overhead speakers. But in the bathroom? I could rock out to some, well, rock, pop, and pretty much anything I wanted to.

I was doing exactly that when someone tapped me on my shoulder. I nearly jumped through my own skin, letting out an undignified yelp. Rolling around, I saw it was yet another grumpy old man. So far this week, I was 0 for 1, and the expression on the man’s face told me he would not be improving that ratio.

“This is the men’s room,” he blathered like I wasn’t aware.

“I know, sir. I did put a cleaning sign outside the?—”

“Get out of here. You can’t be in here.”

“Sir, I have to clean?—”

“This is ridiculous. They don’t have a male worker to do this?”

“Not right now, no?—”

“Right, sure. And if I talk to the manager, I’m sure they’ll tell me the same thing?”

Did this guy think I was getting my jollies from cleaning the bathroom? It was myjob.What was it about the suburbs that made people think they could treat service workers like the scum of the earth?

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