(Tom Brady)

Things should have been idyllic. Since December of 1997, I'd had a place to myself on top of a huge node, all my food provided magickally, everything I could possibly need. Except for human companionship, that is. At times, I wished that Dog were with me, though I knew that was impossible. The television that Dog had watched no longer worked - I tried to trace the cable wire, but it ended somewhere outside the house, and all of the cable companies in the area that I called said they didn't have service to my area. I did get the phone reconnected, at least.

The first few weeks were wonderful - sleeping late, walking through the woods adjoining the property, watching the sun set. I was delighted to find that some of my old carving tools had been salvaged from my place in Chapel Hill before it was condemned, and immediately went to work brushing up my skills again. For a solid week, I carved like a madman, stopping only to sleep and eat, and even those at very irregular intervals. I woke up one morning on the floor of what had been a parlor, but I had converted into my studio. I looked at the work of the previous week scattered about me and stared at the accumulated pieces. A carving of a man carving a dog. A dog watching a television set. Two dogs romping around a bedroom. And other figures were no less familiar - a group of figures in a balloon. An old man and a girl standing, wrapped in furs, over the body of another man, the girl's eyes glowing with an evil pride. Four children sitting around a table drinking tea. A garou, obviously old and worn, but standing proudly.

I sighed and rubbed the calluses on my hands. I had proved to myself that I hadn't lost any talent in my travails. I debated briefly taking these pieces into town to sell them, but quickly rejected the idea; these were too personal. I stood up and stretched. I wondered what time it was. I wandered into the kitchen, nodding to the golem standing impassively in the hallway, and looked at the clock over the sink. 1 PM. I sighed and stretched again. It had been two weeks since I'd left the house, and longer than that since I'd last seen a human face. Might as well make a run in to town and see what's up.

After a quick shower, I slowly backed Forteau's - no, my - Lincoln out of the driveway and onto 751. I was still terribly unused to driving, and the car was so damned big it was pretty disconcerting. At least it was an automatic. I cut over to 15-501 and headed north into Chapel Hill. I wanted to stop by Cameron's over at University Mall, so I took the exit for NC 54.

I was cruising along at 45 mph, moderately comfortable with the ride, when a dog darted out in front of me. I didn't even see what kind it was - all I got was an impression of fur and four legs. I slammed on the brakes and tried to hold on as the car fishtailed out of control. I heard a sickening THUMP, then was thrown against my seat belt as the car slid to a stop along the guard rail. Before the car had even come to halt, I was out of my seat belt and had the door open. I ran back to the animal I had hit, lying on the side of the road. Cars continued driving by at full speed, not knowing or caring what had just happened. One car pulled up in front of me as I knelt by the dog, but I paid it no attention.

It was a golden retriever, and he was hurt badly. His right rear leg was shattered, as was his pelvis. His right lung was collapsed, and he'd be entering cardiac arrest in moments if I didn't do something quickly. I looked into the dogs eyes, and I saw bewilderment and panic. He growled, baring his teeth, even though he was unable to raise his head, so great was his pain. I started to reach out to him, when someone grabbed my shoulder.

"You don't want to do that. He'll bite you so fast you won't know what happened."

I looked up into the face of an older man, balding, with a neatly-trimmed white beard. "I'm a vet, son. I've seen these too many times. There's nothing you can do here."

I shook my head and shrugged off his hand. I turned back to the dog, but the man stopped me again. "I'm serious, there's nothing to be done here. See that? His leg is broken, and it looks like his pelvis too. In cases like this, euthanizing is the kindest option. I have something in my car..."

"NO! If you will leave me alone, I can help. Now dammit, get your hands off me!"

He held up his hands and stepped back. "You're making a mistake, son. That dog's going to bite you, and..."

I tuned him out and resumed my examination of the dog. He had watched this exchange through rapidly-clouding eyes, but when I reached to him his ears went back and he growled again. I spoke to him softly. "It's OK, guy. You're going to have to trust me. I got you into this, now let me get you out..." As I spoke, I reached into his pattern and calmed him, until his growling stopped and became whines of pain. Gently, I put my hand on his head, reassuring him as I went. I reached in and eased him into unconsciousness.

What I was about to do was going to incur a load of paradox, but I was willing to take that risk. I ran a hand slowly down his body, repairing his pattern as I went. Sometimes, I wasn't able to fix all of the damage - he still had a broken rib, for instance, and while I was able to repair his pelvis and knit most of his leg bones back together, he was still left with a compound fracture. When I was done I sat back on my heels. The paradox was making my head spin. I closed my eyes tightly and took a deep breath, then looked up to see that the vet was still standing over me, only his expression was now shock.

"You can't do that," he breathed.

"OK, fine, I didn't. One way or another, this dog needs medical attention and he needs it now. You say you're a vet - is your office near here?"

He shook off some of his shock and said, "Right. I'm at Companion Animal Hospital, just up the road." He over me to my car resting against the guardrail. "Your car isn't going anywhere too soon, and I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind."

I weighed the options - he was right, my car wasn't going anywhere soon. I was pretty tired, and what the heck, it couldn't hurt. Not that he'd believe the truth anyway. I stood slowly and nodded. "Sure, whatever."

He leaned down and gently picked up the unconscious dog. "Could you get the door?" I opened the back door of his car and he laid the dog on the seat. We drove the short ride to the hospital in silence, me slumped against the door, him stealing furtive glances at me.

When we reached the hospital, he bustled out and carried the dog in through the back entrance; I followed at a slower pace. The vet whisked the dog back to an examination room, leaving me to trail behind, walking slowly past the animals in their cages. In the larger kennels were various dogs, large and small. Some barked at me, the newcomer encroaching on their territory; others lay listlessly in their cages. I stopped before a beautiful husky - she couldn't have been more than two or three years old. She lay panting on her side, looking up at me. When I knelt down to look at her closely, she raised her head and licked my fingers where they held the chain-link fence.

I looked closer at her life pattern and saw that it was ebbing away. Everything looked normal, except...there.

"I see you've met Sascha." I looked up to see the vet watching me. "Dr. Horowitz is looking at our injured friend. X-rays, the whole bit." He offered his hand, "By the way, I'm David Alger." I shook his hand, still kneeling by the dog. She regarded me with quiet, suffering eyes.

He returned his attention to the husky. "Sascha's a puzzle. She's been here for a month, and we can't find anything wrong with her. But she's dying slowly."

"Brain tumor," I said.

"What?"

"She has a brain tumor in her frontal lobe. It's so small, you probably haven't been able to detect it, but it's affecting her autonomous nervous system."

He shook his head, skeptical. "Are you sure? X-rays didn't show anything, and I'm reluctant to order a CAT scan - those are expensive, and she's a charity case - brought in as a stray. I hate having to make these decisions, but the money has to come from somewhere, and we're running on a shoestring as it is."

I stood up. "I'd be willing to work with her. I think I could help."

He gazed at me silently for a few moments, his forefinger tapping his chin. "Son, I still have no idea what you did back there on the side of the road. I'm not sure I want to know. If you can do for these animals what I saw you do back there..."

I shook my head. "I can't. Not often, anyway. But I'd be willing to help where I could. On one condition."

He raised an eyebrow, "That being?"

"Anonymity. No one knows who I am, and no one asks."

He gave me a hard look. "You in trouble with the law?"

I laughed. "Not hardly. The law doesn't know I exist." Literally. After the fiasco at the post office in Cary trying to steal the Weather Machine, my identity had been erased - no drivers license, no bank accounts, no nothing. I had a fake drivers license that Raoul had obtained for me, but I knew better than to rely too much on that.

He nodded slowly. "Tell you what. We'll try a trial period and see how things work."

"It's a deal."

Initially, I came in one day each week. I knew better than to try any "miracle healing." That wasn't what I was there for. My time at Companion reinforced for me that Gaia has a pattern for all things, human or animal. I might have tried to heal every animal that came in, but I came to understand that Gaia's purpose sometimes included hard and unhappy endings. Hip dysplasia is a natural occurrence in dogs, and while there's something I might have been able to do about that, it wasn't my place. The same for rabies, and feline distemper. Every animal's death hurt, though. I was able to help where man's intervention had altered Gaia's ways: animals struck by cars, or poisoned, or caught on barbed wire. When I couldn't help, I soothed the animals, or slid them into the unknowing bliss of unconsciousness.

The one day each week became two, then three, and by April I was working five days a week. I never saw any of the owners of the animals, and, true to his word, Dr. Alger never told anyone who I was. I was the mysterious fellow who worked in the back, and was very good with animals. Dr. Alger never questioned my methods - thank all above for that! Usually, he would bring the animal back and talk with me quietly about what he had been able to learn. I would examine the animal myself, and more often than not I would look up and see that he had quietly left the room. The few times he stayed, I would see him watching me closely, trying to figure out what it was that I was doing. I never spoke of what I was doing, but he knew that the animal was always better off when I was done.

I learned much more than I had ever known about life patterns during my time working with those animals. Back home, away from sleepers' eyes, I learned more about animals bodies by actually becoming the animal, shapechanging. I will always cherish the feeling of galloping across the fields outside of the house as a horse, the wind whipping my mane, my feet moving faster than thought. Likewise will I hold the memory of stalking fieldmice in that same field as a cat, or dodging other feline predators as one of those mice (that was quite disconcerting!).

I found that once I had learned the animals' form, I was better able to pinpoint exactly what was wrong by how they held their head, how the stepped with that paw, how their eye twitched just so. Every so often I would come up with a diagnosis that Dr. Alger refused to believe, but I was always proven out. Unbeknownst to me, I had developed a reputation as a wonder with animals, and a nickname, too: "Dr. Doolittle." I only found this out later, though.

© 1998 by Thomas Brady

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