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...And Back Down Again
Jan. 27th, 2007 03:29 pmWhat was that I just said in my last entry? Oh, yeah....
This is also a good suggestion that this year's problems aren't nearly as major and insurmountable as they seem, either.
I really ought to know better than to say things like that. It just invites the universe to kick me in my unsuspecting, optimistic butt. But no, I went and worked myself up into a good, hopeful, happy mood yesterday, and when one of the offices I work at on a regular basis called me and asked me if I could work a last-minute weekend shift, I said sure. What could go wrong, I asked myself. It's just a five-hour shift, just a short day, just an easy extra paycheck.
See above statement about how I really, really ought to know better. Especially when I start settling in one place, and my.... special clients start showing up. Nothing is ever easy when the pointed ears are on the clients instead of the patients.
I had even started settling into a comfort zone with them, too. I'll admit that, travelling around and having no set work address, at first it was nice to be away from challenges like theirs, but after a while I started to miss them. I missed being part of a secret, I missed the mystery of it all, and, well, I missed the glamour and the magic. Once you've had that as a part of your life, everything looks a little dustier and darker without it.
So when the last appointment of the day showed up, and the client's features were a bit too fine and the eyes a bit too big and the fingers a bit too long, I honestly was kind of excited. It was almost a letdown when he just brought in an extremely tall, extremely wolflike dog. I didn't mind too much, though - a lot of the more feral folk have companions that are a bit too fey to be seen at the Wildlife Centers without raising a few eyebrows, and the critters tend to be self-aware enough not to bite.
Usually.
This one, though, had to be the exception. Everything was fine until I put my hand on an unexpectedly ouchy spot, and he turned around and sank his teeth into my left wrist. And the elf accompanying him turned a particularly sickly shade of bluish-white in shock. And I noticed that the medallion on the wolf's collar was *not* a rabies tag.
Here's my rant for today. I don't care how much the cost of human medicine has gone up recently, and I don't care how hard it is for illegal immigrants to get health insurance, and I don't care what your father is king of. Nothing gives you the right to charm your werewolf uncle into his beast-shape outside the standard moon cycle, and bring him in to me to have his cough checked out.
Okay, nothing gives you the right to bring him in to me at ANY time, but at least on full moons I know better than to go near any particularly aggressive supernatural beasts. But aside from the risk to me, I have tried and tried again to make it clear to the more esoteric of my clients that I only treat shapeshifters if all of their shapes fall into my patient base. There's always aspects of the hidden shape there, impacting the medicine, and I don't work on humanoids.
Meanwhile, all of this is pouring straight from my hindbrain, out my mouth, and into the delicate, pointy ear of the Prince of Moonlight while my arm is bleeding freely, my tech is trying not to faint, and Uncle Grymstock is torn between the conflicting urges to tuck his tail in submission and embarassment or finish the job and rip my throat out. And, through all of this, tiny microscopic particles of lycanthropic doom are climbing their way backwards up my capillaries with the ultimate goal of changing my nighttime hobbies permanently.
His Elfy-Welfy Idiocy swears that a particular ointment of wolvesbane should help keep the infection from taking hold, and I've taken out my own insurance by blending it with silvadene - it's an antibiotic ointment with a silver base, and I swear I never thought I'd be using it for anything like this. He says I should be fine. He says that this almost always works.
I guess I'll find out in a few weeks. Right now I'm typing this with one hand and a hell of a lot of hope, because I don't have much more I can do. Damn it all. I so did not sign up for this kind of cultural exchange.
Happy Rabbit Hole Day, indeed.
(Has Becky gone utterly mad? Perhaps, but there's also an explanation for this - check out the backstory here and here.)
This is also a good suggestion that this year's problems aren't nearly as major and insurmountable as they seem, either.
I really ought to know better than to say things like that. It just invites the universe to kick me in my unsuspecting, optimistic butt. But no, I went and worked myself up into a good, hopeful, happy mood yesterday, and when one of the offices I work at on a regular basis called me and asked me if I could work a last-minute weekend shift, I said sure. What could go wrong, I asked myself. It's just a five-hour shift, just a short day, just an easy extra paycheck.
See above statement about how I really, really ought to know better. Especially when I start settling in one place, and my.... special clients start showing up. Nothing is ever easy when the pointed ears are on the clients instead of the patients.
I had even started settling into a comfort zone with them, too. I'll admit that, travelling around and having no set work address, at first it was nice to be away from challenges like theirs, but after a while I started to miss them. I missed being part of a secret, I missed the mystery of it all, and, well, I missed the glamour and the magic. Once you've had that as a part of your life, everything looks a little dustier and darker without it.
So when the last appointment of the day showed up, and the client's features were a bit too fine and the eyes a bit too big and the fingers a bit too long, I honestly was kind of excited. It was almost a letdown when he just brought in an extremely tall, extremely wolflike dog. I didn't mind too much, though - a lot of the more feral folk have companions that are a bit too fey to be seen at the Wildlife Centers without raising a few eyebrows, and the critters tend to be self-aware enough not to bite.
Usually.
This one, though, had to be the exception. Everything was fine until I put my hand on an unexpectedly ouchy spot, and he turned around and sank his teeth into my left wrist. And the elf accompanying him turned a particularly sickly shade of bluish-white in shock. And I noticed that the medallion on the wolf's collar was *not* a rabies tag.
Here's my rant for today. I don't care how much the cost of human medicine has gone up recently, and I don't care how hard it is for illegal immigrants to get health insurance, and I don't care what your father is king of. Nothing gives you the right to charm your werewolf uncle into his beast-shape outside the standard moon cycle, and bring him in to me to have his cough checked out.
Okay, nothing gives you the right to bring him in to me at ANY time, but at least on full moons I know better than to go near any particularly aggressive supernatural beasts. But aside from the risk to me, I have tried and tried again to make it clear to the more esoteric of my clients that I only treat shapeshifters if all of their shapes fall into my patient base. There's always aspects of the hidden shape there, impacting the medicine, and I don't work on humanoids.
Meanwhile, all of this is pouring straight from my hindbrain, out my mouth, and into the delicate, pointy ear of the Prince of Moonlight while my arm is bleeding freely, my tech is trying not to faint, and Uncle Grymstock is torn between the conflicting urges to tuck his tail in submission and embarassment or finish the job and rip my throat out. And, through all of this, tiny microscopic particles of lycanthropic doom are climbing their way backwards up my capillaries with the ultimate goal of changing my nighttime hobbies permanently.
His Elfy-Welfy Idiocy swears that a particular ointment of wolvesbane should help keep the infection from taking hold, and I've taken out my own insurance by blending it with silvadene - it's an antibiotic ointment with a silver base, and I swear I never thought I'd be using it for anything like this. He says I should be fine. He says that this almost always works.
I guess I'll find out in a few weeks. Right now I'm typing this with one hand and a hell of a lot of hope, because I don't have much more I can do. Damn it all. I so did not sign up for this kind of cultural exchange.
Happy Rabbit Hole Day, indeed.
(Has Becky gone utterly mad? Perhaps, but there's also an explanation for this - check out the backstory here and here.)
