Down, Down, Down We Go

[ladysprite]

Sometimes I look at my body, and it feels like... not quite a roadmap, because the symbols don't tell anyone where to go, but more of a storybook. Each little mark is a reminder, the key to a story, a series of memories. The commas around my mouth, mostly hidden when I smile, from the Saint Bernard who tried to eat my face. The pale diagonal line across my sternum from the cat who got his hind foot stuck in the V-neck of my scrub top, before I finally started having my mother-in-law custom-make my scrubs to better fit a skinny, flat-chested girl. The tiny L-shaped scar at the base of my left index finger, dating back to when I was four years old and my neighbor's dog decided to try to share my bread and jam, starting me on a lifelong road of getting marked up by animals. I know them all, and even when I hate them, I love them, because they're part of me and part of my story.

And I look at the red, burned skin on the palms of my hands, and the blisters on my fingertips, and maybe it's just the Ultram talking - without it, I wouldn't be able to type right now, God knows - but I can't help but wonder what these scars will look like, and think about how, someday, they'll be proud badges of this story, too.



I really meant to spend yesterday becoming one with the sofa. Really. My ankle still hurt like a sonofagun, and the downtime would have been good for me. But there are some phone calls I just can't ignore. Mostly, the ones from the Special clients. The ones I've given up trying to hide from, and am trying to embrace as part of my life, for good or ill. And when the owner of one of the more.... specialized and exclusive barns in New England called to let me know that one of his extremely rare and special Queens was having egg trouble, I figured I didn't really have a choice.

I hopped into my tiny blue Saturn, thanking all the Powers that Be that it was my left ankle that was acting up and that I drove an automatic, and hustled as fast as I could to Middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts. I pulled in next to a sign that read 'Dragon Haven Farm,' and hopped out, shaking hands with the broad-shouldered man in coveralls who was waiting there for me. "C'mon," he said, heading in the direction of an impressively large barn-shaped building built of cinderblocks. "Hester's in here."

I followed him in, and glanced around for my patient. And then I looked up. And up. And up. Hester, red as her namesake's scarlet letter, sat on a pile of scrap metal that glowed like embers, reflecting her scales. She shrugged her wings awkwardly, sending an oven-hot draft at my face, and yawned.

"Jake?" I asked, stepping back cautiously.
"Yep?"
"That's.... a dragon."
He looked at me, both patient and concerned. "Yep. What'd you think it was gonna be?"
"No - I mean, that's a real, freakin' dragon. Like First Edition Monster Manual. I thought, you know, it would be some kind of cute little wyvern, or maybe like the Luck Dragon from Neverending Story - you know, the one that looked like a basset hound with a skin condition. This thing could eat Tokyo for lunch, and still have room left for dessert."
My host sighed. "You'd maybe rather go work in the basilisk barn next door? One of 'em's got an infected toe, I think. You really want to find out whether you can lance an abscess blindfolded?"

I shook my head, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. "Okay, mama lizard," I said, hoping that my best soothing-the-savage-beasts voice would work here. "Whatcha got for me?" She took a deep breath too, and let loose with a gout of flame that passed about a foot above my head.

Now, let's get one thing clear. I. Hate. Fire. I am terrified of it, bordering on phobia. Many reasons have been put forth to explain this by various friends, ranging from 'I must have been burned at the stake in a past life' to 'I'm just a big scaredy chicken.' Personally, I prefer the reason 'Fire is scary and dangerous and burns things up, and I am entirely reasonable to want to keep it safely away from me,' but that's just my opinion.

I leaped backwards with an embarrassingly shrill yelp and wound up skidding halfway across the barn on my backside, ending abruptly when I fetched up against the wall. Jake, clearly trying not to laugh, offered me a hand up. "Anyway, she's not your patient. That is." He pointed at a pale red-gold egg, roughly the size of a prize-winning watermelon, in a corner at the base of the scrap pile. "She must have rolled it onto something sharp sometime late last night or this morning, and the shell's cracked. If she sits on it again, it'll crush and kill the baby. And this is the first time she's laid in near a century; we gotta save the little one." He tossed me a pair of welding gloves as I headed to the egg. "You'll need these...."

I slipped the gloves on absentmindedly as I walked over. A large crack marred the upper third of the egg's surface. "I'll take a good look - you're right, that thing isn't structurally sound as it is, but if the membrane's still intact inside, the hatchling should be safe. We could just patch the shell and bury it in her horde until it's due to hatch."

I was thinking out loud more than anything else at this point, as I gently ran my hands over the surface of the egg. Dragons are a pain in the backside to hatch and raise - for all that the adults are giant, mighty monsters, the babies are ridiculously fragile. They need to be kept scorchingly hot, but until they're full-term and ready to hatch, they can't maintain their own temperature, so they need constant contact with their mom to stay warm and alive. The shell protects them from her weight, and a membrane lining that shell protects them from the rest of the environment and provides nourishment. Any disruption to this system means near certain doom for the unhatched baby.

Unfortunately for this little one, a sharp edge from the broken shell had torn the fragile membrane. Small drops of liquid were starting to ooze out, and the hatchling inside was already becoming dangerously cool. It was still hot enough to feel uncomfortably warm, even through the gloves, but for a critter designed to live snuggled up against a house-sized furnace, it just wasn't enough. "No luck," I told my host. "We're going to have to take him out."

"You can't - there's no way he'll make it. He can't stay warm on his own, and if we put him with Hester, she'll smash him flat."

"Well, if he stays in here, he'll starve. If he doesn't suffocate first." I racked my brain as I started peeling away the edges of the shell, trying not to harm the delicate wings and scales underneath. "Do you guys have a barbecue grill?" He shook his head. "Okay.... go grab my cell phone from my bag, and call my husband. Tell him to bring the Weber kettle grill, and as much sand as he can fit in the back of the car, and get here pronto."

I did my best to work away the chipped pieces of shell and peel off the torn membrane, but the thick, heavy gloves got in my way. I could feel time slipping by, and could almost see heat fading, and torn between watching the hatchling die before I could get him out and feeling its thin, fragile wings tearing as they stuck to the lining of the shell under my clumsy hands, I pulled the gloves off and tossed them aside. The sharp edges of the shell cut my fingers and the egg itself, so cold for the baby inside, still scorched my hands until they turned red and blistered, but piece by piece, the shell started to come away.

An hour later, as my husband (bless his kind, helpful, unquestioning heart) started building a fire in the grill and filling the lid with sand, I teased the last threads of clinging membrane off a comparatively tiny belly and cradled a weak, wet, but still breathing baby dragon in my arms. My hands were bleeding and sore, my arms were starting to turn pink, and I'd been crouching in one place long enough that I couldn't feel my swollen left ankle anymore, but the hatchling was still alive.

He wasn't out of danger yet - the grill would only be big enough to hold him for a couple of days, and I was purely guessing that the sand would help distribute the heat evenly enough to keep him warm without burning him. Hopefully, though, it would buy enough time for the farm staff to build a bigger, more permanent firepit to hold him for the next week or two, until he developed enough to maintain his own temperature. But when I looked at the tiny translucent wings, now warm enough in his makeshift incubator that I didn't dare touch him bare-handed, and saw him yawn, stretching his tongue in a miniature imitation of his mother... it didn't matter.

It's been 24 hours now, and the painkillers are starting to wear off, and my hands are killing me. But the barn just called, and he's still alive. It's only been a day, but it's a start. And for all that I gripe about the bizarre cases that I get saddled with, deep down inside, I know that they're really what I live for.

(Questions? Has Becky gone utterly mad? Nope - if you want to check out the background to this story, look here.