by P D Singer
On Call: The Collection
P.D. Singer
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book contains material including sexual contact between men, and is not intended for audiences under eighteen.
Persons depicted on the cover are models.
On Call: Afternoon
Copyright © 2010 by P.D. Singer
Second printing: Rocky Ridge Books, Denver CO, May 2012
First printing:Torquere Press, Inc.: Sips electronic edition / February 2010
On Call: Cat Clinic
Copright 2012 by P.D. Singer
On Call: Dancing
Copyright © 2010 by P.D. Singer
Second printing: Rocky Ridge Books, Denver CO, September 2012
First printing: Torquere Press, Inc.: Sips electronic edition / March 2010
On Call: Family
Copyright © 2012 by P.D. Singer
Rocky Ridge Books, Denver CO, September 2012
On Call: Wildlife
Copyright © 2012 by P.D. Singer
On Call: Crossroads
Copyright © 2010 by PD Singer
First printing: Torquere Press, Inc. / September 2010
Second printing: Rocky Ridge Books / January 2013
Rocky Ridge Books
PO Box 6922
Broomfield, CO 80021
Cover Art: P.D. Singer and Tabatha Heart
On Call: Afternoon
“Exam Room Three, Dr. Hoyer,” Michelle told me as she handed the chart over. “He hasn’t been in before, and he’s kind of jumpy. He seems to know enough to be dangerous, too—he’s got the medical terminology down pat.”
Patients with knowledge could be a blessing or a curse. I looked through the chart quickly, wanting to be prepared before walking into my first appointment of what would be a busy day. “He’s had a lot of the same training I’ve had, no wonder he slings the lingo. He’s a veterinarian and he has to know a dozen species’ worth. I only have to know humans.” Michelle blushed, caught out in not reading thoroughly, something she wouldn’t do again—she was too good a nurse for that. We’d been sizing each other up in the weeks since I’d joined the practice and mutual respect was growing.
It was still mixed in with a bit of romantic speculation: would the new (young, single) doctor want to date any of the staff? Well, no, not even if I was new in town and didn’t know anyone else, but certainly I didn’t want to mess with a functioning office. There had been a few offers to set me up with girlfriends, which I’d turned down as well. No one had offered to introduce me to possible boyfriends. A pity. I had few illusions about my own attractiveness: medium height, medium build, medium light brown hair, medium handsome all paled before the MD after my name for most people. I could probably be Dr. Toad and still get dates with some of them. I worked out a lot of my frustrations on that score at the gym.
I took another quick look through the history before stepping through the door: single black male, thirty-four, intermittent fever, malaise, a swollen lymph node (patient’s description). Could be a lot of things.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Keith Hoyer.” Putting a hand out to a patient dressed in a backless gown without a twitch was one of those skills you gain early in a medical career. Good thing, too, because patients can provoke a reaction for a lot of different reasons—usually not because they are drop-dead gorgeous. Like this guy. My mouth went dry as he shook my hand and introduced himself.
“Dante James.” The name hung well on the handsome man, who sat straight backed on the end of the examining table, his espresso legs showing bare from the hem of the gown.
“Shouldn’t that be Dr. James?” I found my voice again.
“If I’m the one in a backless gown, I don’t think I’ll be insisting on the 'Doctor’ part. I have a small animal practice here in town.” His hand had been warm in mine; now it lay in his lap again. “But Dr. James or Dante will do.”
“So you have to work without your patients telling you directly what’s the matter.” We exchanged a grin of understanding; pediatric patients had some of the same challenges. I liked adults. “Why don’t you tell me what brings you in?”
“I’ve been having a mild fever off and on, generally not feeling well, but I figured that was probably self limiting, until this lymph node blew up. It hurts.” He met my eyes calmly, which I did my best to match. I made a note in the chart.
“Where is the lymph node?” Please let it be somewhere neutral.
“My groin.”
I set the chart down, adjusting my attitude to “professional.” “Let’s check it out.” If I listened to his heart and lungs first I could manage myself better—I hoped.
He scooted back on the exam table and let me lift the end up under his legs. When he tried to lie back, he winced, so I supported him enough to land without a flop. His liver and spleen weren’t enlarged, though if I imagined my pale hand against his dark skin under the gown as I determined this, there would be enlargement elsewhere. I bit the inside of my cheek as a preventive measure.
“Just on the one side, or have you noticed lymph nodes enlarging on both sides?” I asked, as I lifted the gown above his hips. He still had his cotton boxers on; my hand could slide under and I could leave them there.
“Just the one side.” He hissed when I found the node; he was correct in his identification and it was huge, easily the size of a walnut. A few flanking nodes were enlarged, too, but not nearly as much. Just to the left of his package, they were clearly palpable under the skin of his lean body. I had to check the other side, just to be sure. To do that, I had to move his genitalia away, pushing with the side of my hand to allow my fingertips access to the nodes. Even with the soft fabric between my hand and his body, I wanted to react. He had closed his eyes and was breathing evenly.
“Have any of your patients scratched you recently?” I was proud of myself; that had come out normally.
“All the time.” He held out his arms, decorated with a fine network of lines in different stages of healing.
“Glad my patients don’t do that to me.” I had been mauled once or twice. “How about on your lower body?”
“One cat ran right down my leg a few weeks ago.” He pulled the gown up farther to show me the pinkish, nearly-healed tracks on his thigh. What a shame that smooth skin got marked. “It healed oddly, little papules for a while.”
“Well, I believe you have a dandy case of cat scratch fever,” I told him. “They do warn you about this in vet school?”
“Yes, though they don’t mention what a lymph node in your groin an inch and a half across feels like. I totter around like an old man.” He shook his head, his closely clipped hair making a little rasping sound against the protective paper cover on the table. “I did think it was nothing but that, and yet…”
“Yes?” I prompted him when he stopped talking to stare at the ceiling.
“It’s possible that, well…” Now he looked me straight on. “Let’s just say I got a bit crazy about six months ago, and I’ve been wondering about my HIV status since.”
“We can run a test anonymously, just to set your mind at ease.” I patted his arm; I’d sweated out the same thing. “But I really do think it’s cat scratch fever. Stay put, I’ll get the phlebotomy things and do this myself.”
“Thanks,” he said, as I slipped out the door.
I couldn’t keep treating him. Today, but not again. No matter how the blood work came back. It just wasn’t ethical to date patients.
He lay quietly as the blood welled into the little vial. The paperwork would call him
#3187. I wondered what I’d say when I called him with the results. Then I wondered what he’d say when I called to relinquish his care to someone else in the practice, and ask him to dinner.
“That’s it, aside from that lymph node. I can drain it, just so you can move around again.”
“That would be good. I had to fish a cat from under the exam table and I thought I was going to be stuck down there with it yesterday.” His chuckle was wry.
“As long as I don’t have to fish you out from under the table when you see the size of the needle I’m going to stick you with.” He was going to have to take his boxers down for me to do that. I tamped “professional” on my face a little harder as I pulled things out of drawers.
“You probably don’t want to watch this,” I suggested as I returned with my armory—a wide bore needle on a big syringe without its barrel and an alcohol wipe.
“Probably not. Funny, I can do surgery on a cat but I can’t watch you stick me.” He turned to the wall after sliding his boxers down around his thighs, so he missed my face as I saw him revealed and also the medical show that left him sighing in relief as the node deflated. The little round peach bandage showed pale against his skin.
“That’s a lot better. The other nodes aren’t nearly that bad.” He pulled up his boxers and sat up, far more easily than he’d lain down. The gown dropped back into his lap.
“I’ll call you when the lab work comes back. It could be two days, it could be a week.” I turned to dispose of the medical waste before looking at him again. “But I really think the cat scratch would have made you a lot sicker than you’ve described if you were positive.” I wrote out a prescription for an antibiotic and ripped it off the pad.
“I’m going to hold on to that thought,” Dante said as he took the script. “Because it’s going to be a long few days as it is.”
Yes, it is, I thought as I picked up another chart, preparing to treat some stomach ailment in the next room. Because I’m going to spend it thinking about how his thick dark cock looked as it lay against his curly pubic hair, and what I could do to coax it erect.
It was three days later that I picked up the phone. Dante thanked me graciously for the good news, and never had the chance to say yes or no to a dinner date. I had to end the call when all the other things I’d wanted to say stuck in my throat. He’d said he’d gotten crazy, he hadn’t said how, and the uncertainty choked everything else; I couldn’t know if he’d gotten crazy with another man. It would take some getting to know him first before I could offer the hands-on lesson in safe sex that I wanted so badly to give.
Weekends on call really suck canal water. A dateless Saturday night, as if that was unusual, although it was seriously busy. Why do babies wait until two A.M.? I’d spent a big chunk of the night delivering a little girl, and then had an admission to the hospital for an older man with chest pains. At least I was already there. A family practice had sounded a lot more enticing before they handed me the pager. It was around ten on Sunday morning before I staggered home for a few hours of sleep.
Someone would be glad to see me when I got home, not only because the hand that holds the can opener rules the world. Harpo, my big gray tabby cat, would greet me at the door most days unless the furnace was going, in which case I’d find him spreading his furry butt over a vent and stealing all the warmth. He’d seen me through medical school and internship, and had patiently waited through days of being alone or nearly so. Maybe not so patiently—he’d find something to destroy if it went on too long.
He’d sent one lover packing and been the sticking point for one or two others. Allergies can’t be helped, I guess, but he’d managed to intimidate my one and only live-in boyfriend out in less than a month. With a creepy combination of relentless staring and cat pee, Harpo had convinced him to pack up and move out. I’d say that he took my credit card with him, but looking at the dates on the charges later, he’d been at it a bit longer than that. Old Harpo had a better handle on whom to trust than I did.
He did his dangerous ankle strop as he led me toward the empty dish, buzzing all the way. Kibbles and half a can of wet glop anchored him in the kitchen. I threw a frozen burrito in the microwave and headed to the shower, then dressed in some soft workout pants and a T-shirt. I managed to eat the burrito before I fell over, fully clothed, on the couch. If I went to bed I might never wake up for the next emergency.
Sometime later, I became vaguely aware of little peg feet marching across my stomach to my thighs, where a large warm weight flopped down on my groin. Nothing subtle about old Harpo; some cats might pussyfoot, but not this one. He might be part elephant but he was cuddly and my lap was his preferred spot. I drifted back to sleep.
When the pager went off again, it caught me in that weird state of waking that’s disoriented but full of adrenaline. The beeping and buzzing startled Harpo, too, and I got a lap full of claws as he skedaddled and I flew off the couch trying to figure out what was going on. I did put one of my big feet right on the cat—his screech was the final stimulus to make me drop the pager and phone both. Harpo shot under the chair, hissing and yowling. I could answer my page or find out what I’d done to my cat. Trying to get him out from under the chair convinced me that I was better off with my pager, since he wasn’t calm enough to touch and wouldn’t be for a while. I stuck my bloody hand in my mouth and dialed the answering service.
“Hello, this is Dr. Hoyer. What seems to be the matter?” The answering service had put me through to the caller, a Mrs. Vincenza.
“My son Joey, he’s three, fell off a chair and now he’s holding his arm funny and crying…”
I led her through enough history to have a very good idea of what had happened and what to do about it. “Mrs. Vincenza, we can take care of this right away.” I thought fast. “Where are you?” I could drag them into the office three miles from my wounded cat, or show up on her doorstep if that would be faster. Fortunately, she was less than a mile distant, so the sooner I reduced little Joey’s subluxed elbow, the sooner I could do something about Harpo. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
It really does take extraordinary circumstances to get a doctor to make a house call these days, I thought, as I took one last look under the chair into baleful yellow eyes. “I’ll be back for you, pal.” He hissed—maybe that was what he was afraid of.
I could only hope that my cat had suffered no worse than little Joey had; I flexed and twisted his elbow enough that the ligament that had slipped into the joint when he’d fallen on the arm slipped back into its correct position. “See, Mrs. Vincenza, it wasn’t really a broken wrist. They just hold their arms like that in nursemaid’s elbow. He’s fine now.” The child moved his arm in wonder a few times and then ran off to play, skidding into a pile of blocks.
With thanks and backward glances toward her son, she let me out. She’d reached me on a Sunday—could I reach a vet if I needed to? Which vet? There was only one whose number I knew.
Harpo was still unwilling to come out from under the chair when I arrived home, a problem solved by picking the chair up off of him. “I need to check this out, pal. I don’t know what I did to you.” He’d calmed down a little, enough to let me hold him, but he swatted and hissed again as I found the joint in his hind leg that wasn’t moving correctly. “I’m sorry, Harpo, I didn’t mean to put my big foot on you. I think we need some help here.”
He stayed on my lap as I dialed the number I’d used the other day, hoping that I could reach Dante James on a weekend. To my great relief, he answered on the second ring, though not with a professional greeting. He’d given me his private line; I should have realized.
“Hello, Dr. James? This is Keith Hoyer. I’m really sorry to bother you on a weekend, but I and my cat have a problem…” This time it was I who was coaxed through a history.
“Don’t worry about disturbing me, Dr. Hoyer. I think you were right to be concerned. Can you bring Groucho, oh, sorry, Harpo, in? I’ll be there; I live over the office.”
“I can be there in about ten minutes once I get him into the carrier; that’s going to be a task.” He chuckled, making me chuckle, too. “It always is.”
I use a carrier meant for a medium sized dog, because Harpo has legs the length of a giraffe’s that telescope out for the express purpose of keeping him out of carriers. Oddly enough, his injury helped, because I could manage his front legs alone and got him into the box with only three curse words and one scratch. He glared at me some more, and once in the car I got a deep-chested growl. “Sorry, buddy, we’re getting you to help.” “Groucho” was the right name this time.
Dante’s clinic was a two story house just off a main artery where the front door opened into a pleasant waiting area with a Plexiglas cat cage in one corner. A black and white tuxedo cat sat on a perch inside; the signs on the glass suggested that I should adopt it. The door had triggered a bell, which was followed by footsteps. Dante came around the corner. I was glad to see him, but there was a distinctly science-fictiony aspect to his appearance.
“Uh, what’s moving under your shirt?” I stared in spite of myself.
Dante laughed and stroked the tail that stuck out at the neckline of the blue scrubs tops he wore over a T-shirt. It disappeared and was replaced by a small head with black and white stripes. “This is Mandy—she’s a sugar glider. They adore riding around inside people’s clothes.” He stroked her with one finger as she chittered madly at me and then ducked back into the scrubs. “I’m surprised she’s awake. They’re nocturnal.”
The yawn caught me by surprise. “I’m beginning to think I’m nocturnal, too. I was up all night at the hospital.” Maybe if I looked at him too long or wrong he’d chalk it up to tiredness.
“Poor guy. I know how that goes,” Dante said as he led me to an exam room. He had a really nice ass, which I watched shamelessly since the opportunity presented itself. Harpo grumbled from his box, and then hissed when we tried to get him out. The open door didn’t tempt him.