by Dani April
Again she used the automatic pulley in the back of the vehicle to lift the wolf back to the ground. The wolf was still asleep on top of the tarp when she dragged it up the front steps and inside her home. As soon as the wolf was inside with her, even though it was still knocked out by the tranquilizer, she felt a strange sense envelop her. It was like what she felt when she had company in the house. She had gotten used to solitude over the course of the last two years and become set in her ways. Even last year when her sister and her husband had visited for a week, it had felt strange.
Now that the wolf was inside her home she felt the presence of something different in her life. She wouldn’t have time to be lonely for a little while. She had a lot of work to do and for all she knew, the wolf could still die.
She let the wolf lie in the center of her living room. From out of her office in the back of the home, she brought her large black leather vet’s bag. Just to be on the safe side, she readied another tranquilizer. It would serve two purposes. She didn’t want the wolf to wake up and attack her in the middle of the night, and she knew it was in a lot of pain and it was more humane this way.
With the wolf safely put down for the rest of the night, she went into her bedroom at the end of the hall and stripped out of her wet clothes. There was no time for a shower, and she merely toweled herself dry from the rainwater as best she could then slipped into some sweats and a pullover shirt.
Back out in the living room she had her first good chance to examine the wolf’s injuries at length. His right hind leg had been broken in three places. There was no outward sign of wounds to any other part of its body, no swelling on the head or abdominal region. So the good news was there were no head or internal injuries, and the prognosis for the wounded animal went up somewhat. The bad news was that the wound in its leg was still open and bleeding. It was a good thing it still laid on the tarp or her living room carpet would have been permanently stained.
She had been up since the crack of dawn that morning. A full round of the county farms had been made in the morning. In the afternoon she had stopped by her clinic in town to receive more patients. Then when she got home and was about ready to relax with the steamy romance novel and dinner, her phone had rang. Old Mr. Clarkson had pleaded with her to come out to his place, which was thirty miles away, and help deliver the foal that just wouldn’t come out of its mother. Then of course the incident with hitting the wolf had occurred, and now it was one o’clock in the morning. She was dead tired.
For the next two hours she worked diligently on the wolf. She cleaned the wound with antiseptic and bandaged it the best she could. She gave it another injection, this time of antibiotics to prevent an infection. Next she went about the long, arduous task of setting its fractured leg. She frowned as she worked the delicate splint around the leg. If the wolf could never walk straight or even run again, it would never be able to live in the forest, and wolves didn’t domesticate well like dogs did. The likely prognosis was that it would die or need to be euthanized. In fact she was likely fighting a losing battle, but she knew how that felt from the last ten years spent on work with sick animals.
After the leg was set she reexamined it and realized that it would never hold. This wolf would need surgery if it was to ever have any hope of a recovery. She sighed and sat back on the floor of her living room and rested her back against the feet of her couch. Tomorrow was her single day of the week off, and she had planned to read and watch old movies on TV all day. She had not planned to perform an operation on a wolf.
She looked across the floor at the wolf. It was huge, positively a monster wolf. She had never treated a wolf before but didn’t think they ever got up to more than one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy pounds in weight, and that was in extreme cases. Now that she had a chance to more closely inspect the wolf she realized it topped two hundred pounds. He was not fat either. All of that weight distributed across its body was pure muscle. It was a young male and in the prime of its life and strength.
She remembered how it had looked at her while lying out on the county road. It was so intelligent, so brave. It had been in obvious pain but had seemed to put up a valiant front for her. When it stared into her eyes, it was like it tried to communicate. Those brown eyes had been deeper than any animal eyes she had ever seen before. The pupils were smaller than they should have been, like there was real thought behind them, even intelligence.
There was a storm, and she was tired and upset when she hit it. Perhaps she had only imagined the look out of its eyes. She didn’t think so, however. An animal, and most especially a wolf, would never look a human in the eye unless it was about to go for the jugular and kill them. This wolf had shown her no violence when it peered up at her. It was like it tried to lift its head from the pavement and speak to her.
She pushed her still-damp hair out of her face and climbed up off the floor. “You must be losing your mind, Arielle,” she told herself.
Another snap decision was made. She decided she didn’t want to leave the wolf out of her sight while it was inside her home, and she wasn’t about to sleep out in the living room with it. The weight of the animal on top of the tarp was heavy as she dragged it across the carpet. She had to use both arms and pull it behind her. Her bedroom door was half shut, and she kicked it open to allow a big enough entrance to the room.
Her bedroom was the largest room of the house. In the daytime it looked out onto her garden in the backyard. At night when the moon was out, she could lie in bed and watch the moon shine off the Teton Mountains to the west.
With a queasy stomach, she dragged the wolf inside her bedroom. It was better this way, she tried to tell herself. At least she would not be constantly worried as to whether it had awakened in the night. It was so large she suspected she may not have given it enough tranquilizers.
She backed away from it and stood in the center of her room and looked down at the black form. It felt odd to have it here inside her bedroom, and a tiny bolt of fear shot up her spine. She thought about what she should do next for a moment and then realized she was too muddled from exhaustion to think clearly anymore that night. She had already brought a wolf back to her home and carried it into her bedroom. She couldn’t have been thinking too clearly.
One last thought occurred to her, and she ran out of her bedroom and down the hall to her office. “Thank God!” she said to herself as she found what she looked for and ran back to the animal on her bedroom floor.
She fit the muzzle over the wolf’s snout. It barely fit, but after it was secure, she felt a little safer.
When she crawled under the covers of her bed, she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. She had vivid dreams that night, but she didn’t dream about the wolf. Instead she dreamed about a big man.
Chapter Two
The operation was a success. She drove to her office and retrieved the equipment she needed and performed it that morning in her home. Arielle was able to piece back together the fractured bone on the wolf’s hind leg. It went better than she could have anticipated, and she didn’t even have to use any wire to repair the damage. The wolf would live. Now a two- or three-month recovery period would ensue before the animal could be turned back to the wild once more.
She kept the wolf under the tranquilizer for the rest of the day. Eventually she would have to let it come out from under the drug or risk brain damage. Just in case it woke up early, she made sure the muzzle remained firmly in place.
She made a bed for the animal just beside her own bed. She couldn’t really fathom why she wanted to keep the wolf so close to her. It was like she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. No longer did she feel guilty because she hit it. Now she had done her part to save it.
No, she knew the real reason was the beauty and intelligence of the animal. It was noble and big and strong. The way it had looked over its shoulder at her like it was a human had piqued her curiosity. In some ways she could hardly wait for it to wake up so she could s
ee if it was as smart as she had first thought.
Or maybe she had just wanted it to be smart and human-like. She was lonely. She had lived out here on the outskirts of town like a hermit for the last eighteen months. She had suffered a lot in that time. The introduction of a wild animal in her life was enough of a change to shake up her humdrum life.
Perhaps when the wolf regained consciousness, it would turn vicious like a forest animal should, and she would be forced to finally come to grips with how bad her life sucked, and how much she longed for a change, any kind of a change.
After she had performed the operation, she had spent the rest of the day out in her backyard in her garden. She had house cleaning to do inside and laundry that had to be done, but it was a beautiful day after the storm of the previous night, and it was one of those days where it was just too nice to remain indoors. However, every twenty minutes, she ran inside her back door and down the hall to her bedroom to check on her house guest. As she had suspected, there was no change in him all afternoon, and he continued his peaceful sleep.
That night she fixed herself the dinner she was supposed to have had the night before. It was strange that she had never been a good cook until after she lived on her own. In the last two years she had actually turned herself into a top chef. Of course this was just her opinion. She rarely fixed a meal for anyone else. Her sister, Bethany, and her husband, Adam, had told her she should open her own restaurant and give up her vet practice, but of course they just joked around. Then when her mother and father had visited in the winter, she got her mother to make the supreme sacrifice and admit her oldest daughter had actually become a better cook than she was. Other than that, no one had ever tasted anything she cooked, and maybe her family was biased in her favor.
The chicken teriyaki with broccoli and the Caesar salad were, in her opinion, excellent. She even poured herself a glass of wine. She had almost gotten used to a meal alone and really didn’t mind it anymore. On this night she would run down the hall after every second bite of her chicken. Each time she entered her bedroom, she found the wolf asleep.
The dishes were an easy chore since she just had a single person at the table. She removed them from the dishwasher and hand dried them and placed each neatly back in its proper place in her cupboard.
Outside there was still another hour of daylight left. She thought briefly about a walk in the woods behind her house, but quickly discarded the idea. She was still too enamored of the wolf in her bedroom. She wanted to be there at its side when it woke up. Besides, she was tired, and tomorrow she had to start the weekly grind all over again at the clinic in town.
She took a brief but warm shower and then hopped into bed. With the remote on her bedside table she flipped on her TV mounted on the wall at the foot of the bed. The comedy on the cable station was one she had seen at least two dozen times. Her attention alternated between the flat screen, the sun about to set over the Tetons outside her window, and the wolf on the floor not six feet away from her.
Her favorite part of the comedy played out and she had let herself become engrossed in it for five minutes. Also the first signs of sleep overtook her, and she thought with any luck she would drift off for the night in another few moments.
There was a muffled bark from the floor, and Arielle threw herself up beneath the covers. The wolf was awake. His eyes were open. He stared up into the bed at her. She took a minute to let the heart palpitations calm inside her chest.
“You frightened me,” she told the animal. She threw back the covers and cautiously approached him. Because of his bad leg, he would not be able to move, so she was in no danger as long as she kept her distance. The muzzle over his fangs also gave her comfort. “How are you feeling tonight?” she asked him and knelt down to the carpet to be at his level.
This time there was no doubt about the stare out of his eyes, or the deep-seated intelligence. He didn’t seem to mean her any harm. He seemed gentle and kind. She would have removed the muzzle because she knew it was uncomfortable, but the wolf was just too damn big and she was too big of a coward.
She reached out an unsteady hand and touched him, allowing her fingers to play over his coat. He was soft and even smelled good, raw, like the forest. Beneath the layer of soft fur, she could feel the muscles. They were hard and strong.
He moved his head back to her skin and nestled his face against the bare underside of her arm. All the time his eyes never left her own. She chanced a longer glance into his eyes. He blinked at her as if he tried to tell her everything was okay.
“Try not to move your leg,” she admonished him. “Don’t move it at all if you can help it. The less you move it now the better and faster you’ll heal in the next few weeks.”
He blinked at her over the leather folds of the muzzle he wore. It seemed cruel and unnecessary. His eyes were so kind and beautiful. Surely there was no way he would harm her. But he was a wild animal, and she was trained as a vet. She had to leave it on, at least for now.
“You’re tame, aren’t you?” she asked the wolf. “You know how to be around people. Do you belong to someone? If you do they must be out of their minds with worry over you. Don’t worry. I performed an operation on your leg this morning. You were lucky and got run over by the town vet. You’re going to be able to walk again. It’ll just take a couple of months, and I’ll have you back out there in the forest running through the woods better than ever.”
The wolf stretched out its massive body at her side. Could it really understand her words? It held out the broken leg away from its body and did not move it.
She gave it another pat on the head. “Good wolf,” she told it. “I’m glad you and I had this little talk tonight, buddy. I didn’t have anywhere else to take you so guess what, you’re inside my bedroom. But you better promise me you’ll behave yourself in here. Don’t make me regret helping you.” The wolf lay his head down in her lap, and she sat cross-legged on the floor. She only wore her underwear, but this was just a wolf so she didn’t have to worry about modesty. The wolf let her pet him, and he slowly went back to sleep as the two of them watched the sun set together.
When she was certain it was asleep, she bent to it and gave him a kiss on top of the head. She was happy with herself for the decision she had made about this animal. It was a good creature and didn’t deserve to die, and she had saved its life. She loved animals, but somehow she realized with this wolf, things were different.
The answer had to be that he was a tame wolf. Tomorrow when she went into town, she would start some inquiries to see if anyone reported him lost. But she didn’t know if she really believed the story about a trained wolf. She didn’t think it really answered all the questions about him. He was just too special, too big and strong and noble. His eyes didn’t seem to be those of a wolf’s.
She lay his head gently back down on the floor and stepped over him. She crawled back under the blankets of her bed. Outside it had grown completely dark. The moon had not yet risen, and she could not see out her window. The comedy had gone off the television and the action flick that followed it held no interest for her, so she turned it off.
It was late. She had wasted a lot of time down on the floor with the wolf. Somehow she felt a deep loneliness, felt it down to her soul, of a kind she had not felt since she moved out to Wyoming eighteen months ago, or since she had ended her long-term relationship with Gary two years ago. Why did the brief companionship that the wolf brought her make her feel lonely? She rolled over in the bed and curled into a ball. Maybe it was time to sell the clinic out here and move back to St. Louis. Maybe she had shut out life for too long.
Her dreams were simple that night. She dreamed about the big man from the night before.
* * * *
The next day was Monday. It was just as busy as Arielle suspected it would be. She worked a ten-hour day at the clinic. She owned the clinic, or rather paid for it through loans she had with the local bank. She was the only vet present at the clinic. In fact, she w
as the only vet in the small town of Wolf Creek, Wyoming.
By the time she put the closed sign on the front door and made the half-hour drive back to her home on the edge of town, she was exhausted and a little frustrated. She had been the town vet for a year and a half now, but would still hear negative remarks from her customers. They compared her to Dr. Adams, the former vet in town and the man she had purchased the clinic from. Needless to say, they were not favorable comparisons. She had to bite her tongue.
On her way home she thought that it was time for her to sell the clinic and make the move back to St. Louis. Her mother and father and her sister and her sister’s husband all lived there. Her sister was expecting. Arielle would soon be an aunt.
Of course her ex-fiancé, Gary, also lived there. But St. Louis was a large place. She may never see him again even if she did move back. Her experience in charge of her own animal clinic in Wolf Creek would look nice on her resume when she went to look for a job back home. If she planned things right, she might even make a small profit on the sale of the clinic. The allure of small-town life had been nothing more than an escape plan for her. She needed to go back and face life. After all, at twenty-eight, she would not get any younger.
She was lost in thought as she pulled into her driveway. That was when she noticed a strange truck parked in front of her house. She gave it a frown, pulled her Suburban to a stop, and got out.
Her house was located in the country. There were no other residences around for nearly a mile. She had a lot of privacy out here, and she never had to worry about another person. She had always preferred animals to people, so it worked out for her. But now with a truck parked directly in front of her house, it told her they had to be out here to see her.