“I wasn’t sure that you wanted to know it.”
“I do. What was it?”
“Before I answer, can I ask what you will do with the information?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Why don’t I hold on to his last name so that I can hear your thoughts when you decide. I’ll give you his first name. It was William and he went by Will.”
“I can accept that for now. I’ll want to apologize to his family someday but I’m sure they want nothing to do with me.”
“Actually, two of his cousins have already met you. They have different last names, so don’t go thinking you can research but more than one of his cousins work here at The Center.”
“What? Did they know who I was? That I did this to their family?”
“They knew who you were before you met with them. They, like the majority of our people, understand the risks we take every time we shift to our animal selves. We lost so much land to overdevelopment and climate changes that we find ourselves living in more confined spaces that overlap with humans more and more often. You were not the first hunter to take one of us down nor will you be the last. It is as the Great Spirit allows it to be.”
“Who were his cousins? Can you tell me?”
“They will reveal themselves to you in their own time. It isn’t my place to do more than guide you through your healing and into your new reality.”
“I understand. This is just hard to come to grips with in such a short time.”
“Tori, you are doing remarkably well in such a short time. Remember, a mere twenty-four hours ago you didn’t know that shifters of any type existed. You’ve learned a lot in a short time as well as having to cope with your own reality shift. Speaking of which, do you feel up for a walk with me?”
“Can I have a minute to wash up? I’m sure I look horrible.”
“Take a few minutes and I’ll be out by the nurses’ station when you’re ready. I have to do some paperwork anyway.”
“At least that’s the same. Everything always comes down to paperwork.”
Chapter Six
I TOOK SOME time and gathered myself. I understood what Kerstin was saying but it didn’t get through to me on a visceral level. If someone had killed my partner, left me alone with our two children, wouldn’t I have anger toward the person responsible? Even in an accidental death? I knew that I would. How could I not? Unless the marriage was an unhappy one and I had no reason to suspect that it had been such a marriage. Even so, I would be angry about the loss of the children’s other parent.
I shook my head clear and focused on splashing water on my face, one-handed, and brushing my hair. I still wore a hospital gown but I had one over me as a jacket as well. I wore sweatpants and socks but I wanted to put something else on my feet.
I left the bathroom and found the bag that had been brought for me by Dr. Greenwood. Stacy. I had to get used to calling her by her first name. For some reason it was easier with Kirsten. Perhaps because she hadn’t operated on me. Or maybe because she came from a family of deer. Pushing aside my musings, I focused on finding, then sliding into, my slippers. I decided it was time to face the world outside of my hospital room and walked over to the nurses’ station.
“Before we go, let me get someone to take the halter off of you. No need to have the monitor on while I'm with you. Besides, it won’t be comfortable to wear while we cover some ground. Gimme a sec.” Kerstin walked away to find someone to help us.
I leaned against the station and looked around. It seemed like any other hospital I’d been in but the colors seemed dull. I noticed that the lines on the walls and floors were marked in dark tones rather than the bright reds and oranges I was used to seeing. I caught a glimpse of an exit sign down the hall just as Kerstin and a nurse I hadn’t met came over.
“Something’s wrong with me.” I was calm as I said it but inside I was panicking.
“Describe what you’re feeling. What isn’t right?” Kerstin shook her head at the nurse.
“I can’t see the color red. That exit sign, exit signs are always red. Why can’t I see it? I'm an artist who can’t see colors?”
Kerstin guided me to a chair the nurse brought over. “Have a seat and relax a moment. Your body is adjusting to the virus. Did you just lose the color red or did you just notice it?”
“I think both. I saw someone in a red sweater walking by outside earlier.”
“All right. Here’s what’s happening. A white-tailed deer doesn’t see reds or greens like a human. Your body is adjusting its visual centers but, because as a born human you already have the right cones and rods to see colors as a human, you should regain that ability in human form. When in your nature form of a deer, you will likely see as a deer. Your art is safe, Tori.”
“Wait, if I had been born this way I would be color-blind?”
“It differs a bit from family to family. I have the traditional color-blindness to red and orange. I see some shades but for the most part I don’t see them until they add in more blue, for example. As it moves toward purple and violet, I can see color just fine.”
“It will come back?”
“You were born with the tri-chromatic vision of a human. Typically, humans who turn as adults keep their human vision. Some things the virus will create in you but we haven’t found that it takes away.”
Panic started to rise in me again. I could almost feel myself choking on my fear. “Create in me? What are you talking about? I don’t want things growing in me! Can’t you just give me a shot and kill the virus?”
“We can’t. There hasn’t been a cure found for people turned as a result of accidents. We’ve tried a system similar to dialysis to attempt to filter the blood, but the virus replicates so swiftly that we can’t keep ahead of it.”
The nurse brought me a cup of water and continued to hover. I watched him checking the monitor screen behind him periodically as well. I decided he must have been watching the telemetry from the device I was still wearing.
“So whatever this virus is, it forces my body to change? How exactly?”
“I don’t know how much biology you know. Would you like to go to my office? It’s just upstairs and I have diagrams and things we can use to show you more precisely what happens at what stage.”
“Sure. Though I can conclude I should keep the halter thingy on from the way he’s been eyeing it.”
“Yes, I think it's a good idea. I hadn’t planned on having this talk with you this morning but I suspected it would happen by this afternoon.” She turned to the nurse, who had gone back to the desk and continued to watch his monitors. “Can you have her lunch brought up to my office please?”
“Sure thing, Dr. Mueller. Want me to have them send something for you too?”
“Thank you, no. I brought my lunch. We’ll be back probably about an hour after lunch if that isn’t too inconvenient. Then I’ll be back around four pm for another visit with Tori.”
“Thanks, Dr. Mueller. Other than a bandage change and one last round of IV antibiotics this evening, she’s unscheduled.”
“Fine. I’ll see you later.”
As Kerstin and I walked down the hall to the elevator, she leaned toward me and whispered. “I would have introduced you to him but I can never remember his name. He’s still new and his name badge always seems to be twisted around so I can’t see anything but the magnetic stripe on it.”
“So having super powers doesn’t extend to your memory? There goes finally memorizing The Iliad.”
The elevator arrived and Kerstin pushed the button for the tenth floor. “What kind of education do you have in the sciences? It will help me determine how to tailor my explanation of things to you.”
“I took the basics in high school and college. I have an art degree with an English minor. I make my living as an artist and a writer. Most of the science I know comes from Star Trek Voyager and Dr. Who.”
Kerstin smothered a giggle as the doors slid open to reveal what looked li
ke an ordinary office building hallway. Doors along the corridor appeared to be home to a variety of social services-type workers. There were a variety of therapists and psychologists’ names and degrees stamped on brass nameplates as far as she could see.
Kerstin opened one of the wooden doors and motioned me in ahead of her. We walked into a medium sized waiting room with comfortable looking furniture and a large reception desk.
“Welcome to my humble digs. That’s Janice, my ever-amazing and invaluable right hand. Janice, this is Tori Monroe. Tori will be visiting with us for a little while as she acclimates to things.”
“Welcome, Tori. If you every need to find the doc, give me a call and I can track her down. I’ve had years of practice at finding her when she forgets where she’s supposed to be next.”
Janice handed me a heavy cream business card with her name, telephone number and e-mail address.
“Oh, she likes you. She gave you the card with her direct line,” Kerstin noticed.
“Thanks, Janice. I appreciate the help.” I tucked the card in the pocket of my sweatpants and followed Kerstin down a short hall and into her office. “I notice her office space is open to the waiting room. Was it a space issue or preference? It’s unusual to see that style anymore. Most people wall themselves off as often as they can for protection.”
“You’ll find we do a lot of things differently here at The Center.” Kerstin motioned me to choose a seat and walked over to her desk to gather supplies as she continued to talk. “While creating a den space is very natural feeling to some of us, others prefer a floor plan with more open spaces. Some is personal preference and some is our animal side coming to the fore. Janice is a more outdoors kind of woman. Coyotes tend to prefer clearings and lightly wooded areas unless they are birthing or caring for very young pups. Therefore, she likes her office space nice and open.”
“Wait, that nice woman out there—”
“Turns into a coyote whenever she gets the chance to run with her pack. She has been with her older brother’s pack since she moved here. She’s the doting aunt to his and his wife’s litter.”
“Wait, seriously? She seems so...normal.”
“That’s what I hoped you would start to understand. Aspects of your life will be changing but it doesn’t have to be all bad. I know you didn’t ask for this to happen. Most of us live happy and “human normal” lives but our family and home lives include things that allow us to connect to our animal forms.”
“So what will my changes be? And you’re certain my colors will come back, right?”
“Humans are typically born trichromatic.” She pulled a chart of that showed the cones and rods of a human eye and held it next to a chart of a deer eye showing the same thing. “It’s all about the cones really. Deer, and those of us born to this naturally, typically don’t have three types of cones as humans do. The one we lack is the longer wave receptor for colors like reds and greens. So, while a born human can tell the difference between the shades of red, or the shades of the green leaves of trees, a deer, or born deer shifter can not.”
“Okay, I can understand that but you mentioned changes to me.”
“I’m getting there, I promise. You were born with the extra cones so your sight should restore itself over the next twelve hours or so. Probably one of the most major changes will be to your stomach. The reason you’ve been kept on a mild diet is that your stomach is dividing itself into two chambers. You’ll find that deer born in the wild have four chamber to assist with digestion of the various roughage they consume when they forage.”
I nodded and chewed on my right thumbnail. Kerstin pulled more diagrams from her stack and set them on the coffee table between her chair and the couch where I sat.
“We suspect that in ancient times, born shifters probably had the same setup as a natural deer. Over time we’ve evolved and we are now born with three chambers to our stomachs to help with foraging when we are in natural deer form. There has been a trending over the last decade of more young being born with two stomach chambers. Our scientists hypothesize that because we are living so much of our time in human form and that is the form where we take in most of our sustenance, our bodies are eliminating the unneeded chamber.”
“So I won’t find myself suddenly chewing cud? I don’t know if I could handle that, I just don’t.”
“No cud chewing. In the case of someone who lives a vegetarian life, the second chamber is actually a boon. It helps digest and break down tougher, denser things like legumes and cabbage that give the human digestive system fits of gas and bloating. Instead, these items will pass to the second chamber for additional processing before going on to your intestines.”
“What about meat? I will obviously never hunt again or eat venison. It just brings up images of Dahmer now. But what about meat that is farm raised and stuff? I’ve always eaten meat. I’m not sure how I feel about it now, but is it biologically safe to eat it?”
“It is. Deer are not strictly herbivores as is widely believed. There are stories all over the Internet of people camping and watching deer eat bits of meat. In the wild, deer have been observed eating fish that wash up on shore, eating animals that are found dead, or scavenging from another animal’s kill after the predator has left.”
“I won’t be looked at funny or anything?”
“Not at all. My mother is a strict vegetarian and my father loves a good burger. They both shift to deer and both were born shifters. My personal choice is vegetarian but I’ve been known to eat a bit of salmon when it’s cooked on a grill.”
A knock sounded and Janice opened the door while a young man carried in my lunch tray. “Over on the conference table is fine.” Janice directed the young man. “Doctor, do you two need anything before I go grab lunch? I’m meeting some friends.”
“Go ahead just make sure the phones are forwarded to the service.”
“Done. I’ll see you both later.” With that, Janice and the young man were gone and the door shut again.
“Let me grab my lunch from the fridge and I’ll be right back. Can I offer you something to drink?”
“I’m fine, thanks. The tray has juice for me and I’m not trying anything else besides that and tea until I’m given the go ahead.”
“Probably a wise move. I only have water, juice or tea anyway. My mother trained me to always offer.”
“Good mom. I’ll be here waiting.”
I looked around the office a bit, taking the chance to stretch my legs somewhere that wasn’t a Spartan hospital room. The bookshelves held photos of an older man and woman and Kerstin. I assumed that this was her and her parents. The book collection was eclectic. In addition to traditional and eastern psycho-babble books, there were several nature guides, books about various mammals, and oddly enough, books that seemed out of place like cookbooks and some fiction.
The walls held a few of the standard degrees but also some nice photographs of local nature spots that I could recognize. I went back to the table and was just examining my tray when Kerstin came back in with her lunch and a bottle of water.
“You could have started without me, you know.”
“I could have if I wasn’t looking at your bookshelves. In addition to art, I write. I’m always curious about what people keep on their bookshelves.”
“I imagine mine must be confusing for an office then. Any conclusions?”
I started with my soup, broth with mushy vegetables but I was sure they would be easy to digest. “I’m going to guess that the animal books are to study up on the natural behaviors of the various forms your patients might take.”
“Very good. What else?”
“The cookbooks were harder but then I realized that I’m going to face somewhat of a diet change if this is all real.”
“If it’s real? Can you explain?”
“Well, it isn’t as if I’ve seen anyone become an animal. Yes, I’ve had digestion issues and some other medical stuff I can’t explain, but it could all be explain
ed away with other illnesses. Even the color problems with my sight could be something wrong with my retina or something. I’m not an eye expert by any means but I’m sure there are things that can cause loss of color vision.”
“So, until you see someone shift, or experience it yourself, you are going to remain a skeptic.”
“Mm, consider more like hopeful that this is all either an elaborate hoax or a really bad trip from my anesthetic. Maybe I’ll wake up like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and be home in bed.”
“Let’s assume for now that what we’ve been telling you is true and you are not asleep. You’re correct about the cookbooks. I either photocopy ideas for various patients or occasionally lend the books out.”
“Makes sense. The fiction threw me at first. Then I looked a little more closely. They’re all speculative fiction. I’m betting every one of those stories has some kind of were-animal or shifter creature in it. I suspect you are tracking what writers are doing right, doing wrong, or not doing at all.”
“Actually, nothing that nefarious. Honestly, I enjoy ready some of them, though I do view them more as comedic works. Also, I can use them to point out the less dramatic realism that is our existence.”
“Using pop culture to calm people? Interesting approach.”
“You’d be surprised how well it works with some of the folks like you who haven’t grown up in our culture.”
I finished my soup and moved on to the rather bland macaroni and cheese. I was getting protein even if I wasn’t getting much in the way of fresh anything or flavor. “Do you guys send out to a human hospital for this stuff? I might have been in pain after that first dinner but at least it was tasty.”
“It will improve soon. Tomorrow we’ll run a few tests to see the development of your intestinal system. If things are done, we can reintroduce foods that are both more solid in nature and less bland. By this time tomorrow you should also have full range of color vision back.”
“Let’s play the ‘what if this is real’ game. Assuming this is all real, what will my eyesight be like if I shift into a deer, then back to human?”
Stranger Than Fiction Page 6