Chapter 5 Phoebe
PHOEBE
It’s chilly on this mid-February morning in the Village, but my long-sleeved T-shirt is keeping me warm enough as I help unload the truck with this morning’s delivery for Half-Cocked Bake Shop, where I’ve been a pastry chef since I returned from Paris last summer.
The Village is full of relocated historic buildings that were originally from around Shifting Pines and southern New Jersey.
They were turned into quaint shops and restaurants for tourists and locals to enjoy.
While I learned a lot about the art of pastry and baking during my time at school in Paris, I’ve learned even more working here at the Half-Cocked Bake Shop with my rooster shifter boss.
I can’t wait to take all this knowledge and compete in the Pastry Pro Championships with Andie.
We submitted our application and audition tape and are waiting to hear if we’re one of the chosen teams. They are announcing the contestants any day now, and I think we have a good chance at being included.
“Do anything fun last night?” Andie asks.
“Cleaned out my second bedroom for my new roommate.”
“Who’s your roommate? Anyone I know?” she asks.
“Ollie.”
The shock on her face makes me laugh.
“Your brother-in-law? You lucky bitch! He’s gorgeous. So tall, and those soulful brown eyes. Why didn’t you tell me?” She smirks. “With the way he was looking at you at the game the other night, I really don’t think you need that second bedroom. You’d be fine with the one.”
Andie takes the bulk bag of chocolate chips from my arms.
“Maybe we’ll hear from the Pastry Pro folks today telling us we’re in.” Not a smooth subject change as I step backward toward the open door to grab the next load of supplies…but I’m desperate.
“Hope so, the suspense is killing me,” Andie says.
I nod. “I hate being in limbo. I either want to be planning or focusing on something else. Until it’s settled, I feel like we’re stuck.”
As I cross the threshold, I turn around, but it’s too late.
I’m already falling over the huge wild turkey that decided to lie in wait for me.
My hand hits the ground, and pain shoots up my wrist. The demonic gobbling of the turkey echoes in my ears as it saunters away, fanned-out tail feathers swaying like a big old screw you.
* * *
Andie drives me to the emergency room in my car.
I’m not sure if my wrist is broken or sprained, but whatever it is, it hurts.
I’ll get the X-ray to confirm, but I’m really hoping it’s simply a sprain.
I don’t have time for a break to heal and the inconvenience of a cast. Thankfully they aren’t busy, so we’re in one of the bays waiting for them to take me back for the X-ray without too much of a delay.
I’m trying to use my phone left-handed, since it’s my right wrist that’s injured, but I’m clumsy.
Andie takes pity on me and holds it up to my face to unlock and calls up my contacts.
I hit the one I need and listen to it ring before it switches over to voicemail.
“Hey, it’s Phoebe. Call me back as soon as you get this, please.”
I end the call, and we sit in silence for a moment.
“So, are we going to make up a better story for what happened?” Andie asks. “Tripped over your shoelace, hit a patch of ice, bad karate chop?”
I giggle—because it was ridiculous—but then gasp in pain when I accidentally tweak my wrist.
“Well, that’s a welcome sound in here,” says a husky voice as the curtain is pushed aside to admit a doctor.
“It’s usually crying and cursing.” She looks at my chart and confirms my name and date of birth before asking, “What brings you in today?” Her white coat says Dr. Chaudhury, and she’s gorgeous.
Her dark brown hair has stunning streaks of silver running through it, and her brown eyes sparkle with both intelligence and humor. I like her on sight.
“I fell and hurt my right wrist,” I tell her. “It hurts if I try to move it or my fingers.”
“How did you fall?”
“I work at the Half-Cocked Bake Shop and was helping unload the truck with the day’s deliveries. I was walking backward to the door and turned around right as I was going outside and tripped over a turkey.”
The doctor has been examining my wrist but stops when I get to the part about the turkey. “A turkey? Like a frozen turkey on the ground?”
Andie giggles. “Maybe we can let people think that to save you the embarrassment, Phoebs.”
Sighing, because there is no saving me, I admit, “It was a live turkey. The gobble-gobble kind.” The shudder that racks me at the memory of his menacing gobble makes me jar my wrist again, and I groan. “He was huge, and I swear he was waiting for me. I think he tripped me on purpose.”
Her eyes turn serious. “Do you know him? Is he a turkey shifter? Are you being stalked? We can call the police and file a report.”
My eyes widen at her questions. None of that ever occurred to me. I look to Andie in shock.
She shakes her head. “No, he’s a natural wild turkey.
He’s banded and part of the flock that roams the shops and housing developments around the Village.
We call him Reggie. He’s not a shifter. He is an asshole of a bird, but I don’t think he purposely tried to hurt Phoebe. I think he has a crush on her.”
When we both look at her like she’s crazy, Andie widens her eyes in response. “What? It’s turkey mating season, and Phoebe is cute. Who wouldn’t go for her? I mean, not me, I’m strictly dickly, but I have eyes. And she can bake. What’s not to like?”
“Transport for X-ray,” comes a voice from the other side of the curtain.
Dr. Chaudhury opens the curtain. “In here.”
A young man with a wheelchair smiles. “Your chariot awaits, miss,” he says with a sweep of his hand.
“I can walk.”
“Hospital policy,” the doctor says. “Enjoy it. I bet you don’t get the royal treatment every day.”
Lowering myself into the wheelchair without jostling my wrist isn’t easy, but I manage. In no time, I’m being wheeled back to the bay in the ER, where Dr. Chaudhury joins us.
“Good news. No fracture. Merely a sprain. It’s going to heal quickly. Let’s get you wrapped and in a sling so you can get out of here.”
“We’re hoping to compete in a baking competition in three weeks,” I say. “Will I be healed by then?”
She hums and nods. “Provided you rest it, ice it as directed in your discharge paperwork, and keep it elevated, you should be fine. It’s not a severe sprain, so as long as you take care of it, you’ll be back to normal in no time.
Good luck! You’re always welcome to drop off pastry samples to your friendly neighborhood ER. ”
She has the supplies ready and starts wrapping my wrist as I try my phone again. Still no answer.
“Hey, Andie, could you text Colby and ask him to tell Ollie to answer his phone?”
Her fingers fly across the screen of her phone, and I hear the whoosh of the sent text.
“Done. Why are you calling Ollie? I can give you a ride home.”
“He’s my fiancé.”