Adriana
By the time she rolled into town, it was already evening.
In just a few short weeks, the sky would still be light at this hour, the sun still bright and only just beginning its descent into the horizon, but for now, at least, the designation of evening still meant something tangible.
Overhead, azure deepened to indigo, dotted with pinpricks of starlight and swirled with wispy threads of cotton candy-pink clouds so vivid she could almost taste them.
There had been a carnival when she was young, one that passed through town every summer of her wayward youth, and for those four nights, every July, she would join it.
Grunt work, mostly. Fetching cases of water to pour into goldfish bowls, running paper-wrapped sub sandwiches back and forth across the dirt, delivered to ride operators until her hands had stunk of onions, no matter how much she’d scrubbed them.
Every once in a while, she’d be given the responsibility of running one of the games or the kiddie rides, a heart-stopping amount of stress attached to the latter.
She had no training, after all, and only the most cursory of instructions — make sure the brats are buckled in and turn the key — and she would hold her breath the entire time the ride ran, hoping against hope that there wouldn’t be some catastrophic accident on her watch.
It was a little like the ED. Adriana wondered if those balmy summer nights had been the start of her need for adrenaline-fueled victories.
She would be covered in sweat and grime, her face smudged in dirt from the non-stop clouds kicked up from the fair-goers on the lot, but her canvas belt bag would be stuffed with dollar bills by the end of the weekend, enough money to see her through the rest of the summer and ensure she actually had everything on her school supply list come September.
She still remembered the bitter sting of the year the full moon had coincided with the carnival’s stop in their grungy little patch of town, on the edge of the larger wolfpack.
She’d been furious to miss it, furious with the workers, furious with herself, mostly, for being something so other that she was forced into missing the only opportunity her childhood self had at temporary solvency .
. . but the fair had learned its lesson in the halved attendance, and they never came back on the full moon again.
Now the full moon had just passed, and she was a million years gone from that dirty-faced little girl, Adriana reminded herself as the light turned green, forcing her away from the familiar, mouth-watering smell of grilled sausages and kettle corn.
You’ve got nothing to do tonight. Nothing to cook.
Nothing to drink. The movers won’t be here until tomorrow.
May as well unload this rig and come back over here, grab a lemonade to take home.
There was a slight bump in the road, causing her trailer to bounce as she shrieked.
There had been a point several dozen miles back when she’d been forced to cross railroad tracks, and her soul had almost left her body as the trailer lurched over the crossing, convinced it would tip and take her small SUV with it, but somehow, it stayed upright.
She should have used a moving company. Adriana knew that would have been the smarter thing to do, preserving her back and her time, but she hadn’t.
But you should have. It’s not like you can’t afford it.
Whether she could afford it or not wasn’t the point, she argued with herself.
It was a foolish waste of money when she was perfectly capable of packing up her apartment on her own.
She was just as able to load up the midsized U-Haul trailer, hitched to her car, and drive it herself to Cambric Creek.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Some of the money she’d saved on the move itself would instead be spent on hiring a handful of workers found on TaskGremlin, who would unload the trailer and carry the boxes to their labeled destinations throughout her new townhouse.
Packing up her apartment had been one thing.
Carrying those same boxes up two flights of stairs was something else entirely, and she could justify that spend.
Passing an old-fashioned streetcar on her way into her new development, she craned her neck back, able to make out the stop. Perfect timing. Don’t even bother going in, just park and grab that trolley.
She had only been to her new town twice. Cambric Creek.
Once, to walk the campus of the medical building, sitting for her first face-to-face interview and meeting several members of the private practice partnership.
The job opening was for a new role, an extension of the office in an urgent care clinic, meant to be a bridge between the long-term treatment of the multi-species practice and the trauma ward at the larger hospital next door, easing the burden on both.
It was a fixed schedule, a departure from punishing shift work, and, to her surprise, not even a loss of salary.
“And of course the biggest transition, the difference between emergency department treat-and-release and long-term patient care.” The speaker had been an immaculately dressed kitsune with glinting fangs and a sharp-edged smile.
“Even though this role is for our urgent care office, you’ll still be seeing patients of the practice. ”
“The main reason I’m looking to transition out of the emergency department is the lack of ability to form patient-based relationships,” she responded without missing a beat, giving the kitsune a sharp grin of her own.
“Seeing nonhuman patients thrive, making a difference for families . . . isn’t that why we all entered medicine in the first place? ”
The real reason she was leaving was that, as she’d told her therapist, she’d hit her limit, was burnt out, and was on the verge of needing an extended grippy sock vacation.
Her anxiety had never been so constant, and the calmer environment and stable hours advertised by the private practice seemed like the answer to a prayer she’d not even uttered.
The second visit to Cambric Creek was still technically an interview, but it was with the other members of the practice, her potential new colleagues, and it had felt entirely informal.
Informal to an almost alarming degree, she’d thought, smiling outwardly and inwardly panicking as a sleek-feathered harpy bickered good-naturedly with a model-handsome orc over some new streaming series that evidently everyone was watching.
Everyone except for people working back-to-back twelve-hour shifts in the city.
She would have to learn to unplug, Adriana had thought that afternoon, hoping her smile masked her inner terror at the mere thought.
The harpy and the orc hadn’t seemed to notice, and neither had the managing physician, a handsome, golden-eyed shifter she’d met the last time she was there, and as the conversation moved on from the streaming series to the new bakery supplier at the local coffee shop, she counted the beats of her racing heart, feeling blood pound in her ears and the shifter’s eyes resting on her, and she wondered if the tachycardia would make her pass out right there in front of them.
She hadn’t. By the end of the afternoon, they and the other two doctors from the practice were welcoming her to the office, pronouncing her a wonderful fit. They think that now, she’d thought, moving across the parking lot on shaking legs.
From the hospital building, she’d moved on to the townhouse, putting eyes on her real estate investment for the first time since she’d placed her bid, sight unseen.
It had been a risk, buying the condo before she technically had the job offer in hand.
Everything in the model condo she’d toured that day had seemed too new.
New and untouched, too glossy . . . too fancy, if she were being honest. Three narrow stories, her bedroom on the top floor, its wide windows overlooking the backside of the town, and hundreds of acres of rolling greenery.
She’d never lived anywhere like it, had never had anything like it that was hers.
The model didn’t have working plumbing, the only thing preventing her from stress vomiting into the toilet after her interview, the notion that she’d need to somehow fit in with her new co-workers making her dizzy. And that’s why you have a therapist.
Her explorations of the town had been short that day, circling around the business area closest to her development. A hardware store, a hobby shop, a manicurist.
Things she’d likely never need, Adriana thought, searching out the businesses she knew were actually useful.
A laundromat, a gas station a few blocks up with an attached minimart, a grocery store she’d never heard of, always a good indicator that the items on the shelf would be off-brand.
Her new townhome would come with its own laundry hookups, conveniently located on the third floor near her bedroom, and there had been an ad on the counter top of the model townhouse for grocery delivery from an expensive-looking deli, but life had taught her to know where certain businesses existed, whether she thought they would be needed or not.
When she went back to her existing life after that second visit to Cambric Creek, Adriana felt as though she was returning to an already-closed book.
She never wanted to see the inside of the emergency department again.
She was leaving her undersized apartment and the non-stop suffocation of her job for good, and had no intention of looking back.
A private practice in a quaint little suburb. Family medicine. Urgent care, but not in any way as urgent as what she’d been dealing with for years. Fixed hours. Leisure time. Permanence. She could scarcely believe it was going to be her life.