Adriana
She immediately established a routine for her days.
Now you’ll have a set schedule to plan an actual life around. Get up, get moving. Go outside and breathe fresh air. Maybe you can take up yoga. It seemed unlikely, but who knew what the new version of herself might enjoy.
She was up and productive shortly after sunrise, the empty townhouse feeling echoey, stopping at the Black Sheep Beanery for the first time to grab her free medium house roast and the first punch on her pastry card, despite the coffee machine she’d unpacked sitting there on the countertop, staring at her reproachfully.
This is where everyone goes, right? You want to fit in, so this is what you need to do, too. And it’s free!
Several hours had been spent unpacking her boxes, doing her best to turn the empty townhouse into something that felt permanent; a job that would clearly require more stuff than she currently owned.
As it was, the rooms felt empty even with her belongings unpacked, bigger than anywhere else she’d lived previously, vast and echoing without the decorative filler that made a house a home.
You need to start spending like someone who lives in a place like this. Tomorrow, you should buy one of those baskets full of throw blankets. Every cozy small town movie has a basket of throw blankets somewhere. And a goose at the front door.
“Plants,” the sheepwoman advised over the counter. “That’s what you need. Nothing like a bunch of potted plants to pull a room together. You’re over in the townhouses on Finchmere, right?”
Adriana blinked, keeping her smile in place as she nodded, even as she shuddered internally. It was going to take time to get used to strangers knowing far more about her than they should. “I am!”
“Then yes, definitely plants. You have so much natural light! When you leave here, turn left out our main door, and then take the first left at the corner. Viol, Violet, once again, the fact that they seemed to know her already making her stomach churn.
“Yes, emergency department. And it was. Stressful, I mean. I don’t think I’m going to miss it.
It’ll be nice to actually get to know my patients by more than their chart,” she went on hurriedly, remembering the kitsune’s words from her interview.
“Especially since this seems like such a tight-knit community.”
“Up each other’s asses, you mean,” Xavier piped up from behind the espresso machine, making the troll who was running cold drinks laugh. “My sister really ought to have a proctology degree hanging on the wall back here.”
She laughed along with the others standing at the counter when brother and sister began to bicker good-naturedly, accepting their ‘good luck’ and ‘you’re going to be great!
’ as she left, breathing out her relief.
See? You can be one of them. Now all you need to do is show them how valuable you are at work and you’ve got it made.
She didn’t know a Sandi Hemming, and she didn’t need to meet them.
***
“Dā?”
The dragonborn sitting beside the examination table gave her a bright, toothy grin as Adriana entered the room after knocking, answering in the affirmative. “That’s me!” She punctuated her words with a dramatic blowing of her nose, her purple hair swinging. “You’re the new doctor?”
“Yes, I’m Dr. Brunelli. I understand you’re having an issue with allergies?”
Adriana stood before the rolling cart in the small exam room, tablet in hand. The dragonborn’s chart looked refreshingly uncomplicated, and nothing at all that required a visit to urgent care. Seasonal allergies. Persistent congestion. No fever or facial tenderness beyond expected sinus pressure.
“We’re all so glad this office has reopened! Sometimes you need to be seen and it’s not something that can wait for an appointment in the regular office, you know?”
“Allergies should be addressed with your primary care physician,” Adriana corrected. “Especially if it’s a chronic condition. You’ve been dealing with the symptoms for about a month now?”
“So you just moved to town?”
She looked up, blinking in surprise. The dragonborn had ignored her outright, turning the conversation with an off-topic question of her own. “I . . . yes, I did. Just over three weeks for your symptoms?”
“Oh! Yes, ever since we started relocating the apiary collection. From the Applethorpes, you know. It’s been down in the bowels of the building for ages, but we’re starting a new seasonal rotation of the front room.
Have you been to the library yet? Did I mention I’m a librarian?
The whole front collection was turned into all things garden.
The historic texts can’t be checked out, but anyone can come and look through them.
You should make time to stop in! Especially if you’re interested in keeping bees, there are handwritten notes in the ledgers! ”
“So this was potentially triggered by a dust allergy?” She had no idea what an apple thorpe was, trying to glean something, anything useful from the patient. “Or by a fruit?”