55. Bertram
Bertram
Lovey was a fast learner. When she would try to pounce on Bertram or Helena, they would quickly put on their dragon-scale gloves and allow Lovey to wrestle with their hand and forearm.
If Lovey nipped or clawed at clothing or bare skin, she was met with a neutral LRS and the end of her play session.
It didn’t take Lovey long to figure out that if she wanted to attack her surrogate parents, her beak and talons better be confined only to the dragon scales.
For their part, Bertram and Helena did their best to read Lovey’s signals, so that when she wanted to play, they were ready to accommodate her.
Helena noticed that when Lovey got into a playful mood, she did a little butt wiggle that caused her new tailfeathers to ruffle as she swung her hips back and forth.
Bertram noticed that even before the wiggling, Lovey’s zygodactyl back feet would swivel toes back and forth, from three toes forward to two toes forward, and then back again.
It got to the point where both parties had trained reactions in the other.
As soon as Lovey’s toes started going, either Helena or Bertram would fetch a glove.
For her part, if Lovey saw anyone pick up a glove for any reason, even just to move it or clean it, she would immediately jump to a butt wiggle and then pounce.
The system was working, though, and there were no injuries to caretakers nor suppression of behavior for owl-bear.
Helena was mock-jealous—at least Bertram thought she was mock-jealous, but she could have been actual jealous—that Lovey now seemed to much prefer Bertram for the purpose of playfighting.
Helena crunched the numbers, because of course she did, and found that Lovey was a little over twice as likely to stalk over to Bertram and wiggle her toes at him to request a play session than she was to exhibit such behavior toward Helena.
The reason was clear to Bertram: He was strong enough that he could lift his arm off the ground with Lovey clinging to his glove with talons and beak.
Bertram had a feeling that trick would be very short-lived at the rate the cub-chick was growing, but it delighted him how delighted Lovey was in the meantime.
She was a fledgling now, with full (albeit small) wing feathers and everything. Helena was confident that under natural circumstances, Lovey would start learning to fly soon. At the very least, Helena pointed out, Lovey would have been copying the way that her mama stretched and flapped her wings.
In lieu of Helena growing wings of her own, Helena added more taught behaviors to Lovey’s repertoire.
She created a signal cuing Lovey to open her wings, and one for her to close them.
She had Lovey repeat those movements over and over again, making sure Lovey was stretching and flapping her wings, strengthening those muscles.
As she put Lovey through her paces, Bertram wondered if Helena knew how stunningly beautiful she was when she focused with such intensity.
He wondered if there was a workplace-appropriate totally platonic way to express that sentiment.
“Owl!” Helena said. She gestured with both hands to her side, fingers spread wide open.
Lovey spread her small wings as far as she could.
“Good!” said Helena and blew the whistle around her neck.
Bertram threw a treat to Lovey, who gobbled it eagerly down.
“Bear!” Helena said and brought her fingers together in tight fists.
Lovey pulled her wings tightly to her sides.
“Good!” Helena blew the whistle.
Bertram threw Lovey a treat.
“Ready? Owl. Bear. Owl! Bear! Owl! Bear!”
Lovey did a remarkable job keeping time with Helena, even when Helena sped the cues up. It looked a little like Helena was conducting an unseen orchestra, and Lovey’s wings flapped fast enough that they even generated a tiny bit of wind, though she had yet to rise into the air.
At one point, Lovey got bored and wandered off to chomp down on Bertram’s shoes.
“What do we do?” Helena asked.
Bertram bristled to hear that she was using the same “teacher voice” with him that she had been using on the baby owl-bear.
“Make as much eye contact as possible and tell her how bad she’s being,” Bertram said.
Helena started to squawk with indignation, but Bertram turned his back on Lovey before Helena could launch into a lecture.
“LRS,” Bertram said. He removed his shoelaces from Lovey’s mouth without speaking to her or making eye contact and took a few steps away.
“Okay, great.” Helena breathed a sigh of relief. “You could’ve just started with that rather than messing with me.”
“But messing with you is so fun,” said Bertram.
He understood why a least reinforcing scenario worked as well as it did—positive attention was not the only kind he craved from Helena.
Any attention was reinforcing for him. Sometimes her annoyance was even more delightful.
He would weather her insults as happily as he took her praise.
Her frustrated little huffs and eyerolls were adorable.
Lovey eventually returned her attention to Helena. Helena asked her for another few repetitions of “owl” and “bear,” which Lovey responded to correctly and eagerly.
Helena ended the session there to finish on a positive note.
“That’s so good, Lovey!” Helena said.
“Did your mom tell you that she’s started putting together the official construction plan for the otherfolk crossing over the 394?” Helena asked.
Bertram bristled slightly. “She must have forgotten.”
“You may not go back to the wild,” Helena told Lovey, “but all the other animals like you who live around here are going to be much safer if we give them a road to go over!”
“Mraw!” Lovey agreed.
“Plus, not all of them are going to be able to fly like you will one day!” Helena looked admiringly at Lovey’s wings. “Can I feel your muscles?”
Bertram absently wished that Helena would ask to feel his muscles. He would be more than happy to comply.
“Touch!” Helena said, her cue to Lovey that she was about to be handled.
Bertram wondered if there were a joke to be made there without crossing any professional lines. There probably wasn’t, and he should be more concerned with leaving lines un-crossed than he should be concerned with making Helena smile and blush with a well-timed dirty joke.
“Oh yeah, these are some strooooong baby owl-bear muscles, right here!” Helena squeezed at Lovey. Then she stopped. She patted along her wings again, then onto her back, right by her shoulder blades. Her face changed.
“What is it?” Bertram asked.
“There’s—there’s some kind of lump here. Come feel.”
Bertram bent down next to Lovey.
“Touch,” Bertram said, and Lovey looked at him expectantly. Bertram touched Lovey’s back.
“Yup, I feel it,” Bertram said.
“Hopefully, it’s just a cyst, but what if it’s something worse?! I need to aspirate it ASAP, if only to try to identify it.” Helena’s eyes were wide with worry. “It’s giant! How did I not notice it?!”
“It’s not giant,” Bertram said, reassuringly, “and it’s right by her shoulder blade—behind feathery wings and under fur. It’s not surprising that you didn’t see it earlier.”
“A real owl-bear mama would have had her flapping her wings ages ago, and then she would’ve noticed a lump like this!”
“And then done what, exactly?” Bertram asked. “An owl-bear can’t provide veterinary care. You can. She’s lucky she has you.”
Helena bit her bottom lip.
“Come on.” Bertram draped his arm around her. “Let’s get you and Lovey to the lab.”
The three made their way back to the lab.
Bertram played with Lovey on the floor while Helena got her med kit.
Helena returned and ruffled the feathers and fur that met at Lovey’s shoulders.
Helena exposed as much bare skin directly as possible before applying a numbing spray.
She put on a pair of fresh surgical gloves and grabbed a syringe.
“Oh, Lovey, I hope this doesn’t make you miserable,” Helena said, anguish in her voice. “Bertram, will you give her treats?”
“Absolutely.”
Bertram gave Lovey some snacks, feeding them out little by little to keep her distracted.
Helena took a deep breath and inserted the needle into Lovey.
Well, kind of.
From what Bertram could tell, it looked more like Helena took a deep breath and put the point of the needle against Lovey’s skin. But it wasn’t going in. Helena grimaced.
“I’ve always been bad at applying enough pressure,” Helena said. “Even in med school. I get nervous about hurting People.”
“You’re okay,” Bertram said. “You’re helping Lovey.”
Helena nodded. She used all her strength to insert the needle into Lovey—well, actually, she pushed the needle against Lovey with all of her strength and then—
“Oh. Holy shit,” Helena said.
“What?” Bertram asked.
“The good news is I don’t think Lovey was bothered by what I was doing to her. The bad news is what I was doing to her was, uh, snapping this needle in half?” Helena held up the broken point of the needle.
“Oh. Holy shit,” Bertram echoed.
“I’ll just have to open the lump with something sharper and then use the needle to withdraw a sample—how are you doing on treats?”
“Great. I’ve been breaking them into eighths or so, so they should last a while.”
“That’s my guy,” Helena said, then immediately blushed as if she regretted referring to Bertram as “her” guy.
Before Bertram could tease her on the matter, or maybe even go as far as to say he didn’t at all mind being called “her guy,” Helena grabbed a scalpel and was back to focusing on Lovey.
“Okay,” Helena sighed. “Here we go. I really hope the numbing agent is enough on owl-bear skin.”
Helena took a deep breath and made a small incision into Lovey’s lump.
Well, technically, what she did was attempt to make a small incision and instead snapped off the blade of the scalpel against Lovey’s skin.
Bertram and Helena stared at one another.
It was Bertram who broke the silence. “I think we’re going to need some sharper tools.”