Dragon Fall

by Katie MacAlister

  I opened the door to the backseat. The dog looked at the car, then looked at me. I patted my leg. “C’mon, doggy. Let’s go for a ride in the car!”

  He cocked his head for a moment, then got to his feet and limped over to the car, hopping nimbly onto the backseat. “Well, thank heavens I don’t have to haul you into the car. I’m not sure I could do it if I had to. You look like you weigh about as much as me. Right, let’s go find you an emergency vet hospital.”

  Two and a half hours later, I emerged from a twenty-four-hour animal hospital, the Swedish equivalent of $180 poorer. “I don’t quite see why I should be the one to take him home.”

  “You ran over him,” the vet, an older woman with a no-nonsense haircut that perfectly matched her abrupt manner, told me. “He’s your responsibility.”

  “Yeah, but you have a kennel where you could keep him until his people come to get him.”

  “He has no collar, no identification of any form, including a microchip, and you said you ran him down on a rural stretch well outside of any town.”

  I flinched at the “ran him down” mention.

  “Therefore,” she continued, opening up the rear door of the car. The dog hopped in and plopped himself down, taking up the entire backseat. “He’s your problem. We don’t have the space or the resources to take care of him.”

  “Yes, but—”

  She pinned me back with a look that had me fidgeting. “If you insist on leaving him here, he’ll be collected by the animal welfare people in the morning. A dog of his size is virtually unadoptable. He might be a purebred Newfoundland, or he might not. Either way, he would be put down in less than thirty-six hours. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  “No,” I said miserably, and got into the car. The rest of the trip home was accomplished in silence… if you didn’t count the snores of a 150-pound dog.

  Four

  “You can stay here for the night,” I told the dog when we got home. “But my sister is allergic to your kind, so it’s just a short visit for you, and then we’ll find somewhere else for you to go.”

  The dog wandered off as soon as I let him out of the car.

  “Hey!” I shouted after him when he ran across the dirt drive and the scrubby grass that was the only thing that would grow so close to the water, and bounded over a large piece of driftwood and onto the rocky beach. “Dammit, dog, don’t make me chase after you. Wait, are you going home? Do you know your way home from here? Home, doggy, home!”

  I followed after him, half hoping he’d head back to the road and to wherever it was he belonged, but instead, he turned down the beach and loped along the edge of the water until he disappeared into the semidarkness.

  “Great. Now he’s gone. Oh well, at least the vet gave him a clean bill of health.”

  I walked back to the house, trying to convince myself to forget the dog, but I couldn’t even get across the threshold.

  The vet was right—the dog was my responsibility. He might not be hurt, but I had hit the poor thing, and since I had opposable thumbs and he didn’t, I had to see to it that he was either returned to his people or handed over to folks who would find him a new home.

  “Yo, dog,” I called, doing an about-face and heading down the beach after him. The weak light from the horizon seemed to glow across the now-inky water, making it possible to see the large rocks and tree trunks that dotted the shore. A familiar scent of seaweed, damp sand, and salty air filled my lungs. “Here, boy! Treaties! Or there will be once I get you into the house.”

  Ahead of me, over the soft sound of the water lapping at shore, I heard a muffled woof.

  “Doggy?” I yelled. My nearest neighbor was a good three miles down the beach, so I didn’t worry about waking anyone up. “Hey, dog, if you found something dead and stinky and are planning on rolling in it, I’d like to encourage you to change your mind. For one, it’s not nearly as attractive a smell as you think it is, and for another, I don’t think you’d fit in my bathtub—Oh no, not again!”

  By now I’d come upon the dog, who was standing with his nose pressed against a black shape that was slumped on the ground.

  “If that’s a dead seal or something equally nasty…” I started to warn him, but stopped when I got a better look at the shape.

  It was a man.

  A dead man lay at my feet.

  Right there on the beach. The tide was going out, leaving the ground sodden with seaweed, the tang of the night air stinging my eyes. I stared at the black shape, wondering who was screaming.

  It was me.

  “No!” I said in protest, wanting to turn on my heels and run away from the horrible sight. “No, no, no. I can’t have this. I can’t have men lying dead at my feet. The last time that happened, I ended up hooked to a machine that zapped me full of a kajillion volts. I refuse to be crazy anymore. Therefore, you, sir, cannot be dead. I forbid it.”

  I reached down to turn the man onto his back, jerking my hand away when a static shock to end all static shocks snapped out between my fingers and his arm.

  “What the hell?” I rubbed my fingers, wondering if the man had some sort of electronics on him that had gotten wet. But before I could ponder that, he moaned and moved his legs, his head lifting off the rocks for a few seconds before he slumped down again.

  “What is this, my day for seeing dead things that aren’t really dead?” My mind shied painfully away from that thought. “Hey, mister, are you okay?”

  It was a stupid question to be sure—he was facedown, obviously having been deposited on the shore by the tide, and clearly unconscious. But at least he was alive.

  Tentatively, I reached out a finger and touched the wet cloth of his sleeve. “Mister?”

  There was no static shock this time, so I tugged him until he rolled over onto his back. His hair, shiny with water and black as midnight, was plastered to his skull, while bits of seaweed and sand clung to the side of his cheek and jaw. His chin was square and his face angular, with high cheekbones that gave him a Slavic look and made my fingers itch to brush off the sand. There was a bit of reddish black stubble on his jaw that I really wanted to touch. I was willing to bet that it was soft and enticing…

  I shook that thought away. What the hell was I doing thinking about a man’s beard when he was lying at my feet, possibly near death?

  “Stick to what’s important,” I told myself, noting that his chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm. Although a quick examination didn’t show any obvious signs of injury, it was clear he needed medical attention. Accordingly, I pulled out my cell phone and called the emergency services number.

  “What is your emergency?” a coolly impersonal voice asked.

  “There’s an unconscious man on the beach next to my house. He’s alive and breathing okay and I don’t see any blood or twisted limbs, but he might have hit his head or something.”

  “And your location?”

  I gave her the address of the family home.

  She tsked. “You are very rural.”

  “Yeah, I know. My parents liked that. How soon can you get someone here? The breeze is picking up, and I should probably at least cover the guy up until the paramedics arrive.”

  “There has been a large fire in Maslo,” she answered, naming the largest nearby town. “I cannot send anyone to you for some time.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, shocked by such a callous response. “This guy is unconscious. He could have a brain injury!”

  “You said he was breathing on his own, and there was no blood or signs of external injury.”

  “No, but—”

  “The nearest hospital to you is…” I could hear her fingers tapping on a keyboard. “Seventy-two kilometers in Kirkeist.”

  I knew exactly where that hospital was. I’d spent a horrible night locked up in the psych ward two years ago. “Are you suggesting that I move an injured man? What if he has back injuries?”

  “You must move him with care if you believe that to
be the case.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe that you’d tell me to haul this poor guy to a hospital so far away. That’s almost inhuman. Aren’t the emergency guys obligated to come and help?”

  “Not in your region, no. There is no funding for emergency services. They are provided by regions that have them, but on an as-needed basis, and I just told you that the aid units are dealing with the fire in Maslo.”

  I gritted my teeth and fought back the need to punch out the woman on the phone. I’d never before had such a violent reaction to anyone, but frustration and a long, emotion-packed day had pushed me close to the edge. “There’s got to be a clinic closer than Kirkeist.”

  Tappity-tappity went her computer keys. “There are two, but neither has emergency hours. There is a doctor four kilometers from you who is listed as an emergency resource, but his hours are not stated. If you like, I can provide you with that information.”

  “You do that little thing,” I snarled, patting myself to find a small notebook and pencil. I wrote down the doctor’s name and address and thought seriously about giving the woman a piece of my mind, but Dr. Barlind’s strictures on “a calm mind is a happy mind is a sane mind” had me simply snapping a terse “Thank you” and hanging up.

  “So, doggy, I guess this is my day to rescue everyone. Hmm.” I eyed the man. He looked pretty solid. I doubted I could lift him and carry him to my car. I shifted my gaze to the dog. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever pulled a sled?”

  The dog sat down and squinted at me.

  I sighed. “I didn’t think so. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have a sled anyway. Stay here, doggy, and watch over the man while I go grab a blanket or something.”

  To my surprise, the dog was still there when I returned. “All right, you get bonus points for loyalty. Now, if you could grow a couple of thumbs, I’d be delirious with joy. Ugh. Sorry, mister, this is going to be slightly unpleasant for you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, swearing mightily and huffing and puffing in a way that bespoke of someone who hadn’t had much exercise while confined to the booby hatch, I managed to get the man onto the blanket and hauled off the beach onto the sandy dirt drive that led to the house.

  “I sincerely… bloody, buggery hell… hope you don’t have a back… son of a seagull… back injury because if you do, then I’m making it a hundred times worse. Holy mayonnaise and all the little condiments.” I collapsed against the side of my car and panted, rubbing my hands in order to take away the sting of blanket burn.

  The man lay on the ground, still not awake, but every now and again one of his arms or legs would twitch, and he’d mutter something unintelligible. I wondered if he was dreaming or hallucinating.

  “Doesn’t matter which,” I said with an effort, shoving myself away from the car in order to grab him under the armpits. “I just hope my Good Samaritan efforts aren’t going to end in a lawsuit by your family. Upsy-daisy.”

  With a very unladylike grunt, I managed to heave the man into the car, arranging him on the backseat in as comfortable a manner as possible. The dog watched me with bright, interested eyes, and when I hesitated, unsure of what to do with him, he walked over to the passenger door and waited for me to open it.

  “Sure, why not,” I said. “By all means, come with me to see the doctor who may or may not grace us with his expertise. The more the merrier, right?”

  When my parents moved to Sweden, they had chosen an underpopulated section of the northeastern coast to build a house. They wanted isolation, and they got it in buckets. The closest house to ours was a good three miles down the road, and the nearest town—if you could call a collection of weather-beaten buildings and a small bait shop that doubled as a post office and miniscule grocery store a town—clung to the coastline with the tenacity of a limpet. The folks there were mostly fishermen, people like my parents who didn’t mind living on the back side of nowhere. I drove through the town and down the road that led toward several other small communities that dotted the area. The largest of them, about nine miles away, had a few more amenities, including one Dr. Anders Ek, physician.

  “And here we are,” I said as my phone’s GPS directed me to a small green house with a white picket fence. I glanced at the time. “Ouch. He’s probably asleep. Oh well, let’s hope he has a lot more compassion than the emergency lady. Stay, doggy. Guard the guy. Not that he’s going to go anywhere…”

  It took a few minutes of pounding on the front door before a light went on behind the fan window above the door. A few seconds later an elderly man in pajamas and a fuzzy sea-green bathrobe peered at me. He had salt-and-pepper hair that stood on end, reminding me of an old picture of Albert Einstein.

  “Yes? What is it? Who are you?”

  “My name is Aoife. Are you Dr. Ek?”

  “Yes, yes. What time is it?” The doctor squinted up at the sky. “Bah. It is impossible to tell this time of year. Are you ill?”

  “No, but I found a guy on the beach, and the emergency people had some big fire that they had to deal with, so they told me to bring him to you.”

  He didn’t look any too pleased when I gestured toward my car. “I was sleeping.”

  “Yeah, well, I couldn’t very well leave him on the beach, could I? And you know how far away the hospital is.”

  He clicked his tongue and reluctantly told me to bring the man in, turning to walk back into his house.

  “By myself?” I called after him. “I barely got him into the car as is, and being dragged along the beach probably didn’t do his head any good, assuming his brains aren’t already scrambled.”

  The doctor said something I didn’t hear, waving one hand dismissively at me. I had quite a few things to say about that, but mindful of the happy psyche stuff that Dr. Barlind insisted was the key to a successful life, I kept them under my breath. I had the man half out of the car when a metallic rattling caused me to whirl around. The doctor was wheeling out an ancient gurney, the kind used in old black-and-white movies. Still, it had wheels, and it meant I wouldn’t have to drag the poor man in by his heels.

  It took some time for us to get him around the side of the house, where the doctor evidently had a room devoted to emergencies, with what looked like a massage table, a cabinet full of gauze and bandages and a few stainless steel medical tools, and even a bottle of oxygen. We wheeled the man in and I stood back, wondering if I should leave or sit outside and wait for the prognosis.

  “Is that your dog?”

  I glanced over my shoulder to where the dog sat on his haunches, watching us with those eyes that seemed uncannily knowing.

  “Not really, no. I kind of ran over him earlier in the evening, but he wasn’t hurt, and the vet couldn’t keep him, so he’s staying with me until I find his people. I don’t suppose you recognize him?”

  “No.”

  “I figured that was too much to hope for.”

  “Here,” the doctor said, shoving a chipped enamel basin into my hands. “You hold that.”

  “Um… I was going to head on home. It’s late, and—”

  “This is your man,” he said, peering over the tops of his thick-lensed glasses. “You can’t leave him here. I will patch him up, and then you must take him away.”

  “You’re a doctor,” I said, feeling a strange déjà vu.

  “I have no room for him. I am retired, you know, and only help out occasionally when I’m needed. No, don’t tip it. Hold it steady.” He poured some alcohol into the basin and tossed into it a pair of scissors, forceps, and something that looked like a scalpel before bending over the man, pulling up one eyelid and flashing a tiny light right onto the man’s eyeball. “Hmm.”

  “Hmm?” I wanted to look at the same time I wanted to be away from there. My curiosity won out. I peeked over his shoulder. “Is he badly hurt?”

  “I haven’t examined him yet, but he’s not showing signs of a concussion.”

  “That’s good.” I stepped back when the doctor spun
around, selected a pair of scissors from the alcohol bath, and used them to cut the sodden shirt off the man’s body.

  “Ah.”

  “Ah?” I felt like a human parrot, repeating his words. “Is that a good ah or a bad ah?”

  “It is an ah that means I see no obvious injuries.”

  Once again I looked over the doctor’s stooped shoulders, bracing myself for the sight of blood or at least a gaping wound that had been washed clean by the sea. There was neither. What there was made me blink in surprise. The man’s chest seemed to go on forever, with lovely swells of muscles at the pectorals, rippling down to a six-pack that would have done any Hollywood actor proud. “Wow,” I said, drinking in the magnificent sight. He had what I thought of as a reasonable amount of chest hair, not so much that he looked like a monkey, but he was no plucked goose, either. A line of hair disappeared into the waistband of his pants.

  I had a sudden, almost overwhelming hope that the doctor would cut off those pants.

  Inappropriate smutty thoughts aside, I looked back at the man’s face. There was something about those high cheekbones and black hair that rang a distant bell in my memory. Was he some sort of a celebrity that I’d seen pictures of? Mentally, I shook my head. The memory was on the edge of my consciousness, hovering tantalizingly just out of reach.

  Dr. Ek hummed to himself when he pulled out a stethoscope and listened to a couple of different spots on the man’s chest, then with a grunt, rolled him onto his side and listened to his back before letting him return to his resting position. “No water in the lungs. That, my dear, means your man was most likely conscious when he went into the water. It is a good sign.”

  “He’s not really my man,” I protested.

  One fuzzy white eyebrow rose over the lens of his glasses. “You were certainly ogling him as if he was.”

  My face heated with embarrassment. “Oh, uh… I was…” I cleared my throat. “I was just glad to see he wasn’t hurt.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He didn’t sound like he believed me, and I couldn’t blame him. Not with the blush that was burning up my cheeks at being caught all but drooling over an unconscious man. “We might as well take his trousers off, if you think you can control yourself.”