Finding Somewhere to Belong

by C. C. Masters

  Done with my examination of the bedroom, I headed back downstairs to see if there was anything I may have missed while I was in human form. I could smell all the same scents with the addition of two more wolves. That makes a total of 4 wolves here that night, assuming none of the wolves were in human form. Why would 2 wolves stay downstairs during the carnage? As lookouts?

  Done with my examination, I trotted back to the bathroom, quickly changed back into human, and got dressed. I was more than ready to get out of here. I ran down the stairs and to the back door.

  I peered outside of the door to make sure it was safe for me to run for the wooded part of the back yard. It was, so I sprinted to the tree line and slowly crept back through the shadows to the empty lot. I made it to the back of the lot just in time for a car to pull up to Evelyn’s house.

  I crouched down to watch. Two men got out of the car and looked around the neighborhood. It looked like they were also smelling the air. Could they be wolves? How are they using their wolf senses while in human form?

  I couldn’t see them in detail, but they had the same idea about dressing in black that I had. They just looked like two large shadows crossing the front yard.

  They strode confidently up to the front door, and one of the men crouched down with the second man keeping an eye on the street. Were they picking the lock and keeping watch?

  My eyes narrowed. If these are two of the wolf murderers, why are they here? Did they forget something while they were on their murder spree? They must realize that the police would have taken anything of interest.

  I stayed crouched down and watched the front door for signs of them coming back out. I didn’t see any movement in the house that would have given me a clue as to what they were doing in there. It was almost thirty minutes before they came back out and headed to their SUV. I was relieved to see that they were finally leaving, but one man hesitated before getting in the driver’s side door. He glanced back at my car parked in front of the empty lot.

  My heart started to pound. My car had caught his interest, probably because it was weird to have a car parked here in front of an empty lot in the off season. During peak season, all the streets are packed with cars from the tourists, but in the fall and winter months it is just the residents that park here.

  They both got back into the car, and I let out a deep breath, thinking that I was safe. Then their SUV started to back up towards my car instead of driving off down the road. I made sure that I was well hidden here in the woods as I watched their car stop right next to mine.

  I started to count the seconds. This one moment felt like it was lasting an eternity. What are they doing? Finally, before I was about to explode from the tension, the car quickly drove away. I waited for another ten minutes before I decided to risk running over to my car.

  I made it back to my car and started the drive home. Today had been insane. I should be exhausted, but I couldn’t shut my brain off. All the emotions and thoughts of the day were still churning around in my head, nothing making sense. When I finally got home and made it to my bed, I just lay there and stared at the ceiling.

  A part of me didn’t want to go to sleep, because I knew when I woke up it was going to be my first day without Evelyn here on this Earth. The emptiness of the world hit me, and I realized that I now have no one. I felt selfish for thinking like that. I shouldn’t be thinking about how I was suffering. Evelyn was the one who was horribly murdered. Evelyn was the one who suffered.

  Guilt hit me. Evelyn had asked me to do one thing: run. Instead of doing as she asked, I had put myself in more danger by exposing myself to multiple wolves in the woods through carelessness. I had also searched her house and left my wolf scent all over the house in addition to my human scent. If those men who broke into Evelyn’s house tonight were wolves, they definitely had my scent now. And they saw my car. If they were the criminal masterminds that I suspected them to be, it wouldn’t be difficult for them to track me down.

  My heart pounded. What are the chances that they would put it all together? Were those men the wolves that had chased me from the forest? Or were they another two wolves that made up the four wolves in Evelyn’s house that night? If they were connected, what were the chances they could tie my wolf to an oddly parked car in the neighborhood?

  It might seem like I was just being paranoid, but deep down I had the feeling that they knew who I was and were coming for me. Evelyn taught me to always trust my instincts, my gut.

  It was only an hour before my alarm was about to go off, and there was no way I was going to be able to sleep now, so I just got up. I sat on my couch and just stared into space, unsure of what to do next.

  I decided that leaving my house was probably my best option. If the mysterious burglars ran my plates, they already have my address. I packed up a bag, thinking that I should stay somewhere else tonight after work. I felt fairly confident that I would be safe at work, as I worked in a hospital on a military base with a ton of security.

  According to Evelyn, wolves avoided any contact with the police or the government, and they definitely wouldn’t be able to join the military. That means I should be safe on a military base.

  I got to work early and just sat in my car for a moment before I could talk myself into going in. People were going to notice something was wrong with me. I’m usually the annoyingly peppy and positive person at work, but right now I doubted I could even pretend to be my usual self.

  Confiding in my co-workers was not an option. I was not comfortable talking to other people about my emotions; I preferred to keep everything to myself and only present my happy face to the world. I decided to just tell people that I was sick. I would try to do my work quietly and under the radar.

  I walked in and got dressed in my scrubs like a zombie. Just walking to the pharmacists’ table resulted in several people asking if I was okay. I was trying to act like myself, but I am sure that the smile I pasted on my face did not look genuine, and I was missing my usual happy glow.

  On a normal day, I would make sure to say good morning to everyone, making the rounds through the pharmacy. Today I just don’t have it in me, I am barely holding in my grief. If people start being too nice to me, it might all come spilling out.

  I sat down at one of the pharmacists’ desks and organized all my references around me as my computer started up. I pulled up my pager list and Lexi comp before logging on to the hospital system to see what was in our work queue for today. I figured that work would be a good distraction right now.

  I tried to stay focused on things like renal dosing and whether the patient’s antibiotic regimen was going to cover the offending bacteria that grew in their blood and wound cultures. I buried myself in my work and tried to completely ignore all the events in the past 24 hrs.

  Somehow, I made it through the first 5 hours and 35 min without any incident. Once I announced I was sick, everyone decided to stay away in case I was contagious. I was given all the desk work so I wouldn’t risk bringing any of my contagions out to the patients. This worked well for me, as it meant I did not have to talk to anyone and could hide at my desk.

  When it was finally my turn for lunch, I decided to go to the food court. It’s usually the most crowded place on base for lunch, but I found it comforting to be lost in a crowd. I claimed one of the two-person tables for myself and pulled out a protein bar.

  I still had not been able to make myself eat since breakfast yesterday, but I knew that I needed to. Shifting burned a lot of energy in the form of calories. I needed to eat more than the typical human female, and I had shifted several times yesterday. Technically, I should be starving and packing in the calories. But right now, the thought of food just made me feel nauseous.

  I took a sip of my water, sighed, and opened my protein bar. I was just about to take my first bite when a man slid into the chair opposite mine.

  “Hi.” He smiled, and his blue eyes sparkled with humor when I just stared at him.

  I looked around the
food court; there were plenty of empty tables. I looked back at him. He was definitely speaking to me; there was no one else at my table.

  “Hi?” I replied hesitantly, confused about what he is doing here right now.

  “I thought this would be easier. In the reports, your co-workers said you are usually the friendliest person in the department.” He smiled again, he had a dazzling smile and I struggled to keep my wits about me.

  “Oh, are you from security?” I asked, suddenly realizing how weird I must seem to him with all the blank staring I have been doing. It’s not unusual for security to be constantly checking up on people. Everyone here has a security clearance, and with all the security breaches in the news lately, they have been under pressure to crack down on people with high risk behaviors holding security clearance.

  “Not exactly,” he replied.

  “So, what reports are you reading?” I asked suspiciously. Please do not tell me I was part of some weird security drill where he was trying to see if I would give up “secured” info. I did not have the time or patience for this today. I also did not want to look unbalanced or temperamental in front of him, so I fought the urge to scowl at him until he went away.

  Apparently, my attempt failed, because his grin faded a little. “OK, can we start over?”

  “Um, sure?”

  He stood up and walked a couple of steps away. I was surprised at how tall he was; he must have been around six and a half feet tall. He was also quite muscular, and I blushed a little as I admired the view of him walking away. He quickly came back and sat again. I was still just staring at him in disbelief, hoping he did not just catch me checking him out.

  He flashed another grin at me, seemingly oblivious to my staring. “Hi, I’m Cody. Can I have lunch with you?”

  “Yes?” I felt incredibly awkward right now, but since I had already embarrassed myself by staring at him, I figured a couple more seconds of it wouldn’t hurt. He had light brown hair; it was little longer than allowed in the military, so he must be a civilian. He was dressed in civilian clothes and had a tattoo on his very well-muscled arm peeking out of the bottom of the sleeve of his black T-shirt.

  “I’m Anna,” I added shyly.

  He was quite good looking and had a great smile, which explained how easily he invited himself to my table. He was probably used to girls fighting over who would eat lunch with him. I didn’t receive male attention here. Ever.

  I wear hospital scrubs a couple sizes too big so that the pants would be long enough to cover my ankles. There are only 6 unisex sizes to choose from, and ‘tall’ is not one of them.

  If wearing baggy scrubs that didn’t fit correctly wasn’t bad enough, I also don’t wear makeup, and my hair is always pulled tightly into a bun at the nape of my neck. There are strict requirements for anyone who needs to go into the clean room to work on TPNs and IV medications, and they don’t mesh well with ‘looking pretty’.

  It was also a requirement for me to wear a white coat over my scrubs anytime I left the pharmacy. The coat was also too big for me so that it could fit over the giant scrubs. I’m sure the outfit made me look even larger than I was.

  In comparison to me, the food court was full of nurses and female corpsman in tight scrubs who looked like they were on the prowl for a date with their hair and makeup on point. It made no sense that this guy would walk past all of them to sit with me. He must have an ulterior motive.

  I glanced at the empty table in front of him suspiciously. “Where’s your lunch?”

  My suspicion didn’t seem to faze him at all, as he just chuckled. “I didn’t bring one today. I guess what I should have said was ‘Can I sit with you while you eat your lunch?’”

  I just looked at him thoughtfully. He seemed nice enough. Yeah, this was a weird situation, but I was a weird girl.

  I sighed and reached into my bag to pull out a second protein bar. I slid it slowly over the table to him, but his eyes stayed on me. His smile brightened by a couple watts, and he picked up the bar to tear open the wrapper. “Thanks!” he said enthusiastically, biting into the bar.

  I mumbled something incoherent in reply and looked back down at my bar. He finished the bar in four bites and started to eye my water as he chewed. I reached back into my bag and sighed again as I passed him my afternoon water bottle. Yes, I also needed to drink a ton of water to go with all the food, and I liked to be prepared.

  He gave me a smile and thanked me before opening up the water and taking a drink.

  “So, what is it that you do here?” I asked, trying to keep a frown off my face.

  “Oh, I’m just here for an appointment” he told me casually. I leaned back in my chair a little. If he had an appointment here at the hospital, he must be active duty, a dependent, or retired military. He was too old to be a child dependent, too young to be retired military, so that left spouse? I glanced down at his hands quickly, but I didn’t see a ring.

  “Are you active duty?” I asked innocently.

  He chuckled softly and slid a hand through his hair. “Nope, sorry to disappoint, but I can’t offer you Tricare or BAH.”

  I laughed despite myself. A second later, the small smile that was starting immediately dropped off my face when reality hit. What was I doing here? I was sitting here flirting with a random stranger when I had all the other drama going on in my life? I needed to pull myself together and stay on task.

  He seemed to sense my shift in mood as he put a more serious look on his face. “Looks like I owe you lunch one day. What are you doing tomorrow?”

  And I was back to staring in disbelief. I didn’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the total lack of understanding of why this good looking guy I had never met before was asking me to eat lunch with him for a second day in a row. All I had done so far was stare at him and awkwardly mumble useless sentences. My brain was not functioning at all. I was going to blame this entire situation on lack of sleep.

  “I’m working tomorrow. Here,” I stated hesitantly.

  “So, you’re going to have lunch here?” he asked persistently.

  “Yes, but I -”

  “Excellent, I will see you tomorrow.” He stood up, gave me another grin and a wave and then sauntered off before I could gather my thought enough to be able to state my objections. I didn’t even get a chance to ask him why he would be reading reports on me if he was just here for an appointment. What reports?

  I think that this had been the strangest interaction of my life. I didn’t expect to see him again, but I did think that he was either the loser of a bet or the recipient of a dare. I quickly dismissed all thoughts of the awkward encounter with Cody when I started thinking about my wolf problem again. All too soon, lunch was over and it was time to go back to work.

  Chapter 3

  As I got closer to the end of my workday, my numbness started to wear off and my work was no longer working as a distraction. Anxiety took hold of me again. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that there were wolves waiting at my house to murder me.

  I chewed on my lip as I stared at my last kinetics calculations for the day. I suddenly realized something: I didn’t have to go home. The hospital frequently had staff who were ordered to stay on the premises. I perked up a little at that thought. The base would be the safest place for me to stay tonight.

  Last winter, I was stuck here for 48 hours because the command didn’t want to risk on-duty staff not being able to make it back to work the next day if they went home mid-blizzard. They gave me an uncomfortable cot, and I had to share a room with someone else for the duration. But I didn’t have to go home.

  I somehow made it through the rest of my workday, despite my anxiety and sleep deprivation. After my shift was over, I went back to where I had stayed overnight last year. I was hopeful that I would be able to work something out with the corpsman who was on duty.

  Last time, I just had to show my badge and CAC card, and they gave me an assignment for the night. Of course, the last ti
me I was here, every department in the hospital had people assigned to stay the night because of the blizzard. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try again; the worst they could say was no. Just act like you’re upset that you have to stay here overnight, and they won’t question it, I told myself in a pep talk.

  I walked up to the desk where the corpsman on duty was sitting. He was a young HM who clearly did not want to be here. Shockingly, I was able to bond a little with him. We both shared the same ‘dead man walking’ look of fatigue and hopelessness. He informed me that he had been sitting at this very same desk for 26 hours now.

  I commiserated with him as he explained that he can’t leave until someone shows up to relieve him, but there was some kind of mistake on the schedule. The corpsman who was on the schedule to relieve him actually got out of the military a week ago. This being the military, he was told to cover the next shift, resulting in over 24 hours of duty. That sucked.

  “My relief is due to be here any minute. She’s only two hours late,” he told me sarcastically, not looking hopeful at all about that. He was more than willing to assign me one of the open rooms for the night and couldn’t care less about whether I was actually authorized to do so. As he put it, “Who in their right mind would stay here willingly?”

  I was consumed again by dark thoughts when I entered the room and the door clicked shut behind me. There was an uncomfortable cot, a ratty old chair that had seen better days, and a wobbly looking desk, but at least I had a single room this time. The light was giving off a yellowish glow on the dingy white brick walls. I felt like this room matched the state of my soul at this moment.

  I shrugged out of my white coat and draped it carefully on the back of the chair so it wouldn’t wrinkle. I slipped my shoes off but my kept my socks on after taking a look at the cold tiled floor.

  Knowing that I would never be able to sleep without some help, I pulled a bottle of Unisom out of my bag. I swallowed double the normal human dose with the help of a sip of warm water from the bottle that had been in my bag all day. I grimaced as it went down and then laid on the cot, not even bothering to change out of my scrubs.