Eyes on the electronic tablet in front of her, Jillian did
the math in her head. “So, you’ve been
here for… six months now?”
“That’s right,” replied her patient, who had been identified
by her tablet as Wesley Baumgartner. He
wrung his long, thin fingers together one moment, and then absent-mindedly picked
at his eyebrows the next.
Jillian winched away in disgust and hoped that he hadn’t
seen, quickly donning her professional face.
This man was one of her patients, after all. “Are you thinking of moving into more
permanent housing soon?”
Wesley’s large, watery eyes became distorted as he looked
around the extended-stay hotel room through his thick glasses. “Um… well, I suppose I could,” he replied nasally.
“But, I’m sorting of holding out that mother will change her mind and
let me move back in with her. I mean,
right now, the basement is completely unused.
It’s a waste, really.”
Shifting in the folding chair the Agency had given her,
Jillian tapped a box labeled ‘attachment issues’ on her tablet screen. “Mr. Baumgartner, I think that your mother asked
you to move out in an effort to help you rather than punish you. You have to admit, it’s hard to get by with
your… condition… while you’re living
with your mother, isn’t it?”
The thin, weasley, middle-aged man swallowed, and his eyes
seemed to flicker even faster behind his glasses. “Oh. I
was… um… wondering if you were going to bring that up.”
“Well, it is why
the Agency sent me, Mr. Baumgartner.”
Wesley seemed to sit up a little straighter in his
chair. “Oh. Really?”
Jillian noticed the man’s knees beginning to shake. “Just… um… how did the Agency expect you to…
remedy my problem?”
Remembering her training, Jillian put on her most serious
face in an effort to diffuse the situation.
“Simply to examine your living conditions and prescribe medication if I
think it’s necessary. Standard
procedure.”
Lower lip now trembling, Wesley replied, in what Jillian
would later realize was a laughable attempt at a seductive voice, “Are you sure
they didn’t send you to perform a… physical examination?”
A sliver of fear slipped into Jillian’s stomach, but it
didn’t show on her stone-cold expression.
Even so, she remembered her training, and let her right hand slip toward
her purse. “Definitely not. This is a very standard, very professional
visit. You shouldn’t be worried. This sort of thing is much more common than
you’d think, Mr. Baumgartner.”
“Please. Call me
Wesley,” Wesley said, just before leaping to his feet and lunging for
Jillian.
Adrenaline and fear filled the nurse like a hot poker placed
on her skin. Jillian leapt to her feet,
dropping her tablet and knocking her folding chair to the floor. Though she twisted away from the man, Wesley
managed to grab her wrist.
And then he licked the back of her hand.
Jillian shifted her weight, broke Wesley’s hold and, with a
twist of her hips, planted the sole of her right foot squarely into his
sternum. All the air left his lungs in a
great whuff, and the scrawny man
tumbled backward over his chair. In the
moment she had bought, Jillian snatched her purse from the floor, where it had
fallen, and produced the instrument she had reached for earlier.
A moment later, Wesley’s hands appeared on the back of the
chair as he struggled to pull himself to his feet. His previously combed-over quaff of hair was
disheveled and his glasses sat skewed on his nose. “Wow,” he wheezed. “I know it’s been a while since I used the Venom,
but I forgot how powerful it can be!
Just not so rough from now on, okay?”
“I think you’ll find, Mr. Baumgartner, that I’m immune to
your Venom” Jillian huffed. Her
adrenaline-quickened breath made her hand rise and fall rhythmically, but still
she maintained perfect aim on Wesley with the implement in her hand. “The agency made sure to inoculate me against
every possible poison, venom, toxin, hypnosis, mind trick, and curse known to cryptohumanoid
kind. So if I were you, I’d not try that again.
This thing was freshly enchanted this morning.”
Wesley’s eyes widened in fear at the red-handled,
ruby-tipped wand in Jillian’s hand.
“Oh. Oh, no. I’m… I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “I had no idea. Oh god.
I’m so sorry. It’s just been so
long… I mean, look at me! I’m not
supposed to be like this!” Wesley
returned to his chair and put his head in his hands, which put Jillian more at
ease. Still, when she righted her chair, she made sure to place it a few more
feet away from the man, and to keep her Wand of Stupification in her hand.
“It’s not healthy for an incubus to stay holed up in his
mother’s basement,” Jillian went on professionally. When Wesley opened his mouth to protest, she
added, “no matter how good his video game collection is. Your kind survives on the sensual energy of
young women. And there are NO young
women playing video games on the internet.”
“But…,”
“NONE.”
Wesley lowered his face shamefully. “I’ve tried everything,
though. I mean, look at these pills I
ordered from an ad I got in my inbox.”
He trotted to the room’s nightstand, opened it, and produced a pair of
plastic bottles, each the size of the venti coffee Jillian had drunk that
morning. Written across the front of the
red bottles were the words ‘LOVE MACHINE’ in black letters, plastered in a
yellow comic-book style starburst.
“Mr. Baumgartner, you can’t believe everything you read on
the Internet,” Jillian said, setting down her wand long enough to make a few
quick taps on her tablet. “I’m calling
you in a prescription meant to help incubuses just like you with this very same
problem. Soon you’ll be looking like your
old self again, and you’ll have no trouble with the ladies.”
“Thank you, Ms. Nightingale,” Wesley said, looking
repentant. “Mother has been teasing me
because I look older than she does.”
“That’s because she’s a succubus, and she feeds regularly,”
Jillian replied, “and doesn’t spend all her time playing video games.” She flipped the cover on her tablet closed
and stood, collapsing her folding chair.
“Your prescription will be ready by tomorrow. Simply take it, and concern yourself more
with your health instead of how many headshots your squad is
accumulating.”
Wesley nodded, his hands clasped in his lap. “Thank you again, Ms. Nightingale. And I’m so sorry about my little…
outburst. I hope you can forgive
me.”
Despite herself, Jillian smiled. “It’s not the worst that’s happened to me in
this job. Coincidently, werewolf bites
itch like you wouldn’t believe.” With
that, she stuffed her belongings into her back, bid Wesley a final good-bye,
and left the hotel room.
On her way down the hotel’s stairs, Jillian recalled the
patients she had seen that day. A harpy
with a broken wing. A merman with a
terrible case of athlete’s flipper. A
troll, currently living under the Watterson Beltway Bridge, with fang rot. And, lastly, an antisocial incubus with a
hormonal imbalance.
Jillian Nightingale, nurse practitioner for the Agency for
the Betterment of Cryptohumanoid Health, returned to her mobile office (a.k.a.
her car). No doubt, it had been a long
day. Though she could have squeezed in
one more patient, she decided against it, and picked up her phone to text the Agency
that they’d have to find another agent to treat the Sasquatch with fleas.
The nurse left work at five o’clock, officially, and headed
in the direction of her favorite bar.
The wizard bartender had promised her a Wand of Flypaper for the pixies
she was supposed to visit tomorrow, should they try any funny business.
Just another day.
