Chapter 4: Dr. Sloane Davis

[SLOANE]

The desk was organized because I'd organized it.

Three patient files. Two research summaries. One message from the county healer's office that could wait until Thursday. The photograph on the corner—three boys, taken last October, all three squinting into too much sun—was the only thing on my desk without a function.

I kept it there anyway.

Evelyn knocked twice and came in without waiting, which was why I'd hired her.

"Lunches are packed." She set a coffee on the edge of the desk without being asked. "Kai's asking if wolves can get colds or if it's only humans."

"Tell him it's complicated."

"He'll want a follow-up."

"I know."

She left. I heard her on the stairs—her particular rhythm, efficient and unhurried, the sound of someone who understood the household's architecture because I'd explained it once and she'd never needed it explained again.

The duplex worked because I'd designed it to. Clinic entrance on the east side, family entrance on the west, the boys' school two blocks north. Patients never crossed paths with school pickups. Records stayed in the lower level. Everything above the second stair landing belonged to us.

Took me fourteen months to build it the way I wanted.

Worth every one of them.

I could hear all three of them before I reached the kitchen.

"—already said I was going first—"

"You said it. I didn't agree to it."

A pause. Then a third voice, quieter, cutting across both of them: "If you're still arguing when Mom comes down, neither of you goes first."

The other two went quiet.

I stopped in the doorway. My eldest was already seated, his lunch bag zipped, posture straight, watching his brothers with the calm expression of someone who'd already run the calculation and knew the outcome. Rhys's son had his arms crossed but was uncrossing them. My youngest was reading something at the table and had said his piece without looking up.

"Ready?" I asked.

Three heads turned.

The middle one was already crossing the kitchen toward me. He hugged me the way he hugged everything—full commitment, no hesitation, like it hadn't occurred to him that there might be a reason not to. I smoothed his hair back.

"I have a question about bone density," my youngest said, eyes still on his book.

"Before eight a.m.?"

"It came up."

"After school."

He accepted this with the expression of someone filing it for later. Which he would.

The school run was six minutes on foot. Three boys, three different speeds, one consistent argument that changed topic daily but kept the same shape.

Outside the gate, the butcher's wife waved from across the street. "My sister said the treatment worked," she called over. "Said you were the only one who figured out what it was."

"I'm glad she's better." I kept moving.

Mrs. Adina from the herbalist two doors down was unlocking her storefront. "Dr. Davis—do you have any availability this week?"

"Thursday afternoon. Call Evelyn."

Six minutes. Four greetings. Two referrals before eight fifteen.

Nobody asked about anything before five years ago.

There was nothing before five years ago. Not here.

The morning clinic moved fast.

A sprained wrist misread as a clean break by someone who hadn't checked the secondary alignment. Straightforward, once you looked at the right thing. A child with a fever whose mother had already tried two treatments. Fixed inside forty minutes.

The third patient was interesting—a case another healer had passed along with a note that said uncertain etiology. I reviewed the file, asked four questions, and had an answer before the consultation ended.

I dictated my notes while Evelyn prepped the afternoon schedule.

A message came through on the clinic line around noon. Dr. Jackson. Brief: Call me Thursday. New compound results. You'll want to see these.

I marked it in the calendar. Jackson had given me the referral network that built the first six months of this practice. Everything after that, I'd built myself.

I was reviewing afternoon files when the youngest walked past the open clinic door on his way to the kitchen.

He stopped. Turned back. Looked at the diagram I had open on the desk—a cross-section of a wolf's healing response under stress.

The way he tilted his head to examine it, slight angle, sharp focus, like he was already pulling it apart and sorting the pieces—

I looked away first. Picked up my pen.

'Don't,' Eira said softly.

'I know.'

I didn't look back up until he'd moved on.

Dinner was loud. Homework louder.

The eldest organized his work before starting it, files laid out left to right. The middle one needed the table cleared completely before he could think, which the youngest regarded as an unreasonable request given his current project required six open books. This eventually became a negotiation, which my eldest mediated with an efficiency that made Evelyn press her lips together to keep from laughing.

I settled it in two sentences.

Bedtime took forty minutes, which was fast for a Tuesday.

After, the house went quiet.

I sat back at my desk. Same position as the morning, same files—now with additions. The photograph was still there. The clinic light threw everything in sharp relief.

I read. Annotated. Noted three things to follow up before the week ended.

'You built this,' Eira said.

'Yes.'

I had. Every piece of it. The compound suppressants that kept my scent clean and the bond's absence livable. The name on the door. The reputation that spread to packs I'd never visited. The nanny who knocked twice. The boys asleep upstairs who didn't know the shape of what I'd carried to get here.

I chose to stay.

That distinction mattered.

The courier arrived at nine forty-seven.

Professional. Routine. He handed me a sealed envelope with the practiced indifference of someone who'd made fifty deliveries today and had stopped thinking about the contents.

Interpack Medical Council. Embossed at the top left corner.

I studied the seal for a moment.

Then I set it on the corner of my desk, beside the photograph.

Picked up my pen. Returned to my notes.

The envelope sat there under the clinic light, unopened, while I kept working—exactly like the future could wait until I was ready to look at it.