"Yes, doctor, it's a dragon,"

"Yes, doctor, it's a dragon," I replied, my growing frustration at all the damned delays beginning to leak into my voice "and he's going to be a dead dragon if we don't get to work right now."

The vet blinked at me for a long moment, then gave his head a sharp shake. "Yes. Yes, of course." He rubbed at his forehead for a moment, then looked back to Kaa'saht. "Okay," he said, seemingly to himself, then walked over to the young dragon's still form. With a hand that trembled slightly, he traced the damage. "Ye gods," he exclaimed at last "what the. . . ." He glanced back at me, but reconsidered whatever he was going to ask me when he saw my face. He licked his lips, then nodded slightly as he straightened. "These are severe injuries. I'm going to need to call in my team," he stated, but I shook my head.

"Sorry, sir, but I can't let you do that," I responded.

His eyes sparked with anger. "Look," he flared "I don't think I can handle this by myself. I'm going to need help here, and if I don't get it there's a very good chance this . . . creature is going to die."

I closed my eyes for a moment, breathed in, then let it out in a long sigh. "I understand, sir, and I won't hold you responsible for the results. But I'm the only help you're going to get."

He drew himself to his full height, folded his arms and glared at me. I just stood there, returning his gaze, the .45 still in my hand. Finally he sighed, shaking his head disgustedly. "Let's get washed up. And," he pointed to the weapon "put that thing away."

I hesitated. "Do I have your word?" I asked.

"Of course you have my word! Now let's get busy."

Doctor Clarke stomped off to a nearby sink, already pulling off and casting aside his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. I stared after him, looked down at my weapon, then tucked it back under my belt and went to join him.

The hours that followed were bad. Very bad. The doctor was forced to resort to 1800s-style medicine, as he couldn't use anything out of the drug cabinet for fear of killing his patient. In addition, there were other things, things that brought exclamations of amazement from the good doctor, and for me turned a suspicion into a certainty.

Needle, string, the occasional clamp, everything in sight soaked-down with ethanol in the hope it would kill anything that would try to gain a foothold in Kaa'saht's injuries. Slowly, the last of the bleeding was staunched, the wounds were laboriously closed. It was almost dawn by the time the last stitch was made, the last length of surgical tape was slapped into place. In the aftermath both Doctor Clarke and myself just stood there looking at each other, covered in gore, our faces gray with fatigue. "Two days," he said at last, his voice hoarse. "If he makes it through the next two days. . . ." He trailed off, made a weary gesture.

I nodded, the motion almost sending me staggering in my fatigue. "Now I know why medical guys get paid so much," I started, equally hoarse. "Damn; that was like combat."

"Yeah, it is, sometimes," he gave me a sharp glance, then nodded and looked at his patient. "There should have been no way he could have survived all that, but. . . ."

I chuckled tiredly. "Dragons are tough," I replied. "Damned tough."

"I believe it." By unspoken consent we moved over to a nearby set of cheap plastic lawn chairs, slumped into them. Clarke let his head loll backwards for a bit, but eventually lifted it again to eye me speculatively. "I don't suppose. . . .?"

I looked at him for several long, silent moments, then felt my lips curve up into a small, tight smile. "No, Doctor; I'm afraid not. Maybe someday."

"'Someday?'"

"Yeah, someday. When people no longer consider a killer of infants to be a saint."

Clarke gave me a puzzled look at first, but then his face grew pensive. Finally he changed the subject. "So; what happens now?"

I smiled again. "We clean up, you leave, I take my friend out of here, and everyone forgets it ever happened."

The doctor seemed a bit surprised by that, and his eyes flicked involuntarily to the heavy-caliber automatic still tucked beneath my belt. I caught that glance and chuckled grimly. "That would be counter-productive, sir," I replied to the unspoken question. "If you disappeared, there would be an investigation, which is something I would rather avoid. On the other hand, if you were foolish enough to try to tell people what happened here tonight, all that would happen is your reputation would be destroyed, and you quite possibly get carted off to the state hospital."

The aging veterinarian thought about it for a moment, then chuckled as well. "You're right; that's exactly what would happen. 'Poor Doctor Clarke, he's finally gone 'round the bend,'" he mimicked, then shook his head ruefully and sighed. He glanced upward at the building's high roofline, where a skylight was glowing with the pale light of early morning. "Well, looks like we had better get started on that cleanup."

It didn't take long; there was a hose nearby that was just for this sort of thing, and a big drain in the middle of the floor cheerfully sucked down all the runoff. I insisted all the medical waste go into one of those plastic biohazard drums that places like this usually had sitting around. The good doctor, obviously thinking of DNA samples, looked quite disappointed, but said nothing.

Finally, everything was fully scrubbed-down, leaving only Kaa'saht's still-inert form as the only clue we had ever been there. I gave everything a careful looking-over, nodded to myself. "Time to go," I said at last.

Doctor Clarke glanced up at the skylight again, now shining with the first rays of the sun. "Although where you're going to go with a creature this large, I haven't a clue. You can't possibly move him and not be seen, you know."

I gave the doctor an evil smile. "I do the impossible on a daily basis, Doctor."

This earned me what started out as a skeptical look, but then Clarke glanced at Kaa'saht and snorted. "I don't doubt that," he said wryly "not one little bit." He paused then, still looking at me, his expression growing thoughtful. Finally he continued. "You know, when I first started to study medicine, I thought it was the most wonderful profession to be in, and I was going to 'save the world' with what I knew."

He shook his head, chuckled with quiet cynicism. "Two years as a combat medic in Vietnam cured me of that." He sighed, his shoulders slumping tiredly. "I moved over to veterinary practice then, because after that, every time I looked at a human body, well. . . ." Clarke fell silent for a long moment, his eyes gazing into the distance. Finally he looked at Kaa'saht, then back to me, and smiled slightly. "Thank you," he said quietly.

I held his gaze, then slowly nodded. "Time to go, Doc. Thank you, as well; we won't forget."

The vet's smile grew a little wider at that. He hesitated for a moment, then offered me a freshly-scrubbed hand. After a hesitation of my own, I took it. We stood there for a second or two more, then without another word he turned and walked away, soon lost to sight amid the maze of cabinets, pens, equipment, and partitions.

I waited until I heard the door leading back to the front entrance slam shut, then turned and surveyed my sleeping charge. "Time to get you put to bed," I said to him as I reached for my true form. Moments later I called the sphere and stuffed it between my jaws once again, then gently lifted Kaa'saht, grabbed that drum, and thought of what should be a safe place.

Snap.