Filed to story: The Healer and The Wolf PDF Free
Should I call the rangers? I would if the wolf was still there when I got home. After all, I would be gone for ten hours total. Plenty of time for him to sleep and move right along. It wasn’t like he could get into my house. I’d locked it up tightly to make sure my kitties were safe. If anything ever happened to them, I wouldn’t survive it-a sobering thought, and one I tried not to return to.
Instead, I focused on my work, which was much easier to do before Tiffany sauntered up to me, looking like the cat that ate the cream. I’d worked with her long enough to know exactly what that meant, and I braced myself for whatever bullshit she was about to lay on me.
“Hey, Venny girl!”
“It’s Ven,” I corrected tersely. We had this conversation at least twice a week, yet Tiffany always came up with new and annoying ways to butcher my nickname. I didn’t need any other nicknames. I had one. And while I didn’t mind some people being a little informal, Tiffany wasn’t coming from that direction. She never was.
“Righty-o. Hey, listen, there was a major blowout in the men’s bathroom.”
“You’re on bathroom duty today,” I said, already seeing exactly where the conversation was going.
“Yeah, I know, but I’m going on lunch, so I can’t do it. Need you to cover for me.”
“No-” I started, but she was already bounding off.
“Thank you so much for your help. See you later! Toodles!”
I stood, fuming, and figured I had two options. One, I could do it, and it would be handled, and the entire front of the store wouldn’t stink. Two, I could not do it, wait for Tiffany to get back from her lunch break, cause a whole bunch of drama with her, have the front area of the store stink for goodness knows how long, then get in trouble for not being a team player,
Life was really fucking unfair sometimes.
Grumbling to myself, I got the cleaning supplies and trudged into the men’s bathroom.
Blow out wasn’t an exaggeration. I had no idea how we had grown adults coming into our store who didn’t know how to use the bathroom, but I did my best to breathe slowly through my mask and not think about it too hard.
Who knew, maybe the guy had gotten sick unexpectedly? Or maybe his coffee had hit on the wrong way. I always tried to look for the best in people, but more often than not, the best in people wasn’t all that great to begin with.
At least I got to listen to my music. I couldn’t do that when stocking the shelves because then I wouldn’t hear customers approaching, so my ears were perpetually tortured with the tinny oldies playing on the overhead speakers. But in the bathroom? I could rock out to some, well, rock, pop, and pretty much anything I wanted to.
I was doing exactly that when someone tapped me on my shoulder. I nearly jumped through my own skin, letting out an undignified yelp. Rolling around, I saw it was yet another grumpy old man. So far this week, I was 0 for 1, and the expression on the man’s face told me he would not be improving that ratio.
“This is the men’s room,” he blathered like I wasn’t aware.
“I know, sir. I did put a cleaning sign outside the?-“
“Get out of here. You can’t be in here.”
“Sir, I have to clean?-“
“This is ridiculous. They don’t have a male worker to do this?”
“Not right now, no?-“
“Right, sure. And if I talk to the manager, I’m sure they’ll tell me the same thing?”
Did this guy think I was getting my jollies from cleaning the bathroom? It was my job.
What was it about the suburbs that made people think they could treat service workers like the scum of the earth?
“Yes, he will,” I said, already packing up the cleaning gear. “You have a good day, sir.”
I cleared out of the bathroom and bristled for the rest of my shift. I really could have used my vacation to destress from all the stupid people I had to deal with, but no, that was postponed, yet again.
Naturally, I wasn’t exactly feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed when my manager approached me at the end of my shift.
“Got a complaint about you.”
I sighed. “He was a pleasant one, wasn’t he?”
“A real piece of work, for sure. But listen, Vanessa, you gotta start standing up for yourself. Nobody likes a doormat.”
A doormat?
I stared at him, trying to calculate exactly how to reply to that, but he was already sauntering off.
I wasn’t a doormat. Was I? Yeah, I’d ended up cleaning the bathroom when it was Tiffany’s responsibility, but it needed to be done. And, yeah, I’d let Chuck move my approved time off, but that also needed to be done. Was I supposed to be a team player or not?
God, I hated my job.
My thoughts were so stormy on my bike ride home that I somehow forgot about the wolf. All I wanted was to be in my greenhouse with my plants. Belatedly, I remembered the space might be occupied.
I hoped not. While the wolf situation was as cool as it was mindboggling, I had shit to do, and I wanted to decompress in a space that had always been wonderful to me.
Hard to do with an apex predator in it.
Once I was home, I fed the cats and changed out of my uniform. Apparently, the drama from that morning was continuing, because Fork’s bowl had been pushed all the way into the far corner of the kitchen and had a crumpled paper towel in it. That had Mudpie written all over it. She was a real sweetheart most of the time, but if she felt that anyone had crossed her, well… she could be a little bit of a drama queen.
I had no idea where she got that trait from.