The ranch was a perfect place for me to spend this weekend. Kade was on duty in the ER, so he wouldn’t be around, anyway. And I was ready to get out of my own apartment and let the Jeremiah and Shadow situation resolve itself without me around.
Finally, it had been some amount of time since I had shifted into my most common snake form and spent time with Suzy, the enormous python I particularly liked to snuggle up with when I went out to the ranch.
I wondered how Suzy would feel about being a grandmother figure to Serena, too.
For the first time, I was more excited than anxious about bringing Serena and the other infant lamias into my life.
GLORIA HADN’T BEEN thrilled at my request for time off to “work with my foster-daughter’s doctor to develop her treatment plan,” but there really hadn’t been much she could do about it—not only did I have some time off built up, but the CAP-C had a generous parental leave policy that applied to adopted and foster children, too. It would’ve been hypocritical for them not to, of course, since their entire reason for existing was the well-being of children.
And although I knew Gloria wanted to look out for me, I was irritated at her response to my decision to take in and work with these infants.
At any rate, though, there was no way for her to stop me, and after a morning meeting with the teenager who swore she had never been diagnosed as paranoid—a session in which we did not get very far since she still insisted everyone she knew was out to get her—I left for the rest of the day during my lunch break.
When I got back to my apartment, Jeremiah and Shadow were waiting eagerly.
“So what did the matriarch say?” I asked since I could tell they were both eager to let me know.
“Keeya is planning to have us meet her on Monday morning,” Jeremiah said. “We will call her early that day and ask her where to meet.”
I glanced at Shadow. She wasn’t thrilled with the arrangement, from the looks of her, but she seemed content enough to go along with it for now, anyway.
“I realize it is an imposition,” Jeremiah was saying, “but could we possibly...”
“You can stay here,” I said. “I’ll be away this weekend, but you can use my computer and contact me via that email I created for you if you need to. And I stopped by a grocery store. There should be enough supplies here to get you through the weekend—be careful, and if anything comes up, you know how to reach me.” The two nodded, and to my surprise, Jeremiah, who seemed so reticent, reached out to give me a quick hug. Shadow did not follow his example, but she did nod gravely to me and gave a half wave as I headed toward the door.
It wasn’t the clear, clean break and ending that I had been hoping for, and I wasn’t going to be able to tell Kade about those two the next time I talked to him as I had hoped, but it looked like their situation was wrapping up fairly soon. At any rate, I didn’t think I needed to worry about them over the weekend. I hadn’t seen any sign of werewolf surveillance since going to Kade’s house, and I assumed if they suspected the hyena and Hunter had reached out to me, they would be watching me pretty closely. Just to be sure, I engaged my reptilian senses on the way out to my parking spot.
Nothing. I headed off to the hospital feeling pretty confident that everything here was going to turn out okay.
Shows what I know.
AT THE HOSPITAL, DR. Jimson helped me gear up for Serena. He had been glad to learn that I was taking her to my parents’ ranch—even happier to discover that my father was a herpetologist. “So you’ll have everything you need for a juvenile serpent, I presume,” he said. I nodded—anything I didn’t have, Dad certainly would.
“I’m more concerned about what to do if she shifts into a human infant form.” My hands tightened into fists at the thought of it—not so much that I was worried about dealing with the baby, but this baby had come quite a bit early for a human, and I was worried that there might be some human infant difficulties that she would have to deal with.
I knew premature human babies often had trouble. Right? God, it had been so long since I had taken my child development courses that I could hardly remember. I knew that some of them ended up with pretty severe developmental delays, but professionally, I tended not to see them until they were in school. I sometimes got the younger sibling of one of my clients in for a family session, but my work mostly dealt with children five years and up.
Dr. Jimson was watching me with a slight smile. “Dr. Nevala was down here earlier making sure we had everything ready to go for you on that account,” he said. I blinked, startled by the comment. “Kade was here?”
Jimson smiled wider, and said, “Fluttering around every bit as nervous as any new father.”
I didn’t even answer that. I didn’t know what to say, for one thing. Like a “new dad?” Not, apparently, like a “supportive... whatever.”
I brushed the thought aside. I’d deal with it later. “What did you come up with?” I asked.
“First of all, we’re going to send her with you in a fairly standard terrarium with a warming lamp. I’ll help you secure it in the front passenger seat where you can keep an eye on it. I’m also having a traditional children’s car seat installed in the back seat. I’ll give you a quick lesson in how to use it, and then, if she shifts while you are driving out there, you should pull over immediately and move her from the terrarium to the infant seat.”
I didn’t even know what to say to that. The thought of her shifting while I was out on the highway made my head spin and my stomach clench. Surely she wouldn’t do that, though. Right?
Suddenly I wished I had waited until Kade could come with me. At least then I would’ve had someone else in the car to keep an eye on Serena.
Plus, I wouldn’t have minded seeing some of this new-father behavior for myself.
Dr. Jimson was still speaking. “I’m also sending a monitor for her heart rate and oxygen level. If she shifts while you are out at the ranch, you will need to hook her up to this and keep track of it. You’ll have a small oxygen tank that you can use if she needs it as you bring her back into town.” He pointed out each of these items as he went through them, and I found myself nodding almost by rote, overwhelmed by all the possible things that might happen. Terrified by what might go wrong.
Dr. Jimson pulled out an infant-sized doll, complete with floppy head and arms, from a cabinet that ran along the side of the room.
“This is our CPR doll. We’ll use her to show you how to hook everything up and what to do in case of an emergency.”
Luckily, I was certified in CPR—it was a requirement of my job. That part didn’t take long at all.
As we went through the various other options, I snapped photos to use in case I ended up having to replicate any of the placement for these devices. Really, it didn’t look like it would be too difficult, and when Dr. Jimson had me practice for myself, it was all easy enough—on a perfectly still doll. I didn’t know how well it would work with a squirming infant.
I strapped the doll into the car seat a couple of times to show that I knew how to do it and pulled my car around to a side entrance, where we were unlikely to be seen by any human patients. There, one of the nurses, Kelly, loaded the terrarium into my car, buckling it into the front seat. I drove away from the hospital slowly, more anxious behind the wheel than I had been since I was a teenager learning to drive.