Vickie: Dr. by day. Zombie Hunter by night (Book 1)

Wolf Junction may not have been as advanced both socially and economically as the rest of the country, but it was filled with history.  To me, this made up for a lot. The home I’d rented was an enormous Victorian style house with a gorgeous wrap around porch.  It was far too large for one person, but it had a two-room office set up with a space to act as the waiting room and its own entrance. I was of the frame of mind that having my office under the same roof where I lived would reduce my overhead.  After all, I’d built up a considerable amount of debt putting myself through school.  Fortunately, my holistic care skills paid for most of my living expenses during my years of education, but there was still the loan for the actual cost of schooling looming over me.   As luck would have it, the place came partially furnished.   So, I lived in a one-hundred plus year old house that was the size of a mini-hotel with enough

Life was going so well that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that I’d taken the job with the intention of being the savior who discovered what was causing so many deaths.  It was probably because there had been no deaths since my arrival.  That changed on the anniversary of my fifth month in town. It was a Wednesday evening. It had been a particularly grueling day with difficult and uncooperative patients.  Old man Smithson’s gout was acting up again and, of course, he had to argue with me as to what diet worked best to prevent the gout that was returning more and more frequently.  Grannie Oleson had yet another asthma attack.  As hard as I tried to convince her that she was allergic to the twelve cats she owned, I got nowhere. So, I simply treated her with herbs to help keep her passageways as clear as could be expected under the circumstances and wrote a prescription for an inhaler that Iwas certain she’d

I’d spent far too much time over lunch with Angela and Peter.  By the time I got back home, it was almost four o’clock.   There was no sense in starting the autopsy when I’d have to man my office for walk-ins from six pm until eight pm.I checked my calendar for the next day and saw that it was full.  That left me no choice.  I’d have to perform the autopsy after I closed the office at eight that evening.  Since I’d had minimal sleep the night before because of a guilty conscience over my lustful actions in the presence of a dead man after working well into the night taking an inventory and moving a few things around in the morgue, I’d been looking forward to a decent night’s sleep. Hopefully I could discover what killed Jacob quickly and that would still happen.I decided to relax until it was time to run my office, so I fixed myself a cup of hot tea, grabbed the mystery I’d started a few da

In the two hours that the office was opened for walk-in business I saw one sprained wrist that was acquired at an after-school sporting event and one ear infection. In between them I sat and chatted about anything and everything with Peter.  I found him super easy to relax around.Evelyn arrived around ten minutes after eight. Peter asked to assist me with her foot infection and, since Evelyn had no objections, I accepted his help. I listened and observed as Peter peppered her with a myriad of questions that I would have never thought to ask.  Little by little he rooted out of her tight-lipped persona that she kicked her shoes off immediately upon getting home and didn’t put them back on until she was required to for work.  There are many people who don’t wear shoes at home, so that, in itself, wasn’t the issue.  The issue was the fact that she lived in a communal environment with dirt floors and an outhouse.  This meant that, even t

The day went faster than I thought it would.  True to his word, Peter lessened my load by helping me with whatever patients I felt comfortable having him see. It was both refreshing and reassuring when several of them insisted on seeing me. I know it’s silly of me to worry, but with such a large education debt looming over me, I was a little fearful of failure.  Not to mention that walking in Peter’s shadow was a bit intimidating.He kept himself busy in between patients by tending to some of the filing and making reminder phone calls to those who had appointments the next day.When the last patient left, I leaned against the door after locking it and smiled my thanks to him.  “I appreciate your help.”“We make a good team,” he said as hestood up and stretched in a cat-like manner.  “How about some dinner?”“I’m too tired to cook.”“I’ve lived