10:30 p.m.

Baltimore, MD

The 13th Floor Bar

Pamela Loftin was in very high spirits as she savored the burning smoothness of her favorite Kentucky bourbon. She had just graduated from medical school and was beginning work on her new residency in a few short days. Pam was definitely looking forward to finally seeing patients and leaving school for good, but she was worried about what she was getting into…

“Hey! There you are!”

Pam looked up to see her best friend Annie and her long-time boyfriend Ryo saddling up to her table. They had all come out to celebrate her new job. Annie insisted on a full night’s worth of partying and Ryo, just as much Pam’s friend as Annie’s boyfriend, promised to pay for the whole night as his graduation gift.

“Hey guys, thanks for coming out. I think I’m going to need a few more of these,” Pam said, as she held up her glass in a mock toast, “just to get the courage to show up to Dr. Brown’s on Monday.”

Annie plopped in her chair with her usual exuberance, “My God, Pam I know…I just can’t believe you’re doing it. It’s such a specialized field of medicine--”

“It sounds pretty shady to me,” Ryo remarked as he headed toward the bar to get the next round.

Annie rolled her small aqua eyes at her boyfriend’s retreating back, “Ignore him, what does he know about underground medicine.”

Pam slapped her best friend on the arm, trying to remind her sometimes whisper challenged friend that what she was doing wasn’t exactly normal or even legal. Her mentor, Dr. Brown, had told her that she shouldn’t tell anyone about the arrangement, for her own and others’ safety. Pam couldn’t keep a secret from Annie and Annie couldn’t keep a secret from Ryo.

“Okay,” Annie said, “So from what you told me over the phone, you’re going to be like their back up Doc?”

“Well yeah, if Dr. Brown is out or is called to an emergency, then I would run the clinic,” Pam explained, “You know they’re really not allowed to go to medical school, they won’t pass the blood test.”

Annie nodded her understanding. Everybody knew about the Transmission Laws and how the preternaturals were not allowed to attend medical school or practice. Lycanthropy and Vampirism were all transmittable via blood contamination, so any type of job where the spread of blood was possible, the Transmission Laws required a blood test. The test looked for gene markers that only lycanthropes and vampires possessed, and were required for all doctors, nurses and lab techs every six months. If a test turned up positive, you were put on a debarred list and of course, had to prepare for a life as a shape shifter or vampire.

Dr. Brown had only avoided losing his license because he happened to be a chimera, (the only living one in the known preternatural world) and the test wasn’t equipped to catch his particular gene markers.

Pam still remembered the day Dr. Brown pulled her aside at the end of her surgery clinical rotation.

Flashback

“Oh Ms. Loftin,” Dr. Brown said as Pam prepared to head out the door of the hospital, “Would you meet me in 301 before you leave? I want to go over Mrs. Askew’s X-rays.”

Pam quickly ran through a host of possible symptoms she could have missed when diagnosing the woman’s fractured femur earlier today. Having Dr. Brown “go over” any of her work immediately sent panic through her system, but she quickly answered, “Sure.”

Five minutes later Dr. Brown stepped into the empty X-ray room with a swiftness of feet that belied his 56 years of age. The man didn’t look a day over 35, and a number of Pam’s fellow medical students had a crush on their brilliant mentor. Pam considered him more of wizened tutor. She just couldn’t bring herself to gush like a schoolgirl over a man who was old enough to be her father.

Dr. Brown closed the door, dimmed the lights, and hustled over to the far left viewer with Mrs. Askew’s ghostly leg pictures in hand.

“I didn’t miss anything, did I?” Pam wondered aloud.

Dr. Brown crossed his arms and sighed at the viewer with an exhausted huff. Then he turned to Pam with a determined look in his eye that she had only seen when watching him try to decipher the latest medical mystery.

“Pam, what I am about to tell you is privileged. You cannot repeat anything I am about to say to anyone. Will you give me your oath of secrecy?”

Complete taken off guard, Pam could only respond, “I give you my vow.”

Dr. Brown nodded, then without any further ado told Pam his story.

“I am a lycanthrope. I am known as a chimera, a type of lycanthrope so rare that the blood test hasn’t been engineered to recognize the markers yet. The preternatural healers have died off since the early silver tests of the 19th century. We’ve had no sophisticated medical knowledge and I am one of the last still practicing with modern medicine.

“I know you must be wondering why I have not voluntarily resigned, to avoid the possible transmission to my patients. As a chimera, I hold many lycanthrope strains in my bloodstream, so many in fact, that the virus cannot be transmitted through blood contamination alone.

“What I’m asking of you is highly unusual; it is a necessary but still unpopular decision I have made to keep the preternatural community alive through the latest internal and external conflicts. I’m asking you to join me in my practice, a residency in underground medicine, if you will. If we are to survive the threats from Genesis 9, we have to start recruiting humans with modern surgical medical knowledge.

“Pam, you are the brightest student I have taught in the past 20 years. You have a knack for emergency surgery and the perfectly honed technique of a veteran surgeon. If you are willing, I can introduce you to the most amazing mysteries of science, the opportunity to research preternatural medicine without resorting to lab rats in Africa. I’ll also pay you twice as much money as any first year resident.”

Pam began to say something when Dr. Brown cut her off.

“Before you answer, you should know that there are dangers as well. Lycanthropes and Vampires live and work with humans everyday, but we don’t exactly advertise our identities. You’ll have to help run my underground clinic, you may be called to Elite dens and have to deal with hostile reactions to a human healer. You could even be put in the line of fire if Genesis 9 were to attack. However, I think you will find the work intellectually stimulating and I trust in your abilities. Please weigh your decision carefully.

You’ll have the next six hours to call my cell phone and let me know of your decision. At the end of those six hours, if I haven’t heard from you, a vampire will find you and erase your memory of this conversation.”

Seconds later, Pam was left alone in the X-ray room with a million questions running through her mind. How was a vampire supposed to find her? Why just six hours to make a life altering decision? Dr. Brown was a lycanthrope!

Her mind reeling from this conversation, Pam left the hospital and headed home to contemplate her choice. Five hours and fifty-three minutes later, Pam had decided to take the plunge and enter into the strange and unfamiliar territory of the preternatural world.

End Flashback

Pam was brought back to reality when Ryo dropped three beers in front of her and took a seat next to Annie. She smiled at her best friend and adopted brotherly figure from across the table. Being in medical school did not allow for a hopping social life. Annie and Ryo were her only friends, and considering her parents lived in Australia, her only close family as well. She was glad she had made the decision to tell them; Pam just couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with her new life as a Preter Doc without them.

“Promise us one thing,” Annie said.

Pam looked at Annie and Ryo and saw worry etched on their contrasting faces. Ryo’s deep caramel skin crinkled with strain and Annie’s porcelain visage was pinched in concern.

She nodded at both of them, “Of course, anything.”

Annie swallowed, and then said, “If you get into any trouble, and we mean ANY trouble, you’ll let us know so we can help.”

Pam smiled at her friends, “You’ll be the first to know about any weird preternatural sightings.”

Ryo laughed, “Well, you better. You know only the really human looking ones hang out during the day. I want to hear all about the first one you see with horns or a tail.”

Annie jabbed her boyfriend in the ribs, “You know she can’t tell you that stuff…doctor patient confidentiality and all that.”

“What are you talking about,” Ryo countered, “She can describe what they look like, she just can’t reveal if they have some kind of horn fungus or something…”

Pam snickered at her friends’ heated exchange and took a swig of her beer. As she got up to go to the ladies room, she couldn’t help but scan the room and see if she could spot any preternaturals in the crowd. Of course she couldn’t, most of them looked the same as any human, post-shifted horns and tails notwithstanding.

7:00 p.m.

Dr. Brown’s Underground Clinic

Pam descended the steeply sloped concrete basement stairs between two unmarked garages in the city’s depressed West side. Dr. Brown had given her very specific directions about where to go and how to get there (by taxi) and even what to wear (recommendation: jeans) and what not to wear (no perfume).

Considering the circumstances, Pam tried to achieve a professional appearance for her first big night on the job. Her shoulder length mahogany hair was clipped up in a slightly imperfect bun and she wore a simple button up black shirt. Since jeans were apparently a wardrobe necessity, she had decided to wear her favorite pair of super comfortable knee-high leather boots, just to avoid looking too casual in sneakers.

Pam’s dark gray-green eyes scanned the long dank hallway looking for the trap door supposedly hidden underneath a red and gold rug. After a few minutes of worrying she had entered the wrong building, she finally found the rug in the dim light.

She pulled at the basement hatch door and descended another set of stairs, careful to close the door and attached rug shut above her. Pam began to feel a little queasy. Dr. Brown had warned her that she would be watched from the moment she got out of the cab. She kept waiting for some vampire to mist of nothing and snap her neck for encroaching on his territory.

Finally, she found the rusty looking intercom box hanging by one cord at the end of another hallway. Following her mentor’s protocol, she hit the buzzer.

“Yes,” replied the static-ridden response.

“Uh, this is Pam Loftin. Dr. Brown asked me to--”

“Come in.”

Pam barely had time to realize she was dismissed before a door on the opposite end of the hall opened and she saw a row of yellow tinted lights blaze to life on the ceiling. Steeling herself for whatever was on the other end of that door; she followed the yellow-lit road.