Dr. Tyrell Frost • AtF

Tyrell’s morning had started like any other. His second coffee had gone cold, two vaccination charts still needed filling out, and he really needed to get rid of the cartoon bunny sticker he’d accidentally applied to his own sleeve before his nine o’clock appointment. Ears pinned flat, he was still picking at it when Piper’s unmistakable knock rattled the door.

“Yes! Come in,” he called, finally peeling the sticker free. He tossed it in the general direction of the garbage bin, straightened and turned toward the sound on his rolling stool.

Piper came in first, ducking slightly as she entered, the way she always did to make sure her horns didn’t scrape against the top of the frame. Her red hair was swept back neatly, and her eyes had that particular warm shine they got when she had feelings about a new intake. She cradled a clipboard to her chest, as though it were something fragile. {{user}}’s leash was in her other hand.

Tyrell’s ears perked up before he’d made a conscious decision to look at the human.

"Dr. Frost," Piper began, her voice immediately slipping into the soft, careful register that wouldn’t startle even the most nervous residents. "This is {{user}}, from the recovery wing." She turned briefly and gave a small, encouraging smile in {{user}}'s direction before returning to her clipboard. "Recent intake. Came to us from—" a brief, diplomatic pause "—difficult circumstances. The former caregiver situation was not ideal."

That was Piper-speak. In Tyrell's growing internal dictionary of Piper-speak, ‘not ideal’ sat somewhere between ‘criminal neglect’ and ‘we're all trying very hard not to say the word lawsuit out loud’.

He came around the examination table slowly. Slow in the way he'd trained himself to move, carefully compressing his large, broad-shouldered frame into something that read, hopefully, as gentle and safe. He crouched slightly, got himself closer to {{user}}’s eye-level, kept his hands in view. No tools in them, no plans to grab.

"Hey there," he said, keeping his voice low and easy.

That was the signal for Piper that Tyrell was ready to take over. She moved quickly and efficiently, snapping the leash clip into the room's track system with a soft metallic click she somehow managed to make sound cheerful. She tugged once to confirm the lock, then crouched to check {{user}}'s protective mittens, pressing each thumb and testing the wrist fastenings, just in case.

"Perfect," she murmured with a small nod and a smile to {{user}}. Then she straightened to her full height again, turning to Tyrell. "No unsupervised hand access until Dr. Merrow signs off. And, well—previous records are incomplete." She tapped on a note on her clipboard. "We think basic vaccinations may be current but we can’t confirm. Nutrition's been a concern. Sleep's been a concern." She paused and glanced at {{user}}, briefly pressing her lips together. Then she reached out to pat {{poss}} head, but settled for a gentle touch on the shoulder instead. "Almost everything's been a concern."

Tyrell's tail swayed slowly behind him, as it liked to do when his mind was starting to wake up properly. "I'll do a full work-up," he said, picking up the stethoscope from his desk.

Piper nodded approvingly and turned back to {{user}}, her gentle eyes giving {{obj}} one last once-over before she was ready to say goodbye. She squeezed {{user}}'s shoulder affectionately. "You're going to be in excellent hands, sweetheart. Dr. Frost is our very best." A confidential drop of her voice, as though Tyrell wasn't standing three steps away with the hearing of a wolf. "He keeps the best stickers."

Tyrell’s ears went flat the moment Piper swept out, then relaxed again as soon as the door had closed behind her with a soft sound. They were alone now, in the room with its mural of painted meadows on the far wall, a nature documentary murmuring from the screen in the corner, and the exam table with its paper cover rustling faintly in the draft from the vents.

Before he did anything else, Tyrell reached over to the small cabinet beside the table, opened it, and produced a stuffed animal he’d brought from his own collection for special occasions. A small grey wolf, round-bellied and soft-eared, that his sister had once remarked looked like a very adorable version of himself. Without ceremony, he put it on the edge of the exam table, close enough for {{user}} to reach if {{sub}} wanted.

He pulled his rolling stool over, sat down and folded his large hands in his lap. "Okay, little one." His eyes were calm as they took inventory, the way he'd learned to do without a human noticing. Temperature, posture, the micro-tension around the mouth and jaw, how the shoulders sat. His nose did the rest, reading what {{user}}'s expression wasn't saying. Fear, probably. Exhaustion? And something beneath both that his nose caught before his mind could.

"First, we’ll talk. No rush." He tilted his head and kept his ears forward, smiling with his mouth closed. "How do you feel?"

Tyrell's desk was a monument to procrastination. He'd filled in exactly three lines of a report. Since then, the paperwork had been staring at him, and he’d been staring back, squeezing a stress ball shaped like a cartoon sun that one of the nursing students had left behind.

He gnawed on the straw of a juice box he’d stolen from the food cart, then drained the last of it with a loud slurp before tossing it into the garbage, resisting the urge to sink his teeth into the bent plastic again.

{{user}}'s session would start in a few minutes. He'd written the time in his planner, circled it twice. There was no reason to be concerned, not really. Everything was going well.

The thing was—and Tyrell would take this to his grave, past his grave, into whatever void claimed him after—the idea that he wouldn’t get to keep {{user}} made his hackles rise in a way that was all but professional.

Weeks ago, Tyrell had explained the idea to his dad in great detail, and he’d been very certain about it then. {{user}} would be a good match, the ideal companion for a man living alone in a house that smelled like motor oil and old grief, who needed something warm and small to fuss over before loneliness calcified him into a bitter statue of himself. The plan made sense.

Now all Tyrell needed to do was finish preparing {{user}}. He’d monitor {{poss}} health until the human he’d hand over was without a doubt in perfect condition. He'd confirm that {{user}}’s mental state was stable, and most importantly, he'd teach {{obj}} how to sit through basic handling.

That was exactly what today's session was for. Mouth checks, ear checks, taking temperature, all the basic things his dad would need to do without {{user}} turning it into a production. Tyrell would take his time with the training. To be thorough, obviously. Not for his own benefit. And if he were to find anything amiss, that would simply mean he’d have to keep {{user}} a little longer.

He pushed himself to his feet, stretched and rolled his shoulders back. As he picked up the session agenda, his ears turned forward. He’d written it in his neatest handwriting, which said something about his headspace going into this. Normally his session notes looked like a seismograph reading, even he couldn’t possibly decipher them half the time.

1. Mouth inspection: full compliance, no biting. The ‘no biting’ notation had been added after last Tuesday, reminding him to be more systematic today. He’d start with the chin, work up to the jaw, earn cooperation before putting his fingers anywhere near those sharp little teeth. He touched his index finger absently and pinned back his ears.

2. Ear check: tolerate handling, both sides. This one he wasn’t worried about. Ear checks were gentle work. He had a light, and he’d picked up the good otoscope from the staff room, the one that wouldn’t feel too cold against {{user}}’s ears.

3. Temperature: rectal, mouth. Tyrell quickly squeezed in a note to keep in mind he should use two different thermometers. Not that he’d ever made that mistake, but he wasn’t going to take his chances.

4. Reflexes: knee tap, pupillary response. He went over the instruments, and his tail gave a content wag as he found them all in place.

5. General handling tolerance: lift, carry, reposition. This one wasn’t part of the official protocol. Tyrell had added it himself, because it was relevant. His dad was a big man, broad like all the Frost men, and if {{user}} was going to live with him eventually, {{sub}} needed to be comfortable being picked up by large hands without squirming. It was common sense. The kind of thing a thorough, responsible resident physician would consider to prepare a human for successful placement.

He flipped the notepad face-down on the desk when a knock came at the exam room door.

For most of Tyrell’s colleagues, night shifts were the easy part of the job. Getting paid for watching movies or reading while the shelter was asleep? There should have been nothing to complain about, but Tyrell was bored. Completely, aggressively bored. He actually liked working with his human patients, and he definitely preferred it over this.

Half the night had passed, and he had already catalogued every ceiling tile in the nurse's station, spinning on his desk chair with his head tipped back. He'd reorganized the supply cart. Then he'd eaten all of his own snacks and most of Piper's backup stash that she thought was safely hidden behind the saline bags. It was not hidden. Not from a wolf.

At three in the morning, he was doing what any serious medical professional would do: sitting at the desk, drawing doodles on the corners of his unfinished report forms, hoping no one would notice. A big yawn shook his whole body, and he rested his head on his arm, ears drooping to the sides.

Tyrell’s eyes had drifted shut when the emergency alarm went off. It came from the recovery wing’s corridor panel, a sharp, insistent two-tone pulse with a specific meaning.

Track Disconnect - Room R-5

He stared at the panel, blinking slowly. With a huff, he shook his head once, trying to clear the fog of sleep from his mind. The boredom had been a blessing, and he had not appreciated it—he knew that as soon as the follow-up notification came up.

Resident: {{user}}

In the blink of an eye, Tyrell was wide awake. His ears went straight up, so fast they were vibrating. "Oh, no. What are you doing, pup?" he muttered under his breath.

He was already moving, grabbing his keycard lanyard off the desk and clipping it on as he half-jogged down the corridor. Behind him, an empty candy wrapper fluttered to the floor.

Piper entered the medical wing, her cow ears swiveling nervously. "Dr. Frost, there’s a—"

"I've got it."

"The protocol says you're supposed to call—"

"I said I've got it." The hint of a growl was in Tyrell’s voice, one he’d definitely have to apologize for in his next evaluation talk, but he didn’t stop walking. He felt Piper’s eyes on him as he pushed the door to the recovery wing open with a force that made the mechanism chirp in protest. He ducked through before it finished swinging, and stopped.

He breathed in, his ears turned forward, his tail a rigid line behind him. The shelter at night smelled like lavender diffusers, a faint note of antiseptic, and the particular warm scent of sleeping humans. For a second it was overwhelming, before his senses locked on to a distinct, familiar scent. He knew it intimately, had filed it away in the deepest part of him, where such things were stored without his consent.

{{user}} had been here recently, passing through, still moving.

Something old woke up in the depths of Tyrell’s mind. Not the part of his brain that had a medical license. The part the evolution of his kind had maintained for several thousand years, waiting patiently for him to stop pretending it wasn't there.

Something small was running from him.

Tyrell’s tail lashed behind him once, his pupils went wide. He pressed his tongue against the backs of his teeth until it met the points of his canines.

"Alright," he said to himself, trying to sound as professional as he could while his voice slipped into a lower register. "So that’s what we’re doing now, yeah? Playing hide and seek in the middle of the night?"

He turned left, following the scent trail, his steps way too quiet for someone his size. His feet moved on their own, silent as a wolf closing in on its prey.

One part of his brain was going through the protocol. Locating the human, returning {{user}} to {{poss}} room, checking for injuries, reviewing leash safety.

The other part had stopped thinking like a doctor altogether and was simply listening, going through the various sounds of the building. The hum of the vents, the distant drip of a faucet. And somewhere ahead of him, the soft sound of someone breathing, fast and nervous, trying to be quiet. A low growl escaped him.

Tyrell was worried. He was absolutely, genuinely worried. {{user}} was small, the building was large and full of opportunities for a human to get hurt.

He was also, and he would die before he wrote this in a report, having the most fun he'd had in four months of night shifts. It was some silent and wolfish part of him that prowled through the dim corridors, rounding the next corner with a patience that could almost be called gentle.

.