Joey and the Fox by Hollis Shiloh

Author:Hollis Shiloh [Shiloh, Hollis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Spare Words Press
Published: 2015-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

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The next day Ralstead and Singh came by to visit. Ralstead was gentle and friendly, and a little wary of Dylan, as usual.

Singh gave us a few printed sheets of information. "We want you to try this," he said. "It's a different sort of thing—medical work. A nose like Dylan's can make a huge difference, and there's no gunfire involved."

Dylan hung his head, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said in a quiet, humiliated voice, moving the toe of one bare foot awkwardly on the kitchen floor. "I can try again. I'll do better." He glanced at me quickly, silently asking—begging—for help.

I reached out to touch his arm. "No, I think once was enough," I managed in as calm a voice as I could. It sounded gruff. What I really wanted to do was scream, "No!"

No way were they putting him through that again.

The worst of it was that I knew it would be worse doing the actual job. Sean and Tom were fairly tough old bastards, but they got extremely stressed with some of the work they had to do. They'd been involved in numerous firefights, gotten shot more than once, taken down violent criminals, and found dead children.

It was all important work, but it would break my little fox. And, while his nose was superior to all others, he wasn't up to that stuff. I didn't know if he ever would be.

I didn't want him on those front lines. I hadn't realized how strongly I felt about it till I had to watch him suffer through the noise test.

And I knew—I knew—the stress and pain and noise would be worse in the field. It broke my heart. He was trying so hard, but he wasn't in a place emotionally where he could go back to working in what was essentially a war zone.

He needed protected—by me. And the only way to do that was to give up on my dream of working with a shifter in the field.

Dylan came over and leaned his shoulder against me while I looked through the papers.

"This is some pretty deep shit," I said, impressed.

Singh nodded seriously. "Cancer detection. Studies show a sensitive nose can be trained to detect numerous cancers in the early stages by smell alone. Dylan could save a lot of lives without expensive and invasive tests that many people avoid because they can't afford them or are too scared."

He looked at us. "My mother died of cancer, so this is pretty close to my heart. We have several hospitals already on the waiting list to work with some certified shifters. You could be one of the first teams. If you can learn to detect fast-growing cancers in the early stages with any success, and find even one a month, you might help save a dozen lives a year, for as many years as you work for us. And it could be far more than that.

"Many of the people who would benefit are those who can't afford good, early medical testing because of poor health coverage.

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