Content warning:
In this chapter, the main character is seeking treatment for a forced claim bite. His mental and physical condition and some of the treatment he receives are analogous to the experience a person might have after a sexual assault or an experience with intimate partner violence in our world.
Reading this chapter may be triggering for people who have a sensitivity to discussion of sexual assaults or intimate partner violence or people who suffer from panic disorders. Please read with caution.
The big Alpha stepped forward a pace and cleared his throat. He spoke in a low and gentle voice. “Hi Gabriel, I’m Dr. Anderson. I’d like to run through the next steps with you, so you know exactly what to expect. I’d also like to take just a quick look at the wound site to see how it’s healing. Teneisha has already explained to me that you would prefer not to be touched near the site, and that’s absolutely fine. I’m going to stand back, and have you turn for me, and let Teneisha open your gown, just at the top, so I can get an idea of what we’ll do during the revision and tell you about it. Is that something you’d be comfortable with?”
Gabriel, who had been examining the doctor’s neon green crocs decorated with little dinosaur crocs charms as he spoke, forced himself to look up into his face. He couldn’t quite manage eye contact, but settled for focusing on his chin. The doctor’s expression was kind and open, nothing hidden, not a trace of aggression or impatience or disdain. Gabriel couldn’t scent him, even from five feet away, which was a strange feeling, but it was probably a good thing, honestly. For the first few days after he was attacked, every whiff of Alpha pheromones he got had made him shiver and sweat. There are two other people in here with me, this man just wants to help me, I can’t be afraid of the people who are helping me. I can turn my shoulders, damn it. It’s not like I have to run into a burning building. It’s nothing. I can do this. Gabriel, you can do this.
“I can do this…that. I mean, yes, you can… examine me. You won’t… touch?” asked Gabriel, wanting to be sure.
“Nope, I don’t need to for now. The revision is done under anesthesia, of course, so you’re not going to have to deal with me much when you’re awake, unlike poor Teneisha here. Okay, Teneisha, if you could just spread the gown for me a little? Gabriel, can you turn your shoulder a little more towards me? Yep, that’s perfect. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got going on here.”
He moved a little closer, standing about three feet away, examining the scabbed fang marks carefully, his arms securely crossed in front of him where Gabriel could see them. Gabriel stared into his chest, breathing shallowly, but holding on, and then noticed that the button of his retractable badge holder was a photograph of a black and white kitten.
“Who’s the kitten?” Gabriel asked before he could stop himself.
“I think we’re good here, Teneisha. You can close the gown. The kitten?” Dr. Anderson smiled down at Gabriel, a little confused, and then realized what he meant. He pointed to his badge holder. “Oh, you mean Stoffel. Teneisha had this made for me for Christmas. Stoffel is my three-legged foster failure and overlord. I got conned into fostering her because she needed a little extra medical know-how after her accident, and I was so charming she fell in love with me, or maybe just with my house and my generous supply of cat treats, and decided to remain with me in perpetuity, knocking things off of my shelves for fun, trying to escape, and just generally getting into three times more trouble than a four-legged cat. That’s how she got her name, she’s just like this…”
“Honey badger?” asked Gabriel with a little smile, thinking of a video he’d once watched.
“You’ve seen that video? I’m impressed. Stoffel fans unite.”
“I love that video– the part when he teaches his girlfriend honey badger to open the gate for him is hilarious,” said Gabriel, so distracted he didn’t tense as Teneisha closed the gown over his back.
“Listen, my Stoffel has got to be that guy’s distant relative. She busted into a cabinet and somehow shoved the container of dry food down onto the floor from counter height at three am on her very first night. It weighed four times more than she did and it went everywhere. The noise scared the hell out of me– I thought someone had broken into my house. I went running downstairs with my prized display-only autographed Orioles baseball bat, looking like a clown. She’s earned her name, trust me.”
Gabriel laughed a little. Was that his first laugh since…? It was. At least laughing still feels good. “She sounds like a lot.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Dr. Anderson, smiling at her with even, white teeth. “Okay, so, from what I’m seeing, I’m very confident that you are going to have a great result. Do you want the short version or the long version of what we’ll be doing.”
“The long version, please,” said Gabriel, “otherwise I’ll use my imagination and that’s not ideal right now.”
Dr. Anderson nodded. “I’m the same way. I always want to know more. So, if I explain too much or not enough, just hold up a hand to stop me, okay?” He pulled a wheeled stool from underneath the sink and sat down about three feet away so that Gabriel could look down at him, which felt… safer… to Gabriel. He’s good at what he does, I’ll give him that, thought Gabriel, realizing he was more or less not-terrifed despite being in sustained close proximity to an Alpha for the first time since he was attacked.
“So," said the doctor with an as-you-know... gesture of his hands, ''In high school biology, everyone learns the basic mechanics of claim bites. An Alpha bites an Omega in an area with a scent gland, almost always on the back of the neck or shoulder, simply because these are the most accessible glands and they do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of distributing pheromones, which Alphas have evolved an attraction to. Once the bite occurs, the Alpha’s scent begins to be replicated by the Omega’s scent glands, and the Omega’s scent gradually changes, becoming a mixture of the two sets of pheromones. This warns away other Alphas and also affects the Omega’s heat cycles, rendering them less able to conceive with other Alphas or Betas. It was once thought that a claim was permanent and irreversible and that the changes to the Omega’s scent were a function of feeling some kind of emotional bond with the Alpha. Some Alphas out there, as I’m sure you know from watching the news, would very much like that to be true. But it’s not.”
Warming to his topic, Dr. Anderson continued. “We now understand that the way claim bites work is similar to infection with a virus. The Alpha’s saliva contains little packets of DNA wrapped in protein. These enter the scent gland during the bite, hijack the cells in the scent gland, and then begin to make copies of themselves. The Alpha’s DNA sort of colonizes the scent gland or glands directly affected by the bite, and then moves along to the next closest glands, and then on to the next, until, over the course of six months or so, the Omega’s scent glands are all replicating the Alpha’s scent as well as their own. Established claims do eventually increase the chance of conception between an Alpha and the Omega they've claimed, but the reverse is also kind of true --should a pregnancy occur at or around the time of the claim, the spread of the Alpha's DNA is accelerated by the surge of hormones that happens during pregnancy. Still, in a civilized world, a world with a fifty percent divorce rate, the claim bite serves no real purpose other than further strengthening the bond between monogamous partners— it certainly isn’t needed for identifying a pool of breeding partners as it may have been when we were all hunter-gatherers living in caves and fighting off sabertooth tigers.”
Dr. Anderson looked up at his patient’s pale face, checking to see if he was overwhelming his patient with information, but Gabriel was still listening intently, so he continued.
“Sorry, I got a little off topic. Anyway, this is why it’s so great that you came to us so quickly– we won’t give that DNA a snowball’s chance in hell of spreading to your other scent glands. We’ll schedule your first surgery for next week. You have a pair of scent glands on each side of your neck, one just where the neck meets the jaw, those are the submandibular glands,” Alex pointed to his own jaw and continued to illustrate his points using his own body, “and another set where the neck meets the shoulder, and those are your cervical glands. The rest are smaller and produce fewer pheromones, but they’re still part of the scent gland system. The next closest are in your armpits, those are your axillary glands, the small of your back, the caudal glands, a set at the top of your inner thighs, the inguinal glands, and finally a very small gland behind each knee, the popliteal glands.”
“Based on your wound location, during the first surgery, I’ll probably be removing just your left cervical gland and out of an abundance of caution, we'll be taking small needle biopsies from your right cervical gland and your axillary and submandibular glands on the left side to confirm that they weren’t affected. It’s almost impossible that they could have been, given how quickly you sought treatment, which again, is why I’m so glad you’re here today. When I remove the scent gland, I’m also going to be placing a small tissue expander underneath the bite site. You’re young and you’re slim, so you don’t have a lot of extra skin, and I don’t want your skin to have a stretched appearance after the procedure. We’re going to use the time you’re on the hormone suppressant therapy to grow some extra skin for me to work with. Which brings us to the second surgery--but I’m getting ahead of myself. Any questions so far?” Alex Anderson asked, waiting.
“No, I think I’ve got it… if it wasn’t a thing that was happening to me, it’d be kind of interesting,” said Gabriel. “What happens if you wait too long for treatment?”
Dr. Anderson inhaled through his nose, and made an unhappy face. “Well, there’s always something we can do– low dose suppressants can make an unwanted claim much easier to live with, but they come with a host of other issues that have to be considered. Once the Alpha’s DNA has infiltrated the entire scent gland system, total eradication just isn’t possible for now, and the Omega will probably have a more difficult time conceiving normally with the partner of their choice if that’s something that they want. You won’t have that issue at all. Since we only have to remove one scent gland in your case, you also won’t notice too much of a difference in your pheromone levels once you’ve healed.”
Gabriel nodded. At least he’d made one good call in the past couple of weeks.
Dr. Anderson continued. “So, with the second surgery, my goal is always to eradicate the claim site as completely as possible. I’ll remove the expander and then I should have plenty of skin to work with.”
“Is the expander going to be painful?”
“No, it shouldn’t be, and don’t worry, it’s just a small one. You won’t look like Quasimodo, I promise. Wear a collared shirt and no one will ever know it’s there. Once I remove it, I’m going to remove the tissue affected by the bite and resection the skin on your shoulder using teeny, tiny little dissolvable stitches. I am very proud of the teeny-ness of my stitches. The scar should be almost invisible, at worst, something like a healed cat scratch, like this one,” he said, holding out an arm and displaying a fine white line on the golden-tan skin of his forearm.
“Courtesy of Stoffel?” Gabriel asked.
“You got it in one. So while I’m not anticipating any issues with scarring, should your skin decide to fight me, we’ll use laser scar revision or steroid injections. Teneisha, can you hand Gabriel the photo binder? Thanks. Take a look in here and you can see some before-and-afters so you know what to expect.”
Gabriel accepted the binder from Teneisha and flipped through the laminated photos inside, seeing that he was right. In most of the photos, it was impossible to tell where a claim mark had once been. Maybe this was going to work. Maybe he’d be able to put this behind him. He felt a little ball of warm tension forming in the center of his chest. Anxiety? No, he realized. No, that’s… hope.
“So, on the day of your procedure, you’ll come to the outpatient surgery facility. The surgical nurses are both female, both Betas, and the nurse anesthetist I work with is an Omega. All three of them will be in the room for the duration of the procedure, from before you fall asleep until after you wake up. Neither I nor any other Alpha will be alone with you at any point. The pain should be pretty minimal after the first day or so, but we’ll send you home with a little of the good stuff just in case. You should have a friend or family member come with you, because you’ll be groggy afterwards, so we can’t have you wandering the streets of Charm City by yourself. Is that something you can arrange?”
Gabriel nodded. “Teneisha’s making me, I mean, I’m calling my mom after I leave today. I’m pretty sure he’s going to want to come up. So he can bring me.”
“Perfect. Okay, that’s my spiel, but I think Dr. Caris wants to go over a few things with you. Do you have any other questions for me?”
Gabriel shook his head. “No, thank you. I think that’s everything I wanted to know.” The enormous cloud of unknown-ness surrounding everything that was happening to him, and that was going to happen to him, was starting to dissipate. That was a definite improvement. Gabriel did not do well with the unknown.
“Alright, then, if you think of anything you want to ask me later, just email me--Teneisha will give you a card-- or call the office and let them know, and I’ll get in touch. If not, I’ll see you for your surgery.” Dr. Anderson wheeled himself backwards a couple more feet before rising as smoothly and casually as possible, not wanting to make his patient uneasy again now that Gabriel's knuckles were no longer white where he gripped the exam table and his pupils were no longer dilated.
“Good luck with Stoffel,” Gabriel murmured, following him with his eyes as Alex crossed the room.
“I’ll need it.” With a wave, the doctor closed the exam room door and was gone.
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