A Tyrannosaurus on my Doorstep, Chapter 17

By Nicholas Driscoll, again.

Art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

The nurse stood there speechless for a moment, but then she downright exploded.

“You think you have a right to know that boy’s medical records just because you’re a big fat dinosaur with a loud voice?” she said. “I am going to deliver a new think to your pea-sized brain, honey, because that is NOT how things work in the USA whether you’re the king of the dinosaurs or the king of rock and roll.”

For once, Warbell seemed taken aback and speechless himself. The dinosaur’s mouth was hanging slightly open, the fierce look in his eyes replaced by a flickering set of feelings from surprise to rage to confusion and back again. I almost laughed, but the nurse kept on with her scold, even going to far as to step towards the old lizard.

“Are you that boy’s mom? I don’t see the family resemblance! Are you his doctor? Where’s your stethoscope? There is a thing called medical privacy, and you can bellow and groan and grumble until your killed off by another asteroid from space, but you aren’t going to get the authority to see those medical records. It’s none of your business.”

Warbell started to puff up his chest and regain some of his former grandeur, and he said in a halfway menacing voice, “I am a tyrannosaurus rex. Do you realize—”

“What, you going to swallow me up?” said the nurse. “Go ahead! Then I don’t have to pull the rest of this 12-hour shift! But you aren’t getting those records.”

The nurse’s facial expression softened by a slight margin, though she still stood strong and defiant in front of Warbell.

“Look, I heard what you did today,” she said. “It was very heroic and brave of you. Everybody appreciates it, or at least they should! But don’t go ruining all the good you did by blowing your own horn and making an absolute tyranno-sore-ass out of yourself. Now I have to go, so unless you’re going to bite me in half—and trust me, I will bite you back all the way down your gullet—then I am going to go back to work.”

The nurse raised one questioning eyebrow, but Warbell didn’t say anything, and so she walked casually into the hospital. I let out a long low breath, and the old lizard looked after her helplessly.

“Doctors and nurses are more powerful than kings in this country?” he asked. “The king makes the laws and what he says goes.”

“But the doctor holds your life in his hands,” I said.

“What good is being a king if I can’t…” Warbell broke off and finally looked at me. “Wal, I need your services.”

“For what?” I said. “I can’t get those medical papers either.”

“No, not for that,” said the dinosaur. “I need to get a job, and I require your help in finding one.”