When I was just a Medium-Sized Bad Wolf loping through the forest, I stumbled upon a doctor in a white coat, carrying a bag of supplies. It was Sunday night, and dinner options were scarce, since most other humans were home with their families.
“Where are you going so late, Doctor?”
She sighed. “Another patient who refused the flu vaccine is sick with the flu, so I’m bringing them Tamiflu.”
I tricked her into giving me the patient’s address by saying I had free Ozempic samples. Then I ate her, but she was mostly bones and Monster Energy drinks.
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Thankfully, the patient was nice and plump after repeated insurance denials of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s). Licking my lips, I realized I’d stumbled upon a brilliant disguise. A white coat, so much better than a red hood!
Soon I became a Big Bad Wolf working full time as a doctor, and it’s been a truly satisfying career. Especially now that people get medical advice from TikTok influencers, I often don’t even have to do anything very wolfly to get humans to do my bidding.
I started out in the ER, where everyone was still two steps from the ledge after the pandemic. Patients in extreme duress never noticed my big teeth, let alone my eyes or ears. Even if I forgot to wipe all the blood off my mouth, people willingly submitted to my “treatment.”
Like, when someone came in with a life-threatening arrhythmia, BAM! They let me sedate them straight away. One time, after a particularly tasty meal, I got carried away and howled, “WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF!” In the chaos of code blues, nonstop alarms, and patients screaming in pain or shouting at staff, no one so much as glanced up at me.
With all the desperately ill people, including many no one would miss, it was almost too easy. And I was prospering a bit too much, even for my high-capacity stomach.
So I decided to try my paw at primary care, where they were so frantic for anyone to deal with the never-ending unpaid work of responding to AI-written emails that they practically begged me to join. Patients greeted me with the squinty eyes of skeptics who had lots of opinions about ivermectin (which I’m a big fan of, having used it for a gnarly case of mange).
“Doctor, what big eyes you have,” they’d say when I suggested it was time for a colonoscopy. Then when I recommended a vaccine, they’d suddenly notice my large teeth. I’d learned by this point, after one pulled a gun on me, to swallow them whole.
Soon enough, though, this also became too predictable.
Given my passion for gore, I decided to be a surgeon, the kind that does nonemergency “elective” surgeries. This would be a true test of my wolfly powers of deception. Plus, I’d get to run around with a scalpel.
Plastic surgery was the obvious choice, but it was tough to get into. Humans hate vaccines, but they love nose jobs. I was about to give up when I discovered a subspecialty with shockingly little competition: gender-affirming surgery.
The lack of interest was baffling, since I’d heard so much on the news about this field’s potential for huge profits and all the young, impressionable humans who were easy targets. Still, I was practically a lone wolf, frothing with anticipation.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the multimillion-dollar “sex-rejecting procedures” industry included a whole lot of things that didn’t involve any actual cutting. And the tender-fleshed young humans I’d drooled over weren’t getting gender-affirming surgery very often.
On top of that, patients had difficulty getting coverage and often required lengthy evaluations. No apex predator should ever have to submit a prior authorization, and wrangling diagnosis codes made me growl and gnash my teeth.
So there was hardly any surgery, only wasted time and my hungry belly. At one point, I hadn’t seen the OR (or had a meal that wasn’t a rat from the hospital parking lot) for four weeks!
I admit, I got a little sloppy in my hunger and despair. One day in clinic, a patient said, “Doctor, what big hands you have!” and I just said, “Yup.”
Even worse, these patients were shrewd and well connected. Slowly but surely, in online communities and chat groups, they pieced together my tiny missteps: hairs sticking out of my mask, a slip of the tail, those few times I forgot to walk on my hind legs.
Just as they were about to out me publicly with their planned peaceful protest and sit-in, I struck a deal with the feds: I’d out myself as the Big Bad Wolf Doctor in exchange for my protection.
Now I live in a cage that says “Property of the Federal Government.” I’m only allowed out for media appearances, and I’m technically not supposed to eat people anymore, but at least my belly’s not filled with stones.
The good news is that they still allow me to do plenty of shifts in the immigrant clinic. Although they taste plenty human to me, my new boss says they don’t count.
The author is an anonymous physician.
