Made on Planet Earth

There was something to be said for Melania’s patient panel: it had breadth. She treated a wide range of traumas and living things. The latter feature of her practice got into gray territory when it came to certifications, but the lack of a certificate for each and every species she saw didn’t keep her up at night. No two patients were the same, their variety of compunctions and disorders and difficulties compelling her through their surface-level yap and garbage as she revealed the cure to whatever ailed their true and dark hearts.

That being said, she wasn’t entirely sure how the human found her. She’d thought humans had been extinct, or were at least extremely endangered, for good reason.

Still, “don’t believe everything you read” and all that, so she opened her calendar and then her door when the human walked in.

Due to her lack of experience with this type of patient, Melania focused on their name: Taylor. She offered a practiced smile and gestured to the couch across from her. Taylor sat back on their haunches, their odd mammalian limbs sifting restlessly in their lap.

They walked through the requisite caveats: introductions, safe space, get to know one another, I’m here for you and what you need.  The silence settled around them, not uncomfortable but not quite warm; Melania mirrored Taylor’s gesture of limbs on lap. A bit awkward as she had quite a few more than the human.

“What brings you here today?”

Taylor blinked. Shifted a bit, then opened and closed their mouth, reminiscent of a prehistoric fish. What an unattractive set of teeth, Melania observed.

“It’s just, there’s a second-hand store that opened down the street from me. I walk by it every day to go to work.”

A bizarre turn already. No mention of family trauma yet but Melania knew they’d get there eventually. They always did.

“Anyway, it has, like, rare things in it? Old things? Borderline illegal things now? Like, I don’t know if you remember when they used to make handbags out of…” Taylor ran their phalanges over their bare arms.

Oh. Oh dear, Melania thought. 

“Anyway, I made the mistake of going in.”

Oh dear, oh dear.

“Like before, their existence took up zero brain space and now, it’s all I think about.”

Melania could not offer lobotomy or shock therapy. Nor could she provide a drug to make Taylor forget what they’d seen.

“I see,” Melania said panicking internally.

There was no guidebook for this, but there was always visualization. So, she asked Taylor for a happy memory, perhaps with other humans, perhaps at a mall. Humans loved malls.

“There’s never been anyone else,” Taylor said. “I’m the only one left.”

To this, Melania had no answer.