When Arthur first heard it, he couldn't believe his ears: we were not the only intelligent species on the planet. Up in the arctic, where few humans had ever dared to tread, there were apparently three tribes of beast-people, all of them fully sapient and eager to meet the outside world. Their first contact had been with some clumsy photographer, but the UN wasn't about to let that be their first impression; they swiftly assembled a team of anthropologists, biologists, ecologists, and a whole lot of other -ologists to examine these new species.
Arthur had been chosen as the team's chief medical officer, but it wasn't because of his experience as a field surgeon or modest training in veterinary medicine. Out of a hundred candidates, he was picked because he spoke fluent Russian, and even though it started as just a hobby, it now seemed a vital skill among these beast-people. Sure, some of them spoke broken English, but the majority only knew an odd dialect of Russian, one that Arthur was still able to get ahold of. That was enough to get him on the chopper to their brand-new arctic base, and he indifferently agreed to go.
As it turned out, the base was more akin to the set of The Thing than some bleeding-edge research facility, with metal-walled cabins that were just barely able to keep the air at room temperature and heat lamps dating back a decade at least. His office was little more than a desk in front of the examination room/lab/operating theatre, and his tools were rudimentary at best.
However, over the first week, Arthur frequently found himself out in the cold instead of inside the "office," as every damn quack with a bachelor's degree wanted a translator. He'd spend hours following those pricks around, listening to their jabbering while trying not to freeze his balls off... but luckily for him, it got him front-row seats to the freak show.
Well, freak show was hardly the right term for it. Counter to his previous conceptions, the anthropomorphic tiger people looked absolutely natural, thickly muscled and standing a little under seven feet tall. Some of them wore animal-hide clothes, others wore scraps of man-made materials, and some went without clothes entirely, letting him examine their naked anatomy from a few feet away. To his surprise, they had several human features: nipples hidden under their thick white fur, fully opposable thumbs, clear-cut muscles on the chest, and even fully-sized mammary glands on the females. He did his best not to stare, especially at one specimen with a sizable pair, but they didn't seem uncomfortable at all; in fact, when one of them caught him staring, he could have sworn she'd grinned and winked at him.
Despite the tigers' cordial attitudes, the team's anthropologists were getting stonewalled at every turn. Every offer of modern technology was turned down, every offer to host an ambassador was rejected, and one of the tigers had mentioned in passing that they'd kill any human who approached their village. Frustrations were running high, and there were even rumors of pulling out altogether... but then, something wondrous happened.
"Hey, doc!" The voice crackled with static, interrupting Arthur's reading of Metro 2033 and sending the doctor's feet swinging off his desk. "Uh, we've got wounded, but-"
"What kind of wound? Burn? Laceration? How bad is it?" Eager to get a break from the usual, Arthur shot to his feet and grabbed his field bag off his desk. "Was it Scully? Lampert?" He'd been wondering who'd be the first to need a visit to his office... some of his top picks were utter luddites, while others were just unlucky.
"It's, uh... it's one of the natives, and she's got a cut on her leg, I think."
Arthur stopped in his tracks, his enthusiasm thrown into flux. A native? One of the tigers? His knee-jerk reaction was to say he wasn't qualified, but he realized he was likely the most qualified person on the base after a moment of thought. He'd trained as a vet, he spoke their language... and hell, it didn't sound like a life-threatening wound. "Alright, send her in."
"Will do, doc." While the grunts brought the patient inside, Arthur quickly pulled on some latex gloves and got out his materials. Disinfectant, cotton swabs, gauze, tape, an electric razor, PDS sutures, the whole nine yards... he didn't want his first-ever medical treatment of an anthro to be some botched hack job.
He'd just finished laying everything out when he heard footsteps coming down the hall, and the second Arthur turned around, the door swung open. Immediately, two tigers squeezed their way in, a male holding up a female with her arm wrapped around his shoulder; both wore surprisingly colorful garments that appeared to be sown from human materials, something that marked them as high-class among the natives. It only took Arthur a second to see the wound on the female's thigh, and though it seemed like a minor injury, she was limping pretty badly. "Put her on the table," he ordered in Russian, "I need to see what I'm dealing with."
"Yes sir," the male replied, helping his limping companion into the exam room.
As soon as the two towering tigers were out of the doorway, one of the station's armed guards came in, his automatic rifle slung over one shoulder. "They just showed up at the perimeter," he explained, "Out of the blue. It doesn't look like much, but she sounds pretty hurt." As if to concur, the female tiger let out a long groan of pain, then a gasp as she sat down on the table.
Arthur nodded, then turned to the male. "When did this happen?"
"Uh, about twenty minutes ago," he recounted, "Sergei accidentaly grazed her with a spear. We were worried it might get infected, and since you have such fancy medicines..."
"I see." The doctor stepped past him to his female counterpart, but before he could focus on the wound, he was struck by her expression: even an idiot could tell she was faking, and from the way she turned pouty as soon as she met his eyes, it seemed designed to catch his attention. That little distraction was enough to derail his train of thought, and with his attention untethered, Arthur couldn't help but glance at her luscious chest. On a human, her breasts might have looked cartoonish, but on her bulky yet feminine frame, barely held back by an orange strip of nylon...
"Please help me, doctor, it hurts!"