Skylar Cooper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Skylar Cooper pressed her palm against the examination table and felt the familiar tingle crawl up her arm. The injured crow in front of her shifted its weight, and that static-before-a-storm sensation bloomed across her shoulders. Left wing. Definitely the left wing. She'd felt it the moment the bird arrived, before anyone unwrapped it from the towel. Her supervisor called it luck, but Skylar knew better. This gift, this strange ability to sense pain in birds, was exactly why she'd build her own rehabilitation center someday. A place where intuition mattered as much as blood tests. Where she could trust what her body told her and save lives three days before the lab results came back. She grabbed her pen and wrote down her diagnosis, grinning as the crow clicked its beak at her. After her shift ended, Skylar wheeled her bicycle outside and checked the basket mounted on the handlebars. The mesh panels let air flow through while the cork padding protected against bumps. She'd already used it twice this week to transport injured birds from calls around town. Soon she'd need something bigger. A real facility with proper equipment and space for dozens of patients at once. She rode to the park and settled onto a wooden bench with her binoculars and bird book. A chickadee landed on the backrest behind her head. She spent the next hour watching finches and sparrows, taking notes on their flight patterns and behaviors. Every observation was practice. Every detail mattered for the center she'd run one day. The sun dipped lower as Skylar sketched the building in her notebook. Clean lines, big windows, a garden on the roof where recovering birds could test their wings. Her avian treatment facility would become the best in the world. She'd hire people who understood that medicine wasn't just what you could see on an X-ray. Marcus already believed in her methods, and there would be others. She closed the notebook and smiled. The dream was getting clearer every day.