Valerie the Veterinarian's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Valerie folded Sam's map into her pocket and walked him back toward the clinic. At the door she stopped. Sam was eight feet long. Her exam table was four. She had treated him on the concrete of the back lot because he would not fit inside, and the snapping turtle last month had almost taken her thumb off in the parking lot too. If she was going to run a clinic that took every case, she needed a way to see big patients and wild ones without kneeling in gravel. She told Sam to wait on the bench. She had one call to make. She called a hippo she had been seeing every morning for two weeks. Harvey came for the smooth stone work and the written promise he read aloud against the voices in his head. He was wide as a car and gentle as a lamb, and he had once mentioned that his cousin ran a livestock barn on the edge of town. Harvey arrived in his flowered shirt and sandals within the hour. He listened while Valerie explained what she wanted. A three-sided shelter behind the clinic. A concrete pad she could hose down. A low sling on a pulley. Wide doors, no table. Harvey nodded through all of it. Then he said his cousin had a tear-down barn and would give her the beams for free if she took them this week. They worked through the afternoon. Harvey carried the heavy posts across the lot on his shoulder, one at a time. Valerie measured and marked the pad. Sam stayed on the bench and pointed out where the ground sloped so runoff would not pool at the door. By dusk they had four posts sunk and a roof frame braced. It was not finished. It was standing. Valerie walked Sam onto the pad and had him lie flat. His tail cleared the edge by six inches. She lifted his bandaged foot without bending her back for the first time since he had arrived. Harvey watched from the grass and clapped once, softly, with both hands. Valerie locked the clinic that night and stood in the lot looking at the frame. She had a place for the big ones now. She had also just built a structure the permit office had not inspected, on a property whose permit was not yet approved. The inspector was due in five weeks. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a voicemail from the permit office, left while she was hauling lumber. They wanted to move the inspection up. They would be at the Pawcare Clinic on Monday morning.