Valerie the Veterinarian's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Monday morning came too fast. Valerie unlocked the clinic at seven, swept the front step, and set Sam's folded map on the counter beside her one thin patient file. The inspector was due at eight. She had the shelter out back she could not explain and a permit she needed to keep. She checked her watch and stepped outside to hose the front walk. A small dark shape sat on her doormat. It was a penguin the size of a loaf of bread, wet across the belly, blinking up at her. Valerie crouched. The penguin looked at her with round black eyes. "I followed a fish," it said. "The fish went under the ice. I kept walking. I am not near home." Valerie touched its flipper. Cold, but not frozen. She checked its feet for cracks, its beak for chips, its chest for the rise and fall of steady breathing. Everything worked. It was a healthy chick two thousand miles from where it belonged. She had six minutes. She carried the penguin inside and set it on the exam table. She wrote the intake by hand. Species. Estimated age. Condition on arrival. Presenting problem: separated from colony, tundra origin. She heard tires on the gravel and a car door shut. She capped the pen. The bell rang. The inspector was a tall woman with a clipboard and a lanyard. She stepped in, saw the penguin, and stopped. "Oh," she said. Her face changed the way faces do. "Oh, look at you." She set the clipboard on the counter and bent at the knees. The penguin studied her. "I came from the tundra," it said. "I am hungry." The inspector laughed once, surprised. Valerie did not move. She said, plainly, "He walked up ten minutes ago. I've logged him. He needs fish and a cold room by tonight or I'll need to arrange transport." The inspector nodded, still looking at the chick. Then she picked up the clipboard and remembered why she was there. They walked the building. Valerie showed her the exam room, the sink, the log with Sam's map clipped inside, the new intake page still wet. Then they went out the back door. The inspector saw the three-sided shelter, the concrete pad, the pulley rigged to the crossbeam. She stopped walking. She wrote for a long time without speaking. When she looked up she said, "This isn't on your plans." Valerie said, "No. It isn't." The inspector tore a yellow sheet from her pad and handed it over. Correction notice. Thirty days to submit revised plans and pass a second inspection, or the permit would be denied. She said the penguin was fine. She said the shelter was not. She got in her car and drove away. Valerie stood on the pad with the yellow sheet in one hand and a lost chick watching her from the doorway.