Page 17 of Animal Tamer
Dr. Vance is in the doorway of the back hall, and I don't know how long he's been there. His expression is the one I've come to recognize asI have been listening and I am about to make today worse on principle.
Paige goes very still beside me.
“Good morning, sir,” I manage.
“Is it.” He steps into the reception area. His tie is crooked, and there's a coffee stain on his shirt cuff. He looks like he slept in his car, which—knowing what I do about his marriage—he might have.
“Lots to do today,” Paige says brightly. “I was just heading to set up exam one?—”
“Sit.” He doesn't look at her. “Both of you. I have a question, and then you can go back to whatever girls' lunch you were holding in my reception area. Wren.” His gaze moves to me. “Why have you not billed the carnival?”
“I—”
“You went out yesterday.”
“Yes, sir, I?—”
He doesn’t let me finish.
“And?”
“I'm doing follow-ups. The capuchin's on anti-inflammatories. I need to monitor the swelling and re-administer over the next five days, so the visit isn't closed out. I'll bill when?—”
He interrupts again. “You're going back.”
“Yes.”
His jaw works. The vein in his temple does the thing.
“Five more visits.”
“Yes, sir,” I confirm.
“For amonkey.”
“For apatient.”
His nostrils flare.
“A patient.” He says it the way someone else would saya tax audit. “A carnival monkey. Whose hand will heal whether you drive out there once or six times. Whose owners, by the way, are transient scammers, Wren?—”
“They're not?—”
“I don't care what they call themselves.” He takes another step closer, and Paige flinches beside me, and I feel my own shoulders pull in toward my chest before I can stop them. “I care that you're billing one house call's worth of time over six days to acarnivalin a town where every farmer within a thirty-mile radius needs a herd vet, and we have three of us, and one of them isyou, and you are out playing Doctor Dolittle with a monkey that should have been left in its cage with an ice pack.”
“That's—” My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. I clear it. “That's not standard of care, sir. He had soft tissue?—”
“I know what he had. I read the chart.”
He read the chart. Of course he read the chart. He read the chart so he could come stand here and tell me I shouldn't have written it.
“You should have left it.” He's not done. “You should have told them to ice it themselves and call us if it didn't resolve. Or, better yet, you should have told them what I would have told them, which is that we don't service traveling shows, and they should call a vet in the next town.”
“They called us, sir. You took the call. You sent me.”
His face goes a shade darker.
I shouldn't have said it. I know I shouldn't have said it the second it's out of my mouth, and a small, horrible part of me doesn't care because it's true.
