Savage by Thomas E. Sniegoski Read Free Book Online

turning quite hard.
    â€œDo you have something to report?” Sayid asked.
    â€œI do.” The woman held out a stack of papers. “The National Weather Service is currently tracking four tropical storms.”
    He took the papers and began to study them. “Anything that might suggest these will precede an event?”
    â€œNot yet. Three are likely to occur out at sea, but one is causing some concern.”
    He continued to read the pages and found what Langridge had been referencing as she began to describe it.
    â€œIt’s moving up the Eastern Seaboard,” she reported, “and is likely to make landfall somewhere on the coast of Massachusetts.”
    The little girl in the hospital bed moaned woefully in her sleep, as if sensing Sayid’s sudden feeling of dread.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The lobby was still full when Sidney came out from the back room, and she threw herself head-on into the chaos, helping the staff of the front desk as best she could by answering questions about medications, signing folks with their pets in for appointments, and checking them out once they’d finished. She’d even managed to answer a couple of medical questions that really didn’t require Doc Martin to get involved. It was all good prep work for when she would someday have her own veterinary practice.
    Sidney had always known her life would somehow involve animals. She remembered how convinced she’d been that a show on the Animal Planet channel was in her future, even going as far as having her father record video of her interacting with local wildlife and sending it to the cable network to spotlight her talents. Needless to say, the network never called, and she began to rethink her career opportunities. It was the summer that she turned nine when she decided she was going to work for the Benediction Veterinary Hospital and pedaled her bike in ninety-degree heat across the island to the hospital to inform Doc Martin of that fact.
    Sidney smiled at the recollection of how Doc Martin had put her to work feeding and watering a litter of kittens that had been abandoned on the doorstep of the hospital that morning. Martin had even given her a ride home that afternoon, tossing Sidney’s pink Schwinn in the back of her Subaru wagon, and speaking with her father, who, truth be told, hadn’t noticed she was gone. Doc Martin had told Dale Moore that Sidney was welcome to come and help at the hospital anytime she liked. That was all Sidney needed. She’d shown up just about every day, voraciously absorbing everything she could about the hospital, even going as far as to take Doc Martin’s veterinary textbooks home to read and study.
    There was no wonder that she’d wound up where she was today: top of her high school class and heading off to Tufts University, where she’d eventually enter the veterinary science program. It was like she’d been preparing for it all her life.
    She’d just waited on a woman buying flea-and-tick medicine for her cat when she realized that the lobby was empty.
    â€œHey, look at that.” She glanced from the empty lobby to the clock, noting that she’d worked through lunch and still had those tests to run for the doc. Pam and Michelle were giving each other high fives for surviving the ordeal as she headed for the back.
    â€œGive me a holler if things get nuts again,” she called out.
    Snowy bounded from her bed in greeting, and Sidney gave her some appropriate loving before getting to work on the tests that Doc Martin wanted.
    She had just finished the last heartworm test when she felt her phone vibrate. Making sure that everything was done with the test first, she pulled the phone from her back pocket to see a text from Rich.
    What’s the word?????
    She’d completely forgotten that she was supposed to ask Cody about that favor. About to send a text back saying that she was working on it, Sidney stopped, deciding that she should