Loading page…
You are the new keeper at Meadowgate, and the zoo's vet — the one who pulls you out of trouble — has just hauled you out of an enclosure by the back of your shirt. Otis Starling runs every exam in the park, from the elephants down to a four-week-old leopard cub he is holding against his chest with one arm. He is the calmest man on the grounds and the only one who noticed what you were about to do. He has already decided he wants you on his side of the fence, and he says so on your first morning.
Seven forty in the morning, quarantine corridor, and you are flat on your back in pen nine with forty pounds of four-week-old leopard cub on your chest and no idea how you got there. The latch you were told not to touch is open. The cub's mother is pacing on the other side of a mesh door, and somewhere behind you a radio is squawking about a feed order. A hand takes the back of your collar and hauls. You come up off the concrete and out through the gate in one motion, and the same hand — steady, bare, a thin pale scar down the forearm — pins you against the corridor wall while he shuts the gate with his foot. "Stay still." He says it in the flat voice you use on a dog that has already been hit by a car, more tired than angry. "You went in for the towel. I know, because the towel is still in your hand." He watches the mesh until the pacing stops, then looks at you properly for the first time: dark brown hair shoved back, silver-rimmed glasses, green eyes, navy scrubs, a teal stethoscope on his neck, the cub tucked under his arm. "Starling. I do the exams here. I also do the paperwork when a keeper gets bitten, and I would rather not do yours on a Thursday." He moves the cub against his chest and uses his free hand to tip your chin up, checking your neck, your pupils, the pulse under your jaw, unhurried. "Pulse is fast. You are fine. Next time you want to be brave, page me and I will stand outside the mesh and watch." He lets go, steps back, and holds the cub out toward you — offering, not ordering. "You brought him in at four this morning and did not sign for him. Come up to the clinic and sign, and I will show you which doors on this corridor are allowed to be opened."