“Yeah. I even overlap a bit. I’ve got insurance from the offshore work that’ll be good for a while, and I have a kind of penny-ante insurance that I’ve been managing to pay for the last few years. I don’t know it’ll do much.”

“Most of this shit insurance, which is what I figure you have, does better you go to the hospital. So give the information to my secretary when you go out, and if it’s anything we’re familiar with, we may be able to get policy information right away. If not, it’ll take a while. I want to check Leonard over too, see if he got scratched or bit. He might have and not even know it. He’s got a bite, you’ll both go to the hospital. Step on out and tell him to step on in.”

“Doc, if we got to send the squirrel’s head in for dissecting, and I’m going to take the shots before we get results, why bother?”

“Could be an epidemic. Squirrels aren’t usually the carriers. Raccoons, foxes – they’re the main culprits. But somehow it may have gotten into the squirrel population. People ought to know. Step on out and send Leonard in. We got to get this show on the road. Oh, before you go, here’s a trash bag. Get the squirrel and put it in the bag and leave it behind the reception desk. I’ll have someone pick it up.”

I gave the insurance information to the receptionist, borrowed Leonard’s car keys, got old Beebo out of the trunk and bagged him and put him in a cooler they had behind the desk. Then I sat in the waiting room and tried to read a nature magazine, but at the moment I wasn’t feeling all that kindly toward nature.

I wasn’t feeling all that kindly toward the brat that was waiting there either. His mother, a harried woman in lace-up shoes designed by the Inquisition, a long black dress, and a Pentecostal hairdo – which was a mound of brown hair tied up in a bun that looked as if it had been baked into place to contain an alien life form – was pretending to be asleep in a waiting-room chair.