Michael Malone - Weebly

extend her vacation beyond Tuesday. She promised to
keep in touch, to pass on, when he sent them, his
patients' files and the results of the dog's autopsy. She
advised him, however, to request an official
investigation by epidemiologists from state or federal
agencies. Meanwhile, she'd talk with her colleagues. Of
course, she reminded him, the experts might find a
perfectly obvious explanation. There might be no new
disease at all. And even if there were, to isolate a rare
factor like a variant Q Fever might take months, might
take years; would take money, might never happen; an
antibiotic might never be found. So much depended
upon the haphazard coincidence of skill and luck. But
she could not promise to stay, or to come back. In all
honesty, she didn't think she'd want to come live in
Dingley Falls to inherit his general practice. In all
honesty, she preferred the frontier campfire to the
bedside lamp. He told her, "Keep us in mind, quarter of
a century or so from now. Come back, see if you don't
feel different."
At midnight, high in the hawk's nest from which for
so many years she had sat brooding over her town,