"I'm not retiring next week," Caldwell said. "I've got a few years left in me. If we approve this application tonight, we're not making a decision about next year. We're making a decisionabout the next decade. I want the council to be thinking about that."
He looked at the chair.
"That's all I had. Appreciate the floor."
He sat down.
The chair looked at her notes. She looked at me.
"Dr. Matthews. Would you like to respond?"
I stood up.
Easton's hand let go of mine. He set it on the seat where I'd felt it on the drive over. I felt the heat of him at my hip.
I had a folder in my hand. Audrey told me to bring a folder, even if I didn't use it, because a woman with a folder reads differently to a council than a woman without one. I held it at my side.
"Madam Chair. Council. Thank you."
My voice came out lower than I'd been carrying it in the car. I noticed it. I let it be.
"I want to thank Dr. Caldwell for his concern. I do. He has served this town for thirty years, and that means something. I'm not standing up here to argue with any of it."
He hadn't expected the thank-you. I saw it in the small movement at the side of his mouth.
"I want to be straightforward with the council about what I've already been doing in this town."
I opened the folder. I didn't read from it. I had wanted my hands to have something to do.
"I've been back in Hartsdale a little over six weeks. In that time, I've signed a lease on Main Street, hired a tech, and cleared inspection. I'm ten days from opening. I also diagnosed a senior dog with a fractured upper carnassial that had been missed by the practice on Elm for three months. I referred her to Hudson Valley Animal Hospital for the extraction. She came home a different dog."
A few heads in the room turned, slowly.
"I want to say something else. I don't say this to make a point. I say it because the council needs to know it."
I lifted my eyes from the folder.
"Four nights ago, a dog in this town died in her owner's arms on a kitchen floor. She was bleeding internally from a splenic tumor, something that takes old goldens. She was twelve. She had a good life. None of that was anyone's fault." I let the next breath go. "But the reason her owner spent that hour on a kitchen floor and not in an exam room was that the only practice in this town was unreachable, and the nearest after-hours clinic was forty minutes south on Route 23, and her owner didn't have forty minutes."
I felt Easton stop breathing beside me.
I didn't look at him. I looked at the council chair.
"I'm not saying she could have been saved. She probably couldn't. I'm saying her owner shouldn't have had to find that out on the floor of his own kitchen."
The room was quiet.
I let it stay quiet.
"I'm not asking the council to take a side against anyone. I'm asking the council to vote on what is already happening. This town is being served by a second veterinarian. That veterinarian is me. I'm not going to stop being one if you vote no. I'm asking you to make it legal so I can do the job in a building with a license on the wall."
I closed the folder.
"Thank you."
I sat down.
The chair looked at her papers.
