Skyward (22 page)

“Hey,” he said in a lackluster manner before returning his attention to his work.

Ella didn’t reply. She walked along the outside of the mews where the golden eagle, three falcons and two Harris hawks stood on their perches, hunkered against the wind. With each step she tried to walk soft-footed, as she’d seen Lijah do, but her tread pounded and sloshed in the mud as if her boots were made of lead. One of the falcons jumped from its perch as she passed, jangling its bell and fluttering as though she’d just scared the bejesus out of it. The others watched her warily as she passed.

“Is it my smell?” she asked as she drew near to Harris.

He shook his head but did not turn to face her. “They just don’t know you well. Give them time.”

“I don’t know,” she said, putting her hand on the honeycombed wire screening. “Lijah doesn’t get so much as a peep, and even Brady can walk right up to them and they don’t seem to get all flustered like they do with me.”

She thought she heard a harrumph and looked sharply up at Harris. White petals from the flowering shrub on the opposite side of the screening lay scattered on his shoulders. The rain had created marshy conditions and they were all joking that they’d have to drag out the canoes to get from one pen to another. Not that Harris had been laughing. He’d been brooding and his face was as cloudy as the skies. He’d barely said a word to her at last night’s dinner or at breakfast, and his cool greeting was the last straw.

“Look,” she said, stopping before him on the other side of the wire fence. “I know you’re put out that I assigned Brady to a team with Clarice. But you’re making much too big a deal out of it. He’s a good volunteer, he knows the territory, and you know better than I that there are certain jobs that require two people to get them done safely.”

Harris turned his head then and she saw his jaw was set. “Brady is
not
a volunteer.”

She tsked with frustration. “You’re splitting hairs. He’s here to work, no matter what got him here.”

“No matter what got him here?”
he asked, his eyes wide with incredulousness as he took a step closer. “He shot an eagle, for Christ’s sake!”

“I know, I know,” she said, leaning forward and grabbing hold of the wire fence. “And if you’d take a minute to look past your prejudice, you’d see the boy is sorry! Lijah has forgiven him. Seems to me you should, too.”

She met his stare even while her fingers tightened on the wire. She’d learned that his smoldering anger could be a formidable thing, as could her own. She’d also learned that he was fair. Sure enough, after a minute the fire in his eyes banked and his shoulders lowered.

“Maybe. Lijah told me he’d let that business pass long ago,” he said. “Told me the wise man held no grudge.”

“I respect his opinion,” she said softly. “He spends more time with Brady than anyone else. In fact, he’s the one who came to me with the suggestion.”

Harris’s mouth slid into a crooked grin. “He came to you, too, huh? The sly fox. He tells me he thinks the boy has potential.”

“So does Clarice. She’s changed her opinion of Brady, too. She asked for him to be her teammate. Harris, you told me to do what I thought best at the clinic, and I did. You can’t be second-guessing every decision I make. That will drive us—and everyone else—crazy. Clarice needed help and Brady was the best one for the job. That’s all.” She paused, then added with a hint of pleading in her voice, “Aw, Harris, you should have seen him when I told him he could work with the birds. His whole face lit up, as if I was giving him a gift!”

He listened, but he seemed unwilling to change his stand on the issue. “So,” he said with a shrug. “You’ve already given the okay. It’s done. What do you want me to do now?”

She tilted her head and studied his face, wondering if he was really so obtuse about his influence around the center. Come off your high horse and give the kid a break, she thought to herself.

“Nothing,” she tersely replied, turning to move away.

“Ella—” He took a step toward her, placing his hand against hers on the fence.

She slowly turned back, acutely aware of their hands touching, separated only by a thin pattern of twisted wire. She raised her eyes to his.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly.

“It’s okay,” she replied in the next breath.

Her stomach muscles quivered as she stared into his eyes and read a message of longing and need every bit as wild and real as her own.

“I
have
been giving you a hard time about this. Way out of proportion. I shouldn’t be.”

“I should have talked to you about it first. I knew how you felt.”

“No, it was your call.”

Such polite words, she thought with pained amusement. Why couldn’t they speak the same dialogue that their eyes were communicating? She felt the warmth of his skin against hers and wasn’t imagining the press of his weight.

Cinnamon began her high, shrill calling. Ella dragged her hand away as Harris took a step back. It was one of the volunteers carrying a tray of mice and fish to the med pens. She was dressed in a rain slicker and rubber boots and paused to call out a cheery hello as she passed.

The moment was gone, and Ella was glad for the interruption. She’d struggled to reach a place of comfort where they could live and work together as colleagues without her imagination getting in the way.

But he’d lured those emotions out from her again like a magician pulling brilliantly colored silken scarves from a hat, one after the other in a glorious, mesmerizing, seemingly endless string. Was she imagining the second glances, the palpable tension between them when they stood side by side, the countless moments of awareness? She thrilled at the magic of it all, even as she scolded herself for falling victim once again to what she told herself had to be the mere dreaming of a lonely woman.

He had the profile of a hawk, Ella thought as she looked at his long forehead and strong, pointed nose. Even in the twilight she could see the early tan Harris had from working longer hours in the spring sun. A farmer’s tan, he jokingly called it, because it cut a line on his arm and neck where the T-shirt ended. He was standing outside the med pen that housed a pair of eagle orphans that had arrived by special courier from Florida earlier that day. Everyone had been very excited to receive them, no one more than Harris.

“I thought I’d find you in here with those babies.”

He acknowledged her with a smile, then returned his attention to the eaglets. “They’re pretty amazing.”

“Those little guys sure caused a lot of excitement today,” she said as she walked to his side. The shadows in the pens deepened, but she could still make out two distinct, dark brown shapes housed in the kennel.

“It’s rare to have a pair sent to us so young.”

She didn’t reply. From the way he looked at those eaglets, Ella knew that the eaglets’ age had nothing to do with his awe.

“Their parents were shot when they were only chicks, so the rehab center in Florida removed the nestlings and raised them till they could stand and tear their own food. Both parents care for their young, did you know that? They’re amazingly good parents and move about the nest with their talons balled into fists so they don’t accidentally skewer their young.”

“What will you do with them?”

“We’ll put these eaglets into the hack box in a few weeks, when they’re old enough to fledge.”

“A hack box?”

“Haven’t you seen it? That’s that box high on the tower over on the other side of the pond, back in all those trees. It has iron bars on the front of it so they can see the outdoors but they can’t get out and they’re protected from predators. It’ll be like living in a nest up there. Gives them a bird’s-eye view of what’s to come, you might say. Then, after they start to call it home, we’ll remove the bars and they’ll be free to try their wings and get the hang of hunting. It’s a sweet moment to watch an eagle take its first flight.”

“I hope I’ll be able to see it.”

He turned and smiled with such brilliance that she felt singled out for the gift. It was no wonder so many people were devoted to him.

“I’ll make certain you do,” he said.

She backed away toward the next med enclosure. “All the courtship songs I’ve been listening to outside my window must have been fruitful,” she said, looking between the slats. “The orphans have been coming into the clinic in droves. The med pens are like a nursery!”

“It gets like this in the spring. It’ll keep us busy.”

He’d said
us
and she liked the feeling that she was included.

Ella strolled from pen to pen, checking on her patients. It brought her back to the nights she would check on all her patients at the end or the beginning of a nursing shift at the hospital. Her patients were
birds
now, she thought with both humor and amazement that fate would bring her down this road of destiny. This was, she knew, a step in her healing.

She walked first to Med 1 to check on those two silly vulture orphans. There was something about them that made her smile every time she saw them. They were getting bigger by the minute and were loaded with personality. Though they were inseparable, lately they’d commenced squabbling between them, just like two-year-old kids. If one had a bit of food, then the other one wanted it. In the past few weeks their soft gray down had given way to sleek black flight and contour feathers and they’d grown to almost their full height. But they were still kids. The two adult vultures were perched on the highest ledge, probably as far away from the young ones as they could get. The orphans were housed in the kennel on the ground. Peeking inside, she saw them sleeping, one’s head resting upon the other’s flank.

As the sun lowered, the diurnal birds were settling down and the nocturnal birds were just getting frisky. There was a commotion and vocalizing coming from Med 2. She peeked in. There was a gang of owls lined up on the back perch, as far from the humans as possible, with their throats bobbing and their large yellow eyes staring back.

Ella looked over her shoulder and said, “Do you realize we’re up to eight great horned owl orphans in here? Look at them. They’re wide awake and ready to party.”

“And they keep coming,” he said, walking to her side. “People have been bringing them in from everywhere. They find them on the ground where the nestlings probably fell from their nest and, meaning well, they drop them off at their local veterinarian. Problem is, they don’t leave a name, address or phone number. So we don’t know where the orphans came from and we don’t have anyone to call to ask. It’s frustrating because nine times out of ten the orphan is still in good shape. Young owls hop around their nest and from branch to branch to test their wings when they get a bit older. Naturally, some of them fall. I’d have preferred to put these owls right back in their nests where they belong.”

“What about this guy?” she asked, moving over to Med 4. Inside, with two adult barn owls, was an orphan that had arrived in early March looking like a big dandelion puff with a heart-shaped face and enormous eyes.

“I don’t know about him. The X-ray I did this afternoon showed a huge callused area around the fracture. And that wing droop hints at some possible nerve damage. It doesn’t look good.”

The owl really was adorable with the final puffs of down on the head and neck, the last vestiges that revealed he was as yet a hatch-year owl. Otherwise she would’ve mistaken him for an adult. It was hard to accept that this beautiful bird would have to be put down if he couldn’t be completely healed.

“I hope he makes it,” she said, looking into its fathomless eyes. “Speaking of which…how is Santee?”

Harris frowned and walked over to Med 3. Ella followed close behind to visit their star patient. Everyone loved this eagle. She was a regal bird, large and powerful yet well mannered. She deigned to tolerate their presence—as long as they kept a distance. Except for Lijah, of course. Harris had agreed that only Lijah would feed her, clean her pen and bring her in for treatment. Ella looked at the eagle with a nurse’s eye and saw the drooping of the wings and the way she preferred to stand directly under the heat lamp. She clearly wasn’t well.

“She’s having a hard time. Unfortunately she contracted aspergillosis, a respiratory disease common in raptors. I put her on an antifungal, gave her some fluids and put her in the nebulizer box for some vapor to help those lungs. The heat lamp will help, too, especially with all the rain we’re getting this week.” He slipped inside the pen and turned off the heat lamp for the night to avoid the risk of fire. Santee watched every move he made but did not stir from her perch. When he came back out to the hall again, he studied the eagle for a few moments longer with concern etched on his face.

“We’ll keep her dry and her bedding clean,” he said. “There’s not much more we can do.”

“How is Lijah taking this? I haven’t seen him today.”

“He took it pretty hard. You should have seen his face. His chin was dragging on the ground all morning. You know, usually we hear wheezing before we catch this thing, but he just knew something was wrong.”

He wiped his face with his palm, pausing to squeeze the bridge of his nose.

“You look exhausted,” she said, her voice rich with sympathy.

“I
am
pretty tired,” he replied, dropping his hand. He looked at her then, his eyes traveling across her face. “No more than you. You’re working as many hours as I am. Maybe more.” His expression changed and his eyes lit up.

“What?” she asked him suspiciously, sensing something more coming.

“I was thinking… Actually, someone pointed out to me recently that we could use some time off. What do you think?”

She leaned a shoulder against the wood frame of the pen and smiled skeptically. “Yes, I suppose a day off would be nice. We never really discussed days off or vacation time in my job description, you know.”

“No, and clearly I’ve been taking advantage.”

“Yes,” she replied with a straight face. “Yes, you have. I’ve been meaning to report a complaint. I’m sure there’s a nanny union out there somewhere.”