I drove furiously. A part of my brain was already whispering placations about the bird in the box in the back of the car, trying to prepare for that awful moment when I arrived at the veterinarian’s office seconds too late. Her limp body at the bottom of the plastic carrier, a wing splayed, the neck like a dropped rope. It’s a stupid bird, I thought. They can’t live forever. You gave them the best life you could. Though the words were easy to find, they were impossible to believe.

The headlights lit the dirt roads lined by high golden walls of cane, making fluttery embers of thousands of grasshoppers and moths disturbed by my passage. I glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning. The run-down houses and abandoned barns in the fields near my home were dark and empty.

I knew only one vet in the area. I’d taken the geese there the day I found them, when I was drunk and still ravaged by my time in prison. The veterinarian had made no effort to disguise his hatred when he discovered who I was, but he had already treated my birds. I was headed there when I saw for the first time a new, bright blue sign in the distance: VET.

I scanned the façade quickly for any indication that they gave twenty-four-hour emergency care, but there was none. I grabbed the box from the back of the car anyway, not daring to look inside, and ran to the glass doors.

I pounded and yelled for only a few seconds before lights began flickering on at the back of the building. Hope. The silhouette that jogged toward me through the dark was petite and lean, a woman pulling a thin dressing gown around her. She must have lived above the surgery. I lowered my eyes to the box in my hands, but I knew there was going to be no disguising who I was. Everyone in the country knew me. My trial, and its aftermath, had been a national sensation. I began speaking before she could unlock the door.

“Please don’t turn me away,” I said. “My bird is sick. She’s really sick and needs help right now. I’ll go. Just please help her. She—”

“Why would I send you away?” The woman frowned at me. Her accent was British. Northern. My mind raced. Was she new to the country? Her big, green eyes were searching mine, no sign of recognition in them.

I swallowed, shook my head.

“No reason. I meant, uh. It’s just the hour. The terribly late hour.”

“Come in.” She held the door open and I slid past her. A wall of scent, disinfectant and animal fur, the husky smell of the bags of seed and dry dog food stacked on shelves near the counter.