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ten minutes. What’s his name?”
    “Aah, you got me there. Too many names on every shift. I never remember them.” There was the sound of rustling paper as Suszek checked his notes. “Here it is: Krooner, Ned Krooner. You’ll find him in zone two.”
    Hamish rang off. He started to call his resident but remembered the guy was on holiday. The trainees were always on holiday. He closed the phone, placed it on the passenger seat, and reviewed the few facts he’d been given.
    He’d never treated a mink bite. He wondered how many mink farms there were in this part of Ontario. With all the anti-fur rhetoric in the news, mink farmers didn’t exactly erect billboards offering guided tours of their operations. Did they vaccinate mink against rabies? Did mink’s teeth carry the same bacteria that cause cat- and dog-bite infections? And what about TME , transmissible mink encephalopathy? He remembered an outbreak reported from a mink ranch somewhere in the American Midwest. Minnesota, was it? Or Wisconsin? But that was a brain infection in the mink, not in people. It had nothing to do with infected wounds among animal handlers. One thing did bother him. Suszek said the wound was extremely painful. Hamish shuddered, noted the green traffic light ahead, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
    A hint of barnyard odour hung like a stain in the air as Hamish entered zone two, the Emergency Department’s eight-bed examination room. And when he opened the privacy curtains and entered Ned Krooner’s cubicle, the stench of manure hit him like a punch in the chest. A wild-looking man lay propped on the bed, and two tall men stood on either side of him. For an instant, Hamish braced himself against the expected taunts of the burly trio. Hamish had been the short kid on the block who sang in the church choir three times every Sunday, and hazing had been a fact of his life. These days, it rarely happened, not with patients anyway. His status as the specialist protected him. But old feelings never died. Instead, they gained power with age.
    The man on the bed held his right arm against his bare chest. He cradled the limb — bruised, bloated, and covered in punctures — as though it were a wounded animal. A week’s growth of whiskers grizzled his face. His bloodshot eyes crinkled with pain and fatigue. His cheeks were flushed with fever, and his dark hair was matted to his sweaty forehead. Clods of mud from his work boots soiled the bedsheet.
    The man on the right stood trim and neatly groomed, his jaw square and clean-shaven. His blue jeans bore a crisp crease, his loafers a recent polish. He looked the youngest of the three. He smiled without humour and shot out his hand, shaking Hamish’s with firm confidence. “Lanny Krooner,” he said. He pointed to the even taller man standing on the far side of the bed. “My brother Morty.”
    Morty, his long hair wild, his clothing smeared with mud and who knew what else, had the stooped posture of a shy man too tall for his self-esteem. He stared in the direction of Hamish’s knees and grunted.
    “And of course this here’s my brother Ned,” Lanny said. He narrowed his eyes and stared straight into Hamish’s. “You’re gonna make sure he doesn’t lose his arm, eh, Doc?”
    Hamish couldn’t be certain of anything about this new patient. He’d barely caught sight of the injured limb, let alone given it hisprofessional observation and careful thought. So far, the only thing he’d assessed was the reek of the man’s clothing. “I don’t know yet. Give me a chance, eh?” Hamish said. “I just walked in, for heaven’s sake.” He regretted his tone immediately. Worrying that his voice and eyes had betrayed his annoyance, he countered with a forced smile, hoping it conveyed enough empathy to keep these muscular men from turning on him.
    He donned the pair of gloves he’d pulled from a box mounted on the wall and took a step toward Ned.
    “Don’t touch it,” Ned shouted, his