“Hmm?” she said and looked up from the cooling mystery in her hands to her companion who had just spoken. Her eyebrows lowered as she ran through the words her ears had caught but her brain hadn’t processed and then nodded. Yes, he should come back. With Mowzer or not. The thought was odd, but genuine, which was mostly in keeping with her nature, odd but genuine. 

“Yes, that would be fine. I feel bad I promised Lynx and won’t be able to deliver.”

She smiled distractedly and wondered if she was supposed to quip or something just then but since quipping wasn’t her strength by any means she let the impulse die. She nodded again, feeling awkward and already half into the possible answers for the dead bird in her hands. She stepped over sleeping, lolling tigers and out into the hall. She briskly lead the way back into the exam room, though it was less leading and more heading there for her own purposes. Once there she laid the bird down on the table and reached for her tray of tools, distractedly. Blowing an errant curl out of her face she began to work. Minutes passed while she poked and prodded, murmured notes into the voice recorder mounted on the wall over the table. Her face was set into a grim expression while she intently focused on the task at hand, suddenly she sat up and whipped her head around.

“Good bye!” she called out to the empty lab and then slumped. 

“Idiot.” She murmured to herself. Rude too, she was certain the smiling med-tech was just counting down the minutes until he could be ignored by the twitchy vet again. 

“Well you don’t mind me do you?” she asked the bird. “Nah, you don’t mind one bit, you are a corpse, you don’t mind anything. Now let’s see what’s inside you, shall we?”

There was nothing. At least nothing she could find. Oh for certain there was some half-digested fruit from its last meal but nothing to account for this bird’s death. She had found no sign of trauma, no injury, no disease, nothing. The preliminary tests she’d run had shown her nothing, no toxins in the blood, no bacteria, nothing. She was running some deeper tests now, ones that would take a little time. Luddite she might be, but she had learned some basics if only for the sake of her charges. Hopefully the more advanced tests would turn up some answers. She wasn’t holding her breath. It was as if the bird had just stopped being alive. Like a switch had been flipped. 

“Dammit.” She said to no one and turned to face the wall that held all the refrigeration units. She looked over the panels of blinking lights and felt certain that all she would find would be more questions and not a single answer.