“Now raise your, uh, third arm and touch my tentacle. Now touch your bell. Touch my tentacle. Touch your bell. Aha, I see…”
Marvin gave the trembling jellyfish a long look. After a physical examination by a creature with eight tentacles, usually his patients needed some time to recover. So he went and hovered over his desk. With a carefully directed stream of ink, he recorded his observations in his journal. Marvin thought that it was very fortunate he was born a cuttlefish, a creature that makes its own ink, allowing for hours of documenting his findings. It suited his profession as marine neurologist quite well.
Marvin slowly swayed his skirt as he gathered his thoughts. He noticed the ripples in the sand had changed slightly in the light and adjusted a few chromatophores on his back. He certainly wouldn’t want to be attacked in the middle of a consult. Awkward.
“I’m afraid your tremors are incurable,” he said to the shaking medusa. “You probably ran into a cloud of bad algae. The good news is, if you take this tonic once a day, the tremors will calm down enough for you to go back to stinging and ingesting in no time!”
He handed the jellyfish a small vial. “Thank you so much, Doctor!” the jellyfish said. “You really are the Amazing Marvin! You’ve given me a second chance on life!”
“Why thanks!” Marvin said. As he watched the jellyfish leave his reef, he thought to himself, “How can I leave this job and go traveling? My patients need me. Look at all of the creatures I’ve helped today! No, I feel too guilty about this to leave. I’m going to go tell Susie right now that I’ve cancelled my plans. I’m just going to stay here and continue working. Besides, who’s going to be able to see that little guy in follow-up? He needs me!”
Just then, with Marvin watching from afar, a giant sea turtle swooped down from above and ate the jellyfish.
“Whelp, time to go!” he said.
He put his sign out. “The Amazing Marvin Marine Neurology is closed for an extended period of time due to sabbatical. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Marvin went back into his lair. “Susie!” he cried. “Have you packed my things?”
A six-armed starfish popped up out of the sand. She was meticulously groomed; every tube foot was perfectly in place, and even the sand refused to cling to her thick, orange arms. “Of course, Marvin!” She showed him to a bag and opened it to reveal a spare monocle, polished to gleaming, and a lunchbox filled with crab cocktail. “All we need now is your journal!” she said, pointing to a perfectly-journal-shaped space in the bag.
As Marvin packed his journal, he stopped and looked at Susie. “Susie, I need you make sure I make the most of my sabbatical. I mean, I owe it to my patients. Oh, and you took care of finding someone to watch that sick crab, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the Angelfish with neuropathy needs labs next week.”
“All done.”
“And Puff needs her injections again – she’ll have to go to the fish cleaning station for that.”
“She knows! Now LET’S GO!”
And with that, a sailfish dove down from the surface, coming to a stop just outside the door.
Susie faced Marvin. “Marvin, you can only prepare so much! Sometimes, you just have to go!”
And with that, they climbed onto the sailfish and were off! But after a few seconds, Marvin cried out, “Oh no!” “What?” asked Susie, fearing the worst. “I forgot my hat!”
Brian
I sense multiple allegories here somewhere…