"Do outside stores not do that? If they have a regular who goes through a lot of stuff?"

"I don't actually know, I get most of my robotics club and hobby stuff from the junkyard and they just have whatever people throw out. I guess restaurants will get used to cooking something the way you like it if you order the same thing every time."

"I guess it'd happen less outside since a lot more people might go there and all those people have a lot more options."

"Yeah, I expect so. Less consistency of customers from week to week."

"It must be really different."

"It's pretty different, yeah. Lots more people."

Brenda sighs. "Well." She picks up a pair of pliers and a work in progress.

"I should get home; my parents will start worrying if I'm out much later. Thanks for showing me your art and your house!"

"You're welcome!"

Home and zzzzzz. The next day she accumulates as many worms as she can find before her parents get home.

Now she has a lot of unhappy worms.

Timer: start. Mad science: commence.

These two get stuck in a cup but otherwise left alone. These two get repeatedly harassed with the eraser end of a pencil but not injured. This one gets stabbed and left to bleed out. These two get stabbed and healed, then stabbed again and healed again. These two get stabbed once and healed five times, then stabbed again and healed another five times. And this last one gets cut in half and then healed repeatedly until it either dies or appears to have stabilized (she keeps count of how many tries this ends up being either way). 

Control group are doing OK. Harassed worms are also doing OK. Stabbed worm dies. One stabbed-and-healed-twice worm lives, the other expires. Stabbed-and-healed-x5 worms both live. Cut in half worm dies between healing two and three.

Repeated healings: useful. All the living worms and worm-corpses go out the window. The rest of the evening is spent prepping dozens of copies of the diagram and checking the late-night bus schedules.

Three hours after her parents have gone to bed, Margaret sneaks downstairs, memorizes the location of her mother's keys, grabs them, and slips out of the house. There's a bus that goes close to her mom's vet clinic, and nobody works there overnight.

There is an old lady who is curious about what a young girl is doing on the late bus. "You oughta be in bed," she tells her.

"Being in bed sounds pretty nice right now." she says truthfully. She got a bit of a nap earlier, and she's too keyed-up to sleep on the bus anyway, but it's still later than she's used to being awake.

"Why ain't'cha?"

"I have to stop by my mom's vet clinic and make sure everything got locked up properly; she's worried. Better me than her, though, she works crazy hours already. How about you, what's keeping you up?"

"Oh honey child you shouldn't be doing your mama's job. How often this happen to you? I work swing shift."

"Oh, hardly ever. And I'm happy to do it, really, she's a great mom. Swing shift sounds rough."

"Not as rough as being up at the witchin' hour doing your mama's job for her! She oughta learn to lock up after her own self!"

Shrug. Check her notes again for which stop she needs to get off at.

"She oughta be ashamed," mutters the lady.

The bus reaches her stop before Margaret's.

Has she considered that maybe Margaret oughta be ashamed for bad-mouthing her mother like that? Ugh.

Margaret gets off the bus, walks the last little way to the clinic, and lets herself in (her mother had, of course, locked up as always). She slips into the section where the overnight patients are kept, a room full of kennels with unhealthy cats and dogs sleeping on fluffy blankets, and starts checking charts for something old with a physical injury.

Here's a ten year old Schnauzer who got hit by a car.