Vets of the Heart

by Cathy Woodman

  ‘You know where I am if you need me. How about Izzy?’

  ‘Izzy works on the farm after work – I can hardly ask her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Frances like to have them for a day or two?’

  ‘She means well, but no.’

  Ross touches the top of Tilly’s head. She growls and flattens her ears.

  ‘There’s some way to go. Please don’t build your hopes up, and don’t wear yourself out.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I joke. ‘I’m not going to let these babies change my life.’

  ‘That’s what all new mums say,’ he teases.

  I gaze at them fondly. I promised myself not to get attached to them, but I’m afraid that it’s already too late. I’ll be devastated if they don’t make it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Patients Permitting

  The kittens thrive. In spite of his reservations about hand-rearing, Ross takes turns with me to feed them day and night for the rest of the week. At first, I was put off him a little by his suggesting that they should be put to sleep, but when I saw him holding a tiny kitten in one hand and a bottle in the other, my heart melted and I began to forgive him.

  By the time the weekend comes along, I’m starting to relax and look forward to Frances’s retirement do, especially when Heidi drops Bart off without staying for more than a quick coffee, because she’s going to a hen do at a Cornish spa. Bart is calmer than he was at the party, but I keep the kittens shut in my bedroom just in case.

  Ross and I are on duty, but we go along between calls. I drive and he sits with the kittens in a cat carrier on his lap, while Bart is shut in the back.

  ‘Are you sure we should have brought him with us?’ I ask.

  ‘I asked Emma and she said it was okay.’

  ‘She didn’t see him at the party,’ I remind him.

  ‘That was a one-off – he took a dislike to Dave,’ Ross says. ‘You’re being paranoid. He’s a lovely boy.’

  ‘I’m worried about the children.’

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  I feel chastened, which is wrong when he’s the one being unreasonable. I glance towards him. The muscle in his cheek tautens and relaxes.

  ‘I’ll keep him with me, on the lead,’ he says eventually. ‘Happy now?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say as I pull into the drive outside Emma’s house.

  Who needs a designer handbag when a pair of kittens are a vet nurse’s favourite accessory? Wherever I go with them, people talk to me, although this is somewhat nerve-wracking at the party where the children want to stroke them. I sit on a blanket on the lawn in Ben and Emma’s garden with Celine, while Ross – with Bart on the lead – chats to Ben, who’s playing with the barbecue. Maz is frantically wrapping a present on the garden table with Henry toddling about under her feet and the baby asleep in the buggy alongside her, while Emma is bustling around with plates of food.

  She and Ben moved from the new estate to this lovely old white house just outside Talyton St George. It’s my idea of a dream home, and I’m sure Godfrey would have waxed lyrical about it when he marketed it. It has views of the Devon hills and the moors beyond, a walled garden where we are now, with a small orchard behind it, and although the house has original features, such as beams and wooden floors, it’s been updated with a new kitchen and bathrooms. The garden contains a trampoline, various ride-on vehicles and a two-storey playhouse kitted out with everything you can think of in miniature for the twins, yet George, Lydia and Elena are intent on getting their hands on Kit and Tilly.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ I say sternly. ‘They look cute, but they bite and scratch. They are more dangerous than any crocodile.’

  George gazes at me, uncertain about whether to argue that point or not.

  ‘Please don’t touch, otherwise I’ll have to take them straight home, and your mummy will have to take you to hospital again to have your fingers sewn back on.’

  His eyes grow wide.

  ‘I’ve left their bottles of milk warming up in a bowl in the kitchen. It would be a great help if you could fetch them for me,’ I say.

  ‘You’re so devious,’ Celine says, when the three of them disappear into the house. ‘I’m not sure I’d have even thought of that with my little monsters. I should be taking notes.’ She looks into the carrier. Kit hisses at her. ‘You and Ross? I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you . . .?’

  I shake my head, wishing the children would hurry up with the bottles, at which they appear with the twins carrying one each.

  ‘I would if I wasn’t married,’ she giggles. ‘Maz calls him the boy racer – she says she prefers a man in tight breeches.’

  I take Tilly out of the carrier and feed her first. She drains the milk and hiccups.

  ‘She burped.’ George laughs, making the twins laugh too.

  ‘It won’t be long before I start weaning them onto solid food and then we’ll have to decide what to do with them,’ I say, thinking aloud. ‘It will be hard letting them go.’

  ‘I’ll give one of them a home,’ Celine offers. ‘I don’t mind which one. What do you think?’

  ‘That would be great as long as they’re tame enough to fit into normal society.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d describe my family as normal.’ She changes the subject. ‘I hope Frances is going to turn up soon.’

  ‘I expect she wants to make a grand entrance,’ I say.

  ‘It’s her prerogative,’ Ross says, joining us with a glass of shandy in his hand. ‘It’s her party, after all.’

  The kittens settle down to sleep and the children run off to the playhouse. Bart grabs a stick from the flowerbed alongside us and starts chewing it. I give Ross a nudge to suggest he takes it away, but he lets him carry on. Maz joins us, topping up my glass of apple juice.

  ‘I have some exciting news,’ she says.

  ‘You aren’t pregnant again?’ I say, squinting into the sun.

  ‘No way,’ she chuckles. ‘No, Emma and I looked at a property in Talymouth this morning – that’s why we’re running behind. We’ve made an offer and we’re waiting to see if it’s been accepted.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ I say, uncertain how I feel about a branch surgery now that it is more likely to happen.

  ‘There’s a long way to go before we can make any decisions about staffing, and it needs some work – if we get it, of course.’ Maz gazes at Bart, who’s tossing the stick in the air and catching it. ‘I can think of someone who’d make a great branch manager.’

  ‘I wonder who that is,’ I say as she walks away.

  ‘I reckon she’s talking about the dog,’ Ross laughs. ‘You see, you needn’t have worried. He’s being angelic.’

  We continue to chat and, half an hour later, when Ben is beginning to stress over his organic beefburgers and vegetable kebabs, Frances arrives with her husband, Lenny.

  Ross smiles. ‘Good, I was worried we wouldn’t get to eat before we’re called away again.’

  Once we’ve demolished the barbecued food and salads, Maz gives Frances her presents – a watercolour of Otter House that she commissioned Penny to paint, a pen and a gift voucher – and brings out one of Jennie’s celebration cakes with a knife and plates.

  ‘I hope you’ve enjoyed the party,’ she says. ‘I know you didn’t want a fuss, but we couldn’t let you go without one. I’d like to wish you all the best for the future. I’ve been looking up definitions and the one I like best is that retirement is when you get up in the morning with nothing to do and by bedtime you haven’t done a tenth of it. Knowing you, Frances, you’ll be so busy that you’ll wonder how you ever had time to go to work.’

  She pauses. ‘On a serious note, I’d like to say that Frances has always kept us very well informed about what’s going on with our clients, and she makes the best cup of tea in Talyton. She’s provided us with a shoulder to cry on from time to time, and she’s always been completely committed to the practice, for which Emma and I are eternally grateful. We couldn’t
have done it without you. You will be sorely missed.’ Smiling through tears, she picks up a box of tissues from beneath the table and hands them over. ‘Help yourself.’

  Frances thanks her, and wipes her eyes.

  Maz looks at Emma and they start to sing, ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow’, and everyone else joins in. Maz cuts the cake, a rich sponge with ‘Good luck’ iced onto the top, into irregular pieces.

  ‘Call yourself a surgeon,’ Emma jokes.

  ‘Don’t you want any then?’ Maz says with a smile.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Emma holds out a plate for a slice of fluffy chocolate sponge oozing with buttercream. At the same time, Ross’s mobile rings with a call from a client whose cat has been hit by a car.

  ‘We’ll have to leave the cake,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’ He wraps Bart’s lead around his wrist. ‘Don’t forget the kittens.’

  ‘As if.’ I give Frances a hug. ‘We’ll catch up soon, I hope.’

  I miss her. When I’m admitting the patients for their operations one morning after the party, I find that each time I go into reception, I have to readjust to finding Celine there instead. She’s efficient, and although she doesn’t know much about the veterinary side of her job, she’s learning quickly. I leave the kittens behind the desk with her in between feeds so she can look after them, taking them out when she has five minutes to accustom them to being handled by more people.

  Today, it’s like a game of ‘How many people can you fit into a consulting room?’

  Ross is in the corner, reaching across the table to shake hands with Stevie from Nettlebed Farm. She’s in her thirties, a farmer’s daughter who left Talyton St George and came back when her father and their cowman began to struggle with looking after their dairy herd. She set up an alternative business, a petting farm where people take their little kids to stroke rabbits and cuddle chickens. Occasionally, she’ll bring one of their small furries to Otter House for treatment, but her husband Leo, who works for Alex at Talyton Manor Vets, looks after the sheep, goats and donkeys.

  Stevie has her child – a girl – strapped into a buggy, and a big dog on a lead. He opens his mouth and yawns nervously, emitting a pungent scent of halitosis into the mix of disinfectant, wet canine and farmyard.

  I’ve met Bear before. He’s a cuddly patchwork of various breeds, with odd eyes and one ear up and the other down, the kind of character who brings a smile to your face without even trying.

  I step inside the room, pull the door shut behind me and press myself against it, while both Maz and Izzy enter through the other door from reception, Izzy with the consent form, and Maz wanting to have a word with Ross.

  ‘I’m delighted to point out that Stevie has her own vet, yet she’s chosen us to look after Bear,’ she says. The Otter House and Talyton Manor vets can get quite competitive.

  ‘Leo says he doesn’t want to get the blame if something goes wrong. Not that anything will, I’m sure. Bear has been here before for a dental,’ Stevie explains.

  ‘I remember,’ Maz says. ‘I think we clipped most of his hair off too.’

  It was me. I clipped him and gave him a bath. He was filthy – not Stevie’s fault, I hasten to add. Bear’s neglect had been another sign that her father wasn’t coping with running the farm.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ Maz continues. ‘I’ll catch you later, Ross.’

  Ross gives Bear a once-over before giving him a shot of sedative, a low dose appropriate for an old dog.

  ‘I don’t mind how many teeth you take out; anything to make him smell sweeter,’ Stevie says. ‘It’s a shame because when he comes up to say hi, everyone backs off.’

  ‘We’ll see what they’re like,’ he says, but you can tell from a mile away.

  Stevie, who was confident at first, suddenly has a wobble as she signs the consent form.

  ‘I do hope he’ll be all right.’ She drops the pen and squats down to hug Bear and kiss the top of his head.

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be fine. Maz took some blood the other day to check his kidneys and everything looks hunky-dory.’ Ross catches my eye and gives an almost imperceptible shrug in reply. Since when has ‘hunky-dory’ become a technical term?

  ‘I’ll take him through and find him a bed for the day,’ I say, aware that he wants to get on.

  ‘You be a good boy. Love you.’ Sniffing, Stevie stands up and hands me the lead. I feel such an idiot.’

  ‘You can’t help it. They’re part of the family,’ Ross says, and I wonder if he’s thinking of Bart.

  I take the forms, glancing down at Bear’s details. Under breed, it reads ‘mostly collie’. He was an old dog when he first turned up at Otter House, but he’s aged considerably since I last saw him. His nails click-clack along the floor when I take him through to Kennels – I can’t wait to give them a good trim while he’s under anaesthetic.

  He is the last patient to be admitted, so I’m free to finish setting up in theatre. I remove a set of instruments, hot from the autoclave, while I’m waiting for Ross; he turns up a few minutes later, changed into his scrubs. I can hardly tear my eyes away from the V of his top where the dark hairs that adorn his lightly tanned skin curl across the base of his neck, and at the muscles in his arms that flex and bulge. It’s no good. The more I try to suppress the feeling, the more I fancy him. Concentrate, I tell myself, as he puts on a theatre cap.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ he says, as he tucks his hair inside it.

  ‘That cap. It isn’t a good look.’

  ‘I’d rather be wearing my helmet. Perhaps I should do that: design some cool theatre gear.’

  We anaesthetise the first patient, a cat for spaying, and while I finish preparing her for surgery, Ross scrubs up at the sink before gowning and gloving.

  ‘We’re getting rather good at this,’ he says, when we’ve finished all the sterile ops by coffee time, and there’s only Bear’s dental left to do.

  ‘Not bad.’ I survey the mess he’s left behind him – he’s been rushing me and I haven’t had time to tidy up yet.

  After the break, I fetch Bear. We lift him onto the prep bench where he sits drooling calmly as Ross injects a touch of anaesthetic so he’s sleepy enough to be tubed and connected to the anaesthetic machine. I turn the oxygen on.

  ‘That is what I call dog breath.’ Ross grimaces as he hands me a mask and puts one on himself.

  I check Bear’s colour and reflexes. His breathing is regular and his pulse is steady.

  ‘All’s well. He’s ready when you are.’

  ‘He hasn’t got many teeth left. He had ten removed the last time, according to his notes,’ he says, looking inside the dog’s mouth.

  ‘I don’t think Stevie took the advice I gave her the last time about regular brushing.’

  ‘You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. I don’t expect you have time to clean Seven’s teeth every day.’

  ‘I do actually. Most days. As you do with Bart, no doubt.’

  ‘Unfortunately not. He isn’t the most obliging dog when it comes to dental hygiene.’ He picks up a set of dental forceps, and plucks out a tooth.

  ‘Look how easily that one fell out. You would have thought Leo would have noticed something was wrong before now.’

  ‘I don’t think he lives in the house with them. He’s a yard dog,’ I say, in Leo and Stevie’s defence.

  ‘There’s one more to come out at the back, then you can scale and polish, if you like.’

  ‘Can I?’ I say, pleased that he’s confident to let me do more. Maz has allowed me to scale and polish teeth a few times before, whereas Emma prefers to do it all herself.

  ‘I’ll be here, keeping an eye.’

  ‘Do you want to do any X-rays?’

  ‘I’m sure Maz will have talked to Stevie and Leo about that. Bear’s an old dog, it adds to the cost, and this seems pretty routine, so no, I’ll just whip this molar out at the back.’

  Bear is fine under the
anaesthetic, even when Ross takes the electric saw to the tooth and cuts it into pieces. I relax, but after fifteen minutes of watching Speedivet struggling to remove it root by root, I start to worry. This isn’t like him at all.

  ‘I’m having trouble with this one,’ he admits eventually. Red-faced, he starts to lever out the last root with some force, leaning on the dog’s chest so hard that I have to warn him not to interfere with his breathing.

  ‘Shall I go and get Maz?’ I don’t think it’s an unreasonable suggestion, considering that two vets can sometimes be better than one, but Ross gives me a glare.

  ‘What do you think she can do that I can’t? I am perfectly capable!’

  ‘I’m sure you are, but—’

  ‘Just shut up and let me concentrate.’ He leans back over the dog and, suddenly, there’s a terrible crack.

  ‘What was that?’ I exclaim.

  ‘That’s never happened before. I don’t understand.’ He swears as he examines Bear’s mouth. ‘Set up for an X-ray,’ he adds sharply.

  I hesitate, wondering if it’s safe to leave the patient when the vet appears to be in a state of shock.

  ‘Go on. I’ll watch the dog and check on the bloods that Maz took to see if we missed something.’

  I set up the X-ray machine to take a couple of views of Bear’s jaw. As soon as the pictures emerge from the processor, even I can see there’s something very wrong. The bone is broken. I feel the same depth of nausea and sense of inevitability that I did when Drew made his fatal error with Mrs Dyer’s dog. All kinds of questions run through my head. Doesn’t Ross know his own strength? How will he tell Stevie that Bear is going home with more of a problem than he came in with? The thought occurs to me: If Bear goes home . . .

  ‘I wasn’t expecting that – it’s no wonder that jaw snapped.’ Ross looks at the X-rays on the viewer and points out an area where the bone has been destroyed by some kind of cancer. I have mixed feelings, because it proves that it wasn’t his fault, but it makes the outcome look worse for the dog. He turns on his heels and walks away.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I call after him. ‘Wake him up?’