Vets of the Heart

by Cathy Woodman

  ‘Don’t say a word. The sooner we both get to bed the better.’

  I frown at his turn of phrase.

  ‘I mean, the sooner we get to bed separately,’ he adds, blushing. ‘Aurora is coming to pick mum and baby up in ten minutes. She’s delighted – just as much about having an excuse not to go to her mother-inlaw’s as she is about the puppy.’ He tries to unfasten the ties on his gown. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Hang on.’ I apologise. ‘The knot’s too tight. I’m going to have to cut you out.’ I grab a pair of scissors from the draining board and snip through the ties. He strips off the gown and glances down at his scrub top, which is wet with surgical scrub. He pulls it off over his head right in front of me, revealing the V of dark curly hair across his chest. I bite my lip as he turns back to the sink, wets some paper towel and wipes the seepage from his skin.

  ‘That’s better,’ he says, looking back at me with a glint in his eye. I know what it means, that Penny was right, and he still wants me. I don’t know what to say. I’ve lost all power of speech and my face is burning. The autoclave completes a cycle, releasing a cloud of steam. The buzzer sounds from reception.

  ‘That’ll be the proud grandmother,’ Ross says brightly, and he disappears to fetch himself a clean top while I show Aurora through to Kennels. Ross gives her instructions on how to look after the unexpected arrival and sends her on her way before offering to walk me home.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I want to. I mean, I’ll be happier knowing you’re back safe.’

  It’s my turn to laugh. ‘This is Talyton St George you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’ll come back for the bike.’ He throws on his leather jacket and changes into jeans and boots before walking me along the road. The streetlamps and Christmas lights are off and veils of cloud obscure the moon; all you can hear is the rain pattering on the pavement and dripping from the gutters. I glance towards him as we walk side by side in mutual silence. I can just make out his features in the shadowy darkness, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I ask. ‘Are you missing your family?’

  ‘It’s the first Christmas when I haven’t made plans to be with them, but no, I’m not going to mope about that. I’ve sent cards and phoned my mother – we had a good chat.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him too. I’ve promised to keep in touch, and I’m going to make sure I remember never to treat my son in the same way as my dad did me.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m not going back. My life is here now.’ He pauses and swears lightly. ‘That’s the phone.’ He fishes about in one of the many zipped pockets in his jacket, pulls out his mobile and holds it up to his ear. ‘Otter House vets, Ross speaking . . .’

  I wait on the doorstep outside the shop for him to finish the call.

  ‘Why aren’t people in bed at this time of night?’

  ‘They’re up because their kids can’t sleep because they’re waiting for Father Christmas,’ I suggest.

  ‘There’s a cat on its way – apparently it’s chosen tonight to start on the tinsel diet.’ I can hear the humour in his voice when he goes on, ‘I’ll walk you back to Otter House if you like.’

  Five minutes after our return, the client – Mrs Milton, a well-dressed woman in her sixties – shows up with a Siamese cat on a harness and lead. The driver of the car that brings her remains outside.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us so quickly. We’re staying with family in Talymouth and they recommended your practice. This is Ronnie. He’s registered with a vet where we live, but it’s too far to drive home tonight.’

  Ross shows her into the consulting room.

  ‘He’s two, but he behaves like a kitten,’ she continues. ‘He was playing with the tinsel on the tree and it’s got caught around his teeth.’

  Ronnie, a seal-point with a cream body and brown ear-tips, paws and tail, perches on the edge of the table, a piece of gold tinsel hanging out of his mouth and scratches across his face where he’s tried to remove it.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Ross gently prises his mouth open. He has one attempt to untangle the tinsel, but the cat becomes distressed and starts panting and trying to get away, digging his claws into his arm. ‘We’ll have to admit him to be sedated,’ he decides. ‘When did he last have anything to eat – apart from tinsel, that is?’

  ‘He had his usual cat food at six,’ Mrs Milton says.

  Ross is happy with that, so we take him in and send her home to wait until he’s ready to be collected.

  ’It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,’ Ross sings as we wait for the sedation to take effect. ‘What do you think? Is he ready?’

  I check Ronnie’s reflexes and jaw tone. ‘Go for it, otherwise we’ll be here till next Christmas.’

  ‘Very funny.’ He opens the cat’s mouth and starts to disentangle the string of tinsel from around his teeth, using forceps and scissors to snip it into sections.

  ‘Has he swallowed any of it?’ I ask, knowing that if he has this could be the beginning rather than the end of it, so to speak.

  ‘This bit is going down the back of his throat.’ Ross shows me. ‘I’m going to pull on it very gently to see if it will come out on its own. If there’s any resistance, we’ll do a quick X-ray and go in.’ It’s a relief when the end of the tinsel appears, but Ronnie can’t go home. ‘We’ll keep him in for observation for a couple of days.’

  I know what that means: that I’ll be checking his litter tray for tinsel.

  We stay up for a while, watching Ronnie and drinking tea. At about three thirty in the morning, Ross starts to yawn, so I offer to take the phone while he gets some sleep.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m all right at the moment.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay here. There doesn’t seem much point in going back to Talyford.’

  ‘You can have the sofa. I’ll go home for a while.’

  I have a strange sense of déjà vu when he walks me back to Petals for a second time. The temperature has plummeted and our breath forms clouds in the light of the moon as we step outside the practice. Ross locks the door before moving up beside me and stamping his feet.

  ‘That’s cold enough to freeze a polar bear’s you-know-what,’ he says, grimacing, ‘and the kind of night when you’d have to jump-start a reindeer.’ He offers me his arm. I take it and we make our way along the icy street.

  ‘I’m not sure who is holding up whom,’ Ross laughs as we slip and slide into each other, bumping hips. He makes a show of catching me by the shoulders, using it as an excuse, I think, to get closer, wrapping his arm around my back and giving me a squeeze. The contact makes me shiver. I can smell his scent of musk and surgical scrub, and sense the warmth of his body through his leather jacket, a mix of sensations that reminds me of the taste of his kisses and the passionate embraces that we shared. The memories burn like fire inside my head and my heart. ‘Shannon? Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, wishing that it was much further to walk home so I could enjoy his touch for longer and find a way to broach the subject of where we are going – as long as I’ve got it right and we do have some kind of future together. I fumble for the key in my pocket when we reach Petals, and unlock the door. Seven comes running through to greet us, wagging his tail. Ross gives him a pat.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he says, turning back to me. ‘Sleep well,’ he adds.

  I won’t sleep for thinking about him, I muse as I close the door behind him, and I head for the kitchen for a glass of water before going to my room. Mum has left a pillowcase filled with oranges, apples and nuts, and a present on the end of my bed, as she always does every Christmas. The chocolates are on the mantelpiece so Seven can’t get at them. There’s a gift from Godfrey too and, even though I’m twenty-six, not six, I can feel the thrill of anticipation and excitement as I try to guess what’s inside the wrapping paper crackling beneath my fingers. Seven sit
s on the bed with me, nudging at the presents with his nose.

  ‘It’s been quite a year,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve been through some hard times, but we’ve both come out the other side in one piece and the people we love have stood by us.’ I feel quite choked. I have almost everything I could wish for – there’s only one thing that’s missing, and even that seems tantalisingly close.

  I can’t sleep and I can only have had half an hour or so of dreaming of Ross before the phone rings again.

  ‘Hi, who’s there?’ The voice sounds familiar.

  ‘It’s Shannon. How can I help?’

  ‘I bet you thought it was Father Christmas.’ A man laughs and the phone crackles.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says a female voice. ‘Declan’s had a few drinks.’

  ‘Hello, Penny,’ I say. ‘What’s happened to Trevor this time?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m sorry for disturbing you at this time of night, but he’s lying around and being sick, and I’m desperately worried about him.’

  It transpires that he hasn’t been himself for a couple of days, but only took a turn for the worse during the past few hours.

  ‘Can you bring him to the surgery or shall I come and pick him up?’ I ask, although I know what the answer will be. Declan isn’t in any fit state to drive. I walk back to Otter House to fetch the ambulance and wake Ross, who is asleep on the sofa with a blanket around him, his tousled curls spread over a cushion. I struggle to resist the urge to stroke his hair and check his vital signs.

  ‘Time to wake up,’ I whisper, but he’s pretty well comatose. I reach out and squeeze his shoulder.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ he says, sitting up, eyes wide open.

  ‘There is no fire.’ I can’t help smiling. ‘We’ve been called out to visit Trevor.’

  He stretches his arms above his head. ‘You needn’t have bothered to go home. You could have stayed curled up with me. Another time, maybe.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ I say lightly, although my heart is banging lightly at the thought of lying in his arms.

  ‘You are always in my dreams,’ he says, getting up. ‘Let’s go.’

  We bring Trevor back to Otter House for observation and a drip, by which time it isn’t worth going back to bed.

  ‘We’ll X-ray him after we’ve seen the two nonurgent cases at ten,’ Ross says, bringing coffee and croissants. ‘There’s Nero, whose ear’s flared up, and a cat with a sore tail. If we need to operate on Trevor, we’ll do that before we have Christmas dinner.’

  ‘I forgot to say that Mum and Godfrey have invited you to ours for lunch, if we’re not busy and if you’d like to come along.’

  ‘I was hoping to treat you to dinner and crackers. Maz and Alex asked me to theirs as well, but I turned them down. I thought it would be fun if it was just the two of us, like old times.’

  I recall the long hot afternoons we spent on die patio at the house in Talyford, chatting and laughing over a salad and a glass of wine. There weren’t many of them as it turned out, but they were precious to me. I savoured the time we had together. The prospect of celebrating Christmas alone with him is very tempting, and I don’t suppose Mum will mind when she and Godfrey are still all over each other like a rash.

  ‘I’ll let them know I’m staying here with you.’

  As it turns out, we would have missed lunch anyway, because Trevor needs an operation. Once he’s under anaesthetic, I monitor his blood pressure, applying the cuff to his leg, inflating it and deflating it to get fie required readings. I repeat it several times because it’s much lower than I’m expecting – so low, in fact, that he should be dead.

  ‘Would you mind checking this for me?’

  Ross fiddles around with the cuff and machine.

  ‘The cuff’s all right, but when it’s inflated, I can still hear a pulse.’ He frowns.

  ‘You haven’t got the probe on your finger, have you?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s my pulse. I’m sorry.’ He casts me a meaningful glance as he readjusts the set-up. ‘I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping.’

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ I say, trying to divert the conversation.

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ he says quietly. ‘That isn’t why I haven’t been sleeping.’

  I take up the stethoscope and stuff it into my ears so I can block out any further personal discussion. Trevor is our priority, although we do need to talk.

  I watch Ross operating and it feels like his hand has dived into my belly, grabbed me by the guts and twisted them up. I used to find him unbearably impatient, but he’s shown that he can be gentle and steady – he tried so hard to stand by me after the accident and he persisted in coming to see me and trying to get me out and about. How many times did I reject him before he finally gave up? And even then I don’t think he could have completely given up on me. Look how kind and supportive and . . . I want to say ‘loving’ . . . he’s been to me over the past weeks since my return to work when he really didn’t have to. I’m surprised he could bring himself to speak to me after how I behaved.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ he says, unable to disguise the triumph in his voice. He cuts into a section of the dog’s intestines and pulls out a wodge of material, which he drops into the kidney dish on the instrument tray. ‘What is it?’

  I pick the stinking, brownish-green item up and rinse it under the tap.

  ‘It’s a sports sock,’ I say, grimacing. ‘Just what I’ve always wanted. Lovely.’

  ‘Declan will be pleased,’ Ross teases.

  It’s mid-afternoon by the time we’ve finished operating on not-so-clever Trevor. Ross has spoken to Penny, who says that he must have accidentally swallowed it while practising putting the washing in the machine. I wonder if he’s going to get the sack as her assistance dog.

  ‘That’s it for now,’ Ross says, leaving him to recover in a kennel. ‘Let’s have Christmas dinner – I thought we’d eat in the staff room.’

  ‘Are you sure? I expect Mum has some leftovers we can warm up.’

  ‘It’s all here in the fridge,’ he says. ‘Come on, I’ll do the clearing up in theatre afterwards.’

  ‘You?’ I say in mocking tone. ‘What do you know about cleaning?’ I give him a flirtatious smile as we move along the corridor to the staff room. ‘Actually, that’s an offer I can’t refuse – but I’d rather we did it together.’

  Ross holds the door open for me.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he says.

  ‘I’d prefer to be doing something.’

  ‘Just do as you’re told for once and sit down.’ He grins as he steps past me and pulls a bag off one of the shelves and places it on the worktop near the sink. I perch on the middle of the sofa, with Tilly lying curled up at one end and Tripod at the other.

  ‘First things first,’ Ross says, and he hands me the ends of two crackers. ‘Pull!’

  The crackers snap, sending the kitten flying off the sofa and skedaddling across the carpet to hide in the corner.

  ‘Oh, poor little thing,’ I say, jumping up to grab her and give her a quick cuddle before helping Ross find the contents of the crackers, which have disappeared under the sofa, Tripod continues to snooze.

  ‘Do you want a crown?’ he asks.

  ‘Why not?’ I say, laughing, ‘but only if you wear one too.’

  He slips one onto his head, but it tears as he tries to force it over his curls. As for mine, it falls over my eyes.

  ‘Let’s forget those,’ he says. ‘Would you like a fortune-telling fish or a whoopee cushion?’

  ‘Neither, thanks. I don’t want to scare the cat again, and I’d rather rely on Mrs Wall for some inkling of the future.’

  ‘I’ve always been of the opinion that you don’t wait to see what the future brings. You have to build it for yourself.’ Ross turns away. ‘Are you ready for dinner? I’m starving.’ He takes two plates from the fridge and puts one in the microwave. ‘Two roast dinners, one turkey, one unidentifiable object – I think it’s supposed to
be a vegetarian cutlet.’ He warms the second one.

  ‘Where did you get these from?’ I ask, as Tilly takes a flying leap from the back of the sofa, aiming for Ross’s plate, but ending up on the floor, having left paw-prints in his gravy.

  ‘She thinks I should have bought one for her.’ He pushes Tilly away as she makes a second and last assault on his meal. ‘I picked them up from the Talymill Inn yesterday. A special order. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s great. Perfect for the busy vet and nurse on call.’ I can’t believe how sweet and thoughtful he’s being, making sure we have the perfect Christmas on call.

  ‘There’s pudding too, but I forgot the brandy.’ Ross shrugs. ‘It’s probably a good thing – setting fire to it might have set off the fire alarm.’ He changes the subject. ‘Have you got any plans?’

  My forehead tightens. ‘For this afternoon?’

  ‘And for later, tomorrow, next year . . .?’

  ‘Well, we still need to do theatre and check on Trevor..

  ‘We could drop into the new surgery tomorrow, that’s if you’re at a loose end and we aren’t too busy. Maz asked me if I could rim some of the boxes in the office over there. There’s stationery and a delivery of syringes and needles. I thought you might like to put things away exactly where you want them. The more we can get done before we open, the better. I can’t wait to have a place of our own. It will feel like it’s ours.’

  ‘I can hardly wait. I’ll be able to do things my way, not Izzy’s.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. When the idea of me taking on the running of the branch surgery first came up, I was afraid Maz and Emma were going to suggest Izzy joined me. She’s a great nurse, but we don’t work well together.’

  I’m touched when he continues, ‘I’d much rather spend time with you.’

  Blushing, I get up to take the plates and put them to soak in the sink.

  ‘Would you like dessert?’ he asks.

  ‘No thanks, I’ve had enough.’ When I turn back, he’s pulling a flat rectangular box wrapped in tissue paper from his jacket, which he’s left over the arm of the sofa.

  ‘I have something for you, a present. Go on,’ he adds, as I hesitate.