All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  "One of my professors told me that of every ten women vets who want an equine practice, nine will fail. I had been considering equine, but those seemed like bad odds. I figured there wouldn't be that many women going into marine. I'm certified as a general vet, of course. Otherwise I'd never have put in for the job with Dr. Parmenter."

  "Did you like marine?"

  She shrugged. "I got picked for an internship at Sea City, probably because they couldn't tell from my name I'm a woman. When I showed up, they were not pleased. They would have preferred a man."

  "Tough," Eli said. "How did they handle it?"

  "How do they always handle it? They tried to run me off. Stuck me with the penguins, theoretically one of the worst jobs they had." She actually grinned. "I loved it. I had a blast."

  Eli and I leaned forward. "How do you treat penguins?"

  "There wasn't that much treatment, but I did get to swim with them. That was fantastic. You know they mate for life? I had a couple of big male Emperors who were bound and determined they wanted me to have their babies-or at least produce their eggs. They used to wait for me, and then swim circles around me and bump into me and do all this courting behavior."

  "Sounds like fun."

  "Oh, it was. Then the management switched me to the dolphins. If I thought the penguins were fun, the dolphins were fabulous."

  Her face glowed under its tan. Her eyes glittered with enthusiasm. For the moment, at least, she'd forgotten her personal situation. Good.

  "I've heard they re dangerous," I said.

  "They can be. They're big, although not nearly as big as the killer whales. You have to wear a really thick wet suit so that if they grab you, theywon't grab skin. And of course we had air tanks, so we didn't have to worry about being under water with them." She hunched her shoulders. "They really do have a sense of humor. They loved to sneak up behind me under water until I could feel their sonar tingling off the back of my neck. Then they'd blow as hard as they could." She laughed. "I was supposed to turn around, take out my mouthpiece and blow air from my tank straight into their faces. I swear they'd laugh. And then sometimes they'd grab hold of an arm or a leg and drag me around the pool underwater as fast as they could. It was great."

  "Why on earth did you quit?"

  Instantly every trace of animation dropped from her face. "I fell in love."

  "oh."

  "Sea City made it clear I'd be stuck where I was if I stayed with them. Geoff convinced me to marry him and said I could make more money working small animals until he could get established with the big racehorse breeding farms around Ocala."

  "But you must miss it, surely."

  "The dolphins? Of course I do, but I'm a realist. Somebody had to support us while Geoff was building his equine practice. And I do like small animals. Large too come to that. I just didn't expect-"

  "You don't have to go on," Eli said. "Have a little more wine."

  .No, please. I don't usually drink at all, and I certainly didn't mean to dump all my problems in your laps." She gave us a watery smile. "I can't really talk to my mother and the doctors openly."

  "Hey, if you can't talk to a pair of colleagues who are old enough to be your mother-well, nearly old enough," Eli said. "Who can you talk to?"

  "Please don't get me wrong. I wouldn't give Susan up for all the dolphins and penguins in the universe. I just feel so helpless."

  "You ought to feel damned mad," I said.

  "That too. But mostly I'm scared."

  "If you got the job with Dr. Parmenter, would your mother move up here with you to look after Susan?"

  She shook her head.-" My dad's heart is bad. They can't move."

  "Who would look after her?"

  "She's a little over a year old, and she's no more trouble than most babies right now. Actually, she's so sunny, she's better than most. I planned to put her in a nursery. Dr. Parmenter has good insurance..."

  "Even for a pre-existing condition?"

  "They can't turn her down if she's on my plan. That's one of the reasons I want this job so much."

  "How much care will she need down the line?"

  "That's just it. The doctors don't think there's anything wrong with her mental capacity. But I don't know yet whether she'll everwalk, ever speak ever feed herself. She's going to need therapy and ongoing medical treatment. I'm just beginning to find out what I'm up against."

  "You ought to get help from the bastard who fathered her," I said.

  "My lawyer says he can afford to pay decent child support now, but even if he's conscientious about that, I'll be all alone."

  "Maybe not," Eli said, and patted her hand.

  At that moment while we were all sitting around sniffling, the telephone rang. Eli took the call in the kitchen, while Lanier and I got ourselves ready to go back to her hotel.

  "Don't go anywhere," Eli said. "That was Roy Wilson. He's got a cow down with a prolapsed uterus. He needs somebody quick." She turned to Lanier. "It's really a two man job. You mind riding along? Either that or we can call you a cab. The practice will pay for it."

  "Don't even think about that. Hey, I don't have anything to do tonight except watch the late news and worry about Susan. I'd like to ride along. I've handled my share of prolapsed uteruses in school. Maybe I can help."

  On our way out the door, I asked Eli over my shoulder, "Is that cow in the barn or up the side of a hill?"

  "He swears she's inside."

  "Good."

  On the way to Roy's, Eli and I regaled Lanier with the story of Eli's yellow rainboots. I made Lanier put my heavy windbreaker back on before she climbed out of the truck at Roy's and was introduced.

  In the bam under the lights, the cow was standing up and looked to be in fairly good shape except for the massive uterus hanging out behind her. Prolapse of the uterus is fairly common in cows, and if it can be popped back in quickly, it's not that serious. If not, or if its tom, it can be a death sentence for the cow. So speed was essential.

  "Got another problem," Roy said as he opened the stall door. "She won't have nothing to do with that calf. Been trying to kick the fool out of it. Finally had to tie her hind legs together to keep her from stepping on her uterus and tearing it out while she was kicking at the calf."

  The calf still lay in the hay. If it had been trying to stand and nurse, it had apparently given up, and now looked up at us with worried brown eyes.

  "We need to get that calf out of here and into someplace warm," I said.

  "It needs some milk," Lanier added.

  "Don't I know it."

  "Mr. Wilson?" Lanier asked, "Can we move that calf into your kitchen? We could turn on your stove and warm it up. I can get it to nurse and help it to stand so you can help the doctors out here."

  Roy looked at her through narrowed eyes. "Got a couple of old blankets we could put down on the kitchen floor."

  "Do you think you can carry it that far?"

  Roy drew his bony shoulders up. "Doc, I been toting newborn calves since before you was born." He snorted. "Can I carry a calf, huh." He reached down and levered the calf halfway up. We could tell he was struggling. Between the four of us we got it up into his arms and across his chest. He walked out of the barn with immense dignity, but I suspected he'd have a heck of a backache come morning.

  Lanier followed him.

  "Lanier? You okay with this?" I asked.

  "Sure."

  I turned back to Eli who was already positioning the cow's uterus to push it back inside. It was like trying to shove an enormous bowl of gelatin through a small funnel-frustrating and annoying and time consuming. Once the uterus started to go back in, however, it disappeared like a rabbit down a burrow. The cow never seemed to feel any distress. As a matter of fact, that particular cow never stopped munching her hay.

  When I checked my watch after we had treated the cow, I saw that it was after midnight. Despite the chill October air, Eli and I were drenched with sweat and blood. We hadn't given a thought to Lanie
r and the calf.

  We rinsed off as much as we could under Roy's barn tap and half staggered up his back steps and in the kitchen door.

  Roy had been a widower for over ten years. He kept a bachelor kitchen. Clean, but with a minimum number of gewgaws and decorations.

  What few there were had been knocked off the lower shelves. The small kitchen table lay on its side. Lanier didn't just look disheveled, she looked as though she'd been battling a dozen Sumo wrestlers at the same time.

  Milk dripped from her eyebrows and the end of her nose. It ran down the front of her shirt and her denim skirt. Her arms were sticky with it.

  She knelt at the edge of a woolen blanket that had been spread in the open space in front of the stove as she tried to hoist the little black and white calf to its feet. Every time it struggled halfway up, its hooves would spread out the blanket and it would start to slide.

  Splat. All four legs at four points of the compass.

  Roy tried to hold it around its belly, while Lanier made stabs at its mouth with the nipple of a large nursing bottle half full of milk.

  The baby would reach out, grasp the bottle, take a few good pulls, then slide back down. Calves, unfortunately, learn to nurse standing up. This one wanted to eat the proper way.

  "Dang it, Maggie, grab this fool calf!" Roy wheezed. "I can't hold her up by myself"

  "Pull the blanket out from under her feet, you doofus," Eli said.

  "Tried that. Floor's even slipperyer. She don't make it halfway up without the blanket."

  I expected Lanier to look frustrated or annoyed or even apologetic, but the face she turned up to mine was radiant. "Hey, Maggie, Eli," she said. "We got a whole bottle into this little girl already and she's warm as toast. Come on, Mr. Wilson, how about we let her take a little nap?"

  "Whew!" Roy released his hold. The baby slid to the blanket as gently as a Boston matron taking her seat at the symphony. Apparently she decided that nourishment was more important than standing as she was supposed to. She grasped the nipple in Lanier 's hand and suckled noisily and contentedly for a minute, then let go the bottle, struggled to curl her legs under her, put her head down on the blanket and went to sleep.

  Lanier got up off her knees and looked around. "Guess we made kind of a mess staggering around until we worked out the blanket routine."

  "Don't matter none," Roy said. "We got us a warm calf with a full belly. I can clean up tomorrow morning." He looked down at the sleeping calf. "Think maybe I'll call her Lanie. You mind, doc?"

  "I'd be honored, Mr. Wilson," Lanier said. "How's mamma doing?"

  "She's fine," Eli said. "Can't say the same for us. Come on, Lanier, I've got a perfectly good guestroom with it's own bath. I can lend you p.j's and a robe. We'll toss your clothes into the washer and dryer, and you'll be good to go by morning."

  "Oh, I couldn't."

  "Sure you could," I said as I marched the two women out to the truck. "Call your hotel and give them Eli's number in case your mother calls. We can stop by and pick up your stuff tomorrow when I take you to your plane. What time do you leave?"

  "Not until ten-thirty in the morning. You can't take time off to drive me."

  "One of us will make time. We owe you. Right, Mr. Wilson?"

  He held me back as I followed Eli and Lanier to the car. "That's a game little gal," he said. "She comin' to work with y'all?"

  "No, sir," I said. "If I have myway, you just met Dr. Parmenter's new junior partner. I bet she'll be moved into Memphis by Christmas."

  And she was.

  Chapter 24

  In which we meet a cold hound and a warm shepherd

  Sarah was in her junior year at USC and interning with a small independent film company. She wanted a career in what she said everyone in Los Angeles called films, not movies.

  Nathan was a freshman at Brown. He planned to follow his father into something to do with banking or investments. He was aiming for Wall Street where, he said, the action was.

  I had come to terms with the fact that neither of my children would become a vet. As a matter of fact, if one lived in New York City and one stayed in Los Angeles, neither of them would live within driving distance.

  Because the children were home, Eli agreed to take emergency calls so I wouldn't have to. Then, of course, the children, as college kids do, spent most of their time seeing all their hometown friends.

  For the first time in my memory, we had a white Christmas. Boy, did we ever! The Mississippi River froze all the way across. River traffic stopped because of the danger of icebergs. A couple of big ones bashed into bridge peers north of St. Louis and caused enough damage to keep the bridge closed for a week.

  In west Tennessee we did not, nor do we yet have snow removal equipment. The best we could manage was trucks that threw ashes and rock salt onto the bridges and overpasses.

  People around here weren't used to snow and hadn't a clue how to drive in it. School was cancelled as the first snowflake stuck to the first schoolbus windshield.

  Because animals still got sick and hurt, Eli and I had snow tires on our trucks, carried chains, flares, blankets, candles (to stay warm under the blankets until help came if we got stuck on a back road), cell phones, snow shovels, and kitty litter to put under spinning tires.

  Not only was the snow fifteen inches thick-unheard of in this neck of the woods-the temperature was down in the teens. Memphis and the surrounding counties all opened heated shelters for the homeless and indigent, and crews worked twenty-four-seven to keep electricity and gas flowing.

  The clinic, our house and Eli's house all had generators in case the power went out, but thus far it hadn't. We were warm, we were safe, and we prayed we wouldn't get any calls.

  We had closed the clinic on Christmas Eve, but about four in the afternoon Eli called me at home.

  "Sorry, Maggie, we've got a new client coming in. I may need some help. Can you come over to the clinic?"

  "What's the problem?"

  "He says his dog is dying."

  "I'll be there half an hour. I have to put the roast in the oven or we won't have any dinner tonight."

  I put on the roast, shrugged into my heavy parka and stuffed my feet into my heavy rubber boots. Nathan and Sarah and Morgan were playing Scrabble in the den. They didn't even notice when I left.

  The day was semi-dark already. The gray clouds felt like a soggy woolen blanket pressing the life and the breath out of every living thing. Morgan had scraped the driveways and parking lot with his tractor, but I had to slog across virgin snow to get to the clinic.

  I saw that the client had already arrived as I slipped and slid up the front steps. If his car was any indication, he was a rich prospect. He was driving the first Lamborghini I'd ever seen. Even in the dusk its scarlet pelt gleamed like the breast of a bluebird.

  I pushed open the door and heard Eli's voice and an answering baritone coming from the closest examining room.

  He had his back to me, so all I could see was a heavy leather sheepskin jacket with the collar pulled up.

  "Hi, what's up?" I asked.

  He turned.

  I blinked. I probably gaped. Why do men grow better looking as they age? This one was fiftyish, with a mass of iron gray hair, a lock of which had flopped down on his forehead. He had wide gray eyes and the chiseled facial bones of one of those Greek statues. He was drop dead gorgeous.

  Not tall. Probably no more than five feet ten-my height. But even under the heavy coat he looked slim and fit. The kind of guy who models in GQ.

  On the examining table a greyhound bitch lay stretched out stiff. And I do mean stiff.

  "She's hypothermic," Eli said. "I've got hot packs in the microwave. "

  I fetched them. When I came back, we wrapped them and packed them around her.

  "Is she dead?" the man asked. His voice was as handsome as his face, a low baritone with the rich accent that only comes from generations of Southern wealth and privilege.

  "Not yet," Eli said, "But
I don't guarantee anything."

  We covered the brindle dog with more heavy towels and rubbed her feet and ears.

  "How did this happen?" Eli asked.

  The man sank into the client's chair in the comer of the room and dropped his handsome head into his hands. "I didn't know. They didn't tell me."

  "Who? What didn't you know?" Eli snapped.

  He sighed deeply and stared at the greyhound. I was afraid he was going to cry. I turned away and kept rubbing the blood back into the hound's extremities.

  "I should never have agreed to dog sit," the man said. "What do I know about animals? Zip. But it was only for a week. Nobody knew they'd get stuck in New York because of this storm."

  "Okay," Eli snapped. "She's not your dog. Start at the beginning. "

  He took a deep breath. "A couple of my friends flew to New York to shop and see some shows. Greta, here, retired off the dog-track and hates to be cooped up in a cage. She's a sweet dog, and I know her well, so I said I'd be happy to check on her. She has a dog door so she can come and go to their yard to run. All I had to do was look in on her morning and night, make sure she had food and water. Until it got so cold I took her out to Shelby Farms to run every morning, although she gets plenty of exercise on her own. Most of the time she lies in her bed in the kitchen and sleeps. A real couch potato."

  "So what happened?" Eli asked.

  "Sometime last night the power went over there. I couldn't get out of my driveway or through the streets until an hour ago. The house was frigid! I found her lying on her bed like that. She was barely breathing. Her eyes were rolled back in her head."

  "Why us?" Eli asked as she kneaded the dog's rib cage over her heart and lungs. "If you live in town, why risk the drive to the country?"

  "You were the fifth service I called. You called me back. None of the others did. Even the Memphis Emergency Clinic seems to be closed." He turned to me. "And I've met Morgan at several luncheons. I figured his wife would be good at her job. Morgan would have to be married to an extraordinary woman."

  Eli stuck her stethoscope under the toweling. "Heart's stronger."

  I nodded. "She's starting to move her legs."