by Ford, Holly
‘Can you finish taping this?’ Handing Mitch the roll of adhesive, Lennie shaved a third square of Pesh’s chest and wiped it down. She assembled the kit she needed, forcing herself to slow down, to check. All the time in the world. The sucking noise of the exit wound had stopped, but Pesh’s breath sounds were almost imperceptible now.
Lennie checked the seal Mitch had made. It was tight. Feeling out the intercostal space, she sank her largest, cattle-beast-sized needle between Pesh’s ribs, waiting for the loss of resistance that would tell her she’d reached the pleural cavity. There! Lennie pulled the chamber out of the cannula she’d fitted to the needle.
With a long hissss, the air collapsing Pesh’s lungs began to draw out. Instantly, her breath sounds improved. Lennie grabbed her stethoscope. Pesh’s heart rate was up. Retrieving the tape from Mitch, she secured the adapted IV port in place. What Pesh needed most now were fluids and blood, and she wasn’t getting them here.
‘Okay.’ Lennie looked at Mitch. She had no idea how this was going to work, but, ‘Let’s get her out of here.’
‘What about Alice?’
Oh shit. Lennie made her way around Mitch to the deer. Alice had flopped onto her side, her eyes still open, following Lennie’s every move as she knelt beside her. The old hind was snuffing, breathing hard but strong. The source of her distress was easy to see. Alice had been shot in the hindquarters, the bullet ripping through one hamstring and into the next.
‘You poor old thing,’ Lennie said softly, putting her hand to Alice’s head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Can you do anything?’
‘If she was home in the paddock, maybe.’ She stroked the old ears. ‘But she can’t survive here. And there’s no way she can walk out like this.’ Lennie’s eyes were swimming. ‘I’ll give her something for the pain.’ Quickly, she whacked the best she had into Alice’s vein. God, she hated to leave any animal like this. But she didn’t have the right drugs in her bag to do anything else.
‘Come on.’ Mitch hoisted Pesh across his shoulders, carrying the forty-kilo dog like a sheep. ‘We need to go.’
Standing up, Lennie hesitated.
‘I’ll come back and take care of this,’ Mitch said.
Lennie closed her eyes briefly.
‘See if you’ve got any signal,’ he ordered, moving off. ‘We should call the clinic and tell them we’re coming in.’
Sixteen
In the short distance between Mitch’s landing spot in the horse paddock and Central Vets’ operating room, Lennie had a couple of seconds to debate which limbs she’d give to have a specialist surgeon take over from her right now. If she was in Sydney, there’d be one waiting for her. There’d be a specialist anaesthetist too, radiographers, a team of critical care nurses, state-of-the-art imaging and monitoring equipment. If she was in Sydney? If she was in Sydney, this wouldn’t have happened to Pesh.
But she wasn’t, and it had, and all Lennie had to try and save the being she was closest to in the world were her own less nimble hands, the most basic of operating rooms, and Krystal.
She’d only ever been involved in treating one gunshot wound, to a police dog in Atlanta six years ago, and that had been in a teaching hospital with a full team. Lennie’s panic rose again. She’d never put so much as a stitch in Pesh herself. She didn’t know what she was doing, and she was way, way too emotionally invested to think clearly, to concentrate, to detach and make the right calls.
‘Is Paul still here?’ she demanded, hurtling through the empty waiting room ahead of Mitch. It was already twenty minutes past closing time.
‘He’s waiting for you out back,’ Barb told her.
As Lennie made it through the double doors, she had to bite back tears. They were all there. Paul, Jim and Krystal. Central Vets’ entire team.
‘We’ll get her prepped and X-rayed,’ Paul said firmly. ‘You scrub up.’
Lennie met his eyes. ‘Maybe you should take this.’
‘She needs the best surgeon we’ve got.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. It has to be you.’
It wasn’t until she heard the roar of the helicopter moving away that Lennie realised Mitch was gone and she hadn’t even said thank you. She pushed the thought to one side—she had a hunch that Mitch would understand. But as she raced through her prep, another image imbedded itself in Lennie’s mind before she could stop it. Alice abandoned on the forest floor, exhausted and thirsty, system collapse setting in, waiting for a second, more merciful bullet. The look of confusion, of misplaced trust, in the old hind’s eyes was never going to leave her. Had she done the right thing? Could she have done more? Oh god, this really wasn’t helping.
By the time she got into the operating room, the team had Pesh ready for her on the table, fluid therapy going in and Jim, Paul and Krystal combining to monitor the dog as best they could. Swiftly, Lennie examined the chest X-rays. The shot had punched through a rib going in and chipped the scapula on its way out, but the bullet itself hadn’t fragmented, and the few small splinters of bone looked harmlessly placed. The real problem was going to be the soft tissue inside the chest, and Lennie needed to crack it—now. Jesus. She wouldn’t be comfortable performing a procedure this massive on any animal, never mind her own dog.
Lennie picked up a scalpel. Okay, step one—make sure not to slice through the intercostal artery or vein.
Twenty minutes later, she stood staring at the exposed lung and heart of what she was doing her very best to think of as the patient. Neither organ had been hit. She’d made a repair to one small artery, suctioned the chest, and…And that was it? A bullet had ripped through an entire body and that was the only damage it had done? One little bleed?
‘Can anybody else see anything?’ she asked, looking up.
‘Looks like we’re all good,’ Paul said. ‘It’s missed the great vessels. Some luck, huh?’
‘Stats are holding,’ Jim said. ‘Pressure’s good. You’ve got a closed system.’
Lennie nodded. ‘Okay. Okay, I’m going to place the chest drain and close.’
By the time she’d wired the chest back together, sutured muscle and skin, dressed the site, and debrided the entry and exit wounds, Pesh had been on the table for almost an hour.
‘Let’s start bringing her round,’ she told Paul.
‘There you go,’ Jim said, a few minutes later. ‘She’s breathing alone.’
Lennie aspirated the chest tube she’d placed, drawing out the air that their surgery had reintroduced to Pesh’s pleural space. Was she going mad, or was that another helicopter outside?
‘Jim?’ Barb’s voice burst over the theatre’s intercom. ‘Can you come out? There’s something you need to see.’
‘It’s okay,’ Lennie told him. ‘We can take it from here.’
Krystal paused at her elbow. ‘Are you ready for Pesh to go through to recovery now?’
‘Sure,’ Lennie said, realising that Krystal was waiting to go home. Outside, the helicopter was still making a hell of a racket—it sounded like it was at the back of the clinic now. Was it Mitch again? If it was, why wasn’t he landing?
‘Thanks for staying,’ Lennie told Krystal, dumping her gown and gloves as Paul made his way out of the theatre.
‘No worries at all.’ Krystal smiled. ‘It was something to see. You did an amazing job.’
Lennie frowned down at Pesh. ‘I just hope it was amazing enough.’
‘It will be.’ Krystal touched Pesh’s paw. ‘She’s going to be fine. You’ll see.’
At last, the sound of the helicopter was fading.
‘Alright,’ Lennie said. ‘Let’s get her next door.’
In the recovery room, she checked Pesh’s stats, the IV, the chest drain again. Everything was as it should be. Free of surgical drapes, the gunshot wounds and the horrific cuts Lennie had had to make hidden under a mass of jaunty purple Vet Wrap, Pesh was looking less like a carcass and more like a dog again. Lennie stroked the thick white fur.
‘You’re goi
ng to be okay,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve got you. I’m here.’ She turned to Krystal. ‘Sorry, do you think you could just grab me the Pleur-evac before you go?’
Krystal gave her a nervous look.
Oh Jesus Christ. They didn’t have one?
‘I’m so sorry,’ Krystal said.
‘No.’ Lennie made a fresh effort to channel calm. ‘No, don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault. We’ll just have to…’ Without continuous suction from a Pleur-evac, the chest tube would have to be suctioned manually every hour. She racked her old general practitioner brain. ‘We’ll do it another way.’
Lennie looked up as the door to the lunchroom opened.
Barb walked in holding a coffee mug. ‘You could probably do with something stronger,’ she said, screwing up her face at the sight of Lennie’s gore-spattered scrubs, ‘but here.’ She gave Lennie the mug.
‘Thanks.’ With a groan of relief, Lennie took a swig. ‘What are you still doing here, anyway?’
‘I don’t really know.’ Barb looked a bit embarrassed. ‘It seemed wrong to go home when everyone else was staying.’
Lennie gave her a grateful smile.
‘Anyway,’ Barb said, ‘it was just as well I did, or there wouldn’t have been anybody to take delivery.’
‘What’s been going on out there?’
‘Mitch Stuart and Nate McAdam just dropped off your deer. Jim and Paul are working on it now.’
‘Alice?’ Lennie stared. ‘But…how?’
‘They had one of those live-capture bags hanging under the helicopter. You know, from the old deer-netting days. I haven’t seen one since I was a kid.’
Lennie gave herself a small shake. ‘Did they say anything?’
‘I only saw Nate,’ Barb said. ‘He had to jump down off the skid and get the deer out of the bag. I heard him say something to Jim—’ she gave Lennie a peculiar look ‘—about how he’d been told it was one of the family.’
For a second, Lennie didn’t know whether to laugh or give in to the tears that were suddenly choking her throat. I’ll come back and take care of this. And Mitch had. She’d barely been listening to him, had barely acknowledged him at the time, and he’d…he’d done that. He’d done everything. As the full weight of it threatened to crush her chest, the tears won.
‘There you go.’ Barb rubbed a hand up and down Lennie’s back. ‘You let it all out.’
She could hear Mitch’s voice in her head, see his face. His shoulder beside her as they flew home. They all promised something she was too strung out to try to put into words. He just…He made things right, that was all. He made things right for other people. For her. And somebody—somebody—needed to do the same thing for him. Lennie wiped her eyes.
‘Try not to worry,’ Barb said. ‘I’m sure the deer’s going to be okay.’
•
‘How is she?’ Lennie demanded, half an hour later, as her grandfather settled down on the recovery room floor beside Pesh’s bed.
‘Don’t you worry about Alice.’ Jim patted Lennie’s hand. ‘I told you that horse paddock would come in handy one day.’
Lennie managed half a laugh.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Jim said. ‘Just a couple of flesh wounds, really, that’s all. Now we’ve got her cleaned up and some antibiotics into her, she should be back on her feet in no time.’ He eyed the IV. ‘How’s Pesh?’
‘Holding up. Chest is negative. Stats are stable.’ That, they both knew, could change at any second. Lennie looked down, her fingers moving over Pesh’s ears. ‘You know, what I still can’t figure out is how the hell you can mistake a white dog for a deer.’
‘Maybe they didn’t,’ Jim said.
Lennie swallowed. ‘What are you saying? They just shot her for fun?’
‘You found them together, right? Alice and Pesh?’
She nodded. ‘Side by side.’
‘Dak,’ Jim said carefully, ‘if the hunters came to pick up Alice, what would Pesh have done?’
Jesus. A vision of Pesh leaping up out of that ditch like a hound out of hell filled Lennie’s mind. ‘You think she went for the shooter?’
‘I think maybe Pesh did her job.’ Her grandfather stroked the dog’s head. ‘She guarded her deer.’
With her life, almost. Lennie blinked. It was a high price to pay.
‘What I can’t understand,’ Jim said, ‘is how Alice got out. Okay, Pesh jumped the fence—but Alice? Now, after all these years? It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘She didn’t jump.’ Lennie was careful to keep her tone neutral. ‘The gates were open.’ The last person—the only person—to have entered Alice’s paddock that day had been Jim.
There was a long silence. ‘No,’ her grandfather said at last. ‘No. I had to get a new bag of deer nuts out of the truck and I carried it round to the shed and I fed Alice and then the phone rang and I…I shut the gates. I know I did.’
Lennie couldn’t bear to look up.
‘I remember,’ Jim said. ‘I remember shutting them. Somebody else must have gone in and…’
‘Grandpa,’ she said gently, ‘it doesn’t matter, okay? We’ve got Pesh and Alice back. That’s the only thing that counts.’
Beside her, Jim said nothing.
Lennie felt a wave of exhaustion hit her, the swirl mounting up to her chin. ‘Could you do me a favour?’ she asked. ‘Could you look after Pesh for a couple of hours while I pop home and get a few things? I’m going to stay here tonight, but I could really do with a shower and some clean clothes.’
‘No,’ Jim said swiftly. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to go to the golf club tonight.’
Lennie looked up at him in shock. He had to go where?
‘It’s the AGM,’ he said. ‘I can’t miss it. Ask Paul.’
‘Paul’s gone home already.’
‘Krystal, then.’
‘Krystal has two kids waiting for her,’ Lennie said, trying to moderate her outrage. ‘I can’t ask her to stay any longer. And anyway, what’s she going to do if Pesh crashes? Krystal can’t crack her chest, can she?’
Her grandfather had already got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Dak. I’m sorry…I’m already running late. I have to go.’
Seventeen
‘Good morning.’
With some difficulty, Lennie opened her eyes. Krystal was squatting beside her.
‘Here.’ Krystal held out a takeaway coffee and a paper bag. ‘One sugar, right?’
‘Thanks.’ Lennie sat up stiffly. It turned out a double layer of Vetbed wasn’t the ideal thing for a human to spend the night on. Automatically, her eyes fell to Pesh and the respiration monitor beside her.
‘I just took heart rate and blood pressure,’ Krystal said, handing over the chart. ‘She’s looking good.’
With a sigh of gratitude, Lennie pried the lid off her coffee and peered into the bag.
‘Mitch Stuart was here a few minutes ago,’ Krystal announced conversationally.
‘He was what?’ Lennie stared at her. ‘What do you mean he was here?’
‘He was waiting in the car park when I got here to open up. He wanted to know how Pesh was. I brought him through to say hi, but you were asleep and he didn’t want to wake you.’
Shit…
‘He said he had to get going anyway.’ Krystal stirred her coffee. ‘He looked like he’d had a pretty rough night himself, actually.’
The strange sense she’d had through the long, long night came twisting back. As if somebody, somewhere, was watching over them, her and Pesh. Lennie shook her head. ‘I wish you’d woken me up.’
‘Yeah, I thought you’d say that.’ Krystal gave her a look. ‘But he wouldn’t let me. You know, I’m not sure I’ve ever really spoken to Mitch Stuart before. He might not say very much, but when he does—’ Krystal blew out her cheeks ‘—he’s a hard man to say no to.’
As the smell of Hard Yard blueberry-walnut muffin drifted out of the paper bag, Pesh’s eyelids fluttered. Instantly, every atom of Lennie�
�s attention returned to her dog.
‘Well, hello there.’ She put a hand to Pesh’s head, waiting for the morphine-hazy brown eyes to find her face. ‘Hello, pretty girl.’ At the other end of Pesh’s own piece of Vetbed, very faintly, the white tail stirred. Lennie bit her lip as her eyes began to well.
‘Did you see that?’ Krystal’s eyes were brimming too.
Lennie nodded, running Pesh’s silky ear through her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told the dog, ‘just liquid breakfast for you. You’ll have to work up to muffin.’
With a long groan, Pesh drifted off again. Lennie watched the monitor for a few breaths. Again, as she had on the hour through the night, she turned the three-way stopcock she’d rigged up to suction the chest tube and watched cautiously as it drained. No air. No blood.
‘Negative,’ Krystal confirmed, happily.
‘Yeah.’ Lennie took a breath. She just hoped it stayed that way—a few more hours of this and the tube could come out.
Glancing down at her scrubs, she remembered what should have been her first task of the morning. ‘I have to call Jim,’ she said, thinking aloud as she reached for her phone. He’d be leaving home for the clinic any minute now. ‘I need him to bring me some things when he comes in.’ Like clothes. All she had on under her scrubs right now was her underwear, and she could really do with a fresh set of that.
‘He hasn’t told you?’ Krystal was frowning at her in surprise.
‘Told me what?’
‘Jim’s done his back in again.’
Doing what, falling down the golf club steps?
‘He can’t come in today,’ Krystal went on. ‘Sounded like he might be off for a while.’
What? But…Lennie blinked. How could he not come in? She’d had almost no sleep, she was filthy—she was in no fit state to see other patients. And Pesh was going to need ongoing round-the-clock, one-on-one critical care. Paul couldn’t do everything. How the hell did her grandfather expect the clinic to cope?
With a glance at her watch, Krystal heaved herself upright. ‘I’d better go take a look at Alice’s dressings. She’s about due for a change.’