Pat nodded. "And you're a team player, right?"
"Yeah, that's right." Oliver took another long sip of coffee and winced at the bitter taste. He lit another cigarette, and then grinned sheepishly. His face turned red. "I'm not going to smoke much longer. Just until this stuff blows over."
Pat nodded. "Just one more question. Are you sure what you saw was a deer?"
"Yeah, I'm sure. I'm not as much a city boy as most people think. I was raised on a farm. We had deer all over the place. It was definitely a deer. A stag to be accurate; quite handsome."
Pat picked up Oliver's cup of coffee and drained it. She put the cup back down and patted his hand laying on the table. "Thanks. You've been a lot of help,” she said with an edge of sarcasm she couldn’t quite keep out of her voice.
She started to slide out of the booth. Oliver grabbed her arm. "Let it go, Pat. You'll have a much happier life."
Pat extricated his fingers from her wrist. "I'd like to. I just can't." She turned and walked out of the coffee house.
Oliver sat puffing on his cigarette long after Pat had left. I should have told her, he thought as he studied the thick cloud of smoke which hung like a veil in front of him. Maybe she could have it explained why the deer had been bleeding and what had been sticking out of its neck. And maybe, she could have explained to him why those two details had been left out of the report, although every other minuscule little point had been included.
He crushed the cigarette out in the ash tray and left its corpse with its companions. No, he had done the smart thing. What was important to remember was that the report had been censored. Someone had decided not to include the details about the deer. Someone on the team more important than himself.
"I better take my own advice,” he muttered as he slid out of the booth and dropped a couple bucks on the table. "Shut-up and go with the team."
Part Two
The Miracle of Birth
C-Section
Monday, June 7, 2003
The giant dog waddled into the exam room. For a moment Dr. Allan Pritchard thought she'd get stuck in the doorway, her mid-section was so distended, but she passed with a couple of inches to spare.
"Looks like a cross between a St. Bernard and a double-wide mobile home,” he said with a smile to the petite lady being dragged along by the hemp rope tied to the dog's neck.
"Oh, but such a sweetheart she is,” Alice Parker replied. "She wound up on our doorstep a couple of weeks ago, in a motherly way. She was wet, cold, and hungry. One look with those soft brown eyes and I was hooked. She's come close to eating us out of house and home since then, but I can think of worse ways to end up in the poorhouse."
Alice and her family had been clients of Dr. Pritchard ever since he'd opened his practice in Waynesboro six years ago. Like most of his clients, the Parkers were good ol’ southern folk, not high on the cuff of life financially but with a wide-open heart. Somehow they always managed to pay their bills, although maybe not as quickly as he'd like all the time. At last count, Alice had three other dogs and no telling how many barn cats, and her two-footed family was almost as large. If the truth be known, a hundred-pound pregnant bitch was the last visitor they needed on their doorstep, but for some reason providence seldom stopped to consider such details.
Allan noticed two of her strapping teenage sons standing awkwardly outside the door. Thank goodness for some strong help. He'd already called Dawn, his receptionist and right-arm assistant, but it would be another twenty minutes before she would be dressed and at the clinic. Hopefully by then he'd know whether a C-section was in the making for the early morning hours or not. Gazing down at the rotund mid-section of the dog, he suspected that would be the case.
"Boys, how 'bout coming in here and giving me a hand. Given the size of mamma dog here, I don't think we'll lift her on the table, but I'd like to check to see if she has a puppy in the birth canal, and she's less likely to drag us into the next county if you two help hold while I do it."
Dr. Pritchard turned to Alice and smiled at her. "No offense ma’am, but I'd like you to take the bow. Get in front and talk to her. All this is real frightening to her, and she could use your comforting."
"No offense taken, Doctor Pritchard. Lord knows, I ain't got much control over her. I'm no more than a fly pestering at her neck with this here rope."
Alice relinquished the rope to her two sons and slipped in front. She knelt down in front of the dog, and spoke softly in her ear. "It'll be all right, Molly. Doc here is going to take good care of you."
She looked up at Allan with a sheepish grin. "Don't rightly know what her real name is, but she reminded me of Molly O'Brien when she was carrying her triplets. Since she don't come to any other name, we figured Molly was as good as any."
"And better than some,” Allan replied as he slipped the long fingers of his right hand into the latex glove. "I'm going check to see how far along she is and see if I can tell if we've got a pup lodged in the canal."
"If she's breech, does that mean you'll have to cut the puppy up to get it out of her?" Buster, Alice's younger son, asked. "Where'd you get such an idea?" Alice asked, her eyes growing large at the thought.
"That's what Doc Williams had to do with Jimmy's milking cow a few months ago. She couldn't have the calf, so he went in and sliced it up and yanked it out piece by piece."
Alice turned to him, her face white with fright. "I don't care so much if we save the pups, that's not what's most important here, but you won't have to put Molly through such an ordeal, will ya Doc?"
Allan smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, Alice. Small animal practice is a bit different from a farm practice. I'm just going to see what's what in here first. If we have a breech, we'll simply do a C-section. Molly will be asleep and she won't feel anything. But let's not jump to conclusions." He smeared the glove with lubricant.
"Hold her real still, fellas. This may be a bit uncomfortable for her.”
A soft groan of anguish worried Allan at first as he inserted the gloved finger into the dog's vagina, but he relaxed a little when he realized the sound came from Molly's concerned owner. Molly continued to stand patiently, apparently unconcerned by the invasion of her privacy.
"It's times like this that I'm glad I have such large hands,” Allan said to no one in particular. He felt around for a few seconds and didn't like what he found. "There's a pup in the canal, no doubt about it, and it feels huge. How long did you say she'd been in labor before you called me?"
"I'd say a good two, maybe three hours,” Alice replied. "At least half that time she's really been straining, but she wasn't having any luck."
Allan pulled his finger out, slipped the glove off his hand, and tossed it in the trash can. "Well, we could take an x-ray to confirm what I suspect, but all indications point to a C-section."
“To tell the truth, Doc, if it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon avoid the extra expense of the x-ray. As it is, I'll have to pay for the surgery over time, but you know I'm good for it."
"I'm not worried about that, Alice. You just sit here with Molly, and make her as comfortable as you can. I'm going to get the surgery suite set up so we can begin as soon as Dawn gets here. We'll take good care of mamma and the pups."
Alice patted the dog’s broad head, and Allan noticed her eyes glistened more than usual. "Take good care of her, Doc. I've gotten real attached to her. Like I said, I'm not so concerned with the pups. If it's a question of her or the pups, save old Molly here."
Allan understood what Alice was saying. There were to be no heroics trying to save the puppies if they were in trouble.
"Keep the anesthetic as light as you can and still keep her down, Dawn. I've already used a local so she won't feel the incision,” Allan said as he started to drape Molly's newly shaved and washed belly. "We want to get in and out as quickly as possible and get her awake."
Dawn nodded and smiled. Allan knew what she was thinking. In the six years she'd worked with him, she'd heard the sa
me speech many times before. More than once he'd used her as his sounding board extolling the virtues of quick surgery. Not so fast that you were sloppy; but not so darn fired slow that you lost the patient from too much anesthetic. She squeezed the bag of the anesthetic machine, then refilled it with fresh oxygen.
The two worked like a well-oiled team. They both knew what to expect from each other. That's why even though Allan had two other fully trained and qualified technicians, he still called Dawn for the emergency surgeries. Besides, she lived the closest to the clinic, and being divorced with only a teenage daughter, she didn't mind the late-night calls. At least that's what she told him whenever he asked.
Allan finished clamping the last drape in place and reached for the scalpel. He made a bold incision along the midline between the two rows of engorged mammary glands and watched as the blood mixed with the milk of one of the glands where it had been nicked. It always fascinated him that tissue could bleed milk as well as blood. He sponged the incision for a moment before making a second incision through the connective tissue of the midline of the abdominal muscles.
"It feels more like I'm operating on a horse than a dog,” Allan said to Dawn as he finished the incision and laid the scalpel down on the instrument tray. "Do you have a box and towels ready? In just a minute, we'll be up to our knees in squirming yelping pups."
"All ready, Dr. Pritchard. You start tossing them out and I'll start catching them. Don't worry about the umbilical cords. I've got the suture material ready to tie them off."
Allan smiled behind his mask at Dawn's formal use of his title. It didn't make any difference how often he told Dawn it wasn't necessary to call him doctor after hours. Old habits die hard and since she'd been in human medicine for five years before starting with him, she was trained to use the formal title long before she came to his clinic. Besides, as she often said, "once you’re a doctor, you’re always a doctor."
He reached into the incision and began to pull the right horn of the uterus out. As he did so, Molly's side collapsed to almost normal size. "Whoo wee, we've got some large puppies here. I wonder if she mated with one of old man Jacob's Shetland ponies."
He rested the thick tubular uterus onto the surgery drape and worked to free the left horn from Molly's abdomen, looking for an area without major veins coursing through it to make the next incision. Blotting the glistening surface with several gauze sponges, he reached for the scalpel.
"How's she doing, Dawn?" Allan asked as he prepared to cut through the muscular organ.
"She's stable and the color of her gums is nice and pink."
"How 'bout increasing her I.V. drip just a little. This is about the time her blood pressure is likely to drop."
"It's done,” she replied in a few seconds.
"Good. Well, get ready for some pups that might resemble Shetland ponies." He slid the scalpel smoothly across the body of the uterus so he could pull all the puppies from both horns through the one incision.
Allan was always thankful when he cut into a uterus for his years of training at the emergency clinic where C-sections had become a routine piece of surgery. A cut too deep could leave one or more puppies missing a toe or worse. He made the incision lightly through the uterus, deftly stopping just short of the fetus that lay beneath.
Placing the scalpel back on the tray, Allan reached into the incision to pull out the first puppy. His hands made contact with the creamy white surface at the same time his eyes told him he was touching a huge pulsating maggot. Without thinking he yanked his hands away and stepped away from the table, feeling an involuntary shudder course along his back.
"What is it, Doctor? What's wrong?" Dawn asked at the sudden movement. "Did you hit a bleeder?"
Allan stood frozen to the spot, a good two feet from the table, his hands clutching the surgery gown at his chest. A wave of nausea passed through his body and up his throat. He swallowed once, twice, tasting the foul stomach acid.
"No, no bleeder. Everything is fine -- I think,” he finally managed to say.
He felt a droplet of sweat trickle down his temple and had the absurd urge to ask Dawn to wipe his brow but refrained. Taking a final gulp, he stepped back to the spot he had so recently vacated. He stared into the incision at the pulsating mass partially hidden by the pooling blood that seeped from the incised uterus, but didn't take his hands from where they were glued to his gown.
"Are you okay, Dr. Pritchard?" Dawn asked as she started to rise from the stool she sat on next to the anesthetic machine.
"I'm fine; stay where you are,” he said too brusquely. "I'll let you know when I need your help,” he added in a softer tone.
Taking the longest forceps from the surgery tray, Allan gently prodded the blunt end of the mass. It retracted itself away from the probe. As it did so, he could see what appeared to be a similar mass lying beneath the first one. How many of these horrible things could there be? He wondered. As the shock of the discovery subsided, the inquisitive mind of the scientist began to emerge. How could these things have gotten inside her? Were they parasitic in nature? Had they eaten the puppies that should have been in there?
Allan noticed the pool of blood slowly expanding, seeping from a medium-sized vessel. He clamped it off with forceps then cleared the pool with a wad of sponges. Molly still needed help in delivering whatever it was inside her. With another shudder he reached into the incision and gently cupped his hands around the swollen lump. It had a firmer feel than he had expected and was warm to the touch. Still feeling the pulsating motion through his gloves, he fought a strong urge to withdraw his hands.
Allan pulled the mass out of the uterus. It slipped out with a sucking sound like pulling a shoe out of mud. At about eight inches, it was much longer than he had imagined. Pulling the wormlike mass out of Molly's abdomen, Allan looked for some sign of an umbilical cord but couldn't find one. As the other end reached the surface where he could see it, he noticed it was lightly attached to the inner lining of the uterus and was a little more sharply tapered. Could this be its head? He wondered. He wiped the glistening surface with the partially blood-soaked sponges and as he did, heard a gasp of astonishment escape from Dawn's lips.
"Oh my God!" she whispered when she finally found her voice. "What in God's name . . . ?"
Allan gently laid the larvae-like mass in the towel lined box that Dawn had prepared -- the box that had been intended for cute, cuddly puppies. The lump wiggled much like a newborn pup, but there was no chance of confusing the two.
"I don't know what in God's creation it is, or if it even is of God's doing, but there are plenty more where that one came from,” Allan replied as he pulled the second squirming mass from the incision. By this time the beads of sweat dripped from both sides of his face, but he ignored the tickling sensation. He was repulsed by the eight-inch maggot-like masses and at the same time drawn by curiosity.
Surely they can't live, he thought. But what if they did? What would they grow into, and where did they come from? How could nature be so arbitrary with such a miracle as birth? He continued to pull them out of each horn of the uterus until six white sausages laid in a row in the box.
Finally convinced he had the final one, he looked up for the first time at Dawn's pale face. He tried to smile and was glad the mask hid the feeble attempt. "Well Dawn, aren't you going to goo-goo over the little bundles of joy like you always do?"
"No way!" she almost screamed at him, an edge of hysteria in her voice. "I'm not touching those horrid things, whatever they are." She stared down at the box despite herself. "What are they, anyway?"
"Well, they might be the ugliest litter of pups ever recorded, but I kinda doubt it." Allan joked in an attempt to lighten up the atmosphere of the room. "All I can guess is they are some bizarre parasite that somehow made its way into Molly's reproductive tract. Not that I've ever seen or heard of such a thing."
"What are you going to do?" Dawn asked.
"I'm going to finish this piece of surgery, first. A
lice wanted me to go ahead and spay Molly if possible. Given what we just delivered, I think it’s an excellent idea."
"But what are you going to do with those?" Dawn pointed to the box, a look of disgust still glued to her face.
"I don't know. I suppose we could save them for a barbecue this weekend." He knew as soon as he said it that it was a mistake. He'd been accused more than once of having a sick twist to his sense of humor.
"Dr. Pritchard! Sometimes you say the most horrid things -- really."
"Well, don't worry about them. I'll dispose of them. I'm sure whatever they are, they don't have a chance of living."
Several minutes went by without either one talking as Allan concentrated on the surgery. As he finished removing Molly's enlarged uterus, he paused and looked at Dawn. "Alice wasn't really concerned with saving the puppies as much as she was with Molly. I think it might be best just to tell her the puppies were born dead. No reason to have her all worried about something we can't explain."
"You don't have to worry about me, Doc,” Dawn replied, glancing down at the box one last time. "As far as I'm concerned, the less said about this night the better."
Mother Molly
Despite the unexpected development of the surgery, Molly came through with flying colors. Dawn’s masterful handling of the anesthesia had her chewing at the endotracheal tube as Allan tied the last skin suture.
"She'll be up and around in no time,” Dr. Pritchard said as he snapped his gloves into the trash can. "You are one fine anesthetist, Dawn. Despite our surprise, you maintained her at just the right level. I might have to start paying you for these late nights." He smiled at her and laid his arm around her shoulders.
FreeForm: An Alien Invasion Romance Series (FreeForm Series Book 1) Page 5