Animals Don't Blush

by David R Gross

  “OK, you’re the Doc.”

  I clipped some hair off the ear over the hematoma, cleaned it with soap, disinfected it, and inserted a large bore needle. The first eighteen milliliters of fluid was straw-colored serum. The fluid became blood-tinged as I applied more suction. I massaged the edges of the hematoma, milking as much fluid as possible towards the needle. After I removed the needle, I was still able to express a little fluid through the needle opening. I could feel clotted material inside where the fluid had been but was only able to break it down slightly, resulting in more bleeding.

  I covered the inside of the ear with a thick pad of gauze, then placed a roll of gauze on top of the pad, and bandaged the whole thing over the top of Frick’s head. Finally, I bandaged his good ear down over the top of the ear with the hematoma.

  “I know this looks silly,” I said, “but if I leave the one ear free, he’s going to keep shaking his head and probably get a hematoma in that ear. “Let’s leave this on. When I come out for the pregnancy testing next week, I’ll remove the bandages, and we’ll see what we have.”

  Frick seemed puzzled about having his ears bandaged to the top of his head, but he wasn’t at all embarrassed. When Gervis pulled on his leash and he jumped to the floor, Frack immediately came to him and started licking his ears. Frick warned him off with a low growl. Frack desisted.

  ***

  It was one of those wonderful sunny, warm fall days. Dr. Schultz and I arrived at the Gervis ranch. The hounds jumped off the front porch and followed us the quarter mile to the corrals holding the cattle. I got out of the truck and both came over to greet me. Frick’s bandages were off, and his ear was swollen, larger than before.

  Tim Gervis strode over, bandy legged, wearing chaps and high-heeled riding boots. He shook hands with Dr. Schultz and then with me.

  “We’ve got six of them all ready for you in each of the chutes,” he said, “so whenever you’re ready, we can get started.”

  “I see Frick shed that wonderful bandage job I did,” I observed.

  Gervis laughed. “Yeah, Doc. It lasted about two hours after we got home. Between his scratching at it and Frack chewing at it, it didn’t last long. Yesterday I noticed the hema-thingamabob was bigger than what you drained. I’ll try to get him in next week, and you can have a go at the surgical thing you told me about.”

  I nodded as I bent to pull on my rubber boots and tuck in the legs of my coveralls.

  “OK, we’ll see if that will work. I’m afraid his good looks are going to be spoiled though.”

  Gervis laughed again. “Yeah, well, nobody out here much cares about a hound’s good looks, Doc. Maybe we can make up a story about how a cougar got hold of him to explain it.”

  “Or a porcupine,” I rejoined.

  While we worked the cattle, the two hounds found a place in the shade to keep watch on the goings-on. I think they enjoyed watching me get stepped on, kicked, and shit upon, especially the latter.

  Ten hours later, my coveralls were covered in cow feces, and I was tired and hurting. We had completed rectal exams on 280 cows finding 196 of them over six weeks pregnant. That was a high percentage from a good cattle operation.

  “We’ll move the rest of the cows in here this evening and be ready for you tomorrow,” said Gervis, addressing Dr. Schultz. “Do you think we can finish them all up by early afternoon?”

  “If we get an early-enough start,” Schultz answered. “We’ll plan to be here by six in the morning. That OK with you, Dave?”

  “Whatever you say. I’m hoping a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep will have revived me by then.”

  “Good,” said Schultz. “We’ll be here bright and early and keep going until we finish or can’t move anymore.” He was enjoying my discomfort as much as he enjoyed the physical labor.

  We finished the rest of Gervis’s cows the next day. The following week, Frick was back on the exam table. The hematoma was almost twice the original size.

  “Have you got some things to do in town?” I asked. “I’ll have to anesthetize him to do the surgery. He should be ready to go home in a couple of hours.”

  “Sure, I can always find something to do for a couple of hours,” Gervis answered.

  After the rancher left, I anesthetized Frick, prepared his ear for sterile surgery, opened up the hematoma, scraped surfaces to freshen them up, and removed as much of the already forming scar tissue as I could. I sutured through the skin on the inside of the earflap through the cartilage and then back and tied down the “mattress sutures” to close the space between the skin and cartilage as much as possible. Before suturing the skin incision, I inserted a teat tube for a drain at the tip of the incision and secured it with sutures. I planned to remove the drain in two weeks. I taped the ear up over his head again but this time incorporated hair from his neck and the top of his head into the bandage. I hoped he and his brother would leave it alone long enough to heal.

  Gervis was back in two hours, and I took him back to the barn where Frick was recovering in the same stall he had occupied after the porcupine incident.

  “If he gets the bandage off again, you’ll need to remove the drain I put in near the end of his ear at the tip of the hematoma.” I showed him a teat tube. “This is what I put in as a drain. If he gets the bandage off, it will act as added weight at the end of his ear and could cause some other problems with his shaking his head and scratching at it. So, you’ll have to remove it. It’s held in with three sutures, and I left the ends after the knot long so you should be able to find and identify them. Just cut the sutures with a manicure or other small scissors, and the drain should fall out. Think you can handle that?”

  “Sure, Doc, won’t be a problem. That it?”

  “We’ll see what happens. Bring him back in ten days if the bandage stays on or not, either way. I’ll have to remove the sutures then.”

  ***

  This time the bandage stayed on. I removed it and the drain along with the sutures. The ear looked reasonably good, but it was thicker than the opposite ear, slightly gnarled, but not as bad as some other repaired aural hematomas I had seen.

  “You OK with this result?” I asked Gervis, a little apprehensively.

  “Sure, Doc. It doesn’t look too bad to me, gives him some character.” He smiled.

  I was relieved.

  “OK then, that’s it. Frick has character, and you can tell the two apart, even if their collars get lost. See you next time they get into something.”

  Chapter 29: Separation

  Dr. Schultz called me in the evening, but not about any of our patients or clients.

  “She told me to get out. Says she wants a divorce. We weren’t arguing, just her normal bitching about me being at work all the time and not spending enough time with her and the kids.”

  When I told Rosalie that I was surprised by what Dr. Schultz had said, she admonished me, “You are so oblivious. It was obvious to me that their marriage is in trouble. She’s completely obsessed about finances and how little they make from the practice. At the same time, she does nothing but spend money and complain that he’s never home. He, on the other hand, just wants to do the veterinary stuff and take care of his pigs. Surely you’ve noticed?”

  “Yeah, but he’s very attached to their five kids.”

  “Sure, but he doesn’t spend much time with them. Her parents have spoiled those kids, giving them anything they ask for. Do you remember the one time she invited us to their house for dinner? Her father and mother were there. She had to have her family’s support to put up with us. Her father never missed an opportunity to say something demeaning about Dr. Schultz the whole evening in front of us and their children.”

  The next morning, I arrived at the clinic and discovered Dr. Schultz dozing on a canvas army cot in the office. I removed my hat and jacket.

  Schultz sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

  “You spend the night?” I asked.

  “Yeah, my brother-in-law
the lawyer explained the facts of my life. You knew Cheryl’s dad bought this property from Dick and built the hospital for me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I’ve been making payments on it every month since, but everything is in Cheryl’s name. So’s that huge house we bought and spent so much money remodeling. I’ve always let her control all the bank accounts and let her take care of our business and finances. I never dreamed it would come to this. I was happy just practicing veterinary medicine. It turns out the only thing I actually own is the new practice truck.” Tears welled up in his eyes.

  “You don’t have your name on the bank accounts?” I was incredulous.

  “Both our names are on the practice account, but she has other accounts. She moves money around a lot.”

  “I suggest you get down to the bank and find out what’s there,” I said. “Then you need to open a new account for the practice, one that only you control. You need to deposit everything we take in now into the new account. You also need a good lawyer.”

  He repeated the same litany he had given me the night before. “I can’t believe she kicked me out. Says she wants a divorce. We weren’t arguing, just her normal bitching about me being at work all the time.”

  “I know, but you need to try to rescue what you can from the practice, so she can’t drain it. You need to be there when the bank opens.”

  I finally convinced him, and he left to attend to the shambles of his finances.

  “I knew Doc and his missus didn’t have much in common, other than the kids,” Dick said. “I never did understand what he saw in that woman. She takes after her old man. Not a bit surprised that family managed to take everything Doc owns. They left him his truck though, nice touch. I wonder if he’ll even stick around. Seems like leaving him the truck was just an invite for him to clear out. I can’t say I’d blame him if he did.”

  Dr. Schultz leaving town was something I hadn’t considered.

  I liked Dick and respected him. He was steady, reliable, and calm. He didn’t look up during the prolonged silence while we both considered the future.

  “You worried about what will happen to you and your wife if Dr. Schultz takes off?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I live off my salary but rely on the pet supply business and the free apartment. I have folks depending on me. My parents are getting older, and I have to help them out. I don’t think Doc has the balls for it anymore. He would have fought them when he first came here, but that woman and her family have emasculated him.”

  He handed me a fist full of call slips. I left to get through the demands of the day.

  ***

  When I arrived at the hospital the next day, I found Dick and Don sitting in the office, their heads almost touching. Both men turned as I entered.

  “Doc called early this morning from Bismarck,” said Dick. “He talked to a classmate of his who works for the USDA. There’s a meat inspector job open in Des Moines. He’s on his way to Iowa to have a look. He said he wouldn’t come back unless he could patch up his marriage.”

  “How’d he sound?” I asked.

  “Depressed. What’s the next step for us?” Dick asked. “Do we keep this place going and work for the bitch?”

  “Don’t know yet, Dick. Do we have a lot going on this morning?” I asked.

  That morning it was clear and cold with two to three inches of snow on the ground where the wind hadn’t blown it away. Farmers and ranchers were out checking stock. Dick handed me some call slips, not as many as the previous day.

  “OK,” I said, shuffling through the calls. “Don and I will take care of these this morning, but see if you can keep me clear for a couple of hours this afternoon. Call Mrs. Schultz and make an appointment for me to meet with her. I need to get some sort of agreement, so we’ll all know what’s going to happen. Also get a hold of Sam Samuelson’s office and see if you can make an appointment for me to meet with him an hour or so after my appointment with Mrs. Schultz.”

  “Good idea,” said Dick. “When you deal with the Watts family, you need a shark on your side.”

  ***

  “I think we should just continue the arrangement we have. I see no reason to change anything,” Mrs. Schultz told me.

  She sat at her office table with her brother sitting next to her. I sat opposite them. She did not even offer a cup of coffee.

  “As you know,” I answered, “when I first negotiated with Dr. Schultz, he offered me five hundred dollars a month. That was the going rate, and most of my classmates who went to work for someone got about the same. However, when I visited, I saw how busy the practice was. I told him I was willing to work for five hundred for fifty hours a week but after I worked two hundred hours each month I wanted 40 percent of anything I billed. He agreed, and that’s been our deal.”

  That negotiation had turned out to be a better deal than I had anticipated. The practice was so busy I routinely worked twelve-plus-hour days. With emergency calls and weekends, I usually reached two hundred hours during the third week of the month.

  “I came here as an associate and to learn from Dr. Schultz,” I continued. “Now you’re asking me to run the entire practice and do the work of two veterinarians. I think we need an entirely new arrangement. If I leave, you’ll have to shut the practice down until you can find another licensed veterinarian, if you can find someone. My suggestion is that we arrange for a fair market appraisal for the land, buildings, and equipment. I’ll lease everything from you based on that appraisal.”

  Mrs. Schultz’s brother inserted himself into the negotiation. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You sign a five-year lease and pay us 2,500 a month, and we’re done.”

  “The practice couldn’t possibly support that much. I know what we take in,” I said.

  I stood up and addressed Mrs. Schultz. “I didn’t think you would bring in legal counsel until after we made some sort of temporary arrangement. Under these circumstances, I’m not prepared to make any commitments, unless I have representation too. Actually, I think it would be best to let the lawyers negotiate with the understanding that our current arrangement is void. My handshake agreement was with Dr. Schultz, and he’s no longer involved in the practice. Without Dr. Schultz or myself, there is, in fact, no practice. After my attorney examines all the financial records and determines a fair market value for the buildings and equipment, we can negotiate a fair lease arrangement or not.”

  Then I addressed the brother. “I’m willing to continue the arrangement I had with Dr. Schultz for one week, no longer. I’ll have my attorney contact you.”

  I turned and started for the door.

  “Who is your attorney, Doctor?” the brother asked.

  I turned to gauge their reactions and found them both smirking.

  “I have an appointment to talk to Sam Samuelson this afternoon.”

  I was gratified to see a fleeting grimace on the brother’s face. Mrs. Schultz frowned.

  They’re not very good poker players.

  ***

  The next day, Mrs. Schultz turned over the financial records of the practice to Sam. He called me the following morning to tell me that Dr. Schultz had paid back three-fourths of what his wife’s father had spent purchasing the property and building the hospital, plus 7 percent annual interest on the unpaid balance each month. All the furnishings and equipment in the hospital were cash purchases from the hospital income.

  Sam and I met with Mrs. Schultz’s brother the following day, and Sam explained our position. “Even if you can find another veterinarian to take over the practice, it will take some time, probably months, for you do so. Anyone you find would have to be a fool to lease the buildings and equipment or to purchase everything for more than their value. The only thing you can do with an animal hospital is to practice veterinary medicine out of it. Of course, you could renovate it for some other purpose; that’s up to your family to decide. Dr. Gross’s agreement to continue to work based on his verbal contract with Dr. Schultz expi
res Monday. Either we have a signed lease agreement, or your client has a building with no veterinary practice. Perhaps she can operate a boarding kennel.”

  Three days later, Sam and I met again with her brother, plus Mrs. Schultz. Sam took charge.

  “Dr. Gross isn’t going to continue to run the practice after tomorrow unless we have an agreement. He will continue to practice from his house. He’s the only veterinarian in a fifty-mile radius, and he’s already well-known and well-liked. Any other veterinarian coming in will have a tough time getting started.”

  “What about the goodwill, the client list?” asked the brother.

  “What goodwill is that?” asked Sam. “Dr. Gross is the one with goodwill. Dr. Schultz has goodwill, but he is not party to these negotiations.”

  It was a bluff. Rosalie and I hadn’t managed to save enough money for me to go into practice on my own. I had very little in the way of instruments or equipment of my own, and no drugs or supplies. I had talked to the representative of the major veterinary supply company that serviced the area, and the company had agreed to extend me credit for a couple of months. However, they wouldn’t be able to deliver an order for four or five days.

  I needed so much in the way of instruments, equipment, and supplies; I didn’t think it would be possible to do enough work and collect enough in fees to pay for everything and reorder what I used. I would have to get a loan, find a place to store everything, and practice out of the Ford. I could probably do it, but it would require a major commitment. Rosalie and I were not certain we were ready to go into debt and shoulder that much responsibility.

  “Well, we have no idea of what the building, equipment, and supplies are worth. We’ll need time to come up with those figures,” the brother responded.