“Are you okay?” Keith asked, alarmed to see her looking so very pregnant. He hadn’t known, or he wouldn’t have suggested she drive all this way. He wondered if it was going to be too much to keep the children for the two and a half weeks he had managed to wrangle out of Rosemary. Fortunately, they were on their summer vacation and driving her crazy, which had made it easier to convince her to let them go to the ranch.
“I’m fine. I’m just a little stiff from sitting is all,” she admitted, giving Sean a slight shove in greeting. He grinned shyly up at her, pleased to see her. “You both packed?” she asked unnecessarily. She knew they would be.
“Um, yeah. I’ll get the bags,” Sean answered.
“Not until you give me a hug,” she threatened him.
He smiled shyly again and submitted to the bear hug she gave him. She let him go quickly because she knew she’d embarrassed him a little, and he hurried to their dad’s car to get the bags.
“Sounds like you have a full house out at the ranch,” Keith stated as Traci rushed to get her own bag to put in the Jeep.
“Yes, it’s busy now, but it will be nice to have them. Fey and I love having them,” she assured him.
“Good, I’m glad,” he said sincerely, pleased that his older daughter and her wife were so friendly with the younger siblings. There had been a big gap of time and space between his children, all due to Rosemary. He’d divorce her if he thought she wouldn’t mentally harm the two younger children in retaliation. Right now, he felt trapped by her, but then, that feeling had been going on for several years. In fact, he was convinced the only reason she had become pregnant with Sean thirteen years ago was to keep him from leaving her. He knew for a fact that Traci was an accident, but he would never tell her that. He loved all his children, even if relations with Fiona weren’t always the best.
“We are loving the journals. I’m almost done with them,” she told him, looking at him curiously. He seemed a little more tired than usual. Living with Rosemary in that hostile situation had prematurely aged him. She’d seen him last January in the house he shared with her, and it was a toxic atmosphere. In fact, she had felt the need to get away from the woman and had left there completely upset. How the children were unaffected thus far was a wonder.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I hope Fey is getting something out of them too.”
“She loved them. She finished before I did and...” she went on to tell him she was transcribing the journals along with her assistant, Renee before the kids returned from putting their things in the Jeep.
“We ready to go?” Traci asked, anxious to get to the ranch. She loved it there and couldn’t wait to arrive.
“We are,” Allyssa assured her, smiling at the little girl, who was on the cusp of becoming a teen. She was sprouting up as just like Sean. If he was anything like his father, he would be a tall drink of water. Fiona was shorter, built a little different, but looking at pictures of her mother it was understandable. She took after that side of the family. “Well, see you in two and a half weeks?” she said to Keith, who nodded his head as he watched them go. He waved until they were out of sight and then returned to his car to head back to Portland. He wished he could go to the ranch with them, but he had a job he enjoyed and had to support his family. The rest of his life was hell, but then, that was his own fault. He accepted that as his penance.
“Do you have any new horses?” Traci asked right off the bat from the back seat.
“You didn’t sell Sarge, did you?” Sean asked, sounding worried.
“Yes, we have a few new horses,” she admitted to Traci. “Sit back and make sure you have your seat belt on,” she told the little girl. Then, addressing Sean and his concerns, she added, “No, we didn’t sell Sarge, but you’ll have to find him and get him used to you again.” She went on to tell them about the red horse they had all seen. “Fey says it’s a mare, and she has a foal.”
“Is she really red?” Traci asked, enthused. The idea of seeing the mare with its foal sounded beautiful to the horse-crazy girl.
“Yes, it’s an odd and distinctive shade of red. When you see it, you will know it’s her.”
They discussed horses for the rest of the drive. Allyssa wished she hadn’t volunteered to drive for over four hours but resigned herself to it. She was going to have to lay down when she got home. She’d forgotten the baby needed exercise. Sitting in a car for this length of time wasn’t good for either of them.
“Are you and Fey due at the same time?” the little girl asked at one point.
“Yes, in September after you go back to school,” she told her, unwilling to go into details as she knew Rosemary wouldn’t appreciate that. As it was, there was no hiding the cliché that two lesbians were pregnant at the same time. Traci was sure to tell her mother; the little girl was no good at keeping secrets.
“I’m going to be an aunt,” the little girl breathed happily. She’d liked the idea last year when Allyssa had been pregnant and had been very disappointed to hear she lost the baby. “Are you okay this time? You aren’t going to...you know?”
“I’m fine, and that was a freak accident,” she informed her, wincing a little as she remembered how she had lost her baby last year. She knew it was too soon to be pregnant again, but she really wanted this child. She wanted children with Fey. She wasn’t thrilled at the idea of trying to raise two children anymore, but it had been her that convinced her wife to try getting pregnant at the same time. She had really believed she wasn’t pregnant for those first four or five months.
The two plus hours passed pleasantly as Allyssa answered the curious girl’s questions. She was a lot more verbose than her brother, who was a teenager and feeling shy around her. She sensed his bashfulness and included him in the conversation when she could, not wanting to push him. As they arrived back on the ranch Rex greeted them almost a little too exuberantly. He adored these kids and showed it by nearly bowling Sean over.
“Easy, Rex,” she cautioned him as the two children greeted the big dog. When Rocky trotted up to meet these obviously welcome visitors, it was all a little overwhelming. They finally got the kids’ things in the house and Traci settled in her room. “We’re going to put you up in the cabin, Sean. Do you think you can stand that?” Allyssa asked the younger boy. They’d decided since Fey was sometimes away overnight with the RV, the cabin would be the best place for him to stay.
Excited and scared at the same time, he nodded. “Can Rex stay with me?” he asked casually as they walked him and his bag across to the cabin. He didn’t want to admit he was scared. After all, newly a teen he considered himself pretty grown up.
“Sure, and I’ll bet he insists on sleeping with you,” Allyssa told him and hid her smile at the relieved look on the boy’s face. She wasn’t fooled. Personally, she would have liked to ask Buddy to move out of the house into the trailer as they had originally planned, but she didn’t want to rock the boat. The interns were proving enormously helpful to Fey, and she was teaching them a lot of hands-on work, so they couldn’t protest the arrangement.
Fey was pleased to see her siblings and eagerly introduced them to her interns.
“It’s nice to meet you. Fey talked about you both a lot,” Althea said formally, not used to being around children.
“I hear you like horses,” Buddy said to them, trying to be friendly.
The kids acted shyly with the strangers at first but warmed up gradually as they were around them a lot. Fey took her siblings out on a few calls with her the next day, and they loved seeing their older sister at work. They’d seen her work with the horses on the ranch, but this was different, and they were proudly introduced to various farmers and ranchers as Fey drove to different clients’ homes.
“What is this?” Allyssa asked when Fey brought home a sweet but malnourished Pit-bull.
“This is Lexy. She has been used for breeding, and they surrendered her to me when Sheriff Bradley shut down their puppy mill.” She lowered her voice, so the children cou
ldn’t hear. She was grateful they hadn’t been with her and the interns that day. “I had to destroy several dogs today due to their breeding program. In fact, I ran out of pentobarbital,” she confided sadly. Pentobarbital was a seizure medication. In large doses it rendered the pet unconscious, shutting down the heart and brain function in one to two minutes. “I had to improvise. There were so many, and they were ruined by both overbreeding and fighting.” Allyssa could hear the sadness in her wife’s voice and took her in her arms.
“Are you okay?” she asked, knowing Fey’s job was rarely easy.
“I’m fine, but I hope you don’t mind I brought her home. She’s very sweet.”
“Absolutely. I trust your judgement. I just don’t want to have a dozen dogs on the place; the horses are bad enough.”
“Those hay burners?” she teased, knowing the horses ate a lot more hay than the dogs would eat kibble. Fortunately, they had lots of room for them on their ranch. “You aren’t worried about the breed, are you?”
“Naw, it isn’t the breed that worries me. I know the problem is the people that bred her. Is the sheriff going to arrest them?”
Fey shook her head sadly. “They’ll get a fine and a slap on the wrist. If we are lucky, they won’t be allowed to have anymore animals, but all they need to do is move or change their names, and they can start up again and use their contacts to make money.”
Allyssa sighed. Now, she knew the subject of her next blog. She wouldn’t name names, but she would write a scathing report using statistics about puppy mills, dog breeding, and fighting. In fact, she would write four blogs, and the fourth would tie the other three together. She hated seeing a good animal abused. She knew it preyed on her wife’s mind too. She was the one who had to euthanize the poor animals, if they lasted that long. Sometimes, these poor animals lived a life of torture in horrible conditions. She shuddered, not wanting to think about it. She slowly let her wife go and looked at her, seeing the weary look on her face. Both interns were unaccustomedly quiet at the dinner table that night, going off to their rooms to ‘study.’
The children were delighted to have another dog to play with. She was a friendly thing, and after some mutual sniffing and posturing, Rex finally accepted her. She was just so grateful to be free of her cage and running around a place with grass. She wasn’t used to that. She had been kept in cages most of her adult life.
“I’ve got to get that grass cut,” Allyssa remarked as the two of them sat on the porch swing and watched the children play around the fountain with the dogs. The ducks had set up a quacking noise to let everyone know they didn’t appreciate the intruders among them, but Lexy didn’t seem to mind the ducks or the chickens who fluttered when she came near. She was too busy checking out the smells and sights of her new domain with Rex glued to her side and the children trying to keep up.
“How are you doing with the gardening?” Fey asked, knowing it was getting harder for her to work cases as she came to rely more and more on the interns. She was letting them do more things than she had been allowed during her own internships, but they were learning more intensely and more quickly as a result. She supervised of course but explained practical things, so there would be no mistakes. She didn’t need a lawsuit from her clients. She introduced them as interns to her clients but implied they were fully qualified. They’d learn a lot this weekend at the clinic.
“It’s getting harder to bend over, but I manage,” she admitted, rubbing her stomach and then Fey’s. She was feeling some excitement now they had gotten this far together. She’d spotted a little blood last month and panicked that she was going to lose her baby again, but Leslie had calmed her saying it was not uncommon and she just needed to relax.
“But I didn’t have nausea until the second trimester this time,” she complained to her doctor and then turned to her wife. “Do you get nausea?”
“No, and I don’t know if my patients do either,” she grinned to show she was teasing. “They never complained of it.” Leslie laughed with her. Allyssa rolled her eyes at her wife but joined in with a grin.
“I find getting back up to be a little difficult,” Fey admitted, telling them about examining a downed cow and having her arm inside it up to her shoulder. Althea had wrinkled her nose but had been game to try it herself. Fey thought Buddy would faint when he saw all the muck on the long, plastic sleeve she unrolled from her arm once she was back on her feet. Leslie was glad she didn’t have to deal with that sort of thing with her patients. Allyssa grinned and then chuckled appreciatively at her wife’s stories.
* * * * *
Due to the horses involved in this clinic, there was a lot more traffic in their yard. Truck after truck pulled into the yard with horse trailers attached. Fey, Allyssa, the interns, and even Woody and Rhonda helped offload horses and lead them into the barn to await their surgeries. The owners wanted to stay and socialize but there was little time as Fey and her interns worked on the big animals and occasionally helped with the smaller animals.
Jeremy was busy in the clinic handling the spaying and neutering appointments of the dogs and cats. Bess and Renee kept up the paperwork as Allyssa shuffled between the operating theaters, making sure that instruments were in the autoclave being steam cleaned for future use. She had stacks of surgical tools ready and waiting on trays and towels for the doctors. She was annoyed when Buddy upended a tray, which led to a domino effect, and five trays were rendered useless by his clumsiness. His apologies annoyed her further as she took a couple trays from the cabin addition to keep up with their appointments while the other instruments were still in the autoclave. “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath, having still not completely forgiven him for his initial attitude when he arrived on the ranch and turned his nose up at their surroundings. He had changed a lot since then, but she wasn’t in a forgiving mood. She was tired after doing a lot of work and even helping with a couple of the surgeries as a veterinarian’s assistant.
The first day was exhausting and so was the second, but by the third day, they were all zombies.
“Whew! No more three-day clinics,” Fey told Allyssa as they all relaxed over beers and hamburgers. A rain had started, so they were all under the overhang on the porch.
“Amen to that,” Allyssa agreed with her wife. Between being pregnant, having horses and even a goat and pig or two in addition to all the dogs and cats, they had had a full clinic. “And if we ever do a horse clinic again, we will schedule that separate from the dog and cat clinic.”
“Agreed,” Fey said, hoisting her root beer bottle instead of the alcoholic beverage she so badly wanted. Sighing and arching her back, which ached from bending over horses, she realized she much preferred the small animal practice these days.
“I can’t believe how many patients you all accommodated this weekend,” Buddy marveled, impressed. He was so excited at the write-ups he would add to his book for school explaining all the operations and procedures he had been allowed to participate in.
“I’m surprised how many people are so cheap about their horses,” Althea put in, relaxing over an imported beer she had bought herself when none of the others expressed an interest.
“Well, maybe it’s because you are out west now, and we don’t have the fancy riding you do back east,” Jeremy put in. He hadn’t liked it when the intern assisted with some of his dogs and cats. Allyssa was a much better assistant, knowledgeable and able to anticipate what he needed. She also seemed to have an affinity for the animals, which transferred to the frightened creatures. Even the animals that lashed out in their fear got her good side; she never showed anger. He’d had to ask Buddy to leave when he became angry at a dog that snapped at him out of fear.
“Yet the rescue is mostly Thoroughbreds,” she pointed out. Most of the nearly forty horses involved in the rescue had been Thoroughbreds, and many had been adopted, pending a home visit by Fey the following week to be sure the conditions were acceptable for the horses. She wouldn’t let them leave the rescue unle
ss she felt they would be well taken care of. They had taken in a few more surrenders working with the local humane societies, the sheriff’s office, and the public.
“Good point, but there are a few Quarterhorses, which are traditionally western horses, as well as Mustangs,” he argued, not liking the uppity easterner. He felt she was a horse snob and she’d do well to specialize in equine medicine, which she had made clear was her forte.
“I once owned a Mustang,” Allyssa put in with a grin, knowing a change of subject was in order. They were all exhausted, and they didn’t need things to escalate. After dinner everyone would probably head for a well-deserved bed. She could see even the kids were tired. They had helped clean up after accidents, walked groggy dogs, and run around fetching things. They’d even helped after the vets were done on the final day, putting things away clean, something the interns hadn’t been too concerned with. Althea especially seemed to think it was beneath her. If Fiona hadn’t been there to make sure they did the menial tasks, Allyssa was certain they wouldn’t have helped.
“You did?” Traci asked, suddenly interested.
“A Mustang car, not a horse,” Allyssa explained, grinning harder as the adults began to chuckle.
“What happened to it?” Sean asked, amused but finding her more intriguing since she had owned a car he thought was cool.
“I had to sell it. My father wouldn’t let me keep it,” she explained, remembering that car from so long ago.
“Did you buy it with your own money?” he asked, wondering about that.
“Yep. I worked all summer for it, and I even fixed it up myself.”
“I wouldn’t have sold it,” he asserted.
“Well, you never know what you’ll do in some situations,” she told him and shared a grin with Fey, who knew the story.
“I wonder whatever happened to Khan?” Jeremy put in, reminding Fey and Allyssa of the German Shepherd that had come into the clinic last year with a rattlesnake bite.
“He healed fine. In fact, Khan’s owner, Holly Winters, is a regular client now. I’ve seen her and her other German Shepherds a couple times now,” Fey told him.
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