Ever by My Side

by Nick Trout

  “I had so much more responsibility, meeting with the client one on one, taking the history, doing the examination of the pet myself rather than just watching the real vet do it.”

  “I can appreciate that,” said Dad, “but was it so different from what we do over here?”

  I noticed how he picked up the pace a little. Perhaps this was his defensive prelude to an uncomfortable turn in the conversation.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I guess I’ll find out during this next year. But, I did have a few … let’s call them, communication difficulties.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing major.” I smiled at the recollection. “Everybody was great, really friendly, it’s just that we happen to say a few things differently. For example, I had a rottweiler with dirty ears and I wanted to clean them up, so I asked the nurse for some ‘baby buds’ and she looked at me like I had two heads.”

  Dad glanced my way, visibly confused, trying to fathom the nurse’s problem.

  “She didn’t know what a baby bud was?”

  “No,” I said. “Apparently they call them ‘Q-tips.’ ”

  My father played with “Q-tips” in his mouth, didn’t like it, spat it out, and shook his head in disgust.

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know, silly stuff, like that. One time I cut my hand and asked for a plaster and everyone thought I wanted to put a cast on the cut instead of wanting what they call a ‘Band-Aid.’ In surgery they use ‘sponges’ and not ‘swabs,’ and when I told another female student I would see her in theater rather than the ‘operating room,’ she practically fluttered her eyelashes and asked which show we were going to see.”

  Dad laughed and Bess padded toward him, as if to make sure all was well.

  “Go find your brother,” he said, waving her away. “Go on. Go find him.”

  Bess seemed to understand and trotted off, but still she refused to stray too far.

  Whiskey and Bess, I thought, brother and sister, and now son and daughter, the replacements for me and Fiona. Maybe it is inevitable, the transition of pets into surrogate children for empty nesters, the kids who always want to stay home. Perhaps this was what I had noticed most about my sporadic visits over the years, the increase in direct verbal communication between my father and the dogs, as though he wanted to share his thoughts with them and even sought their input, their approval. Was this part of a natural evolution in the relationship between a man and his dogs or was it a sign of isolation and loneliness?

  “You think she’s overweight?”

  Safe territory, I thought, pulling me away from what I wanted to really discuss about America. Lie, use tact, or use honesty. This was Dad. I knew which he would prefer, for this question and for the bigger one both of us knew we still needed to address.

  “Definitely. She needs to lose five pounds, maybe a little more.”

  “Oh, dear,” he said on a lengthy exhalation. “I’ll have to have words with your mother.”

  I huffed a fake laugh because we both knew who was to blame for too many treats and secret handouts under the kitchen table.

  “But what about her coat? Just look at the shine. Now you can’t complain about that. That’s a teaspoon of cod-liver oil added to her food every—”

  “Dad, I want to talk to you about something that really hit me during the summer.”

  I’d stopped him in his tracks even though we kept marching at the same pace, his hazel eyes telling me to go on.

  “I think I might want to become a surgeon.”

  “Surgeon,” he said, shocked, sounding almost affronted, as though I might have told him I was quitting veterinary medicine to become, oh, I don’t know, a puppeteer or perhaps a mime artist. “But I thought that was what you were: a veterinary surgeon—MRCVS—a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said, “but I’m talking about trying to become an actual specialist in surgery, someone who focuses solely on surgical problems in cats and dogs and fixes them with surgery.”

  My father pursed the blood out of his lips, looking troubled by what he was about to say.

  “Not being funny, son …”

  This phrase, “not being funny,” a rejoinder frequently employed as a preamble to a polite snub, instantly had me on the defensive.

  “Not being funny, son, and remember, I love you dearly, but, in fairness, you’ve never been exactly … well … dare I say … practical or particularly good with your hands.”

  I wasn’t affronted because he was right. I may have put together a few plastic airplane kits as a kid, but they never turned out anything like the picture on the box they came in. At school, my pottery class bowls always wobbled precariously on level surfaces and my dovetail joints in woodwork wept with obligatory sticky white glue. In short, I was not handy and we both knew it.

  “I know. And I’m not offended. But I hope I can learn because, for some reason, surgery just seems to feel right.”

  “In what way?”

  This was a question I knew he would ask though I had never tried to put an answer into words before.

  “Well,” I started, caught myself, laughed. “Um … I don’t know, so many different ways. For example, I like the idea of being someone to turn to when you’re out of options, or when you need a definitive fix, or when you are an animal’s last hope. I like this responsibility, I like the weight of it because the heavier it gets, the greater the reward to the pet, the owner, and finally, to you. It seems so … what’s the word … dynamic, scary, exciting, difficult, and demanding. That was part of the reason for going to the States, the chance to try out lots of different specialties and of all the ones I tried, surgery felt like the best fit. I’m not sure why, but I felt most at home in scrubs and a paper mask.”

  Dad nodded, as if he wanted to let me know he was listening.

  “I felt like I had found a key I didn’t even realize I had been looking for. I have no idea if I’m going to be able to use it. I don’t know whether it will unlock any doors. All I do know is having found it, I should probably pick it up, try it out, and see what opens up.”

  Dad stopped nodding, made to speak but hesitated, and I sensed he was racing ahead, pausing as he took this information to its logical conclusion.

  “So, if I’m not mistaken, this means you’re not really interested in general veterinary work, period?”

  I knew he was already way ahead, but I said, “That’s right. I’m just not sure it’s right for me.”

  I could almost see my father’s brain joining the dots.

  “So, no interest in working with farm animals? Or horses for that matter?”

  What he really meant was, this is my last appeal for rural veterinary practice in the Yorkshire Dales.

  “It’s not that I don’t have any interest. I do. But I think I would be happier and, hopefully, do better focusing on a small, single, specific area of veterinary medicine and for me, that area would be surgery.”

  “Does this mean you’ll be leaving us for America, permanently?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t see why it should. We’ve got exactly the same kinds of specialized equipment as they do across the pond. And besides, we’re supposed to be the ‘nation of animal lovers’ and not them and that should mean plenty of call for a vet with good surgical skills on this side of the Atlantic.”

  My father came to an abrupt halt, paused, and called the dogs.

  “Time to turn around,” he said, already heading back.

  Bess was on it, quickly turning fifty yards back into fifty yards ahead. Whiskey, on the other hand, required several calls before he emerged from a hedgerow, blowing by us, treating us to the sight of a brown stain along the fur of his back and the fleeting aroma of something feral and decomposed.

  “Looks like the ‘lion-hearted fellow’ is going to need a bath when he gets home,” I said, hoping to get a rise, but Dad didn’t seem to hear me and we walked in silence for a whil
e. I imagined he was probably letting what I had shared sink in, and at the same time, I worried that he was thinking I saw myself as too good for general practice. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Humility had been high on his list of priorities to instill in his children. “Always hide your light under a bushel,” he would say, but this was different. Ambition is not the same as conceit.

  We reached the point where we needed to put Whiskey and Bess back on their leashes, but before my father called for them, he turned squarely to face me, reached out, and squeezed my upper arms.

  “I want you to know that if you’re happy, then your mother and I are happy. Whatever that is. Wherever that takes you.” I saw the familiar intensity in his eyes, fiery, trapped somewhere between anger and tears, and he gave me an extra squeeze with his hands, as if to underscore the sentiment. “You understand.”

  “Yes,” I said, lasting as long as I could without crying myself.

  We set off and this time when I offered to take Bess’s leash he gave it up. She let me walk her for a while, but I could tell she was restless, the balance seemed off for her, and within a hundred yards my father had taken her back, her stride instantly happier, her demeanor less confused.

  “You know this doesn’t mean I don’t like the Dales.”

  “Of course,” he said. “What’s not to like? What’s not to love? It was just that … having you up here, working, while I was in my retirement, well, it was only ever a pipe dream. No harm in dreaming, eh?”

  “No, of course not. And who knows how things will turn out.”

  At this my father refused to meet my eye, perhaps because he knew better.

  “But part of me feels as though I’ve let you down.”

  “Don’t. Please,” said Dad. “Not on my account.” He paused, and then added, “So long as the pups always get to the front of the queue if they need a veterinary consult from yours truly.”

  “Sure,” I said. “If Whiskey will ever let me.”

  It was his turn to smile, and I remember feeling good, pleased to have broached the subject and cleared the air about my imagined role in that whole Herriot fantasy. I had sought and obtained his approval for the direction I wanted my career to take, a path at odds with his own dreams. It would be decades before I came to appreciate how selfless my father, like so many good parents, had been that day. He knew there was nothing he could do or say, that argument and condemnation would surely lead to isolation. So he chose the tough option—the sacrifice of unconditional support.

  “So,” I said, “when are you thinking of moving up to the Dales permanently?”

  “Couple more years,” said Dad. “I’m going to have to be careful though. These two will probably have to be on leash walks for the rest of their days.”

  I considered this aspect of Herriot country, spectacular walks and hikes, and all of it through potentially hostile farmland. There were cows everywhere and they were sparse by comparison to the number of sheep. Bess would lose it if she ever got off her leash. And then Dad would lose her. How frustrating, I thought, to be tethered, in all that wonderful open space, because you’ve never learned how to ignore livestock. Or rather, never been taught.

  “Did Nigel enjoy the trip?”

  By this time we were back in the first field, our last field of the walk, Bess’s cow field, though once again there were no cows in sight.

  “Yeah, he had a great time.”

  My friend Nigel and I had taken many trips together during our summer vacations when I wasn’t immersed in matters veterinary. Most of Europe, Pakistan, China, Hong Kong, and Thailand had been checked off and therefore it seemed only natural to fly west. Nigel had joined me after my formal training program was complete, and the two of us had been up and down the East Coast, driven across the Midwest, and up and down the West Coast, all in a hectic three-week tour.

  “But he doesn’t think I’m much cop as a vet.”

  I couldn’t hide my smile.

  “Why’s that?”

  This was my cue to narrate a story from our road trip, when we drove a dilapidated Ford Tempo (a vehicle now extinct) from Washington, D.C., to Phoenix, Arizona. Late in the day we had crossed the mighty Mississippi in St. Louis, taken a peek at the Arch, and were looking for a place to sleep somewhere on the border between Missouri and Kansas. We were both exhausted, our concentration and nerves shot from driving on the wrong side of the road, constantly buffeted by the biggest trucks we had ever seen, and so we pulled over at some kind of campsite just off Highway 70.

  “You sure about this?”

  “Not really,” said Nigel, sharing my trepidation as we stopped outside a single-story wooden building that looked remarkably similar to the Bates Motel in Psycho.

  “I don’t see anywhere to pitch a tent.”

  “Maybe it’s out back,” said Nigel as the two of us headed toward a porch lit by hanging lanterns. It was a ridiculously hot and sticky night and as we rang the bell, moths the size of crows flew kamikaze missions all around.

  “You lookin’ for somewhere to camp?”

  The question came from a compact, wizened old woman with thick braided gray hair coursing down her back.

  “Help yourself,” she said, looking the two of us up and down in the manner of someone inspecting a cut of beef for Sunday dinner. Then she smiled a cruel yellow smile that stayed in place for an unnaturally long period of time. She didn’t ask us to register. She didn’t ask for any money. She just thumbed over her shoulder and added, “Go wherever y’like,” which we took to mean “I’m gonna kill you anyway, but I likes me a challenge!”

  We thanked her and backed off, trying to match her smile as we did, and drove around the back of the building, the old Tempo’s headlights playing across a totally deserted campground. Save for the occasional tumbleweed blowing around there appeared to be no one else but us. There were, however, rows of empty campsites demarcated by small trees as far as we could see.

  “You want to stay?” I asked.

  “Not really,” said Nigel. “But in spite of Norman Bates’s mum I think it’s too late to find something better.”

  I agreed and so we pitched our tent, trying to laugh off our paranoia.

  Nigel was already cocooned inside in his sleeping bag and I was zipping up the tent when I thought I saw something moving between the trees.

  “D’you see that?”

  “No,” said Nigel, working his apathy into the single syllable.

  I watched and waited but nothing moved.

  “What?” asked Nigel, clearly unable to put the element of unease to rest.

  “I don’t know. I thought I saw something moving, a shadow of something.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Something big.”

  “You mean grizzly-bear big, mountain-lion big, or gray-haired-lady-deranged-killer-who-doesn’t-ask-for-money-because-she-knows-she’s-going-to-get-it-anyway big?”

  “Could have been any or all of the above.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “How are we ever going to sleep out here?”

  I didn’t bother answering, I was too busy listening.

  This time we both heard the unmistakable snap of a twig.

  “Seriously,” I whispered, “they have all kinds of dangerous stuff out here. And I’m talking a whole lot bigger than badgers and foxes. Rabid too!”

  “Seriously,” said Nigel, “why are you whispering?”

  And with that something feral, focused, and determined lunged at the bottom of the tent, the weight of the creature pressing on the canvas walls.

  What followed was not the response of experienced mountain men, or men, period, for that matter. There was much kicking and inappropriately high-pitched screaming, as our sleeping-bag-encased feet beat back hungry teeth and raking claws. Soon we were both sitting up, catching our breath.

  “I’m pretty sure I made some sort of contact,” said Nigel.

  “With what?”

  “How should I know? You�
��re the animal doctor.”

  We waited, fighting to control the noise of our own breathing so we could hear what was going on outside.

  “You think it’s gone?” said Nigel.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, “I’m sure it’s completely satiated by its encounter!”

  “Well I’m not lying here waiting to be devoured,” said Nigel. “I vote we sleep in the car.”

  He would get no argument from me and so, after a period of lengthy surveillance for the creature of the night or the crazy lady from reception, we both made a mad dash back to the security of the Tempo.

  Needless to say, the following morning, the two of us emerged from our cramped sanctuary as cranky, stiff, red-eyed monsters.

  In the light of day I recognized our attacker, moving slowly toward us, a subtle limp in her front leg from where my best friend’s big toe had landed a cushioned blow.

  “I think this might be our rabid mountain lion,” I said, bending down to pet a small gray-haired kitten.

  She was incredibly friendly and obviously hungry, and after I checked her over to make sure there was nothing swollen or broken in her front leg, we offered her some food.

  “Some vet you are,” said Nigel. “For all the dogs you’ve had, it might be time to get a cat.”

  I couldn’t argue the point as I squatted down to have my picture taken stroking this delightful, yet abominable creature. Little did I know that I would first see this photograph on my wedding day, in a poster-sized version. The accompanying story was presented as part of Nigel’s best man’s speech, evidence of my fear of cats (though this humiliation was nothing compared to the photograph of me sporting a perm—to this day I swear the hairdresser promised me her product would simply provide my flat hair with a little bit more body)!