Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (26 page)

‘Mark,’ I said, ‘could you put your thumb across the crook of her leg – here – and hold up the vein for me? Try and keep her leg still . . . no, like this.’

A small, old, seizuring dog is not the ideal subject for vet-nursing practice, but he did pretty well, and I managed to get in half the diazepam before blowing the vein. I gave the rest into a thigh muscle, and then recalled that, for some reason that I probably knew the night before my pharmacology exam, it would have been absorbed faster per rectum.

‘Was she herself at breakfast time, Mrs Stewart?’ I asked, keeping my thumb over the needle hole in Taffy’s foreleg.

‘She didn’t finish her biscuits, but she often doesn’t. She’s always been a fussy eater. I didn’t worry about it.’ She laid a hand on the little dog’s head. ‘She was like this when I found her. She might have been like this for hours.’ A tear rolled down the soft wrinkled cheek, and she wiped it away with a trembling hand.

‘I know it looks awful, but she honestly isn’t feeling it,’ I said. ‘She’s unconscious.’ I opened the nearest cupboard with my foot. ‘Mark, could you put a bag of fluids in the microwave for a minute and a half?’

He bent to get one, and vanished silently up the hall.

‘We’ll get her on a drip, Mrs Stewart, and keep her anaesthetised. Every time the drugs start to wear off I’ll see whether she starts shaking again, and when she doesn’t I’ll let her wake up.’

‘She’s not – she’s not responding,’ she whispered.

‘She will, I promise. I’ll give her something stronger; I’ve just got to wait a few more minutes to see how well that first dose is going to work.’ I flew around the treatment room, opening and shutting drawers. IV-giving set, catheter, a second catheter in case I spoilt the first one, tape . . . Where was Mark? Surely by now he’d had time to warm a dozen bags. Finally he opened the door and, snatching the fluids, I started to connect up the giving set.

‘If she’s eaten slug bait there’s an antibody, surely?’ said Mrs Stewart.

I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t. It’s just a case of keeping her asleep until it wears off, and running in lots of fluids to flush it out of the system. Could you bear to leave her, and go home to see if the bait you put down is gone?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, taking a cobweb of linen handkerchief from her sleeve and wiping her eyes. ‘I’m only getting in your way here.’

‘You’re not in the way at all,’ I said, running fluid through the line to flush out the air. ‘But it’s awful to watch your dog like this. Would you like to come back, or would you rather stay at home and keep in touch on the phone?’

‘I – I’m not sure,’ she said helplessly.

‘Perhaps you could ring me from home about the slug bait, and then come back if you’d like to,’ I said. ‘Mark, could you write down my mobile number for Mrs Stewart? There should be a post-it note somewhere over by the computer.’

‘Thank you both so much,’ she said, taking it. ‘I know you’ll do your best.’

I stopped myself from saying, ‘She’ll be fine, I promise,’ when I couldn’t actually promise anything of the sort, and nodded instead.

‘Right,’ I said as Mrs Stewart’s footsteps faded down the hall. ‘Catheter. We’ll try the other leg. You’ve got to hold it really firm.’

Mark immediately clamped the leg in a vice-like hold.

‘Just let me shave it,’ I said. ‘And you’ll need to give me some space to put the catheter in.’ I repositioned his hand. ‘That’s better – now hold it still – cool . . .’ I pushed the catheter through the skin, and blood ran back to fill the hub. ‘Thumb up. Thank you.’ I threaded the catheter up the vein and taped it in, started the drip running and ran to the safe.

The Nembutal bottle wasn’t in the safe, and I rummaged frantically through the drug cupboard for a good minute before remembering that Nick had finally thrown it away a month ago, in anticipation of a best practice audit. Auditors tend to frown on the use of drugs that are five years out of date.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Can’t find the stuff I want,’ I said, returning to the table and pulling a mil each of ketamine and diazepam into a syringe. I injected slowly into the port on Taffy’s giving set, and the small woolly body went limp.

‘Good work,’ said Mark.

‘No it’s not,’ I said tiredly. Poor work at best. I should have had all the right drugs to hand, and their doses written down for quick reference. ‘Watch her for me?’

‘Watch her for what?’

‘Breathing!’ I snapped, and hurried up the hall for my toxicology book.

The book wasn’t on the shelf above my desk, or on Keri’s, or Richard’s. This was becoming a recurring theme. I gave up the search and pulled out my phone to call my customary fount of veterinary wisdom.

‘Hey, Nell,’ he said. ‘Merry Christmas.’

‘I’m so sorry to ring you on Christmas Day,’ I said, leaning back against my desk. ‘Work question.’

‘No worries,’ said Lance.

‘I’ve got a seizuring dog, twelve years old, probably slug bait.’

‘Yuck,’ he said.

‘Yeah, she’s pretty bad. I’ve knocked her out with ketamine-diazepam – I know it was the wrong thing to use but –’

‘Not at all.’

‘I thought you weren’t supposed to use ketamine in animals with neurological signs?’

‘Old wives’ tale,’ said Lance briskly. ‘Newer studies have found that it actually decreases ICP – intracranial pressure. Top it up with Nembutal.’

I went back down the hall to the treatment room, where Mark was standing over Taffy, watching her chest rise and fall. ‘Haven’t got any. Can I use pentobarb?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Lance. ‘The concentration of that stuff’s a bit variable. You might as well stick with ketamine, if it’s working. Got the dog on a drip?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. What brand of bait was it?’

‘Don’t know. The owner’s checking and ringing back.’

‘Some have carbamate in them,’ he said. ‘Has your dog got pinpoint pupils?’

I looked. ‘No.’

‘Okay. No point in giving atropine then. Might be worth trying gastric lavage, if it’s been less than four hours since it ate the stuff.’

I looked at my watch – it was one thirty. ‘It might be. Good idea.’

‘Got anyone to help you?’ he asked.

‘Mark,’ I said, smiling at him across the patient. ‘He’s a pretty good vet nurse.’

‘Good on him. You might have to keep the dog sedated for a few days: metaldehyde takes a long time to wear off.’

‘Will do. Thanks, Lance.’

‘You’re welcome. Oh, Kate’s yelling about something, hang on . . . She wants to know if you’re feeling better.’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Is she?’

‘Yeah, she’s great. She says you should try vitamin B6.’

‘Does it help?’

‘So she says.’

‘I’ll give it a go,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. Take care, okay?’

‘You too. Merry Christmas.’ I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket. ‘Thank you for watching her for me. I’m sorry I snapped at you.’

‘So K-Y man told you what you needed to know?’ Mark asked.

Lance was a bit pedantic, and prone to experimenting with nasty straggly tufts of facial hair, but he was a better person than I was. He wouldn’t have told his new girlfriend my embarrassing secrets, and I shouldn’t have told Mark any of his. ‘Please don’t,’ I said unhappily.

Beryl Stewart rang just then to say that the ground around her primulas was indeed devoid of slug bait, so we spent an unpleasant half hour with a bucket and a stomach tube, washing out Taffy’s stomach. Then I packed a box of supplies and we headed home, dog and all. I laid Taffy on a pile of newspapers and blankets in one corner of the kitchen, with the drip bag tied to a cupboard door handle.

‘Drink?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Mark, crossing the kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘What do you want?’

‘Tea, please.’ I opened the pantry to retrieve the cake. ‘I’m sorry; this is a lousy Christmas.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said.

‘Did you have a nice talk with Uncle Peter?’ I asked.

‘Which one was he?’

‘The one who should have been an All Black.’

‘That’s right. Yeah, it was great.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘I liked your aunty Deb.’

‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

He put an arm around me. ‘She told me all about how clever you are, and how you were dux at high school.’

She would. Sam won the Accounting Cup one year, and she carried it around in her handbag and showed it to people.

‘There were only about twenty of us in seventh form,’ I said, resting my head against his shoulder. ‘It’s not all that impressive.’

‘It’s a lot better than I could do.’

I reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘But you can knit.’

‘So I can,’ said Mark, letting me go.

I was sick and tired and self-absorbed, and it didn’t occur to me that he honestly thought he was stupid. So instead of pointing out that he was the smartest, most logical person I’d ever met, and that he would have passed sixth form on his ear if he’d bothered to devote a fraction of his brain to schoolwork rather than rugby, I turned away and went to check Taffy’s heart rate.

It was a lovely summer afternoon, warm and sunny, with a light breeze ruffling the leaves of Rex’s poplars. All over the country, happy overfed people were playing cricket on their lawns and nibbling on leftover pavlova and chocolate truffles. Mark went to help Hamish milk, and I considered making something amazing for dinner for about four seconds before nausea won and I retired to the couch instead.

In the end, Mark dined on mayonnaise-and-salami sandwiches (had Em known I’d given him a litre of condensed-milk mayonnaise and an illustrated history of the Persian empire for Christmas she would have predicted the rapid and inevitable downfall of our relationship), and I had banana on toast. As we finished eating, Taffy’s anaesthetic began to wear off and she started to paddle again. I topped her up for the fifth time, rang Mrs Stewart with a progress report and moved Taffy to the floor at the end of my bed.

It was not a restful night. About the seventeenth time Taffy stirred, somewhere around three in the morning, I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow.

‘Your dog’s twitching again,’ said Mark sleepily.

‘Mm,’ I said, rolling back. ‘I think I’ll be sick when I stand up.’

He pushed himself up to sit. ‘Tell me what to do, then.’

‘No, it’s okay.’ I swung my legs out of bed, took a few deep breaths and switched on the bedside light. I had swathed it in a pair of pyjama pants so as not to wake Mark every time I turned it on, and then proceeded to wake him anyway by blundering around the room and falling over things.

The drip bag needed changing, and Taffy’s body temperature was down to thirty-six degrees. I filled a hot water bottle and covered her with an extra blanket, and crawled back into bed, nibbling furtively on a Cabin Bread.

‘What are you doing?’ Mark enquired.

‘Eating Cabin Bread to settle my stomach,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

He sighed and sat up again.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘Couch.’

‘No, please don’t! I’ll stop.’

He got out of bed. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said shortly, and went up the hall.

I lay and watched the numbers change on the digital alarm clock beside the bed: 3:40, 3:52, 4:09, 4:17 . . . Finally I got up and padded after him.

He was lying on his back on the couch, slowly rubbing his sore shoulder with the heel of the opposite hand. A square of yellow light from the hall framed his feet but his face was in shadow.

‘Is it very sore?’ I asked, stopping in the doorway.

‘It’s alright.’

‘Would you like a heat pack?’

He shook his head.

‘Lucky it happened now, I guess, if it had to happen,’ I said tentatively.

‘Helen, being injured now isn’t insurance against being injured later.’

I bit my lip. ‘I know.’

‘Go back to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there soon.’

He hadn’t come by the time I went to sleep, and he wasn’t there when I woke up. I pushed myself up on my elbows – the clock said 7:05, bright sunlight outlined the curtains, and on the floor at the end of the bed lay a little white dog, watching me warily with her chin on her paws.

24

I
NJURY
W
OES
L
EAVE
B
LUES
B
LUE

The season’s barely started, but mounting injury lists are keeping Blues head coach Bob Grantham awake at nights. There’s Mark Tipene’s shoulder, of course, partially dislocated in last year’s final Irish Test and then reinjured against the Crusaders last weekend. Tipene’s management are talking about a four- to six-week rehab, but with the World Cup looming the All Black coaching team is unlikely to want to take any chances rushing its star lock back into play.

Then there’s prop Luke Sia’alo’s torn hamstring, fullback Sean Jones’s dodgy ankle and several senior players unavailable due to extended holiday leave. Blues captain and All Black skipper Jaeger set a good example by choosing not to take advantage of his contract’s holiday clause but was in disappointingly poor form last weekend, a mere shadow of his relentless and rock-solid best.