Comeback (9 page)

“Why is the passage so long?”

“Something to do with what’s under the ground. It wasn’t suitable for foundations any nearer. So we had to have the passage or else run from building to building in the rain.”

“Lucky.”

“So it turned out”

“How old is the hospital?”

“Three or four years,” Ken said. “Three and a half, about”

“And you all use it?”

He nodded. “Not for minor things, of course. Often it’s because of some sort of emergency. Dog run over, that sort of thing. There’s a small-animal wing. Otherwise there are—were—the two small-animal surgeries over in the main building for vaccinations and so on.” He paused. “God, it’s all so depressing.”

He led the way out of the office and into the central passage. The floors throughout were of black, gray-streaked vinyl tiles, the walls an unrelenting white. The hospital hadn’t been designed, of course, to soothe human patient anxieties: severe practicality reigned along with the fire-retardant ethos.

Nothing was made of wood. Doors were metal everywhere, set into metal frames, painted brown. A row of three on the left-hand side were storerooms, Ken said. All the doors were locked. Ken opened them and we checked inside: all quiet.

On the right, past the office, lay another, much bigger, double room, one half housing X-ray developing equipment, the other, a movable X-ray machine on wheels. There was also a simple bed in there, with folded blankets, looking unused, and a closed door giving access from the car park for patients.

“We have to keep all these doors locked, including the office,” Ken said grimly. “We’ve found things walking out of here when we’re all busy in the theater. You wouldn’t believe what some people will steal.”

Looting was a built-in instinct, I thought.

Immediately beyond the X-ray room there was what should have been a heavy fire door blocking our way. It was present, but had been opened flat against the wall and held there by a substantial wedge. Ken saw me eyeing it and shrugged.

“That’s the problem. We can’t open these doors with our arms full of equipment. The firemen closed that door earlier, when they first came, but someone’s opened it since. Force of habit.”

Past the habit, there was an extra-wide door straight ahead. The passage itself turned right.

“That door,” Ken said, pointing ahead, “is the entry to the theater area from this side. The passage goes round to an outside door.”

He unlocked the theater door, pressed rows of switches to light our path, and led the way into a vestibule with doors on either side and another across the end.

“Changing rooms right and left,” Ken said, opening the doors and pointing. “Then we go ahead into the central supply of gowns and gloves and so on. We’d better put gowns and shoe-covers on, if you don’t mind, in the interests of cleanliness in the operating room.”

He handed me a pair of plastic disposable shoe-covers and a sort of cotton overall, dressing in similar himself, and then supplied us also with hats like shower caps and masks. I began to feel like a hospital movie, only the eyes emoting. “Instruments and drugs are in here too,” he went on, showing me locked glass-fronted cupboards. “This cupboard here opens both ways, from this side and from inside the operating room. The drug cupboard has two locks and unbreakable glass.”

“A fortress,” I commented.

“Carey took advice from our insurers as well as the police and the fire inspectors. They all had a go.”

Ken pointed to a door in the left-hand wall. “That leads towards the small-animal operating room or theater.” A door to the right, he showed me, opened to a scrub room. “You can go through the scrub room into the operating room,” he said, “but we’ll go straight in from here.”

He pushed open double swing doors ahead—not locked, for once—and walked into the scene of his disasters.

It was unmistakably an operating theater, though the wide central table must have been almost nine feet long with an upward-pointing leg at each corner, like a four-poster bed. There were unidentifiable (to me) trolleys, carts and wheeled tables round the walls, all of metal. I had an impression of more space than I’d expected.

Without ado, Ken skirted the table and went to the far wall where, after another clinking of keys, a whole section slid away to reveal another room beyond. I followed Ken into this space and found that the floor was spongy underfoot. I remarked on it, surprised.

Ken, nodding, said, “The walls are padded too,” and punched his fist against one of the gray plastic-coated panels that lined the whole room. “This stuff is like the mats they put down for gymnasts,” he said. “It absorbs shocks. We anesthetize the horses in here, and the padding stops them hurting themselves when they go down.”

“Cozy,” I said dryly.

Ken nodded briefly and pointed upwards. “See those rails in the ceiling, and those chains hanging down? We fasten the horse’s legs into padded cuffs, attach the cuffs to the chains, winch up the horse and he travels along the rails into the theater.” He pointed back through the sliding door. “The rails guide the horse right over the table. Then we lower him into the position we want. The table is mobile too, and can be moved.”

One lived and learned, I thought. One learned the most extraordinary things.

“You have to support ... er, to
carry ...
the head, of course,” Ken said.

“Of course.”

He rolled the wall-door into place again and relocked it, then went across the spongy floor to another door, again padded, but opening this time into a short corridor which we crossed to enter what Ken called the preparation room. There was a clutter of treatment carts round the walls there, and more cupboards.

“Emergency equipment,” he explained briefly. “This is reception, where the horses arrive.” He stepped out of the shoe-covers and gestured to me to do the same, throwing them casually into a discard bin. “From here we go back into the corridor and down there into the outside world.”

A gust of wind blew specks of ash in through the widening opening of the outside door and Ken gestured me to hurry through after him, relocking as usual behind us.

Each of Ken’s keys had a colored tag with a stick-on label, identifying its purpose in the general scheme of things. Ken clanked like an old-time jailer.

Outside, we were still under a wide roof which covered a good-sized area in front of a row of four new-looking boxes stretching away to the left. All the box doors stood open, as I’d seen before, the patients having left.

“That’s about it,” Ken said, looking around. “We unload the sick animals just here and usually take them straight into reception. There’s often not much time to lose.”

“Nearly always horses?” I asked.

He nodded. “Occasionally cattle. Depends on the value of the beast, whether the expense is justified. But yes, mostly horses. This is hunting country, so we get horses staked and also we get barbed wire injuries. If we can’t sew them up satisfactorily in their home stable we bring them here. Abdominal wounds, that sort of thing. Again, it depends on love, really.”

Reflecting, I asked, “How many horses are there in your area?”

“Can’t tell exactly. Between us we’re the regular vets of, say, half a dozen or more racing stables, five riding schools, a bunch of pony clubs, countless hunting people, showing people, eventers, and people who just keep a couple of hacks about the place ... oh, and a retirement home for old steeplechasers. There are a whole lot of horses in Gloucestershire.”

“A whole lot of love,” I commented.

Ken actually smiled. “It keeps us going, no doubt of it.” The smile faded. “Up to now.”

“Law of averages,” I said. “You’ll go months now without another death.”

“No.”

I listened to the hopelessness and also the fear, and wondered if either of those emotions sprung from facts he hadn’t told me.

“There won’t be anyone out here in the boxes,” he said.

“We may as well look.”

He shrugged and we walked along the row and found it indeed deserted, including the small feed and tack rooms at the end. Everywhere was noticeably swept and clean, even allowing for the fire.

“That’s it, then,” Ken said, turning back.

He closed and bolted the empty boxes as we passed them and, at the end, made not for the door into the treatment areas but to another set back to the left of it, which led, I discovered, into the offshoot of the black-tiled passage. From there, through uncurtained windows, one could look out to where the fire engine had been. A long line of pegs on the wall opposite the windows held an anorak or two, a couple of cloth caps and a horse’s head collar. Pairs of green wellies stood on the floor beneath, with a row of indoor shoes on a shelf above.

Ken wiped his own shoes carefully on a mat and waited while I did the same, then opened yet another door, at which point we were only a few steps and a couple of turns away from where we’d started. Ken took the gowns back to the changing room and returned to comment on the silence everywhere in a building usually full of bustle.

I agreed that we could relax on the score of ill-intentioned intruders for the moment and rather regretted having offered an all-night service. Cold was a problem I hadn’t given much thought to, and although it was by then nearing three o’clock, it would presumably get colder still before dawn.

“How about us borrowing those anoraks?” I suggested, “and wrapping ourselves in blankets.”

“Yes, we could,” he began to say, but was forestalled by the same muffled noise as in the restaurant, the chirp of his telephone on his belt.

He looked at me blankly for a second, but pulled out the phone and flipped it open.

“Hewett and Partners,” he said. “Yes ... Ken speaking.”

I wouldn’t have thought he could grow much paler, but he did. The shakes returned as badly as ever.

“Yes,” he said. “Well ... I’ll come straightaway.”

He clipped the phone back onto his belt with fumbling fingers and tried with three or four deep breaths to get himself back into control, but the pale blue eyes were halfway to panic.

“It’s the Vernonside Stud,” he said. “They’ve a broodmare with colic. The stud groom’s been walking her round but she’s getting worse. I’ll have to go.”

“Send someone else,” I suggested.

“How can I? If I send someone else I’ve as good as resigned.”

He gave me the wild unseeing stare of a courage-racking dilemma and, as if he indeed had no choice, unhesitatingly went down the passage and into the drugs room, where he rapidly gathered an armful of bottles, syringes and other equipment to take out to his car. His fingers trembled. He dropped nothing.

“I’ll be gone an hour at least,” he said, “that’s if I’ m lucky.” He gave me a brief glance. “Do you mind staying here? It’s a bit of an imposition ... I hardly know you, really.”

“I’ll stay,” I said.

“Phone the police if anything happens.”

He set off fast along the passage in the direction of the coats-on-pegs and over his shoulder told me that I’d get no incoming calls to worry about because they’d be rerouted in the exchange to his own portable phone. Always their system for whoever was on duty at night.

“You can make calls out,” he said, taking down an anorak, shaking off his shoes and sliding into wellies. “You’d better have my keys.” He threw me the heavy bunch. “See you.”

He sped out of the far door, letting its latch lock with a click behind him, and within seconds I heard his car start up and drive away.

When I couldn’t hear him any longer I tried on the remaining olive green anorak, but it would have fitted a small woman like Belinda and I couldn’t get it on. I settled for a blanket from the X-ray room and, wrapped to the chin, sat on the padded chair in the office, put my feet up on the desk and read an article in a veterinary journal about oocyte transfers from infertile mares into other mares for gestation, and the possible repercussions in the thoroughbred stud book.

This was not, one might say, riveting entertainment.

A couple of times I made the rounds again, but I no longer expected or feared to find a new little bonfire. I did go on wondering whether the office building had been torched or not, but realized that it was only because of Ken’s general troubles that arson had seemed possible.

I read another article, this time about enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, a fast antibody test for drugs in racehorses. It was the only reading matter of any sort in sight. I had a readaholic friend who would read bus timetables if all else failed. Hewett and Partners didn’t use buses.

I eyed the telephone. Who could I call for a chat at three in the morning? It would be nine o’ clock at night in Mexico City. A good time for the parents. Better not.

I dozed over an account of 3-D computer scanning of bone-stress factors in hocks and awoke with a start to hear someone rapping on the window with something hard, like a coin.

A face accompanied the hand, coming close to the glass, and a voice shouted, “Let me in.”

He pointed vigorously in the direction of the rear door and as I went along the passage I remembered that he was the one who’d been kicking the coffee machine and so could be presumed to be on the side of the angels.

He came in stamping his feet and complaining of the cold. He held two large Thermos flasks and explained that in the rush he’d forgotten his keys.

“But not to worry, Ken said you were here.”

“Ken?” I asked.

He nodded. “He’s on his way back here with the mare.” He thrust the Thermos flasks into my grasp and kicked off his boots, reaching up for a pair of indoor shoes on the shelf above the pegs. Slipping his feet into those, he took off his padded jacket. Then he said, “God, it’s freezing in here,” and put it on again. “Ken’s phoning Belinda, and I’m to get the theater ready.”

He was moving as he talked. “I hate these middle-of-the-night emergencies.” He reached the central passage. “I hate buggered coffee machines.” He marched into the office, took one of the Thermoses back, unscrewed its inside top and used it as a cup. The coffee steamed out and smelled like comfort while he drank.