Rescue (Emily and Mason) (2 page)

As I turn the corner off one of the shady streets onto a
sunnier street, I reach into the console and pull out my sunglasses. Music
pours from my speakers as I pull into the small gas station six blocks from my
home in rural Pennsylvania. It’s the closest place to get coffee.

I grab a large can of Folgers and a large coffee from the
dispenser at the back for this morning. Then I pay with the twenty my Dad
tacked to the wall and the middle-aged woman at the register quirks her eyebrow
at the large, scrawling word in my father’s handwriting.

“Don’t ask,” I tell her in an amused voice. The woman shakes
her head at me and hands me my change, not bothering to give me a bag. I don’t
care; one item doesn’t really demand a bag.

As I slide in behind the wheel, I check the time on the dash
and lean back as I sip my coffee. It’s only ten in the morning, which means I
have four hours to kill before I go off to my first day at a real job. I start
my car and take a cruise around the block before I take off for home. By the
time I get home, I now have three hours and fifteen minutes to kill.

I decide I’ll take my chances with Halo today and get
started on a server. A song echoes through the room from my computer speakers
and I chuckle as I listen to it. It’s something about going camping, probably
because there’re a few players sitting in one spot picking off people as they
reappear. By the time I’m ‘Dominating’ in the game, it’s time for me to head
out to work.

After finishing off my coffee and tacking a note beside the
door to let my father know where I’ll be at until six tonight, I grab my keys
from beside the door and slide in behind the wheel. It takes me only twenty
minutes to get to work, a steal considering jobs are hard to find around here
anymore. I take one look at myself in the rearview mirror and try not to freak
out.

Emily

Running my hands through the orange, tiger striped cat’s
fur, I find another knot and grab my brush. It would be a shame to cut off all
his pretty fur. As I’m gingerly working the knot out, one of the other regular
volunteers pauses in the doorway to the medical room. She puts her shoulder to
the doorframe. Jesse and I have been chatting more and more lately. I would
like to consider the raven haired, tall woman a friend, but friends tell each
other the complete truth. She has no idea about the fact that I’m a foster kid.

“No one’s been able to touch that cat since it was brought
in last night. He’s been pitching a fit in that cage every second of every hour
he’s been here. You get out a brush, and he’s like putty in your hands. How the
hell do you do it?” She sounds genuinely stumped over my ability to keep Cream
sickle calm. I named him myself; all the fuzz balls in here need a name, so
they feel like they’re something to someone.

“I show him respect, and he shows me respect back.” It’s
something I learned when I was just a small child. Most animals are more afraid
of the human than the human is of the animal, but a calm, clear respect usually
brings them around.

“Right, well when you get to his butt; make sure to show him
plenty of respect as your cutting out those shit balls.” Jesse flips her hair
up into a neat ponytail and smiles at me before she walks away. I lean down to
the cat to whisper to him that she has no idea what she’s talking about. I
won’t be cutting out his shit balls. I’ll wash them out with some wipes and
then brush them.

Cream sickle and I both cringe when a whiny voice comes over
the speakers. There’s something about this song that makes me want to vomit
somewhere. As I’m brushing and cleaning, Cream sickle washes his paws in front
of him, patiently waiting for me to be done with it. The time comes for me to
put him back into his holding cell and he stiffens in my arms. Most of the cats
don’t like their metal cages, and I don’t blame them.

Who would want to spend hours on end in a metal cage when
they could have the entire room to play in? But Cream sickle hasn’t been
cleared for play with the other kitties in the greeting rooms. I give him a
gentle hug before I put him in the cage, gently picking each one of his claws
out of my shirt as I do so. He yowls one time for me before he lies down in his
bed. Perhaps being clean is enough for now.

I move on to the next cage, another cat that needs brushing.
There are strict policies on cleanliness here so as not to spread disease. So I
pull out all the hair from Cream sickle and shove it into a medical waste trash
can, and then I dump the brush into an antibacterial bath before I dry it on a
towel. Once the brush is sufficiently clean, I pull out Midnight. I didn’t name
her, and I don’t care for the name.

“And this is our feline holding room. These are the cats
that are not available yet for adoption and need to be cleaned up and checked
out. Oh, Emily!” Gail, the resident veterinary assistant, comes bustling
through the door with a man in tow. He’s a few years older than me by the looks
of it. He’s also absolutely petrified but trying to show a cool bravado on the
outside.

“This is Emily, she volunteers every day here, even on
Sundays. If you ever need to know something and I’m not around, you should
probably ask her.” I feel a flush hit my cheeks. Wow, I do volunteer here every
day. Now that it looks as if I have no life, Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome is completely
off limits.

Gail moves further into the room with her brown, curled hair
up in a ponytail and her hazel eyes narrowing as the new guy steps closer to
me. I see her shoulders stiffen; she knows I don’t like physical contact. He
sticks his large hand out anyway and smiles shyly at me. Oh man, dimples.

“I’m Mason, the new vet tech.” My hands smell like the
antibacterial wash that we use, which is not a pleasant odor. There’s an
awkward second where I’m not going to reach out my hand to shake his, but I
take it.

“Nice to meet you,” I say lamely, pulling my hand back and
picking up the brush off the blue, speckled counter. Gail seems to realize that
I’m feeling flustered and quickly moves Mason on to the next room. That’s the
small animal room.

I can’t say that any of them are my favorite. I work with
anything that comes through those doors whether it’s a one thousand pound horse
or a half ounce bird. But right now I’m going to be grooming a nine pound,
female, long haired cat who hates brushes. I have a feeling her owner either
never brushed her or was not very nice about the mats she tends to get on her
back legs.

“Come on Midnight, it’s time to get you looking pretty so
you can go out with the rest to find a new home. One where you don’t have to
put up with me every day.” I smile at her as I pull her out of the cage and
stroke her a few times on the table. The attention she’s getting starts up the
purring, but as soon as the brush comes up to touch her head she gets wide eyes
and scrunches.

I wait, patiently, for about two minutes before she head-butts
the brush gently in my fingers. When she feels comfortable enough to let me
brush her, I make sure to get all the small knots starting and brush a little
extra just to keep the comradery going. My afternoon goes a lot like that,
taking one cat out after the next and cleaning up their fur, ears, eyes, noses
and a few teeth.

Once I’m finished with the cats, I move on to the small
animal area. It’s pleasantly almost empty. There’s just one small gerbil left
in her wire cage on one wall and a ferret with severe adrenal disease on the
other. The poor fellow came in with a blocked urinary tract, and missing all of
his fur except one small patch on his head.

“Bandit, if you don’t stop pooping in your water dish no one
is going to want to take you home.” Animals are funny like that sometimes. He
was supposedly a well behaved ferret, but the owners were moving into a home
where they couldn’t take him. Now, whenever a tech or another volunteer tries
to get him out to show him to a potential ferret parent, he bites.

I pull out his water dish and empty it in the sink,
thoroughly washing it before I refill it. To give him some exercise time, I
pull him out of his cage and let him run around on the floor with a few toys as
I clean out the bottom pan. The other volunteers and techs know that I let
Bandit out of his cage while I do this, but apparently one of them in
particular does not know.

I don’t have a chance to grab the ferret before Mason opens
up the door to the small animal room. The ferret bounds right past him and
scurries down the hall before I have a chance even to call out his name. With a
frustrated sigh, I grab one of the squeaky toys and stand just outside the door
to the small animal room. It’s an incessant noise, but Bandit always responds.

“What are you doing?” Mason asks, putting his hands up to
his ears. I don’t answer him; just keep squeezing that toy until the furless
wonder bounds around the corner of the hall and races down the tiles after me.
I lead him back into the room and close the door quickly, letting him have the
squeaky.

“I’m saving your ass on your first day. Whenever you enter a
room with animals, knock beforehand.” I try not to sound tart, but I guess it
comes out that way. Mason puts his hands in his jeans pockets and tries to look
apologetic, but I can see the smirk on his lips.

“I’ll remember that, Mom.” He says, his eyes twinkling.
Before I can come up with a smart-ass response, he dives right into the reason
he came into this room in the first place. “Gail sent me to get Bandit, said
his implant arrived.”

I can’t help it. I smile. Scooping bandit up in my arms, I
march right past Mason and head down the hall for the exam rooms. Bandit has
been waiting two weeks for his implant. Hopefully it will bring his hair back
and make him even more playful than he already is. He’s only four years old,
which I suppose to some might seem like a lifetime for a ferret. But it’s really
not.

Mason

She’s long legs, cream colored flesh, and heaven walking
down the hallway in front of me with a naked ferret in her arms. If I had known
there were hot chicks like this in animal shelters, I would have volunteered
here myself just to get a few dates. Her hair is an odd color, one that I can’t
really describe. It’s something between strawberry blonde and a very light
brunette and her eyes are strikingly hazel.

“Which room?” Emily calls back to me, stopping by the exam
rooms. Gail opens one up and motions for her to come inside with the ferret.

I’m not sure if Emily realizes it or not, but Gail sent me
down to the room to fetch Bandit when she knew Emily would be in there.
Apparently the girl has a way with animals. I suppose if Emily had gone to
school, maybe they would have hired her on as a technician.

Gail waits for me to get into the room finally and closes
the door behind me. She pulls out a hellaciously large needle and hands it to
me. I know my eyes pop wide open as I look from the needle to the ferret, but I
suppose implants are not small. Emily grasps the back of the ferret’s neck like
a pro and holds his scrawny, loose body in the air.

“Now it needs to go right here,” Gail points to a distinct
point just below the shoulder blades, and I let my instincts take control. I
gently grasp the bottom of the ferret and pull Bandit towards me. The needle
slides in effortlessly, and I inject the implant.

As soon as the procedure is finished, Emily holds the ferret
to her chest and whispers comforting words to it as she leaves the room. I
can’t help but watch her go, mesmerized by the way she’s so distant with people
and so open with a ferret. What would make a person want to clam up around
others like that?

Sure I was nervous before I came in here; I’m always nervous
meeting new people. And I wouldn’t have become a vet tech if I didn’t love
animals, but I don’t radiate this air of frigidness when I’m around others. Although
it seems the rigidity is not as strong around Gail.

“What’s with her?” I finally ask Gail when I’m sure that
she’s back in the small animal room. My supervisor turns to me with a curious
look as she disposes of the medical supplies.

“With Emily? She’s just shy.” I want to tell her that I’m
just shy. There’s something more to Emily than shyness. But then again, who am
I to judge? I live with my father and younger brother because I’m too afraid to
man up and live.

“So what else do you have in store for me today? I got to
meet all the other volunteers and employees and stab a ferret, what’s next?”
Gail chuckles at my light banter and points at the door.

“We’re going to see if we can’t get an ultra sound of Daisy’s
belly; she was due to have her puppies three days ago. I’m worried something
might be wrong.” I can gather that Daisy is a dog since she said puppies, but I
haven’t meant this particular one yet. As Gail pulls off her gloves, I pull off
mine and help her gather a few supplies before we head out.

“I didn’t know there was an ultrasound machine here.” Gail
didn’t mention one, but she’s walking me down a long, white hall with several
supplies in her hands. She leads me into a room with a few nice machines.
There’s a plack on the wall that reads
Thank you Dr. Noggle
.

“We didn’t about a year ago. Dr. Noggle’s been doing very
well at his practice and decided to donate some of the older equipment to us.
It’s only a few years old.” Gail bustles about the room and sets up the machine
carefully. I watch her every move. During classes at the university I was
instructed on how to use one of these, but I only got to use one once.

I follow my supervisor back down the hall to the dog kennel
and stop in the doorway when I see Emily again. She must be finished with the
small animals and is now trying to coax a rather vicious looking German
Shepherd out of his cage. Gail steps behind the young blonde and whispers to
her to be careful with that one.

“I got it Gail, she’s just not sure of where she’s at is
all.” Emily gives up on trying to get the dog out of the cage and puts one foot
gingerly in. She stands rigidly with a surety that I would never have felt
around a dog drooling like that. The
she
looks as if it might rip off a
hand that dares to reach out and touch it.

Gail comes out of one of the cages with a shy golden
retriever behind her on a short leash. She leads the plump dog past me, and I
close the door, but not before I look back to make sure that Emily is not being
gnawed on. As we walk down the hall, I can’t help but wonder why they would
allow her to get into a cage with a dangerous animal.

“Is that dog considered adoptable?” I ask Gail as I catch up
to her.

“No, Baby’s not adoptable right now. But we’re a no kill
shelter and Emily begged us to give her a shot at training the dog. You should
have seen her two weeks ago. She wouldn’t even let someone walk past that cage
without biting at the bars so hard her gums were bleeding. On several occasions,
I had to make sure she didn’t break teeth.” Mason furrows his brows as he
walks. Maybe some people are just gifted, and others have to work at it. He
feels a pang of jealousy, wishing that he were that easy going around vicious
dogs.

Gail stretches the Golden Retriever out on the table, and I
grab the clippers. This time I take charge and shave off the hair on the poor
dog’s belly, careful not to catch any of the swollen mammary glands. “What’s
her name?” I ask as I turn the clippers off.

“Daisy,” I can’t help it, I grin. It’s a fitting name for a
bright gold dog with light brown eyes. She’s adorable.

“Daisy,” I repeat, stroking her muzzle before I help Gail bring
the machine over. It turns out that Daisy’s babies are just not quite ready to
pop out of their mother yet. Perhaps their initial estimate of how far along
the puppies were had been wrong.