The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs: A Novel (6 page)

However, I do know that Kai likes when I scratch any crusty area of his skin because he melts and thanks me for the distraction and temporary relief. He dislikes, though, when I examine the cracked and ulcerated webs of his footpads, pulling away and showing me his teeth. Trouble is I can’t tell if he’s actually going to bite me or giving me fair warning. I’m totally out of practice interpreting the message in his coarse communication, and as a result, I’m hopelessly jumpy. I must look like I’m ready to run screaming from the room, jazz hands fluttering overhead.

“Well?” says Mrs. Silverman.

I make a show of the raised eyebrows and the stern countenance of someone who is clearly impressed and not someone who is clearly clueless.
If you don’t know what to say or do, take a rectal temperature, it will give you a few extra minutes to think
.

“Let me take his temperature.”

Thermometer in place, I consider the dog’s age.

“Inherited diseases of the husky. What have I got? Hip dysplasia. Genetic eye diseases: juvenile cataracts, corneal dystrophy, and progressive retinal atrophy. These can occur with any eye color. Then there is …”

“What are you mumbling on about?”

Her question brings me back into the moment. The dog’s age has to be important, the distribution of lesions, and the fact that they involve very specific parts of the body. And that’s when a picture forms in my mind. As usual, I’ve jumped straight to a conclusion and a strange one at that. For some reason I see the black-and-white image of a child, eyes letterboxed for anonymity, from a textbook of, of all things,
human
skin disorders.

“I’m assuming Doc Lewis ruled out the possibility of parasites?”

I check Kai’s temperature—perfectly normal.

Mrs. Silverman stares through me, offers her dog a pitying glance, and shakes her head.

“Course he has,” she says, and under her breath I hear her add, “you damned fool.” My fingers begin to twitch, and Mrs. Silverman notices, forcing me to shove my hands under my armpits.

“Look, if you ain’t seen nothing like it, speak up and we’ll be on our way. And don’t be thinking I’m paying for this visit. I’m only here out of loyalty to Doc Cobb and Doc Lewis. Just as easy for me to go to that fancy new practice in Patton. Bet they’d have the answer for me.”

She makes a grab for Kai’s leash and gets out of her chair, surprisingly spry for her years. After my conversation with Mr. Critchley from Green State Bank and his insistence on a good faith payment, I can’t afford to lose a single client.

And if you are totally clueless, try, “This thermometer must be broken. I’m going to grab a new one,” then head out back and try to look up what’s wrong
.

“No, please.” I snap, the desperation in my voice giving her pause. “If you could bear with me for one more minute, Mrs. Silverman.” I pat the air between us, hoping she will sit back down. “I think my thermometer might be broken. I’ll be right back.”

I exit the examination room by a side door marked
PRIVATE
and enter the large work area containing a bank of cages, two dog runs, an old soapstone sink, and a wall of cabinets, counters, and drawers, home to pills, capsules, ointments, and syrups.

“Ah, Cyrus, good morning. Decide what you’re going to do with that golden retriever of yours?”

Fielding Lewis watches me over the rim of his coffee cup, leaning into the countertop, the
Eden Falls Gazette
spread out before him. Today’s bow tie has a New Orleans feel—purple, gold, and green fleurs-de-lys.

“Not exactly,” I say, scanning the room for a hard drive or a monitor. “Has the man who brought her in been back to sign the paperwork?”

Lewis shakes his head.

“Someone recognized her last night when I took her for a walk.”

“Really,” says Lewis. “Well, I’ve never seen her before. Maybe her vet’s in Patton?”

“Maybe. What d’you think of me taking her to an adoption center? Or a retriever rescue group?”

“Fine. Do it. Too bad you can’t use the ‘Wall of Fame.’ ”

Lewis reads my confusion and explains. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the wall next to the front door? The one covered with dog photos?”

I shake my head.

“It’s like a lasting tribute to all the dogs Bobby Cobb found homes for over the years. If someone came across a stray dog, if a dog needed to be adopted because its owner was relocating or lost a job or died, Cobb posted the pet’s picture on the wall. Made sure they found a good home. People even joked about him being the Patron Saint of Lost Dogs.”

“Wait a minute,” I say, “last night you told me we’re not in the animal rescue business, that we can’t afford to be.”

“We can’t. Who do you think was providing food for these dogs while they were waiting to be adopted? Let alone paying for vaccines, worm, flea, and tick treatments?”

“He did it all for free?”

Lewis nodded. “There’s not even a donation box up front. Don’t look so surprised. You’ve seen the figures for this practice. Cobb was running it into the ground through kindness.”

I’m not in the least bit surprised. Bad business labeled as one more saintly act by the pet lovers of Eden Falls sounded about right. What Lewis was misreading was my look of irritation. Yet again, Cobb would go out of his way to provide you with a good home, befriend a lost soul, so long as you had four legs.

“Take my advice,” says Lewis, “when it comes to Frieda and finding a rescue center, you’d best stay outside of a thirty-mile radius from Eden Falls.”

Good idea, everybody knows everybody in this town. “You know, I’m pretty sure the owner was lying about her urination problem.”

I catch the distressed look on Lewis’s face.

“Act fast, young man. Your good conscience will not save you from the disciplinary committee of the Vermont State Veterinary Board.”

“Uh-huh,” I manage.

“How’s the charming Ethel Silverman?” Lewis takes a sip from his cup, but it does nothing to hide his smile.

“Fabulous. Where’s your computer?”

“You’ll find what you need in that cabinet, over there.” Lewis gestures with his eyes.

I open the doors. There are three shelves on each side containing neatly organized textbooks, periodicals, and magazines. I’m paralyzed. “Bedside Manor doesn’t have a computer?”

I hear a page being turned, a pause, and then, “Nope.”

My hands are still attached to the door handles. “No Wi-Fi, no Internet, no Google, nothing.” I must remember to call Verizon and hook up some broadband for my laptop.

“What d’you mean, nothing? There are gold standard tomes in there.”

I notice a sheet of paper taped to the inside of the cabinet’s door. The blue ink of the neat copperplate may have faded over time, but I instantly recognize my mother’s handwriting and begin reading a detailed outline of her filing system, followed by a plea to keep things tidy. Visualizing this order, this discipline, I feel an instant sensation of reassurance. It’s soothing, but at the same time heavy.

I consult Mom’s guide, reach in, and remove a textbook entitled
Veterinary Dermatology
. “I think Mrs. Silverman pretty much hates my guts.”

“Of course she does,” Lewis says in a quieter voice. “Ethel can be a cantankerous old bird on her best days. Finds something bad to say about everyone.”

This remark stops me in my tracks. “Really,” I say, turning to face him. “Does she know who I am?”

“No idea,” says Lewis, swallowing his final mouthful of coffee. “Nice job with the beard, by the way.”

I huff, wanting to let him know that life was easier without the need for facial grooming. Shaving is supposed to turn me into someone I never wanted to be.

“Did she recognize you?” asks Lewis.

“If she did she never said.”

Lewis puts his mug down. “When were you last in Eden Falls?”

It’s a tough question, not least because it points out a brazen and damning fact—I never returned for Bobby Cobb’s funeral. “Fourteen years ago, three weeks before my mother died. But I didn’t come back to Bedside Manor. I was at the hospital in Patton the whole time.”

I can see her sitting up in bed, a red bandanna almost bright against her pale skin. She was joking, upbeat, and eager to get home. Together, we reviewed her blood work. She was in remission. She was going to be fine. This was never going to be my last visit.

Lewis fingers the handle of the mug. “And before that?”

“Not sure,” I lie, knowing exactly when it was. “It might have been the summer before my sophomore year of high school.”

Lewis does this thing with his mouth, a chipped upper incisor worrying his lower lip. I’ve noticed this when he gets serious. “Was that when you moved down south?”

“Let’s just say I was sent.”

“You make it sound like you were deported.”

I bite my tongue and choose my words carefully. “Mom never wanted me to go away. Cobb had the final word. He swore it was all about my education. Run-down regional high school versus an elite private school. Free tuition sealed the deal, thanks to my aunt Rachel.”

“Your mom’s sister, right?”

I nod. “She was the headmistress. Beaufort, South Carolina. From a purely academic standpoint it made perfect sense.” I wait a moment and add, “At least it did to Cobb.”

“So the pimply teenager never got back?”

I hesitate, the reasons beginning to stack up in the back of my throat like bile.

“Mom preferred to come down,” I say and hope I can leave it at that.

Lewis nods, and I can’t tell whether or not he knows he’s on dangerous territory.

“Okay. Then the last time you were in Eden Falls you were maybe fourteen, fifteen, and now you’re what?”

“Forty.”

“Forty. Twenty-five years later, you’ve got a different last name and you speak with a funny accent. I’d say there’s a reasonable chance Ethel Silverman has no clue that her new veterinarian is Bobby Cobb’s son.”

I think about this. I love the idea that I can maintain a sense of anonymity while I am in town, but it’ll never happen, not in Eden Falls. And there’s no way the estranged son can pretend to be keeping the Cobb legacy alive. So that means my only hope is to make money and sell the practice faster than the fierce scrutiny and the inevitable dissent.

I go back to
Veterinary Dermatology
and work my way down the
A
’s in the book’s index.

“To be fair, not every word that comes out of Ethel Silverman’s mouth is bad,” says Lewis, turning over another page. “Think about what might happen if the new doctor in this little town of ours were to solve poor Kai’s relentless skin disease when everybody else has been stumped? That’s the kind of gossip this practice could use.”

I shake my head. “Ever heard of ‘acrodermatitis enteropathica’?”

“Never,” says Lewis, “but it sounds good to me. You think that’s what Kai has?”

My finger reaches the
B
’s in the index. Nothing.

“Damn, I can see this photograph of a child, a baby, from an Armed Forces Institute of Pathology textbook, and he’s got exactly the same kind of crusty scabs on his face and hands as Kai. And I can even see the name of the disease—acrodermatitis enteropathica—and I’m fairly certain it’s caused by a dietary deficiency.”

“Of what?”

I grit my teeth, willing the answer to shake loose from somewhere deep inside my brain. Incredibly, nothing happens. How can that be? This new job has my synapses turned inside out. “Can’t remember.”

Lewis moves into my personal space and doesn’t give it a second thought. “How d’you do that?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“Recall that kind of obscure detail.”

“It’s what I do,” I say.

“But why study human disease?”

I’m confused. “Disease is disease, whether you’re human or a duck-billed platypus. There’s a lot of overlap. Besides, I like comparative pathology.”

Lewis flashes his bushy gray brows. “Hey, if it helps find a cure for Kai.”

“Yeah, but don’t forget what they say about hearing the sound of hoofbeats?”

Lewis nods. “A good clinician should think horses and not zebras.”

“Exactly—well, I think unicorns. Why do you think I have the term
acrodermatitis enteropathica
stuck in my head?”

“At least you’ve got something to go on. Of all the possible causes of skin disease, you’ve already narrowed it down to diet. From there, how hard can it be?”

Lewis is right. Most deficiencies are caused by a lack of vitamins or minerals. Once more I reach for
Veterinary Dermatology
, find
V
in the index, and within seconds, Vitamin A deficiency is starting to look good. Then I catch the phrase “generalized scaling.” Kai’s lesions are in very specific locations of his body. The jarring “incorrect answer” buzzer sounds in my head and I’m about to move on when a list of differential diagnoses catches my eye. I flick back to the index, to the letter
Z
, flick forward to the appropriate text, and discover the clinical signs of zinc-responsive dermatosis. And there it is, the canine equivalent of a disease of children called “acrodermatitis enteropathica,” a congenital zinc deficiency causing characteristic skin lesions in infants as they discontinue breast milk.

“What ever you think you’ve discovered, whatever you think the cure might be, there will always be a certain client who needs to see actions and not just hear long words. Ethel Silverman is the kind of client who needs something … how shall I best put this … tangible.”

Lewis’s rant yanks me from my page.

“Round these parts, people prefer honesty to pussyfooting and bull, if you get my meaning. Let them have it. I promise you they’ll respect you all the more.”

Newspaper abandoned, Lewis is in the process of drawing up some white fluid from a glass bottle into a needle and syringe.

“Okay,” I say, reluctantly, “so what you got there?”

Lewis grins, flicks the barrel with his finger, and recaps the needle. “Steroids. Kai will thank you for them and, if nothing else, for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, Ethel might even think you’re going to restore her dog’s skin to its former glory.”

He makes a show of presenting the medication with two hands, like a sommelier proffering a bottle of fine wine for approval.