Vet Among the Pigeons (15 page)

With my baby’s arrival well overdue and with Boris’s regular walks now setting off some increasingly regular contractions, I finally handed him over to Catherine in the local welfare group, along with a list of instructions. I may have been over-meticulous with my list, but I thought that I should cover every eventuality. Arthur had agreed to take any follow-up radiographs and whatever else might be needed. I knew from experience that Catherine was
thorough
, even to the extent of being over-cautious, and thought she would be the ideal person to take over his
care, given the severity of Boris’s injuries.

It wasn’t until the third phone call by lunchtime on the first morning that I was beginning to realise that Catherine was perhaps cautious to the extent of being over-zealous. By tea-time, I wished I had never handed him over, as it would have taken less time to care for him myself than field the barrage of phone calls relating to every aspect of his daily movements.

Whether it was from Molly’s insistence that we carry on with the regular walks, with or without Boris, or the stress of answering the phone calls all day, it was only two days before I ended up in the local labour ward. In true form, Catherine rang while I was on the way in, concerned that Boris has taken a brief sniff at his leg before getting up, something she was quite sure he hadn’t done on any other occasion. I casually mentioned my destination and suggested, feeling incredibly guilty towards my
unfortunate
colleague, that she ring Arthur if she had any more queries.

It came to a head in the labour ward when the phone rang for the third time; yes, it was Catherine, clearly
distressed
, trying to glean further snippets of information before I became unavailable. Niamh, the angel-faced but world-wearied midwife, grabbed the phone from me before I had a chance to answer. ‘For God’s sake, the woman is in labour. D’ye understand me? She’s trying to have a baby, if you’d just let her get on with it.’ With that she pressed end, switched off the phone and placed it on the nearest counter, well out of my reach, before returning to me with a menacing frown.

‘Are you sure that was her again?’ I muttered weakly, afraid to argue.

‘Well, sure, what harm if it wasn’t. I wasn’t telling lies when I said you’re supposed to be having a baby.’

With the interruptions halted, baby Fiona arrived in due course, much to the delight of her now big sister. Molly was happy enough to substitute daily walks of Boris with walking ‘Nona’, as she proudly introduced her baby sister to anyone we met.

I assumed it had been Catherine who had been ordered off the phone by the midwife as the silence from that front was deafening ever since. I was terrified to ring and enquire about Boris.

As baby ‘Nona’ progressed from sleeping two hours at a go to twenty minutes at a go over the following weeks, it was in the back of my mind that it must be getting near time to radiograph Boris’s leg to see if the fracture was healing. But I was still afraid to ring, hoping that no news was good news.

This time my luck was out. Arthur arrived at the house one day with the sheepish look of a middle-aged bachelor visiting a woman with a new baby. I laughed to see him standing at the front door with a bunch of supermarket flowers and a beany baby tvoy still bearing the logo of the drugs company that had supplied a batch of vaccines!

Molly, who had long since appointed herself as official receiver of Fiona’s presents, was more than happy with the offering and content to amuse Fiona with it.

It wasn’t until the second cup of coffee that Arthur brought up the subject of Boris. He avoided my eye as he
casually mentioned that he had had a phone call from Catherine one evening. Boris, it seemed, had been feeling well in himself and in his revived exuberant form decided to join Catherine when she went out to feed two yearlings she kept in her back field. I had given strict instructions that Boris was to have short but regular lead-walks only, as much from my lack of faith in my surgery as anything else. This day, however, she had let him off the lead and he had galloped the length of the field with the two frisky colts. Apparently, one of the colts had lashed out, catching Boris on his injured leg and Catherine had arrived at the surgery with Boris in a very distressed condition.

Faltering slightly, Arthur went out to his van and returned with a radiograph, clearly labelled with the
practice
stamp and Boris’s name. I sat, stunned, looking at the perfect image of a leg with the pin snapped in two at the point of the fracture. The ends of the bone had overridden, and despite the evidence of a significant amount of healing callus at both ends, were now clearly fractured again.

I looked from the radiograph to Arthur. His face said it all.

‘He’s gone isn’t he?’ I demanded.

Arthur nodded.

‘Did you put him down?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.

Although I would never know if the story about the horses was true or not or whether the pin had just snapped while Boris was sleeping peacefully in his kennel, I knew for sure that my first orthopaedic case had well and truly failed.

I
reland was playing France in a friendly at Lansdowne Road and the rain howled around the Kylemore roundabout.

‘You know,’ I said to Eamon, ‘we just might get out early tonight.’

‘Ah, don’t say that,’ he replied with the superstition of a born and bred Dub. ‘Sure, you know we never get out on time.’ After a few seconds of silence he continued, with a glimpse of pure hope on his face, ‘But wouldn’t it be
marvellous
to get to see the second half?’ A look of desperate anticipation came from one who had served his time for over forty years of Blue Cross clinics that ran at prime
football
time, resulting in him missing more matches than he cared to remember.

‘Okay, a rush job it is,’ I declared and dispatched the first few drowned-rat-like dogs and their bedraggled owners in record time.

‘Another few just arrived,’ commented Eamon, peering
out the steamed-up window. ‘No rush, though. Take your time,’ he added, after another hasty look at his watch.

Sadly though, not everyone was interested in the match, nor bothered by the weather, ‘Ah sure, I had te do
somethin
’ te ge outa de house,’ declared one football widow who had chosen the night to request a thorough analysis of her dog’s chronic skin condition.

‘You’re marvellous, really, to take such good care of him,’ Eamon told her through gritted teeth as he helped her down the slippery steps, while Gordon grinned at me, mentally preparing himself to catching just the highlights.

It was almost looking like it just might happen when there was a bit of commotion from the crowd. A taxi pulled up and out of it came a middle-aged man,
staggering
under the weight of a Golden Retriever-type dog. A rough bandage covered the dog’s forelimb and the deep crimson staining made the extent of his injury fairly
obvious
. Eamon hurried them through the waiting crowd, the unwritten triage system kicking in as effectively as in any Accident and Emergency department.

‘I’m glad yez was here tonight,’ gasped the man as he relieved his burden onto the consulting table. ‘De kids took him out for a walk. They never miss a day. Imagine bringin’ a dog out on a day like this,’ he said nodding towards the menacing sky. ‘Said he jumped into de river at the park and came out like dis – musta stood on a bit o’ glass or somethin’.’

I let him talk as I assessed the dog’s condition. His gums were slightly pale and the heartbeat was rapid,
although strong and regular. Gordon restrained the wet, shivering, blood-stained creature, hugging him closely, regardless of his own clothing, as I began to peel off the heavily sodden bandage through which blood was still dripping.

‘I dunno ’bout takin’ dat offa him, luv,’ the man
cautioned
me. ‘By God, der was blood everywhere. Lucky me mate ’as a taxi. I dunno who else wudda given me a lift.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him, ‘I’ll just have a quick look to see how much damage has been done.’

It took some time to unravel the layers of socks, a tie and some other unidentifiable material within which the leg was enclosed.

‘You did a good job with the bandage, anyway,’ I
congratulated
him, wondering to myself when the layers would come to an end. Finally, I pulled off the last
bloodsoaked
pad but just as quickly clamped it back on again as a jet of blood shot out from the wound, liberally spraying the drugs cabinet that stood behind us.

‘Oh! You’re right. It is a bad one,’ I agreed, frantically wondering what to do next within the confines of our mobile clinic. This was no case to be sent home with a few tablets and referred on to the local vets in the
morning
. ‘I think we’ll have to send you in to the emergency clinic with him,’ I told the concerned owner. ‘The cut itself, as much as I saw of it, doesn’t look too bad but he has severed a blood vessel and that’s going to need to be operated on tonight.’

While I worked on rebandaging the wound tightly enough to control the bleeding, Gordon explained about
the emergency clinic. ‘The Dublin vets don’t do their own out-of-hours work anymore. They are all covered by a central on-call clinic. But you’d better bring you wallet with you,’ he joked.

At that, the man looked genuinely downcast. ‘Are yez talking much?’ he asked. ‘I did me back in last year – had an accident on the building site. Missus does wha’ she can, but we’ve the three young wans at home. Even if I had the money, I couldn’t afford te spend it on the dog, much an all as ’e’s one of us.’

It was a dilemma. To control the bleeding, the bandage needed to be on very tight, effectively cutting off the blood supply to the limb. By morning, when the vets at the local veterinary clinics would be available to treat the dog at a discounted rate through the Blue Cross, the limb, deprived overnight of blood supply, would be dead.

I could see the anguish in the owner’s face as he
considered
his options. The dog lay quietly, a little too quietly, silken head resting on Gordon’s shoulder as we
contemplated
his fate.

‘Is there nowhere else at all open tonight?’ implored the man as much to himself as anyone.

Subconsciously, both Eamon and Gordon turned their eyes towards me. With a sense of doom that had nothing to do with the certainty that I was going to miss the match, I reluctantly muttered, ‘Well, unless you can make your way down to Wicklow …’

‘Wicklow?’ He jumped at it instantly. ‘What’s down in Wicklow?’

‘Oh, a much better class of a practice, altogether,’
grinned Gordon. ‘All the better vets are based in Wicklow!’

‘And do you think they’d take him?’ asked the client hopefully.

‘Well, ask her yourself,’ replied Gordon, nodding at me.

Before we moved on to the next patient, Harry had directions to the practice and we had exchanged mobile numbers. ‘I’ll ring you as soon as I get finished here and you can meet me down at the clinic,’ I told him.

Off he went to try to borrow a car for the journey as his taxi friend had long since left. Despite the delay, we
finished
not long after eight, a minor miracle for the clinic. Eamon and Gordon were sure to catch at least the second half of the match.

With the usual weariness that hits at the end of any day, I was beginning to regret my offer. I rang Harry to tell him I was on my way, but he told me that he still didn’t have a car organised. Had there been any other option, I would have switched off my phone and headed home, but I just couldn’t abandon this poor dog.

Donal wasn’t too happy when I rang to tell him I’d be late. ‘Do you know this guy at all?’ he asked, sounding concerned. ‘What are you going to do with him while you’re operating?’

To be honest, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. ‘Well, he’ll just have to go home. He can collect the dog in the
morning
,’ I replied, suddenly none to keen to have this total stranger waiting with me late at night in the surgery.

‘What did Seamus think?’ he asked, as usual way ahead of me in terms of practicalities.

‘Sure, we’ll see what he says in the morning,’ I replied,
to tired to worry about it.

I was almost half-way home when Harry finally rang me back. ‘I’m sorry, luv, but I’m on me way now. Had te borrow de taxi offa me mate. Was waiting for ’im to come back from a run te de airport. Sure, I’ll not be long after ye.’ His mate was obviously a generous type. I hoped there weren’t a few speeding points clocked up on
Harry’s
licence – he arrived at the surgery while I was still
setting
up.

As soon as he had signed the consent form, I ushered him back out the door, conscious of being alone in the practice with this total stranger.

‘You can pick him up at nine in the morning,’ I told him, opening the door for him.

For the second time in an evening, his face dropped.

‘Nah, luv,’ he told me. ‘I’ve te get de taxi back te me mate. He’s te be back on his run in de mornin’.’

No amount of persuasion would induce him to leave the dog with me and I was starting to despair at my moment of weakness back at the clinic, determining, yet again, never to get involved in anything like this again.

Even the threat that he could be waiting until three in the morning until the dog was sufficiently awake to travel home didn’t bother him.

‘Dat’s no problem, a’ all, luv,’ he assured me. ‘I’m just so delighted to ’ave ’im looked after.’

Happy and all as he was to stay until three in the
morning
, I had no intention of it. Cringing as I thought about how Seamus would react, I opened a bottle of the
expensive
intravenous anaesthetic that I had talked him into
stocking for sick or high risk (and preferably paying) patients. For the job on hand, it did have the added
advantage
of offering a very fast recovery time.

‘Would you mind holding him while I inject this into the vein?’ I asked, hoping that Harry wasn’t going to get squeamish at this stage.

‘Not at all,’ he assured me, confidently. ‘You just tell me wha’ ye want me te do and I’ll do it.’

He was as good as his word, but once Charlie was peacefully sleeping and drawing even, measured breaths on the gas machine, I thanked him for his help and led him back out to the waiting room.

I was little bit on edge, operating late at night, especially as Slug, who would normally accompany me on late-night calls, was sleeping peacefully at home, Ballyfermot being her night off.

The procedure itself was effortless – the most
demanding
part being the cleaning of the matted blood off the
surrounding
fur. Having tied a tourniquet above the wound, I was able to remove the bandage and ligate the bleeding vessel with a small section of catgut. Having tied it off, I cauterised the end of the vessel to ensure that it would not start to bleed again. A quick exploration of the wound revealed no further damage. I flushed a quantity of saline over the wound to remove any contamination and two simple sutures closed the innocent-looking cut that had caused me such grief. Within minutes of turning off the gas in the anaesthetic machine, Charlie was sitting up, and his feathery tail wagged lazily, confirming that all was well in his world.

‘How’s Charlie?’ asked Harry, jumping up out of his chair as soon as I came through. He was stunned to see him follow behind me, slightly wobbly, but otherwise clearly well.

‘Yer man was righ’ when ’e said dat yez are better vets down ’ere. De look o’ him is worth de drive.’

By then, I was too tired to appreciate his approval,
especially
as I would have to explain myself to Seamus the next morning. Having let Harry out and loaded Charlie back into the taxi, I locked myself back in the surgery and did a quick clean-up, even stopping to scrub and repack the suture kit which I wouldn’t normally bother to do at this hour of night. It was well past midnight when I finally got home to bed.

I was always tired on a Thursday morning and the next day was no exception. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who was having a bad day. Seamus was in one of his rare foul humours. He hadn’t seemed to notice anything amiss and I diplomatically decided not to fill him in at that moment. I felt a bit bad, but used the donation which Harry had given to cover the cost of the drugs and
materials
I had used.

Nothing was said and it looked like I had got away with it. By Friday morning, I had almost forgotten about my venture and I was delighted to see that Seamus was back to his usual form.

‘Gillian, you’re looking a bit tired today,’ he informed me jovially, as I arrived in. ‘All the late nights catching up on you?’

I looked at him, feeling slightly perplexed. Sometimes
his good moods were almost as hard to fathom as his bad ones.

‘Sure, it’s been fairly quiet lately. No late nights at all, apart from Molly and Fiona,’ I replied, genuinely forgetting about my mid-week surgery.

‘Ah well, at least the children must appreciate you just as much as your clients do,’ he laughed gaily.

I was almost out the door when he called me back. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot! Some post arrived for you today. Sorry – it was addressed to the practice so I opened it.’

‘What a cute little puppy,’ he added, feigning a most uncharacteristic interest in the chocolate-box style puppy on the front of the card.

I was perplexed – the local cattle farmers weren’t overly prone to sending thank you cards in grateful receipt of a good job. All was to be revealed as Seamus stood,
theatrically
, to read out the card to me.

‘Excellent work,’ finished Seamus, dripping with heavy sarcasm. ‘I always knew you’d pull the business in. And you were right! It’s well worth stocking those expensive anaesthetics for our valued clients. Keep up the good work,’ he added magnanimously, before sweeping out the door.