Fight for Life (2 page)

“When did you notice something was wrong?” Gran asks the owner.

The owner dabs a wet tissue at her eyes. “I’ve only had him two days. I bought him at the farmer’s market on Penn Street. His name is Shelby.”

When she says his name, the tears start again. I hand her a box of tissues.

“He was skinny and acted sleepy, but I thought he just needed some love. I went home an hour ago to check on him, and he was lying on the floor. He couldn’t even lift up his head.”

“Shelby’s a sick pup, no question about that,” Gran says. “I need to get some fluids into him and run some blood tests.”

“Is he going to be OK?” the owner asks while shredding another tissue.

“He’s malmourished, and he probably has worms in his intestines. I suspect he hasn’t been vaccinated either. I’ll know more about what’s bothering him after I see the results of the tests.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Let’s take it one step at a time. He’ll have to spend the night here. I’ll call you in the morning.”

The owner runs her hands over Shelby’s back. She bites her lip to hold back more tears.

“Don’t worry,” I say, leading her out of the exam room. “Gran is the best vet around. She’ll do everything she can to save Shelby.”

The woman nods, jots down her number, then leaves.

As soon as the door closes behind Shelby’s owner, it bursts open again. A man rushes in holding a small cardboard box. Twin toddler boys clutch his pants, howling like someone stuck them with a pin.

Two identical black Lab puppies lie on a blanket in the box, fighting to breathe. They look just like Shelby.

“Please help us,” the father says. “Something is terribly wrong.”

T
he father and his wailing twins follow me into the exam room. Gran lifts an eyebrow. She doesn’t mind loud animals, but she can’t stand it when kids cry.

The father places the box on the table, and Gran looks in. “Take Shelby,” she says to me. “I don’t want him too close to these pups until we figure out what’s wrong with them.”

I gently pick Shelby up and carry him to the far side of the room. I make a safe, soft bed out of clean towels for him to rest in.

Gran squats in front of the crying twins. “Hi, guys. I’m Dr. Mac,” she says. “I’m going to try to help your puppies. You can stay in here if you’re quiet. If you need to cry, you have to wait in the other room. Fair?”

The twins nod their heads solemnly and blink away their tears. Gran is a magician.

After settling Shelby into his bed of towels, I wash my hands with antibacterial soap. I have the cleanest hands of any eleven-year-old I know. Gran is a fanatic about fighting germs.

Gran quickly cleans the exam table with disinfectant and dries it off. Then she takes the two little Labs out of the box. It’s like Shelby all over again. The pups are scrawny. Their fur is matted and dull, and their eyes are crusty. The little one is breathing too fast, like he can’t get enough air. Gran asks questions as she checks the pups.

“When were they born?”

“I don’t know,” the father says. “I bought them at the farmer’s market last weekend. The boys saw them and fell in love. I didn’t have a choice. The guy who sold them said they were old enough to be weaned.”

“Vaccinations?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Did you see the mother?”

“No.”

“Did you get any kind of health record?”

The father looks down at his shoes. “No. It was kind of an impulse buy, I guess. They were cute.”

Gran doesn’t answer. She’s weighing the puppies.

“Did you get them at the Penn Street farmer’s market?” I ask.

“Yes,” answers the father. “How did you know?”

“That’s where the little dog in the corner came from. I bet these two were sold by the same guy.” I feel blood rushing to my face. I turn to Gran. “We should find out who he is. He shouldn’t be selling sick puppies. Who knows how many more helpless pups he’s got.”

“Let’s take care of our patients first,” Gran answers calmly. “What are their names?” she asks the father.

“Inky and Dinky. Dinky is the smaller one.”

“Dinky is my puppy,” says one of the twins. His lower lip quivers, his face crumples, and he starts to cry again. His brother joins in.

“Maggie—” Gran starts.

“It’s all right,” the father interrupts. “I should take the boys home. Why don’t you call me, Dr. Mac? I’ll leave my name and number at the front desk.”

He does not look hopeful.

Once the twins and their father are gone, Gran asks me to gather the things she’ll need to start an I.V., an intravenous drip.

“I need two bags of lactated Ringer’s solution. Inky and Dinky need more fluid in their systems.”

As I get the bags of Ringer’s, Gran inserts a needle into a vein in each puppy’s right foreleg. A thin plastic tube, called a catheter, is attached to the end of the needle. She connects each catheter to the bag of Ringer’s solution. The solution looks like a bag of water, but it has special ingredients called electrolytes that the puppies need to help them get their energy back. Gran also gives them injections of antibiotics to help fight off infection.

“Will they make it?” I ask, worried.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It depends on how strong they are. Can you get me some charts, please? I need to write down my notes. I can’t find anything since Lois left.”

Lois, our last receptionist, quit last week. She was the third one this year, and it’s only March. Gran used to take care of all the paperwork by herself. But the clinic has gotten busier and she needs help. So far we haven’t had any luck finding a receptionist who is not allergic to fur or afraid of birds.

The receptionist’s desk is a nightmare. It’s flooded with files and sticky notes. It looks like my desk upstairs.
Oh no—don’t go there, Maggie. Desk means homework. Stay focused on the pups.

I rummage through a desk drawer looking for the blank charts.

“Hello?” someone calls from the waiting room.

A
girl wearing a faded green “Save the Whales” sweatshirt leans over the reception counter. Her dark hair is pulled back in a long ponytail, and her earrings are shaped like howling wolves.

Boy, is she tall. I recognize her from school, and I’ve seen her here at the clinic before.

“Hi,” I say. “Aren’t you the girl with the pet crow?”

“That’s me. Brenna Lake, reporting for duty. Dr. Mac told me I could start volunteering today. What do you need me to do first?”

A pile of folders slides off the desk and hits the floor. She’s working here? Gran didn’t tell me about this. There has to be some mistake.

“Um, I’m not sure. Let me get Gran.”

Gran pokes her head in. “Maggie, I need those charts—oh, Brenna, you made it!” She walks around the desk. “Maggie, do you remember Brenna?”

“Yeah. She brought a crow in last fall. His name was Poe, right?”

“His full name is Edgar Allan Poe Crow, but we call him Poe. You have a good memory,” Brenna says with a smile. She sticks her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She’s wearing an old pair of boots, the kind that lace up the front. We look at each other, not quite sure what we should say next.

“Brenna’s going to be working with us,” Gran says. “She called last week with a question about Poe.” Gran looks at the messy desk. “The day Lois quit.”

I’m confused. “She’s going to be our receptionist?”

“Not exactly,” Gran says. She opens a file drawer and pulls out the blank charts she needs. “I had been thinking about bringing in a volunteer for a while. With Brenna around, you’ll have more time for your homework.”

Uh-oh. The H-word. Homework. I have a bad feeling about this.

“Brenna will help you with your clinic chores after school,” Gran continues. “She can start right now. The cages need cleaning, and she can keep an eye on our newest patients. I’ve just moved them into the recovery room.”

“But that’s my job,” I say. I can’t believe Gran is bringing in someone with no experience to do it. I’ve been ambushed. This just isn’t going to work, I can already see that.

Gran closes the file drawer and looks at me with a stern eye. “I want you to do your homework in the kitchen, Maggie. There are fewer distractions there.”

I pick up the fallen files. I have to be smart about this. Temper tantrums don’t work with my grandmother. She just ignores them.

“Now, Gran,” I start. “I don’t have that much homework. Besides, it’s not fair to make Brenna do everything. Not on her first day.”

“You’re making excuses to get out of studying.”

“I’m just worried about Brenna and the dogs. And you. You can’t be everywhere at once, can you, Gran?”

The bells on the door jingle as another patient comes in. It’s Mr. Asher, carrying Yertle, the turtle whose shell is too soft.

“I’ll be right with you,” Gran tells him.

“How about this? I’ll do my homework in the recovery room. That way I can keep an eye on the puppies and answer Brenna’s questions. What do you think?”

Brenna straightens a pile of business cards on the counter. “If you don’t mind, Dr. MacKenzie, I’d like to have Maggie show me around a bit. It’s my first day, and I have a lot of questions.”

Gran looks at each of us. Brenna grins. I try on my most innocent expression.

“All right,” she says. “Just for today. And you’ll have to show me your homework after dinner.”

Yes!

“Come on, Brenna. Follow me to the recovery room.” I lift a section of the counter to let her into the back of the clinic.

Shelby, Inky, and Dinky are sleeping in a puppy pen on the floor of the recovery room. They look like little black commas curled around one another. A heat lamp shines over them, and their I.V. bags hang on a stand next to the pen.

“When a patient is recovering from surgery or from being real sick, they live in here,” I explain to Brenna. “Gran is strict about keeping everything in the clinic spotless. Let me show you how to clean the cages.”

A double-decker row of cages stands against the back wall. I open the first door and talk her through the steps of taking out the dirty newspapers that line the bottom, disinfecting and wiping the inside, then laying down clean newspaper.

Brenna catches on quickly. Too quickly. She cleans the second cage almost as fast as I did the first. Who knows what job of mine Gran will give her next? I’m going to have to have a talk with Gran.

“I can do the rest,” she says. “You better get started on your homework.”

I really don’t like the way this is working out.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Let me walk you through one more.”

“Go on, Maggie. I don’t want Dr. Mac to be angry on my first day here,” Brenna explains.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I sigh. I’m going to talk to Gran
tonight
.

I drag out my backpack and flop on the floor with my humongous social studies book. “I have a test on government tomorrow. I’m supposed to memorize gigantic words like
legislation
and
subcommittee
.”

Brenna takes dirty newspaper out of a cage and dumps it in a trash bag. “We had that test last week,” she says. “It was easy. Make sure you know the steps of making a new law. We had to write an essay on that.”

“Great.” I turn the page and try to read.

Laws start with ideas. State representatives (another big word) vote on the new law. Blah, blah, blah. Every sentence has a word I trip over. I should look up the words I don’t know, but that doesn’t work either, because the definitions have words I don’t understand. I read really slowly to begin with—throw in super-long words and I’ll never finish.

My eyelids are drooping. I think I need a break. Brenna is on her fourth cage already. I close the book and sit up.

“Brenna, are you sure you haven’t done this before?” I ask.

“Well, I did have to clean my crow’s cage when he was really sick and lived inside the house,” she says.

“What was wrong with him?”

Brenna spreads clean newspaper on a tray and slides it into a cage. “Jeez. You studied for two seconds. No wonder Dr. Mac asked me to come.”

“I know this stuff. We saw a movie on it. Wait, you didn’t spray it enough. Without the disinfectant, the inside of the cage can get moldy, really gross. And the germs could infect another animal. When a patient is in the recovery room, we want them to get better, not sick.” I stand up. “Let me show you how to do it.”

Brenna frowns and holds the disinfectant bottle out of my reach. “You already showed me. I don’t want your grandmother coming in here and seeing you doing all the work.”

“Just give it to me.”

“No way.”

We glare at each other like two stubborn mules. She sprays the tray and wipes it clean with a paper towel. “There. Is that good enough?”