The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell (21 page)

I nearly panicked. I envisioned the headlines that would be seen when the news hit the community.
VETERINARIAN ABUSES AN UNCONSCIOUS CLIENT AFTER KILLING HER BUNNY
. I would be a pariah, a felon. I would no doubt lose my license, my practice, maybe even my family. My clients would desert me in droves. My staff would revolt. My career would be over.
What to do
?

It was about lunchtime on a Wednesday and the office was nearly empty. With no other clients in the building, my receptionist was downstairs in the break room eating her lunch and waiting for me to complete my awful task. I felt very alone. Still not able to rouse Sue Anne from her stupor, I mustered my strength and began to call the receptionist.

“Beth,” I called. When there was no answer, my calls grew progressively louder and more frantic. Before long I was bellowing at full voice through the closed door, Sue Anne, still unperturbed and unhearing, nestled on my shoulder like a mistress. “BETH … BETH!”

Finally the door of the exam room opened and Beth entered. I don’t know what exactly she expected to find when she opened the door, but from the look on her astonished face, I was sure this loving embrace was not it. Embarrassed, she started to close the door again, apparently to afford us a measure of privacy. I watched the look on her face change from shock to confusion, which transfixed her for a moment before she spoke.

“Which one of you called me?”

This question struck me as incredibly unnecessary under the circumstances. Of the three individuals in the room, I was the only one capable of speech. One was clearly unconscious on my shoulder, and the other was dead in my arm.

“Who do you think called you, Beth?” I snapped.

She stood at the door, unsure whether to enter the room, indecision cloaking her face.

“Did you need something?”

“Yes, Beth, I need your help. Doesn’t it appear like I need a little help at this moment?”

Still she stood there as if glued to the floor, making no movement to come to my aid.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked tentatively.

“Why don’t you start by taking the rabbit from my left arm and putting it on the table. Then come and take Sue Anne off my shoulder.”

When the reality of what was happening came clear to her, she began to move more quickly. In no time she had Sue Anne laid out on the floor and was bathing her face with cool water and a clean towel. Even so, smelling salts wafted under her nose were required to bring her fully around.

I tried to stay clear of Sue Anne during the forty-five minutes or so it took for her to recover adequately enough to drive her pickup home. I did sneak in a time or two to express again my deepest sympathies at her loss and try to furtively discern whether or not she had any memories of the period during which she was unconscious or if she harbored any intentions to pursue legal action against me. But she was only grateful for my sympathy and saddened by her loss.

It was not until she had gone and the intensity of the emotions had waned that the humor of the situation began to sink in. Every time I pictured myself in that room with one dead rabbit and one pretty girl in a dead faint, both of whom were wrapped in my helpless arms, I broke into laughter.

Wednesday was my afternoon off, and I had arranged to go golfing with three good friends. As we drove to the golf course, I found myself involuntarily smiling to myself again as I reviewed the events of the morning. Just when I was ready to tell the story to my friends, I happened to glance at the pickup truck we were passing. It was pulling a stock trailer and traveling slowly. Absentmindedly, I glanced at the driver—and froze! Instinctively, I sank as deeply as possible into the seat and turned my face away from the truck.

“Don’t look at that truck!” I screamed, suddenly frantic.

The car went strangely silent, my friends confused now and looking at me as I hunkered down in the seat. With my hand obscuring my face and my head down, I’m sure I looked like a fugitive at an FBI picnic. My face turned pasty white and my mouth went dry.

“What in the dickens has gotten into you?” one of my friends asked.

“That truck,” I yelled in response. “Pass it, quick … and don’t look at the driver!”

In an incredible twist of fate, we had happened upon this truck, and I had recognized the woman driving! With her long, dark hair, she was very familiar to me. She was driving slowly, her head hanging sadly and her hand clutching a Kleenex, with which she dabbed at her weeping eyes. It was Sue Anne!

William

My history is imbued with richness—not monetary wealth so much—but after eighteen-plus years in the same small town, there is much texture and color woven into my memories. I find it odd that my memories of two decades of life diminish the difficult times and wreathe the good ones in garlands of glowing gladness. I still smart at the significant losses, of course, but the day-to-day annoyances and frustrations are mostly gone now as I think back. What remains in my mind are the bright patches of emotional color that make up the quilt of my experience.

Much of this richness accrues by virtue of the personalities and characters of the people whose pets I have treated over the years and whose experiences and memories intertwine with mine. At any one time, there is a matrix of such people whose dogs and cats make up my patient list. But because some patients pass on and because people change jobs and locations, the makeup of that matrix is constantly in flux. When a special client slips from the network, it is with nostalgia that I recall that person and the place of prominence he or she once held in my professional world. I was reminded yesterday of one special personality, whose memory always brings a fond smile.

Susan met me in the treatment room one day with a cat carrier, from which she extracted a cat of the Siamese denomination. Though close observation revealed that he might not have actually been Siamese, he did look like a recent convert who was trying hard to become one. His coat was a little longer than that of most Siamese. His coloring was the same, though it lacked the sleek, spoiled sheen typical of the breed. Instead, it had the coarse, rough texture of a cat that made his own way in the world. Neither did he display the confused, cross-eyed Siamese expression; instead, he fixed on me focused eyes of penetrating intelligence. There was about him a certain presence that made me take notice.

“What do you have there, Susan?” I asked with interest.

“An old lady just dropped him off for us to look at. She says he’s limping on one of his back legs. She doesn’t know exactly what happened, but he came back in after being gone for a few days and was holding up his leg. She says to do whatever is necessary to fix him. She couldn’t stay for an examination; said she had some errands to run and to just call her when you have more information.”

It was a story pocked with red flags, having all the hallmarks of a dumped cat. I have had cats abandoned at the practice many times over the years by irresponsible people who cared little for the animals that adored them. They typically were too “busy” to wait for me to examine the pet, and left phony names, addresses, and phone numbers. Once the hapless patient was successfully deposited within the confines of the office, the owner would skip and we would never hear from him or her again. With bad information, our attempts at contacting the person would be fruitless. It was how Rush had ended up in my home. What to do with this cat?

“Have we ever seen any of this lady’s pets before?”

“No, this is the first one.”

“Does this cat have a name?” I asked. Many times, dumped cats come without names or with names in which no creative energy has been invested.

“The lady said his name was William.”

“William, huh? Not Bill? That’s a big name for a cat. Let’s take a look.”

I had already been watching William make his way around the room, holding his right hind leg off the ground carefully. I had already noted how it formed an odd angle below the hip and how the foot hung a little too loosely. I already knew William had a broken leg. It was a simple thing to confirm a fracture of the femur with just a quick feel of the bone. There was grating of the broken ends of bone against each other and severe bruising on the inside of the leg. It always amazes me how stoic my patients can be when they sustain injuries that would leave us humans screaming for morphine. William reacted to my probing simply by turning his head and flinching slightly.

The rest of William’s examination was unremarkable, if you call the ability to stave off shock and unremitting pain in the face of serious injury unremarkable. In all other respects, William seemed normal. I estimated him to be about three or four years old. He had been neutered, was in good flesh, and free of fleas. He seemed to have been provided with good care. Still, though William seemed okay, reservations about his owner remained.

I fully expected to dial a nonworking number as I lifted the phone to my ear to call the owner. To my surprise, the phone was answered promptly by a woman with a voice that belied many years of experience and also an impressive degree of education and sophistication. Hers was a deep voice, not only in tone but in character. My concerns were allayed.

“Is this Mrs. Moynihan?”

“It certainly is. Who is this?”

“I’m Dr. Coston, ma’am. You just left your kitty, William, at our hospital.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you for calling so quickly. William is such a dear. What’s wrong with poor William?”

“He has a broken leg.”

“I was afraid of that. You know, he’s such an independent soul. He absolutely insists upon going outside and roaming the neighborhood while we’re out here in the Fort. He stays inside when we’re in the city. But here, he just must be let outside. I was afraid he’d get hurt at some point. And now he’s gone and done it. What do we need to do to get William back on his feet again, so to speak?” She laughed easily at her play on words.

I knew without explanation that “the city” was Washington, D.C. There was an ease of interaction, an assumption of acceptance about her that I sensed had arisen from living among the privileged who resided in the stately 1930s- and 1940s-era homes within the Beltway, not from the straining ambition teeming in the northern Virginia suburbs. No doubt she was one of the many D.C. residents who sought serenity on the weekends and in their retirement years in the quietude of the outer reaches of Shenandoah County.

I learned later that Mrs. Moynihan and her husband had purchased St. David’s Church, a crumbling piece of history in the Fort that was slowly bowing to the ravages of time, and had restored it bit by bit to a place of rustic beauty that served as their getaway. Not only had the church been converted by their loving attentions but each of the outbuildings had undergone physical and spiritual transformations as well, till the site was once again a scene of tranquil elegance. You can still see the Moynihans’ craftsmanship if you drive east on St. David’s Church Road in Fort Valley. It will be on the left. You’ll recognize it.

“I haven’t taken X-rays yet, so I don’t know for sure what he’ll need. But I’m almost certain he’ll need surgery to repair the bone. Breaks in this location almost always do.”

“Well, I have complete confidence in your judgment. You do whatever William needs to get him well again. Just let me know when to pick him up. We miss him here at the homestead.”

It struck me that she was expressing such confidence in me even though we had never met and this phone conversation was the first we’d ever had. Rather than making me uncomfortable, though, it filled me with determination to warrant the confidence she was placing in me.

“I suppose we should talk about the expense of the surgery, Mrs. Moynihan.”

“You can if you’d like, Doctor. I know a surgery like that is pretty involved. But my William is worth whatever it is you must charge me to fix him. I’m not worried about that even a little bit. I hope you won’t worry about it, either.”

And on nothing more than her word, I did not. It is a rare gift indeed for a veterinarian to receive—a client who places such high value on her relationship with her four-legged family members and is blessed with the financial wherewithal to provide, without concern for the costs, the medical care her pets need. Not every person who shares with Mrs. Moynihan her love for a pet can do so. And not all who can afford the care share Mrs. Moynihan’s unqualified devotion to a pet. In the many years between when I first met William and when the Moynihans moved back to the city, I have treated a host of her cats. Never has it been necessary to factor costs into the calculus of their medical care.

That afternoon I took William to surgery. The X-rays showed a fracture in the middle of the femur, with a spiral curve to the bone ends that would allow placement of stainless-steel pins and wires to stabilize it. The X-rays made it look like a routine repair. They often do. But once the incision was made, things looked different, what with the bruising and tissue damage.

From the fracture site, I inserted pins into the middle of the bone, driving them toward the hip and exiting them out of the bone at the top of the leg. Attaching a driving device, I then pulled them up farther into the bone’s center, till their tips were even with the broken edges of the bone. Then, after fitting the fracture pieces together like a glistening white puzzle, I drove the pins down into the center of the bone in the lower half of the femur, below the fracture, seating them firmly in the dense bone just above the knee. This prevented the abnormal bending at the fracture site, but it did nothing to prevent the bone ends from rotating around the pins. Placing three wires a centimeter or two apart and twisting them tightly around the bone fragments did. What remained was to cut off the remainder of the pins, which extended above the hip, and to close the tissues with sutures. In an hour and a half, the surgery was done. Postoperative X-rays showed a good repair of the fracture, the pins and wires standing out on the film in stark relief to the surrounding bone and soft tissue. The fact that the top of the pins extended farther above the bone in the hip than I would have liked gave me a moment’s pause, but overall I was pleased with my handiwork.