The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Thirty-Three

BY THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY I WAS IN FULL FREAK-OUT mode.
From the moment Vijay had left Monday night I’d known something was lost.
On Tuesday, he didn’t answer my calls, texts, or e-mails. By the time I’d left the clinic (checking my damn phone between every spay, neuter, and dental), I drove to Shivani’s house only to be told he’d flown back to New York.
The way Shivani said, “Work, work, work. What will we do with that boy?” I could tell she didn’t know what had happened.
Was I insane? Had I just made the mistake of a lifetime?
Olive seemed to think so. I’d called for an emergency GNO on Thursday. After clinic closing time, we took a corner table on the heated, covered patio at El Meson. With the fountain trickling, we could pretend it was summertime or some other country, not Ohio on a raw, gray, almost-Thanksgiving day.
“You said no?” Olive asked. “What’s wrong with you? You’re over forty. He’s a doctor!”
Helen—thank God for Helen—laughed. “Over forty? You say that like she better grab the last man she’s ever going to get!”
Olive opened her hands. “He’s loaded. You’d live in the best city in the world. You told me his place is fabulous—”
“And I’d be alone all the time.”
I saw from her face that she wouldn’t mind that one bit. That she might, in fact, prefer it. For the first time I saw clear as a compound fracture in an X-ray the fundamental split between us: I wanted a partner. Olive only wanted to be married. To anyone.
Aurora stirred our pitcher of sangria when it arrived and filled our glasses.
My phone rang and I snatched it from my purse, hoping it was Vijay. At first my shoulders slumped when I saw that it wasn’t, but then I recognized the number—a new number I hadn’t yet added to my contacts. I couldn’t stop the itchy mottles from blooming. I dropped the phone back in my purse. I’d listen to the message later.
“Who called you?” Olive demanded.
When I mumbled my confession, Helen sat up straight. “Dubey? Well, well, well.”
“No, no. It’s not like that. Truly. There’s been nothing—”
“Who the hell is Dubey?” Olive looked outraged.
I brought her and Aurora up to speed.
“You turned down Vijay for a musician named Dubey?” Olive asked.
“No, listen, I turned down Vijay for reasons having nothing to do with Dubey.” I scratched at the rash on my neck and admitted, “But, it is true that . . . Dubey is . . . he’s really present and spontaneous, and . . . when he says he’s going to be there, he actually shows up.”
“And Vijay sure didn’t,” Aurora said.
“But what he does is important!” Olive said.
“Sure it’s important,” I said. “But if it’s more important than our relationship, then the marriage is destined to tank. For it to work we both have to want it more than anything else.”
The entire patio hit a lull in conversation at the same time, the only sound the trickle of the fountain.
Olive made her smoke-ring mouth again. “But, Cami, it’s not right. You’re beautiful and you have so much to give to somebody. You shouldn’t be alone.”
I spewed sangria, I laughed so hard. Alone? I pictured my crowded house. I wiped up the mess I’d made and asked, “What about the so much somebody has to give to me? When does it get to be my turn?”
Helen and Aurora grinned and raised their glasses.
HERE IN MY CLINIC, I SIGHED, THE SWEETNESS OF THAT sangria long gone.
It had been my Saturday to work. All had gone well, no surprises, but interesting enough to be distracting. When noon rolled around, I was sorry. I lingered in my office long after the staff had left. What did I want to do with the day? Fly to New York? Arrive on Vijay’s doorstep?
Gabriella was at another debate tournament. Aurora was hiking in Red River Gorge with an interesting new man she’d met in her To-Shin Do class. Helen and Hank were in Chicago. I didn’t have the energy for Olive and her wedding mania right now. Davy was swamped with end-of-fall-term papers and had asked not to be bothered (I’d called to ask about their meeting with the prospective new mom; they were optimistic but hadn’t heard her decision yet).
The clinic phone rang, and I mouthed the answering-machine message along with my receptionist’s recorded voice. For once I wished we were open all day on Saturday.
Should I call Dubey? I’d texted him after his sweet El Meson message (thanking me for the dance class), telling him this week was crazy busy but I’d call soon. I wrinkled my nose. No, no, no—not until I figured out what was going on with Vijay. God, I wish I’d known how to tell the truth without hurting him.
As I started a search for flights from Dayton to New York, my phone rang. Bobby. Ugh.
I let it go to voice mail and kept scrolling through flight options, waiting for the trill that told me I had a message.
What would I do if I went to New York? What could I say or do differently to make Vijay understand?
After a moment, I realized that the musical chord indicating a new voice mail had never come. Was Bobby talking that long? I checked my phone. Nope, he hadn’t left a message.
As I stared at the phone, he called again.
I sighed. Whatever. He still didn’t leave a message.
I could be in New York around 5 p.m. if I left right now. What did I need to take? Anything? Why not do it? That would show Vijay how serious I was, right?
I clicked “Book Flight” and began to fill in my information when my phone rang again.
This time it was Gabby.
“Hey, baby,” I said. “Guess what I’m—”
“Where are you?” Her clipped, panicked tone made me go still and alert.
“At the clinic.”
“Thank God. Hang on.”
What the hell? After about twenty seconds of waiting (I watched the clock on the wall, trying to steel myself for the crisis behind her voice), she clicked back on.
“Okay. Dad’s bringing Zuzu to you. He’s already driving, actually, about—”
“No, no, no. I’m closed.”
“It’s an emergency, Mom!”
“Then he should go to the emergency clinic. You know that num—”
“You’re closer.”
“Gabby! This isn’t fair. I don’t have a staff here!”
A car peeled gravel in the employee parking lot. I looked out my office window. Bobby. With Zayna in the backseat. “They’re here. Damn it, I can’t—”
“Mom!”
When I got to the employee entrance, I saw through the window that Bobby held the back car door open for Zayna, but she didn’t get out. I couldn’t hear exactly what they said to each other, but the body language and raised voices were clear: they were arguing.
Great. Just great. How was this my problem?
When Zayna finally got out of the car, I took in the details—Bobby and Zayna, both with blood on their shirts, arms, and hands. Zayna carried the puppy wrapped in towels. Towels with bright-red spots. Blood dripped off Zayna’s elbow as they walked toward me.
“I gotta go,” I said to Gabby, unlocking the door.
“You can’t send them to the emergency clinic!”
As I opened the door, I saw the way Zayna had her hand clamped on Zuzu’s distal left foreleg, saw the blood that welled around her grip. Saw the puppy’s shocky eyes and pale gums. There wasn’t time to send them to the emergency clinic.
“Take her to a treatment room,” I said, holding the door open, then asked, “What happened?”
“She fell out of our apartment window,” Bobby said, his bloody hands in his hair. “The screen popped out and she fell.”
“How long ago?” I yanked a light over the stainless steel table where Zayna laid the too-still Zuzu on her side, wounded leg up. Zayna kept pressure on the wound, knuckles white.
“Ten minutes?” Bobby guessed.
Zayna shook her head. “Less.”
Okay. She might have a chance. I opened cabinets for pressure bandages and clamps, wishing I had a vet tech to get IV fluids ready. “Why would you waste time coming here?” I asked, snapping on exam gloves. “You should’ve gone straight to the emergency clinic.”
I turned around in time to see Zayna shoot Bobby a furious look. She hissed an “I told you!”
“Let’s see what we’re dealing with,” I said.
Bobby hovered near the table, his face gray, grim. “Is she okay? Can you make her okay?”
I peeled open the towel and, through the bubbling stream of deep, thick blood, saw bone.
Bobby wheeled around and bent over a linen basket, as if to puke.
“No!” I yelled, startling him enough to make him freeze. “Those are sterile surgery packs! We’ll need those.” I pointed him to the metal trash can.
He nodded, breathing deeply, and moved away.
I dabbed a four-by-four gauze sponge on the wound, then lifted it, over and over, each time able to see the damage for a few seconds before it filled back up with blood. God, what I would give for a technician!
Another dab of gauze and I managed to get a clamp on the severed bleeder. Three more dabs and I clamped the other end. The bleeding stopped.
“Is she going to be okay?” Bobby asked, looking at the floor.
I wiped away all the blood, checking the puppy’s entire body. Other than a fairly deep abrasion on her pink-and-black freckled nose and several minor abrasions, the leg was the only external wound. “This looks like she was sliced with a scalpel,” I said. “How’d a fall do this?”
“She slid down a canopy over the entrance,” Zayna said. “I think she got cut on the canopy frame.”
Bobby moaned and paced the room.
“I’m going to tie off this bleeder before we do anything else,” I said.
I opened a sterile pack for my suture materials. Zayna brought me a cassette of catgut and pulled out the thread for me. I cut it under where she’d held it—so that only my gloved hands and suture scissors touched it. I threaded a tapered needle and began to work. “This’ll be quick,” I said. “I just don’t want these clamps flopping around while we X-ray.”
I tied off both ends of the bleeder, suturing them closed. Then I released the clamps one at a time to make sure I’d been successful. I had been. Bleeding stopped. Next, treat the shock.
I grabbed an IV bag of sodium chloride, hung it on a pole, and bent over the puppy’s uninjured foreleg to place the IV catheter. “Zayna? Remember how I showed you how to hold the vein off for me?” Like I did with Tyler, I often had Zayna assist me, since she was so good with the animals and such a quick study. Please, please let her remember how to do this.
Zayna nodded but just looked at me expectantly.
“Well, could you do it?” My voice was harsher than I’d meant.
She still stood there.
“Now?” I prodded her.
She stepped forward and took Zuzu’s uninjured foreleg in her hands. She rolled the leg correctly—even though I knew I’d only showed her once—so the vein was straight and popped up for me. Puppy veins were tough. Puppy-in-shock veins were tougher. I felt the vein with my thumb and slid the catheter in. Got it. First try. “Perfect,” I said to Zayna.
I attached the IV and fluids to the catheter, then turned the knob to start the flow. “We’re gonna run this wide open for a while,” I said.
“What is that?” Bobby asked.
“Shock makes her blood pressure low,” Zayna said. “The fluids will bring it up.”
I nodded and taped the catheter to Zuzu’s leg. I checked her pupils. They responded to light. While I listened to her chest, Bobby asked again, “Is she going to be okay? Can you fix her?”
“Her heart and lungs sound normal,” I said, beginning to feel her belly. “How many stories did she fall?”
“Three,” they said in unison.
I cringed. I needed to rule out internal injuries. Diaphragmatic hernia. Ruptured urinary bladder. Ruptured spleen. Broken back. Broken ribs. My own ribs ached at the thought.
“She fell two stories,” Zayna said, “but then she hit the canopy. She slid off the canopy and into some big bushes.”
That helped. The canopy and bushes probably saved her life. “We need to do some chest and abdominal X-rays. You carry the bag,” I said to Zayna, pointing. Just as I worked my hands under Zuzu’s body to lift her, she peed. I leaned over, scrutinizing the urine. Clear. Normal. Good. We could probably rule out a ruptured bladder. I scooped her up and carried her to the X-ray table.
“Will she be okay?” Bobby asked.
“I’m trying to find out!” Would you stop asking me that?
Once I’d measured the width and depth of Zuzu’s chest and abdomen so I’d know how to set the X-ray machine, I put on my leaded gown. I looked at Bobby and Zayna. I’d need help for the ventral-dorsal view. Zayna knew how to do this, but . . .
“Any chance you might be pregnant?” I asked Zayna.
I thought I blushed badly? Zayna’s face flushed red like a poisonous reaction.
“I . . . I don’t think . . . I—” She looked at Bobby.
“Bobby, put this on,” I said, handing him a lead gown.
Zayna protested.
“You hesitated,” I said. “If there’s a possibility, you shouldn’t be in here. Bobby can do this.”
Bobby better be able to do this, dammit. I gave us both lead gloves and throat shields, made Zayna leave the room, then had Bobby help me hold Zuzu straight, on her back. Bobby held her back legs extended, and I gently held her front, holding the IV bag in my teeth.
After a lateral view, we got her back on the treatment table. “I’ve got to develop these in the darkroom. It’ll take about ten minutes. You keep her still.” I checked her gums. “She’s already pinking up. That’s good. Watch her color. Watch her breathing. Come get me if you need to.”
In the darkroom, I turned off the lights, opened the cassette, placed the film in the automatic processor, then stood still. I breathed in, I breathed out—relishing my first second to collect myself since they’d arrived with the puppy.
I really didn’t have to wait in here. I could go start prepping for surgery, but I heard their voices, arguing again. So . . . apparently there was trouble in paradise. You know what? The puppy was stable. I’d stay right here in the peaceful dark, thank you very much.
Please, please, don’t let these films show any further trauma. Don’t let this dog die on my watch. Damn it, why had Bobby put me in this position? Why was I suddenly responsible for saving the life of my ex-husband’s dog?
How long had I sat looking at flights? If I’d walked out that door ten minutes earlier, even five, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be in this position. I’d be on my way to New York.
But . . . had I left five minutes earlier, Zuzu would surely have bled to death.
When the processor buzzed, I collected the films. Zayna and Bobby fell silent the minute I opened the door. I put the films in a view box and scanned them for broken bones, pulmonary contusions, fluid in the abdomen. I exhaled. Fortunately, the leg was our only issue. In the lateral view, I pointed for Bobby and Zayna. “Fractured radius and ulna.”
“Can you fix it?” Bobby asked.
“Yes, but not today.”
They looked confused. “That surgery might take an hour and a half. Zuzu’s been through a lot already. We have to be sure she’s going to—” I stopped myself from saying live and revised my words before speaking. “I will do surgery today, but just to clean the wound and close her up. I’ll splint her leg for now, then we’ll get her stronger before we do a more extensive orthopedic surgery in a day or two.”
Zuzu was already coming around, wriggling and whining.
I carried her to the surgery room, Zayna holding the IV bag beside us. I gave Zuzu an injection for pain and a dose of ketamine and valium in her IV to induce her for surgery. Bobby, who’d been standing near the table, moved away again—wiping the sweat from his face—when he saw the needle.
Zayna shot me a look and rolled her eyes, I suppose attempting solidarity.
Zuzu stopped trying to sit up. Her head flopped. She was now out of it enough to intubate.
“Remember how I taught you how to assist with an endotracheal tube?” I asked.
Zayna looked at me, her face blank.
“You have to assist me,” I said to her.
“Dr. Anderson, I don’t think . . . I don’t feel comfortable. Not under—”
“You have to.”
She stammered and shook her head. “Maybe Bobby could—”
I shook my head. “He’s worthless.”
Her hurt expression exasperated me. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “I don’t give a shit about any of that right now. But look at him!” Bobby sat on the floor, head on his knees. Poor Binky. My voice softened. “Zayna. He can’t do this. If you want Zuzu to live, you have to help me.”
For God’s sake, this is why I’d finally taken pity on Bobby and stopped inviting him on rescues!
She nodded. I talked her through it, and she was competent. She held Zuzu’s head, keeping the dog’s upper jaw open. I pulled Zuzu’s tongue to the side and guided the tube into the trachea. When Zuzu coughed, the gentle breeze of her breath traveling up the tube, I said, “We’re in.”
I did all the things my technician usually did for me while I’d be scrubbing in—tying the tube in place, blowing up the cuff with three cc’s of air from a syringe. I hooked the tube up to the anesthesia machine and turned on the gas.
Once I’d clipped a pulse oximeter onto Zuzu’s tongue, I turned on the monitor. Her heartbeat beeped into the surgery room, the green bag rising and falling with her respirations.
I tucked my hair under a surgical cap and hooked my mask over my ears, then scrubbed my hands, all the while talking Zayna through cleaning the wound—she’d done that before. I opened a sterile pack and popped open a sterile blade. I unwrapped and shook out my surgical gown. I put my arms through and turned my back to Zayna for her to tie me in.
She had to move the bundle of my cap-covered hair to tie the gown at my neck, then touch my waist to tie the belt snug. An odd intimacy moved through the ritual. Zayna’s hands on me, Zayna dressing me. I couldn’t help but picture her doing this to Bobby. But she’d probably be undressing him.
I could finally get to work. I checked the bleeder, looking for my ties. All was well. I assessed the damage, then used forceps to clean and debride the wound, picking out hair, dirt, gray tissue too traumatized to recover, and fragments of bone that didn’t bode well. Painstaking. Slow. The steady beep-beep-beep of Zuzu’s heartbeat marked the time.
Every time Bobby asked, “Is she okay?” I wanted to poke him with my forceps.
I had Zayna get sterile water, which I squirted through a syringe to flush the wound.
At last, I was satisfied. I trimmed the edges of Zuzu’s skin to “freshen” it and said, “That’s good. We can close her.”
“Wait,” Zayna said, looking confused. “You didn’t connect that vein, or artery, or whatever.”
I wanted to laugh at her. “I can’t,” I said. “Those two pieces can’t be put back together. I tied them off to stop the bleeding. Now we just hope the collateral circulation kicks in and saves the foot.” Blood vessels had the ability to dilate if necessary.
I began suturing the first layer, pulling the muscles together. I didn’t want to amputate this puppy’s leg. The last time I’d amputated, I realized, was the day Bobby left me.
“Save the foot,” Zayna repeated. “She might lose her foot?”
“She might.”
Bobby heaved huge, deep breaths. If he was going to puke, could he please just go to the bathroom?
As if reading my thoughts, he stood and stumbled to the hall.
Zayna looked over her shoulder at the door. When she turned back to me, she said, as if she’d been waiting to say it, “I told him we should go to the emergency clinic. I knew that.”
“Then why didn’t you?” My voice was cold.
She looked away. “Bobby said it had to be you. He said you’d save her.”
I continued suturing, glad my face was hidden behind my mask.
When I finished that layer, I asked in a calm, quiet voice, “What were you thinking?”
She kept her eyes only on that green bag, but I knew she’d heard me. And I knew she understood what I was talking about—I didn’t mean letting her puppy fall out a damn window.
“Did you give any thought at all to what this would do to me?” I asked, suturing the subcutaneous tissue. “To my daughter? To the practice?”
Zayna’s face was set as she stared at the bag expand and deflate, expand and deflate.
“I trusted you,” I said.
The beep-beep-beep was my only answer.
“I trusted you,” I repeated. “As an employee. As a friend. I tried to help you.”
After a long pause, she whispered, “I know. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I know there will never be a way to make you know that.”
I couldn’t lift my eyes to hers at that moment because I’d begun to close Zuzu’s skin, the third and final layer of sutures, but there was something so naked in her voice that I believed her. “You can turn that gas way down now,” I said. “But leave her on the oxygen.”
When I finished and stood up, Zayna didn’t look away but held my gaze.
“Go to the closet and get a meta splint,” I said.
While she did, I put gauze over the sutures and rolled the leg in two-inch cast padding.
Zayna brought back three sizes of splints, smart girl, and we selected the right match for Zuzu. The clear plastic splint went from toe to shoulder. As I secured it with stretchy cling tape, Zayna asked, “So you think you’ll fix those bones on Monday or Tuesday?”
“Probably Tuesday.” I made my voice more gentle. “We need to find out how that foot does, so we know exactly what kind of surgery we’re heading into.”
She nodded. She knew what I meant. There was no point in pinning bones that might be amputated altogether. Just as there was no point in operating on a dead dog.
“I want to ask you one thing,” I said.
Zayna’s eyes were eager, and I recognized the look from when Bobby’d volunteered to help with barn chores while I was injured. Give me something—anything—to assuage my guilt.
“Why did you come to Olive’s apartment that morning? Remember, when I was there with Davy and Gabby, the morning of her engagement?”
A shadow crossed Zayna’s face, and she looked back at the monitor.
“You can turn that gas completely off now,” I said. “But not the oxygen.”
“I was scared,” she said to the monitor, turning the knob. She looked over her shoulder again, but Bobby hadn’t returned. “Bobby was scaring me. It was the morning after he left—” She fumbled with what to call it. “The morning after he moved out of your house. He just came to the apartment and laid on the bed. He wouldn’t talk. He just laid there, staring at the wall. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t how I thought it would . . . I thought . . . I thought Olive might be able to help him.”
I wrapped Zuzu’s leg with a final layer of nasty tasting “No Chew” vet wrap while mulling this information. In some small way it helped to know this, to know that he hadn’t run immediately into Zayna’s arms, happy to be rid of me. That he’d struggled helped me. If only he’d stayed and we’d struggled to untie our knot together. Even though I was now relieved he was gone, I still felt the gaping wound of being shut out of the decision altogether, of being left.
I let Zuzu breathe oxygen for one more minute before disconnecting the endotracheal tube. I waited for the puppy to swallow, then gently pulled the tube from her throat.
“He doesn’t love me, Dr. Anderson.”
The flatness in Zayna’s voice made me stop. She looked into my eyes and said with resignation, “Just so you know. He doesn’t love me. I thought maybe I could make him love me. That I could make him happy. But . . .” She shook her head.
I pulled down my mask. “You can’t rescue him.”
“I know. Now.” She looked miserable. Her eyes shone under the glaring surgical light.
I moved the light away from her face. “Nobody can rescue Bobby but Bobby.”
We looked at each other, and I saw in her face that she would leave him. Who knew how soon, but she was bailing. Clear as printed words on that young, porcelain face.
Of course she would leave him. How could she be the actress she’d dreamed of being while lugging the heavy anchor of a sad man? Honestly, Bobby couldn’t have believed this would end well. To my surprise, though, an ache unfurled in my rib cage, a faint vestige of the broken bones there. Poor Binky. Poor clueless bastard.
Zayna cleaned the blood from Zuzu’s chest and other foreleg with gauze and hydrogen peroxide. “I’ll be sorry about this the rest of my life,” she said. “I’ll never do this again. It . . . it sucks to be the other woman. Your daughter hates me.”
I couldn’t deny that. Zayna’s honesty, however belated, didn’t deserve such a knee-jerk platitude. Besides, Bobby came back, looking a little less cadaver pallored.
He stood looking down at the puppy’s neat, intact leg in its hard plastic splint. He looked from the leg to me three times before he said, “You are amazing.”
Zayna shrank at the heartfelt admiration in his voice.
You clueless, self-absorbed bastard, I thought.