I’m superb at seeming interested in the thirty-seventh conversation of the day about the weather, or feigning surprise at how congested Main Street is on a Tuesday afternoon. I don’t give a shit about traffic. Or weather. Or any combination thereof. Want to know what the last thing the hourly wage drone trapped behind a desk in a windowless office for eleven-plus hours wants to hear from a person who clearly has a lot of in-the-middle-of-the-fucking-day free time on her hands? How beautiful it is outside. How gorgeous the clouds are and how wonderful the air feels. Oh, you didn’t have to wear a jacket today? WELL GLORY BE, DIANE. I don’t care! For me, today is the same temperature-controlled sixty-eight degrees it is every other goddamned day. Storm clouds? Sixty-eight degrees. Blizzard? Still sixty-eight degrees. I mean, sometimes I turn on the ceiling fan if I really want to feel like I’m living my best life, but even then it’s still only sixty-eight degrees with a light breeze. Dude, every day I dream of chewing my wrists open and emptying them until I’m dead. I really ought to get out and enjoy that sunshine, I get it. But then who would sell you your dog’s outrageously priced limited-protein food?!
I can and will answer to many names that aren’t my own, “Hello, Stephanie? Sabrina? Salmonella, is that you?” I have been referred to as the “nice African-American woman” on the phone more times than I can count. Which is interesting because I am decidedly not nice. “Mildly unpleasant” would work just fine, I think. Speaking of my awful voice and face, even though a lot of Dianes have been looking at the same scowl for the past fourteen years, three months, and handful of days, many of them think of me as their friend. Which is surprising, even to me, and so my friend-making-under-duress skills will obviously be an asset in my new position. I totally understand why watching this metamorphosis over the last decade would fool someone into thinking he knows me in real life. I scheduled their rag doll’s tooth surgery! I faxed their bichon’s Bordetella vaccine to the kennel! And sure, they often don’t remember my name, but they’ve invited me out to lunch (dreading that I might take them up on it), asked me over to their actual houses for dinner (really, really dreading that I might wear my work jeans stinking of Roccal-D into their homes), and on one special instance, paid for my books that one semester I decided I was going to finish my degree (okay, that was actually amazing). The nice ones come in with boxes of chocolate and cases of beer and bottles of wine, grateful that an adult woman who got a thirty-three on the ACT dedicated most of her life to explaining the difference between fleas and ticks to college freshmen who use their meal allotment money to buy corgi puppies from shady Craigslist breeders. One time, when I was in Whole Foods with a cart full of shit pretending to be rich, I ran into this woman who was so thankful that I’d talked her through getting her dog to vomit up the carcass of a squirrel the week before that she bought all of my groceries. I don’t know why I’m resistant to say so, but I am actually quite good at serving a customer.
Upon finding out that I work in an animal hospital, people are usually like, “Aww! You must love pets! Are all the puppies and kitties so cute?!” And then they blink real hard and smile with all of their teeth showing, waiting for me to regale them with heartwarming stories of cats rescued from trees and dogs that save little boys who’ve fallen down the local well. They picture my day to be like Belle’s in Beauty and the Beast, except instead of skipping through the French countryside, I’m limping through the suburbs, waving hello to the baker and the cobbler as they tip their caps while I struggle past, carrying a backpack full of a halfhearted attempt at lunch I already don’t want to eat and anxiety meds in lieu of a basket laden with library books, ruffling the heads of children I pass on their way to school. This imaginary hospital is little more than a modernized gingerbread house, purring kitties and floppy-eared dogs bounding after me with their bushy tails wagging as I flip on the lights and turn on the fans and cast open the shades to let the sunshine stream in. No animals are violent or in critical condition, and all of them are well behaved enough to roam free, maybe alighting on my shoulder as I hand Mr. Martin his parcel of healing tonics and tinctures I’ve made myself, the price of which he wouldn’t dream of haggling over. Cool breezes blow through open windows that no dog is actively trying to commit suicide through, and who needs doctors when the needles and blades just come to life and perform the operations themselves?!
In reality, I stumble through blinding snow from the train at 7:20 in the morning to the darkened door, grope blindly down the pitch-black hallway to find the keypad that shuts off the alarm, then have thirty seconds to enter the four-digit code before those flashing lights and that awful siren start blaring, signaling that the police are on their way and I have to find something in this building other than my secret painkiller drawer to prove I actually work here. I spend twenty-seven real seconds punching in various pass codes until one finally stops the ticking clock, then immediately bend at the waist to dry heave as the computerized voice bleeps “Disarmed, ready to arm.” I try to regain composure as I rummage through the communal fridge to find the Coke I swear I left in there, but give up when I hear voices approaching, shoving someone else’s soda into my bag, swearing to myself that I will replace it as soon as the liquor store next door opens. When I get to my desk, the fax machine is shooting memos from various referral clinics by the dozen, and the phone’s blinking red light indicates that eighteen messages have been left in the twelve hours since we’ve last been around to answer the phones. Hospitalized patients, realizing that the box-cleaners and food-pourers have arrived to start their shifts, howl and yowl and caterwaul for their breakfasts. The place quickly fills with the brain-rattling noise of the day: the sharp clang of metal bowls in the waist-high tub/sink, the whoosh of water from the hose spraying down the outdoor runs, the slam of a washing machine filled with blankets and towels, treatment orders shouted over the din of bark and meow.
I listen to the voice mails (several hang-ups, a couple “Hello, is this the answering service? Hello…? Hello…?! JEAN, I TOLD YOU THEY WEREN’T OPEN YET!” and at least one “No, I don’t have an appointment but I’m bringing my dog right when you open and I want to be seen immediately, I don’t care what else the doctor has coming in” just to get the stress adrenaline pumping) while trying to say good morning to coworkers as they answer e-mails and file lab work. By the time we unlock the doors, we’ve done so many things that it feels like the day should already be over, and then comes the constant deluge of impatient questions I may or may not have the answer to (yes, I know the requirements for filling out an international health certificate for a cat to fly to Romania; no, I don’t know whether your dog walker’s advice to use cedar oil will get rid of a flea infestation); the hourly pop quiz of every single one of the prescription diets we carry and its indications (because if I sell Hill’s a/d to a person who really needs IAMS Low-Residue, I could get in hot water); and the ungraceful mating dance that occurs when someone mindlessly talking on her cell phone has a pissed off, scared, snapping terrier raging at the end of a loosely held flexi-leash as I’m trying to usher her into an exam room.
I can translate the consistency of a dog’s stool as relayed to me by its owner into the proper medical terminology:
“Soupy” = diarrhea.
“Watery” = diarrhea.
“Like a melted chocolate bar” = diarrhea.
“Kinda runny this morning but lumpy by lunchtime” = diarrhea.
“You know, like, vomit but from her butt” = diarrhea.