Must Be Love

by Cathy Woodman

  I lean out of the car to find Alex, my current boyfriend and the best thing that’s ever happened to me, wading towards me, all six foot one of him.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I say, surprised and pleased, and more than a little embarrassed that he’s turned up in the middle of nowhere to find me in a predicament of my own making.

  ‘I’m on my way back from a stitch-up at the Wilds’ place,’ Alex says.

  ‘The horse sanctuary?’

  ‘That’s right. They rescued this poor young cob from near death and now it’s gone and got itself caught up in barbed wire. A case of sod’s law, don’t you think?’ Alex holds on to the car door, the water swirling around a couple of inches below the tops of his wellies: my knight with a shining four by four. ‘I took the short cut.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad you did,’ I say, taking in the fierce, stormy blue of his eyes, and the way his dark hair is beginning to curl at the ends in the wet. I note the few hairs silvering at his temple – he is ten years older than me, after all – and the spatters of mud – no, blood – on the stonewashed denim jeans that hug his long, muscular thighs, and the yarn of his ancient Arran sweater, snagged here and there into loops.

  ‘I bet you are, seeing your sleigh has let you down,’ he chuckles. Then, noticing I’m staring at him utterly bemused, he goes on, ‘The antlers.’

  Blushing, I whip them off and leave them, rather bent and battered, on the dashboard. They were one of Emma’s madcap ideas to make the practice feel more Christmassy. What must Penny have thought? I glance towards Sally. I could swear her belly’s blown up even bigger since I squeezed her into the car.

  ‘Alex, you’ve got to give us a lift,’ I say urgently as Sally retches again. ‘Me and the dog.’

  ‘Of course.’ Alex smiles, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening – and yes, they’re definitely creases, not worry lines, because Alex isn’t the worrying type.

  My teeth chattering with cold, I slide out of the driver’s seat and give myself up into his arms so that he can carry me to his four by four. I cling on to him just a little longer than necessary, breathing his scent of cow, penicillin and musk, before he lets me down, his lips brushing mine, our bodies briefly in full contact, my heartbeat quickening against his, and his hand squeezing my buttocks, so that all of a sudden I feel much warmer.

  Alex hurries back for Sally and lifts her into the back seat, the boot being stacked up with his boxes of kit and drugs, calving gowns and buckets. (Alex and his father own the neighbouring vets’ surgery at Talyton Manor. It’s a traditional mixed practice, treating farm animals and horses, along with a few cats and dogs.)

  ‘I’ll get someone to bring the tractor up and give your car a tow back to the Manor, then we can have it seen to.’ Alex gets into the front seat and turns on the ignition. ‘What’s up with the patient?’

  ‘She’s OD’d on Christmas dinner. Her eyes were bigger than her belly.’

  ‘They aren’t now,’ Alex points out, as Sally lets out a gut-wrenching groan. ‘I’d better put my foot down,’ he adds, and the engine roars into life. ‘The dog’s in a bad way and you’re soaked through, Maz. In fact, I really should get you out of those clothes – as a purely preventative measure, of course,’ he goes on. ‘We don’t want you going down with pneumonia for the festive season.’

  ‘Alex!’ I pretend to scold him, yet I’d love him to strip me down and make love to me … I look back at Sally. Just not right now.

  ‘Unfortunately, though,’ Alex says as we head into Talyton at speed, ‘I’m on my way to another call. Mother’s booked in as much as possible for today in the hope tomorrow will be quiet. And talking of which, did you manage to do that swap with Emma?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alex. She’s got Ben’s parents staying over Christmas. They’re only here for three days and they’ve driven all the way from Edinburgh to see them. And anyway, if Sally does pull through, I’ll have to stick around to keep an eye on her. It’s nothing personal.’

  ‘But I want us to spend Christmas together …’

  ‘So do I …’ Just you and me, I want to say, but I can’t because I’m afraid I’ll hurt his feelings. I’m not ready to enjoy a jolly family Christmas up at the Manor with Alex’s children and his parents. I watch the muscle in his cheek tighten and relax during the intervening silence.

  ‘Lucie will be disappointed,’ he says eventually. ‘She’s been planning to make up a stocking for you.’

  I try not to feel guilty at letting her down – I mean, he’s the one who told her I’d be there when he wasn’t sure of my plans, not me. Lucie is Alex’s daughter. He has a son too, Sebastian, and I don’t want to get too involved with them, at least until our relationship is on a firmer footing. I can remember my mother bringing a series of boyfriends to the flat to meet me and my brother, how just as I’d begun to accept one, she’d dump him and go on to the next. Not that I have any intention of dumping Alex, you understand. I’m still a little afraid that Alex might one day dump me.

  ‘I was hoping to wake up and find you in my stocking,’ Alex says.

  ‘I didn’t know you wore them,’ I tease. ‘Stockings,’ I add when he pretends not to follow.

  ‘I’m not that in touch with my feminine side.’

  ‘What feminine side?’ I say archly. As far as I’m concerned, Alex is all man.

  ‘We’ll have to do Christmas next year, then,’ Alex sighs.

  ‘Next year,’ I echo quietly, afraid of tempting fate by daring to believe we’ll still be together in a year’s time. I can’t help it when my two previous exes both let me down just as they’d convinced me this was it, the happy ever after. I try to remain optimistic as Sally utters another groan, weaker this time. Why shouldn’t this be third time lucky?

  Alex pulls across the road and onto the pavement outside Otter House, killing the engine before jumping out. He carries Sally ahead of me into the practice, striding out and shouldering double doors aside, as if he owns the place. Reaching the prep area, he puts Sally down gently on the bench, where she collapses, gasping for air, her tongue ominously blue.

  ‘She doesn’t look too good,’ Emma says, emerging from theatre with a cap instead of her Santa hat over her brunette locks, and carrying a stomach tube. ‘Hi, Alex. What are you doing here?’ she asks, as I throw a gown over my wet clothes and plug in the clippers.

  ‘I was between calls when I came across Maz stranded in the ford. How are you?’

  ‘I’m well, thanks.’ Emma touches her bump, all clucky and maternal. (She’s almost five months gone now.) ‘How about you? How’s business?’

  ‘It’s pretty busy at the moment.’ Alex holds on to Sally for me while I clip a patch of hair from her flank. ‘I’m booked up with calls all day.’

  ‘We’re rushed off our feet here too,’ Emma says with a competitive edge to her voice.

  ‘But not taking enough for your partner to buy herself a new car.’ Alex grins. Although it’s been a while since the Talyton Manor Vets tried to stop Emma setting up her plate in town, there’s always an element of professional jealousy between Talyton Manor and Otter House. It keeps life interesting.

  I spray Sally’s skin with surgical spirit, which makes me sneeze – not only does it disinfect, it does wonders for clearing the sinuses.

  ‘We’re interviewing for new staff,’ Emma says, ‘but I’m sure Maz will have told you all about it.’

  ‘I wish my father would take on some staff. We could do with another vet,’ Alex says ruefully.

  ‘I second that,’ I say as I select three of the largest gauge needles we have in the drawer beside the bench. ‘You could take some time off.’ I slide the needles one by one through Sally’s skin. As they puncture the stomach wall, there’s a hiss of gas like a long, low fart, and a whiff of rotting veg. Sally’s belly softens, her breathing eases and her tongue turns a more reassuring shade of pink.

  ‘I’ll buy him a bottle of malt sometime, see if I can soften him up
,’ Alex says.

  I know Old Fox-Gifford’s a difficult man, but I can’t understand why Alex doesn’t stand up to him. I refrain from asking why he doesn’t take on another vet anyway and present it to his father as a fait accompli. Now isn’t the time.

  ‘Look, I’d better get going.’ Alex takes a step back.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ Emma says, moving across to take Alex’s place at Sally’s side.

  ‘Bye, Emma. I’ll drop by later if I can, Maz.’

  I lean into the brief pressure of Alex’s hand on my back and tilt my head for the touch of his lips against mine.

  ‘I hope the dog makes it.’ And then he’s gone, the doors swinging closed behind him and for the briefest moment I feel quite bereft.

  ‘Cheeky sod,’ says Emma.

  She sets up a drip and anaesthetic, then lifts Sally’s head while I try to pass the stomach tube through her gullet, but it comes to a stop. I try wriggling it, twisting it and rolling the dog over, but it won’t budge. It’s a bad sign.

  ‘It’s a torsion.’ I stroke the sleeping dog’s ear, thinking of Penny alone at home, waiting for news.

  ‘There’s nothing else for it, then,’ Emma says. ‘You’ll have to go in.’

  We move Sally into theatre, and soon she’s lying on her back in a plastic cradle, her body half hidden by blue cotton drapes. I pick up a scalpel and open her up straight down the middle.

  ‘She’s all right,’ says Emma, as if she’s reading my mind, ‘stable anyway.’

  Resisting the urge to scratch an itch where my theatre cap rides up above the roots of my hair, I concentrate on gently untwisting Sally’s stomach, examining it as I go. There’s no sign of damage to the stomach wall, which raises my hopes for Sally’s chances until Emma dashes them again.

  ‘Maz, we’ve got a problem.’ Emma straightens, sending Sally’s anaesthetic chart clattering to the floor. ‘She’s gone a bit flat.’ Emma’s tone is cool and professional, but there’s a tinge of barely disguised panic as she goes on, ‘She’s stopped breathing.’

  I let Sally’s stomach slop back into her abdomen and take a moment to watch.

  ‘I can’t get a pulse.’ Emma swears. ‘She’s going blue.’ She switches off the anaesthetic, turns up the oxygen and starts resuscitation, alternately pumping Sally’s chest and ventilating her lungs with the black rubber bag in the anaesthetic circuit.

  The greasy scent of fat and blood cut through with spirit fills my nostrils and my hands grow hot inside my surgical gloves. I can hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears as I stare at the blood vessels in the skein of tissue, mottled with glistening white fat, that covers Sally’s gut, praying for them to start pulsing once more.

  Come on, Sally. I recall Penny’s tears as I left, the way she ruffled Sally’s soft fur, gripped her around her dribbling jowls and gave her one last desperate hug as if it were the last time she’d ever see her …

  ‘How long has it been?’ Emma asks. ‘I forgot to look.’

  I can only make a stab at a guess – it feels like a lifetime.

  ‘Two or three minutes.’

  ‘We’ll give her three more …’ Emma’s voice trails away, because she knows as well as I do that you have five minutes at most. Any longer without oxygen, the sensitive cells in the brain begin to die off.

  I start preparing to open Sally’s chest. This is the last resort. We’ll be able to massage the heart directly, shoot drugs straight into the muscle. Hand on heart – well, almost anyway – I think Sally’s had it.

  ‘Stop! Maz.’

  My own heart plummets to the soles of my Crocs. It’s too late. She’s gone.

  ‘I’ve got a pulse. It’s very faint.’ Emma points to Sally’s chest, which rises, quivers, then falls again. I can see the relief in her smile when she goes on, ‘What do you want to do? Stitch her straight up or go on?’

  It’s tempting to close her up, to let her come round.

  ‘I should go on,’ I decide. We’ve come this far. If I stop now, there’s nothing to prevent this happening to Sally again, and next time it could kill her. The muscles across my shoulders grow tight and perspiration trickles down my nose into my mask as I tack Sally’s stomach wall to a rib, and it isn’t until I’ve almost finished that I feel relaxed enough to chat with Emma once more.

  ‘I’m going to miss all this,’ Emma says.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I ask lightly, as I start to close up.

  ‘I’m talking about when I have the baby.’

  ‘You said you’d still come in to work.’ I’m worried. Emma’s making it sound like she’s taking eternity not maternity leave.

  ‘Ben and I have been talking it over and we’ve decided that whatever crazy scheme I thought up once I knew I was pregnant is no good. I can’t work all the way up to the birth like Superwoman. I don’t want to and I don’t need to.’ Emma pauses and I find myself blaming Ben, who’s a GP, for being overprotective. ‘I’m planning to cut down my hours as soon as possible, take my statutory maternity leave, then come back to work part-time. I hope that’s all right with you, Maz.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I have any choice,’ I murmur. I’m happy for her, yet I can’t help feeling a little disgruntled because I never expected Emma to do anything but return to work full-time.

  ‘I don’t want to miss out on anything, her first smile, her first tooth –’

  ‘Her?’ I interrupt. She? Suddenly the bump has an identity and I can see Emma as a mum with a baby in her arms: a girl with flyaway brown hair and dark eyes like Emma’s. My throat tightens – not with envy, because I’m not the maternal type, but with joy that Emma is so close to achieving her dream of starting a family at last. ‘I thought you didn’t want to know the sex.’

  ‘We tried not to look too closely at the scan, but neither Ben nor I could pretend we hadn’t noticed,’ Emma says, colouring slightly. ‘Anyway, it’s time we started looking for a locum.’

  ‘A locum?’ Sally twitches, making me jump. ‘I didn’t think you’d want another vet working here. You’ve always said it would be like leaving your baby with a stranger.’ I can’t imagine running Otter House with anyone else. It doesn’t seem right somehow.

  ‘So you can understand my dilemma. For once, though, the practice has to come second. It won’t matter too much because you’ll still be here.’ Emma’s lips curve into a cheeky smile. ‘I’ll return the favour for you one day. Your clock will start ticking soon. One day you’ – there’s the tiniest hesitation before she continues – ‘and Alex –’

  ‘No way.’ I hold up my gloved hands, which are covered with blood. ‘You know I’ll never have kids.’ I gaze at Emma. ‘I’m not like you. I don’t dream of the big house, the husband and two children, a cat and a dog.’

  ‘You have the cat part,’ Emma points out.

  ‘Not for long, I suspect,’ I say, thinking of Ginge, my rescue cat, and how the knobbles of his spine are almost sticking out through his skin. I’m still giving him the tablets for his overactive thyroid, but he isn’t doing as well as he was when I first took him in after the fire at Buttercross Cottage.

  ‘One day I’m going to have great pleasure in reminding you about this.’

  ‘About Ginge?’ I say, confused.

  ‘About not having children, Maz. I reckon you’ll end up with six,’ Emma says, chuckling. ‘You’ve got two already if you count Alex’s children.’

  ‘Lucie and Sebastian? Oh no.’ I tie the knot and snip the ends of the last stitch in Sally’s skin, aware of her breathing quickening as she begins to come round. ‘They’re strictly Alex’s department.’ He has them every other weekend and for parts of the school holidays, that’s all. The rest of the time they’re with their mother, Alex’s ex-wife. ‘They’re nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Does Alex see it the same way? What if he wants more children – with you? What would you say?’

  ‘He has a son already, a boy to continue the Fox-Gifford family name, inherit the Manor and take on th
e practice.’ He’s done the father stuff. He won’t need to do it all over again with me. I can honestly say I have no desire to procreate and pass on my genes to the next generation, to populate the world with more little Fox-Giffords. I have no desire to create another unhappy family like mine was.

  ‘Okay,’ Emma says lightly. ‘There’s no need to give me one of your killer stares, Maz. I’m not saying another word.’

  Chapter Two

  Once Bitten

  The cutest tabby cat with a white bib is looking up at me from the consulting-room table, her green eyes wide with anxiety and a piece of thread dangling from her lips. I open her mouth, catching a flash of steel at the back of her throat before she wriggles back out of my grasp. Mrs King – another new client – steadies her and I try again, gently easing her jaw open. I reach for the forceps I keep on my tray of instruments, grasp the end of the needle and give it a cautious tug, at which Cleo goes berserk, raking my arms and sinking her fangs into my thumb.

  ‘The poor little thing!’ Mrs King exclaims, as I fight Cleo’s flailing claws. ‘She must be in agony,’ she goes on, while I hang on to the edge of the table, riding the wave of pain that surges up my arm.

  ‘I’ll admit her,’ I decide, watching the hairs on Cleo’s back sink back down flat along her spine, blood oozing from the base of my thumb. Five minutes later, having taken her through to the prep bench in Kennels and slipped a plastic apron over my scrub top and jeans, I remove the needle under anaesthetic, which is what I should have done in the first place. I blame my lack of judgement on a combination of caffeine deficiency and a lack of sleep – I stayed up most of last night with Sally.

  ‘Does she want it back?’ Izzy holds up the offending article. ‘Has Mrs King finished her quilt?’ she adds with a flicker of impatience when I’m slow to reply.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask.’ I perch briefly on a stool in the prep area outside Kennels while I write up the notes, Cleo coming round on the bench beside me.

  ‘I’ll give it a rinse in case.’ Izzy gazes at me. Her complexion is pale and freckled and her short auburn hair is run through with silver threads. Since her engagement to Chris, a local farmer with a flock of sheep and a hefty acreage, she’s taken to wearing mascara and a touch of lip gloss, which makes her look closer to thirty than forty, lucky thing.