Monsieur le Vet

by Sylvain Balteau

  Yes. It is. Of course it is.

  ‘Er, OK, if you think so.’

  ‘Was he stiff before this?’

  Of course he was stiff before this.

  ‘Yeah, he was.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Maybe two or three years?’

  ‘Two or three years?’

  Did you hear it, the menace in my voice?

  ‘How stiff?’

  ‘Well, he’s had trouble getting up in the morning.’

  ‘He’s been dragging his back legs when he walks, he’s had difficulty getting up stairs and into the car?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘For two or three years?’

  ‘Yeah, at least that.’

  ‘Has he been on any medication?’

  Say yes.

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘Fine. We’ll do that X-ray then.’

  I give the dog an injection of anti-inflammatories and another of a morphine-type drug.

  ‘What are they for?’

  ‘For the pain. He’s in pain.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  I don’t feel like shouting any more. I feel like weeping. I want to be hard and unpleasant, but I just feel like dissolving in tears. To be absolutely clear, when I called him a ‘great awkward stammering lump’ I wasn’t being entirely fair. This young man isn’t a complete idiot, far from it. He doesn’t have the excuse of suffering from learning difficulties. He’s just a normal bloke. Someone like you or me. Someone you might pass in the street.

  I pick the dog up in my arms and carry him to the radiology room. I switch the developing machine on, position the plate and put on the lead-lined apron, thyroid shield and protective goggles.

  ‘Woah, it’s like a suit of armour!’

  ‘Yes, to protect against X-rays. Leave the room, please.’

  What was that smart-arse remark about? Is he taking the piss or what? Doesn’t he realise that his dog is probably going to die? That I’ll almost certainly have to put him down? Do I look as if I’m in a mood for jokes? It’s not as if I’m being exactly friendly or even polite, except when I address him with a professional courtesy that gets me out of having to talk to him more directly.

  I put the old dog on his side, make the necessary adjustments. When I speak gently to him, he wags his tail. Feebly, timidly, with all the enthusiasm that his pain allows. In the silence I stroke him gently. He doesn’t dare turn his head, and he watches me out of the corner of his eye with a look of frustrated love, the look of a dog who wants to leap into my arms but quite simply can’t.

  I call his owner back in. He needs to be with the dog while I go to develop the X-rays, to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself by trying to do anything acrobatic like clamber down from the table.

  When I return to the radiology room, the only sounds as I wait for the X-ray to develop are the hum of the developing machine and the mewing of a cat that I operated on during the night. Neither of us says a word, and the great lump sways from side to side, looking ill at ease. He can’t bear a silence.

  ‘Euuggh, must be horrendous being on call all day with those cats on heat screeching for a tom.’

  ‘I operated on that cat last night. I removed her uterus, ovaries and three decomposing kittens. She’s not on heat, she’s all alone, lost and in pain.’

  That should shut him up. No?

  ‘But still, moggies on heat, a total nightmare, huh? Tee hee.’

  Finally the wretched X-ray is developed, which means I don’t have to find an answer. I glance at it against the infrared lamp. Just as I thought. I’ll show him a normal X-ray first.

  ‘So. This is a normal dog’s spine. Here are the vertebrae, the pelvis, the ribs and the stomach. You can clearly see the rounded edges of the vertebrae and the processes, these bony projections. So this is all good. Now, this is Nestor.’

  On hearing his name, Nestor wags his tail. Or tries to.

  ‘Nestor’s spine is non-existent. Over the past two or three years, he’s developed crippling arthritis. The bone spurs have fused, the sacrum has fused with the lumbar vertebrae, the lumbar vertebrae have fused with the thoracic vertebrae, he has zero mobility left in his spine, he’s got a pickaxe handle where he should have a spinal column. He’s been in pain for two or three years, and he’s been suffering in silence. Then a couple of days ago he suffered a severe herniated disc. He’d probably had minor ones before, but this one caused a compression of the spinal cord that’s so serious that the nerve impulses can no longer travel along it, and Nestor can’t move his back legs. He’s paralysed. Either because of the pain, or because of the compression of the nerves, or both. I’m pretty sure it’s the compression though.’

  I say it quickly. Firmly. Clearly. I look him straight in the eye. His eyes are brimming, and great tears are rolling down his cheeks. He’s snivelling, breaking down, this overgrown kid who I want to beat to death with spinal bone spurs, who I want to comfort and hug tight. He blows his nose noisily, sniffs and splutters.

  ‘But what can you dooooooo?’ he wails.

  ‘He’s your brother’s dog?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘I suggest I keep him in till tonight. That will give time for the morphine and anti-inflammatories to take effect. If he can stand up tonight, then it’s the pain, and we can try to manage it. If not, there’s no point in kidding ourselves. Surgery can’t help, and this is no life for him. We’ll have to put him down.’

  Ten minutes later, Nestor is in his cage. It’s two o’clock and I’m starving; there were flashes in front of my eyes as I explained the X-ray to the lad. I wait for him to drive out of the car park before I leave. I have no desire to encounter him again. While I wait, I put all the orders and bills to one side, and I make a fuss of Nestor, cradling his great brave German shepherd head in my hand as he enjoys the feel of my fingers ruffling his fur, the sound of my whispered words of comfort.

  When I leave the surgery the kid’s still there, sitting in the driving seat of his car with the door open and legs outside, holding his head in his hands. I stop to see if he’s OK.

  ‘I’ve broken dooooooown!’ He’s wailing again. ‘I’ve got a flat battery, I haven’t got a mobile, I live twenty kilometres away!’

  You don’t say.

  I get the jump leads (you can find anything at this surgery), put my vehicle bonnet to bonnet with his, and get it started. I watch him as he sets off, just to be sure he doesn’t plough the car into one of the plane trees that line the road.

  I loathe him, and I love him. I’m quite sure I was once as dumb as he is. By tonight his dog will be dead. I just hope that the dog’s owner will have grown up a bit.

  *

  There wasn’t a miracle.

  When I went back to see him at seven o’clock that evening, Nestor was waiting for me in his cage. Sitting up. I got him out of the cage, and tried to help him walk a few steps. It was no use. The nerves were destroyed and he had a herniated disc with major compression, there was no doubt about it. I put Nestor back in his cage. He was wagging his tail furiously, with all the enthusiasm of a dog that was no longer in pain, of a dog who’d discovered that the world could be a different place, goddammit.

  I called his owner to tell him. His brother and father confirmed that they wanted him put down.

  So I went back to the kennels, where Nestor’s tail was still drumming out an ode to unconditional joy. I stroked him, I inserted a catheter, talking to him all the while, whispering a stream of foolish nothings that filled him with delight. All that dumb canine devotion. I got out a tin of cat food, the luxury stuff. He started devouring it, delirious with joy. It was as he pushed his muzzle deep into the tin that I injected him, that he collapsed.

  He fell asleep, his tail wagging ever more feebly, his jowls festooned with flecks of cat food.

  I talked to him, but he couldn’t hear me any more. No more suffering. No more happiness. No more pain. No more wild enthusiasm. No more love.

  I
euthanised him, and I listened as his heart stopped beating, until the last fibrillation.

  Then I took a big white bag and I put him into it.

  Pirouette

  Listen.

  A heart beating.

  A litany, a simple sound.

  Listen.

  So as not to see, so as not to hear.

  So as not to be aware of their tears.

  Big kids, old people.

  Terrified, or agonised.

  Impotent.

  Listen.

  A heart beating.

  My stethoscope, eyes closed.

  Listen.

  Don’t cry, don’t go under.

  Run away, run or hide.

  Far away from these people, from the here and now.

  Cared for, fussed over.

  He’s going …

  A heartbeat missed.

  The rhythm’s going, the tempo weeps

  Of rebellion, one last clarion call.

  Fibrillation.

  The sound fades slowly. The blood ebbs away.

  Now there’s nothing

  But this heart, this rhythm, this beat, this pulse.

  I am gone, he has left me,

  I am sitting close beside him.

  They are here

  But this lonely heart

  Beats only for me now

  Only I hear its music.

  Only I hear the coma.

  For a few minutes, a few beats,

  I gather up this last breath,

  This fugue.

  Softly.

  Silently.

  The final witness.

  Without pain, without suffering,

  Far away from all these people, all these children, all these teenagers and their parents.

  His last pirouette

  Was for them.

  His last heartbeat

  Was for me.

  ‘He’s gone.

  It’s over.’

  Kids of all ages

  It’s just on eleven o’clock in the morning as I remove my arm from the cow’s birth canal.

  ‘Uterine torsion, 270 degrees, irreducible, nothing to be done. We’ll have to open her up.’

  In the minutes that follow, old men, neighbours and other curious onlookers roll up to enjoy the major spectacle of a caesarean. The setting is perfect, with a clear, transparent light, clean straw and a gentle breeze. The cattle are lowing, the birds are singing, the smell of the cows mingles with the aroma of damp grass drying in the September sunshine. Cleaning, disinfection, incision: I ask the latest old codger to arrive to pass me the metal box containing my surgical instruments.

  ‘Without touching anything inside it, please.’

  He’s stuck his great fingers inside the box, but – caught in the nick of time – he doesn’t touch anything. Hmmm, OK then. Tall, stiff, his face bronzed by the sun under his cap, brown trousers and shirt of an indefinable blue, he starts mucking about with the farmer who’s standing beside me, leaning his weight against the heifer.

  When I next turn round, the 85-year-old is miming making a surgical incision in the farmer’s stomach, a little smile on his face, his eyes creased with wrinkles of happiness.

  Sweet.

  The scrape of metal. I turn round quickly. The old boy’s still pretending to cut the farmer open, but this time with my scalpel in his right hand.

  I explode.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  He protests in disbelief:

  ‘But I wasn’t really going to do it!’

  He’s trying to justify himself. Now I don’t believe it.

  ‘I don’t give a damn if you cut him open!’

  I’m speaking very clearly.

  ‘But …’

  He’s like a child.

  ‘Listen, my instruments are sterile, and your hands are filthy. Are you crazy or what? That goes in the cow’s stomach, goddammit!’

  In a flash he puts the scalpel back in the box. Just like that. Genius. That’s all sorted then.

  After that he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move a muscle except to anticipate my movements when I turn round to get a needle or a clamp.

  Kids! Octogenarian kids!

  The calf in the hearth

  It was one of those freezing cold late afternoons in April. A Sunday, typically. A long way from home, a long way from the comfort of my living room, a long way from the central heating. A long way from springtime.

  That morning you could almost have believed that spring was in the air. Then came the drizzle, fine, penetrating and persistent, to shatter the illusion.

  ‘He was born this morning, I saw his mother was licking him, so I came back to the house. When I went back at about five, he wasn’t moving. I brought him back here in the tractor bucket.’

  The calf is stretched out, his head thrown backwards and his eyes rolled back. He’s shaking. No pupil reflex, heart OK. Not yet twelve hours old and already suffering from hypothermia. My thermometer registers his temperature at 33.5 degrees.

  He hasn’t moved.

  ‘He’s dying of cold, your calf.’

  A bit like me, but worse. Now that’s what you call diagnostic skill.

  ‘I’m going to need a bucket of hot water, really hot, hot water bottles, containers of scalding water and straw, to start with.’

  He’s not dehydrated, but his blood pressure must be low. Everything must be low. A saline drip with sugar. I add corticoids and an antibiotic to the bottle as a precaution. A little vitamin E, just because, and an intravenous hypertonic saline solution administered rapidly as a bolus dose. Belt and braces.

  The guy comes back with a bucket of water. I plunge the bottle into it along with the line to two IV solution bags, so that the liquid can stay in the hot water as long as possible before reaching the calf ’s jugular. The farmer watches me with the look of a newborn calf when it sees a cat for the first time: curious, fascinated even, but utterly dazed. As he would later tell me, he’d never heard of an intravenous sugar solution. And all my endless lines, all screwed into each other! A veterinary take on make-do-and-mend, and one of the great charms of the profession. Thinking on your feet, falling back on your own nous and resources, cobbling together DIY contraptions, whatever it takes to save a life!

  He’s also brought me two bottles of scalding water. Of course, as if three litres of water will be enough to warm up a 50-kilo calf. I don’t say anything, just position them against the infant. I have twenty minutes to kill in any case, the time the sodding drip will take. Nice and slow. If I can just get the needle into the wretched jugular of a calf suffering from low blood pressure! Which doesn’t show any reaction, more to the point.

  Twenty minutes during which I can explain to the farmer that by a hot water bottle I mean at least 40 litres. He must have some containers lying about somewhere, surely? That the drugs and drips are all very well, but what the calf really needs is to warm up. That his mother can’t have licked him for very long, that he’s been left soaking wet in the freezing rain and mud, that he probably hasn’t suckled, that he might have a slightly underactive thyroid, which is common hereabouts. If he survives, we’ll give him some iodine and selenium. Yes, yes, lots of vitamins will be a good thing, but it’s not vitamins that will save him, Monsieur …

  Twenty minutes later, I struggle to stand up again, my legs seized after kneeling down for so long. The drip’s done, the calf is still dying, still frozen.

  The farmer, meanwhile, continues to watch me, wringing his hands. Evidently the message about the hot water bottles hasn’t got through. Too delicately phrased, doubtless. So I get to the point.

  ‘It would be good to get him inside, too. Could we get him in the garage, beside the boiler? Or is there a fire lit in the house?’

  He watches me, eyes wide with terror, as I go back to the car to write out the pointless prescription spelling out the waiting time needed before the meat can be consumed from a calf that will die tonight.

  H
e stands there waiting.

  ‘Have you got a fire lit?’

  ‘Oh, yes, would you like a coffee?’

  OK. I’m strong, and I’m a vet.

  I lift the calf up in my arms. He dangles like a corpse, but a corpse that’s breathing. He’s a dead weight.

  The farmer rolls his eyes.

  As I head for the house, he trots along beside me. The calf weighs as much as a donkey, but I’m a vet, I’m a man, I’m strong, I smile casually, I hold my breath. It’s bloody miles back to the house! It must be at least ten kilometres! And the house must be at least 500 metres higher than the cowshed!

  A couple of minutes later, the farmer opens the blasted door to the blasted house and slips inside in front of me, with an air of he-who-obeys. Another door. A proper airlock before the inner sanctum, the living room with its great brick fireplace, as big as an inglenook almost. Sweeping the poker out of the way with my muddy boot, I deposit the calf on the hearth.

  There’s a dead body on Madame’s hearth. The dead body of a calf. But it’s breathing!

  ‘So it’s going to die then?’

  ‘More than likely, Madame, and if he survives there will no doubt be after-effects, but if he stays outside he’ll certainly die. He’s suffering from hypothermia, he has to warm up, it’s too cold in the cowshed.’

  By now Monsieur has virtually disappeared under the table. A magnificent, immaculately polished oak table, on a superb and flawlessly clean tiled floor. An impeccably ironed table runner. Gleaming copper ornaments. Not a speck of dust on the fireplace. Little slippers in the re-entry. The trail left by my muddy boots. The dead body of a calf breathing on the hearth. It’s that breathing that I cling on to.

  It would have been better to do the drip here, in the warm.

  Neither of them dares breathe a word. I brazenly exploit my vet’s aura to claim this space for the newborn. Here, in this world that’s about 200 kilometres away from the cowshed. At least.

  And I slip away.

  The calf did pull through in the end. The farmer still talks about it. I haven’t seen his wife since. The calf spent a night in the warm. Their niece visited them that evening, a few hours after I’d left. She suggested taking some photos of the calf in the hearth, but he wouldn’t have it: he didn’t want any souvenirs of that dead calf in his house.