She didn’t blame Evelyn for her losing herself and she didn’t regret loving and living with Evelyn, but now she wanted to reconnect with her true self. It would be a long process, but she had to start somewhere. So she’d taken the first two steps toward that goal a year ago. She’d retired from her job at the Bangor Savings Bank, and then she’d adopted Dingo.
She couldn’t lose him. He was too big a part of the new life she was building, not to mention being her closest friend and ally in a quest she hadn’t shared with anyone but him. She simply couldn’t lose him.
“Let’s go in and get you all better,” she whispered with determination as she took him into her arms and walked into the Perry Veterinary Clinic.
Chapter Two
Amanda Carter enjoyed working at the Perry Veterinary Clinic. She’d been happy at the Maine Veterinary Medical Center in Scarborough, south of Portland. She’d worked there since she’d graduated from veterinary school and she’d learned much. When Douglas Perry had offered her partnership in his small clinic in Bangor, however, she hadn’t hesitated. Opening her own clinic or becoming partner in an established practice was a career move she’d been planning on making. Moving to Bangor also brought her even closer to the vast forests she enjoyed exploring alone with her thoughts and her backpack. She felt more at home in nature than in any other place and nature was everywhere around this town.
She hadn’t known Doug well when he’d made the offer. She’d met him in a professional conference and they’d bonded as the two most reserved people attending the event. They found they had similar practices and beliefs and after the convention, they’d called each other several times to ask for advice on complicated cases. When Doug found himself overwhelmed with the rapid growth of his clinic, he’d asked her to join him as a partner.
Amanda still didn’t know Doug all that well even though she’d been working at the clinic for a little over a month now. In fact, all she knew about him was that he had a wife and a son she would guess to be about eight or nine years old. Not that he’d talked about them. She’d seen the family picture sitting on his cluttered desk. That minuscule window into Doug’s private life was still a lot more than he knew about her own life outside of work. That was the way she wanted it. They seemed to be in silent agreement, in fact, that the only thing it was necessary for them to talk to each other about was their patients’ needs.
He didn’t know, for example, that today was her birthday. This year the seventh of July would go by without awkward hugs or kisses, without cake that would go to waste, without a gift she might have to return to the store.
Amanda wasn’t made for embarrassing social settings of those sorts. And neither was Doug. They were made for sevenths of July like today, their schedules filled with yearly exams, routine vaccinations, spaying and neutering, and three emergencies. They’d managed to handle two of them, but one they’d had to refer to an emergency veterinary hospital because the clinic was not equipped for surgeries that complicated. And all of that before eleven a.m. on a Friday. They didn’t have time for birthdays.
Amanda entered Exam Room Number Three. It was her favorite of the four examination rooms because of the large poster displayed on one of its beige walls between ads for flea and tick control treatments. The poster showed a gigantic Great Dane looking down on a tiny Chihuahua, with the caption “Never be afraid to say what you really feel.” The caption was appropriate for a vet practice, but Amanda smiled every time she saw it because someone, probably Doug, had covered the other caption. She’d seen the poster somewhere else and knew that underneath the white correction fluid on this print were words that revealed what the Chihuahua really felt—“Fuck off.” The perfect Chihuahua thing to say, she thought. When she entered the exam room today, however, she didn’t even look at the poster.
Her attention was immediately captured by the woman standing by the exam table where a basenji sat, held in trembling hands. She was touched by the woman’s obvious affection for her animal and the sincere concern she saw in her eyes, but those were qualities she’d seen a million times before in her career.
There was something else about her. Something in her eyes and overall presence. She was a strikingly beautiful, stylish, mature woman, but that couldn’t be the only thing that was keeping Amanda’s gaze on her. Not even Professor Jones, on whom she’d had a powerful and long-lasting crush when she was studying veterinary medicine, had affected her this way. A warm tingling energy coursed through her body, as if this woman, this incarnation of grace and beauty, had been sent to her for reasons she couldn’t explain yet. As if the universe had sent her a birthday present she hadn’t known she wanted.
“Doctor Carter, this is Ms. Allen,” Isabelle explained from the other side of the exam table, “and this here is Dingo. Dingo had a little accident in the park and injured his leg.”
The spell she was under having been broken by the vet tech’s voice, Amanda turned to face her and nodded, hoping she hadn’t been staring at Ms. Allen too long before Isabelle intervened. She then turned back to Ms. Allen and extended her hand, willing it not to tremble. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Allen. Doctor Amanda Carter. I’ll be examining Dingo today.”
“Nice to meet you, Doctor. Please fix him, will you?”
Ms. Allen shook Amanda’s hand and the contact sent another wave of unfamiliar and unexplained electricity through her veins. It took every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep her composure. She’d never been nervous in an exam room before. She’d never felt out of control. Never been so aware of her Caribbean blue scrubs under her white lab coat and of her boring ponytail. She’d always been businesslike, the ever-efficient, calm, and collected Doctor Carter. She had to be that person again now. For Ms. Allen and for Dingo. She took a deep breath, pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with her index finger, and started examining Dingo.
She carefully avoided glancing at Dingo’s owner as she took his temperature, listened to his heart, and probed his entire body with the help of Isabelle, who was holding him. Ms. Allen stood at the end of the exam table, whispering words of encouragement to the dog. Her voice was low and soothing and though it was helping Dingo remain calm, it was having the opposite effect on Amanda, who thought she could feel the woman’s breath and the vibration of her voice on the skin of her arms and hands as she went on with the examination.
Somehow Amanda was able to go through every step of her thorough checkup. She cleared her throat before she spoke in an attempt to calm her nerves. “The good news is that nothing else seems to be wrong with Dingo,” she said without looking at the woman. “Something is definitely wrong with his leg though. We’ll need to take X-rays to know exactly what the problem is.”
“I see. Yes, that makes sense. Do you think it’s bad, Doctor?”
Amanda heard the distress in her voice and couldn’t resist looking at her and offering an encouraging smile this time when she spoke. “Don’t worry. We’ll most likely be able to get Dingo back running as if nothing had ever happened.” The sigh of relief she heard come out of Ms. Allen made her realize she hadn’t been breathing that well either. She couldn’t resist inhaling and exhaling deeply.
Amanda had never been good with people, but she’d loved animals all of her life and she hated seeing them suffer. She’d never had a pet of her own as a child because of the unpredictable nature of her home and didn’t have one now because she didn’t spend enough time at home and she didn’t think it’d be fair, but she could still imagine how bad the pain must be when the animal that was suffering was a part of your family. She’d always been able to relate to that anguish, but she’d never felt it in such a physical, almost symbiotic way as she was now.
“Dingo is young and I’m convinced he’ll recover,” she continued. “The question now is what will need to be done to get him there. The X-rays will tell us if we can fix him here with a splint that will hold his leg in place while he recovers, or if he’ll need to go to Brewer’s Veterinary Hospital
for surgery.”
“Oh my god,” Ms. Allen exclaimed, alarmed by the possibility of surgery.
Amanda instinctively covered the woman’s hand with her own to reassure her. She’d seen similar reactions in clients who panicked thinking of the cost a surgery could represent, and she understood them. Some people simply didn’t have thousands of dollars to pay for their pet’s surgery. She had a feeling, however, that paying for surgery wouldn’t be a problem for Dingo’s owner. Amanda didn’t know much about fashion, but she guessed the fancy clothes Ms. Allen had worn to the dog park hadn’t come from Walmart. The luxurious light blue scarf she was wearing probably cost more on its own than Amanda’s entire outfit. No, money was certainly not the issue. Ms. Allen’s concern was more likely about the process and the pain Dingo would have to endure as well as the possible complications surgery entailed.
“Let’s take it one step at a time, okay?” Ms. Allen nodded her understanding, so Amanda went on. “Right now we need to give Dingo a mild sedative so we can take the proper X-rays. That’s the first step. It might take some time. Would you like to go home and wait for us to call you when we know more?”
“No, I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind.”
Amanda smiled. She would have been surprised if she’d agreed to leave the clinic without Dingo. “Of course. I understand. There is a coffee machine in the waiting room. Please take a seat and we’ll call you as soon as we can take a look at the X-rays.”
“Thank you,” Ms. Allen said with a weak voice and the first smile Amanda had seen on her face. It was a tentative smile, still tainted with worry, but it was enough for Amanda to know she was grateful and enough for her to want nothing more than to see an even lighter, untroubled smile light up her features. A smile that Amanda would have elicited in her. She hoped she would get that chance once she looked at Dingo’s X-rays.
“You’re welcome. Isabelle, will you please show Ms. Allen the waiting room?”
“Yes, right this way,” Isabelle answered as she opened the door and escorted her out of the exam room.
Left alone with Dingo, Amanda sighed heavily. She missed the closeness of Dingo’s owner, but she was finally able to focus all of her attention on the dog. The little beast looked up at her from the exam table, panting with pain and using the wrinkles on his forehead to question her. “Don’t worry, pup. I’ll take good care of you. I’m not completely useless, you know.”
She scratched Dingo’s head affectionately and took him in her arms before she added, “You do have a lovely mommy, though, don’t you?” Dingo licked Amanda’s face, which she took as his way of agreeing with her assessment. She took him out of the exam room to the back of the clinic where Isabelle helped administer the sedative that would allow them to take X-rays of his injured leg.
She hoped with all of her heart that Dingo wouldn’t need surgery. Part of that hope came from wanting to make things easier on him and his owner. Another, more selfish part, came from her wish to keep treating his leg at the clinic over the next few weeks, which would mean she would see his owner again. Maybe enough times to figure out what to do with that beautiful birthday present the universe had sent her.
Chapter Three
“Thank you, Barb, but I can handle this on my own,” Joyce declared, trying to reassure her sister over the phone as she sat in the waiting room. The last thing she needed was for Barbara to come and join her. Sadly, she couldn’t trust her sister to be the source of comfort she needed in her current situation.
“It doesn’t sound like you’re handling it, Joyce. You’re crying.”
“I was crying, I’m fine now. See, you helped from a distance,” Joyce replied, rolling her eyes and hoping the sarcasm wasn’t obvious in her voice.
“I can’t believe you’ve gone ahead and complicated your life with this animal. Now not only are you crying over his broken leg, but that whole little adventure in the park will cost you a fortune. Evelyn would never have let that happen, that’s for sure.”
And there it was: the real reason why Barbara would be useless in comforting her through Dingo’s ordeal. She hated the idea of owning a dog or any kind of pet even more than Evelyn had. Her disdain for animals made it hard to believe they’d been raised in the same home. She’d tried to dissuade Joyce from adopting a dog from the time she’d learned about her plans until the very morning she’d gone to pick up her puppy. What Joyce needed now was someone who would sympathize with the pain and anxiety she was going through because Dingo was injured, not someone who would go on and on about why she should never have burdened herself with a dog in the first place.
“Listen, I really don’t need this right now. Evelyn is dead. She can’t keep me from having a dog anymore and neither can you. I live my own life now. And my life includes a dog named Dingo. I love him and he’s injured and I’ll cry over that as long as I want to, damn it! I’m going to hang up now. Do not come, you hear me?”
Before Barbara could answer, Joyce hung up. She hoped she hadn’t raised her voice too much, but the young woman sitting across from her in the waiting room was staring at her and the Maltese sitting on the woman’s lap growled at her. “Some people don’t get it, do they?” she said to the woman, hoping to elicit her compassion.
“Oh, I know what you mean. This one here is my baby,” the woman replied as she scratched her Maltese’s neck. Joyce smiled at her as her heart broke thinking of how her own sister had been incapable of giving her the support this stranger had managed to offer with one simple comment. She dropped her cell phone into the depths of her purse and got up from her seat to go make herself a second cup of coffee.
She didn’t like the fact that she’d been forced to speak to Barbara that way, but she was proud she’d been able to stand up to her. She’d had a few similar outbursts recently. They were part of the process of taking back control of her own life and letting her true self come out of its shell. It wasn’t easy and it left her exhausted every single time, but it was necessary. She put skim milk in her coffee and with a sigh went back to the chair she’d occupied for over an hour.
As she waited, she tried to focus on the framed art of cats and dogs that tastefully covered the walls of the waiting room and adjacent reception area of the clinic. They brightened the beige walls and proved that she was not the only person in the world who loved animals as much as she did.
She went back to the photo she’d been obsessing over since she’d sat in the waiting room. The image was of a basset hound laying his head on a bandaged front leg. Basset hounds were probably the most pitiful looking of dogs, she mused, with those sad, droopy eyes and those long, floppy ears. The dog in the frame appeared so afflicted by his injured leg. Joyce’s heart tightened again as she imagined Dingo in pain. She took a deep breath and recalled Doctor Carter’s reassuring words. “Let’s take it one step at a time,” she said, repeating the phrase to herself over and over again until she calmed down.
Joyce squirmed in her seat and pressed a hand to her aching back as she focused her thoughts on the woman caring for Dingo. She must be new in town. Doctor Perry had always examined Dingo and administered all of his routine vaccinations until today. She looked so young Joyce thought she might have just graduated from veterinary school. Her youth, however, didn’t keep Joyce from instinctively trusting her with Dingo. Dingo had seemed to trust her as well, keeping still and quiet for her, something he’d never done for Doctor Perry. Doctor Carter’s words had been reassuring, but even more than what she’d said, her presence had been like a soothing, enveloping coat of comfort for both Joyce and Dingo.
Joyce smiled as the image of Doctor Carter flashed in her mind. Under the professional appearance of her crisp white lab coat and dark-framed glasses, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail and the freckles on her round face betrayed the looks of a young, geeky, adorable woman. How could anyone not trust a woman like Doctor Carter? She embodied trustworthiness and credibility better than anyone Joyce had ever met before. She would take good
care of Dingo. Joyce had no doubt about it. She only hoped that Dingo could remain under Doctor Carter’s care and wouldn’t need to transfer to Brewer for surgery.
“Ms. Allen?”
Joyce was startled by Isabelle’s voice. She’d been so absorbed in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the vet tech approach her. Isabelle was now standing a few feet from her. Joyce turned to her. “Yes?”
“Doctor Carter will see you now, if you want to follow me.”
Joyce automatically readjusted the silk scarf around her neck, grabbed her purse, and followed Isabelle, her heart racing as they walked to the exam room.
Chapter Four
“Dingo’s still in the back,” Amanda offered in response to the look on the face of his owner, who was obviously confused not to find her dog in the exam room.
“How is he?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
“He’s doing great,” Amanda said quickly to reassure her. “He behaved like a champ while we took X-rays and he’s still lightly sedated as we speak. We’ll take care of his leg while he’s still in that relaxed state, but first I wanted to talk to you about what we’ll do next.” Ms. Allen nodded and Amanda realized she hadn’t yet shared the information she was probably most interested in. “The good news is that he won’t need surgery,” she added hastily, producing an instant sigh of relief from her new favorite client.
“Oh that’s really good news. Thank you, Doctor.”
Amanda had hoped the time she’d spent apart from Joyce Allen would have weakened the effect the woman had on her, but as soon as the silver-haired woman entered the exam room she’d gone back to the nervous wreck she’d been earlier. She swallowed painfully, her mouth as dry as the nose of Mrs. Anderson’s poodle, who suffered from severe allergies.
Dingo's Recovery Page 2
