Vetted Further

by K'Anne Meinel

  “Impressive,” Jeremy piped up, meaning it.

  “It’s lovely. Even more lovely than you said. Allyssa has been showing me what she does on the computer and has promised to teach me a thing or two. After seeing what you two do for advertising, I have a lot to learn.”

  “Well, she is good at what she does. I know for a fact she keeps the clients very well informed,” Fiona answered, smiling at her wife, who was blushing at the praise.

  “We better get this restocked and ready for your next voyage into the upper reaches of Oregon,” she teased to hide her red cheeks.

  With the Dorceys helping and their eagerness to find out more of how they ran their operation, they soon had the camper restocked, inventory balanced, and orders ready to be sent in after the weekend.

  “Wow, you do things completely different than I do, but I can see it works for you,” Jeremy admitted. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a large animal practitioner. I prefer my patients to be smaller than me…much smaller.”

  Fiona laughed at him. “Sometimes I do too. Getting kicked by a cow or a horse is dangerous, and the resulting bruises are not fun.”

  “Have you ever broken anything?” Bess asked, sounding worried.

  “Nope…knock on wood,” she said as she closed a cabinet in the cabin and leaned over to knock on the wood.

  “That would be terrible,” Allyssa agreed, putting her notes on the desk for Monday’s orders.

  “I’m going to repark the camper,” Fiona announced. She and Allyssa had discussed it and agreed it should be one of the first things people saw when they came over that last hill onto the ranch. The now familiar RV was very distinctive, and the local paper had played it up since no one in this part of the state had ever seen anything like their truck. It was great advertising for the practice.

  “Can I see the inside?” Jeremy asked, sounding like a groupie. “Aren’t those the forty-six-inch Michelins? You know, they did a custom suspension on these with Fox shocks. The tanks hold two-hundred-fifty gallons of fresh water, and the fuel tank holds one-hundred-fifteen gallons?”

  Allyssa tried hard not to roll her eyes at her wife, who was amused. Both she and Fiona knew these facts about their find very well.

  “God, a full bathroom with a separate shower, a washing machine, and a dryer. It has in-floor heating,” he told his wife reverently. “Check out the Bose surround sound system!” He enthusiastically cranked the sound up, causing some birds to take wing from where they had been perched on the barn. The horses in the corral twitched their ears as the sound echoed through the valley. “You can spend weeks in this without needing anything. It has a twenty-thousand-watt lithium-ion battery bank!” he shouted over the music. They finally pried him out of the deluxe truck when Fiona feigned how tired she was from her full day.

  They had a barbeque dinner and enjoyed the other couple’s presence. They told them stories and answered questions about the practice and what to expect over the next two days. Allyssa had forms ready on clipboards with pens attached by a chain, so many people could fill out their information at the same time. The meds they commonly used were laid out and ready for the two vets, who would be taking turns using both the addition in the office as well as the operating theater in the barn to handle the influx of patients.

  “Do you think you can handle the paperwork while I help both vets where I can as an unqualified veterinary assistant?” Allyssa asked Bess over a beer they were enjoying on the hot evening. She’d found citronella plants to place around the porch and keep the mosquitos at bay and had discovered they would repel other bugs as well. She’d have to bring them indoors for the winter to keep them alive.

  “The way you have things set up, you bet,” she enthused, glad she could be of some assistance. She had no desire to help the vets cut open people’s pets. “I don’t know about the computer though…” she began, hesitatingly.

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of the data input,” Allyssa assured her.

  “Are you going to use the clips you ordered?” Fiona asked, amused.

  “Absolutely not,” Allyssa said, embarrassed.

  “What clips are you talking about?” Bess asked, confused, wondering if she had missed something.

  “Should I tell them, or will you?” Fey asked, grinning.

  “You can,” Allyssa answered, flushing and looking away.

  “Allyssa got this great deal for the practice—paper clips shaped like bones. In theory, they were great, but we realized after she started using them, that when you clip them to paper, the inner circle looks like a penis.”

  “What?” Bess asked, alarmed.

  “When you can see both pieces, the paper clip looks like a bone, but as soon as you clip them to paper, the inner piece of the clip looks like a penis.”

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, trying to hide her laughter as Jeremy and Fey joined in.

  “Well, they looked great in the ad,” Allyssa grouched, her mouth twitching at her mistake.

  “Of course, they did,” her wife assured her, nudging her to get her laughing.

  “I don’t know how we will get rid of five thousand of those things,” she added.

  “Anyone with a child should get a few,” Bess put in and they all agreed. They would let the parents think the clinic was giving out cute bone paperclips and hope there would be no repercussions when they realized the clips looked like penises.

  “What a bonehead mistake,” Allyssa quipped, which had them all laughing.

  During their friendly banter intermixed with business discussions, things turned personal. Bess asked, “Do you two intend to have children?”

  Allyssa wasn’t sure what to answer, and her face flamed in her embarrassment.

  “Well, we are trying but no results yet,” Fiona put in, gesturing with her beer, which nearly caused it to slosh out of the bottle.

  “Trying is the best part,” Jeremy teased, trying to ease Allyssa’s obvious embarrassment. He was annoyed by his wife’s unthinking question, feeling it was just too personal.

  They all shared a laugh.

  After Allyssa showed their company to the guest room, she returned to the master bedroom. After Fiona locked up and joined her, Allyssa sat down musingly at the table in the bathroom and stared at her reflection. Rising, she held her shirt to her stomach, imagining what it would look like slightly rounded in pregnancy.

  “You look beautiful,” Fey said as she looked in the bathroom. She came in, her boots making a clumping noise as she went from the carpeting of their bedroom to the tile of the bathroom.

  “I do not,” she immediately denied, embarrassed to be caught out again. She seemed to have been embarrassed a lot this evening. “I was wondering…” she left off.

  “What you would look like pregnant?” Fey asked, amused. She was pleased that Allyssa wanted to go first. She knew she should have since she was older, but she was more worried about having an income. Being a pregnant vet with the schedule she kept was going to be a feat…someday. Some of the work she did required her to use chemicals and medicines that wouldn’t be healthy for a pregnant woman, and she had also wondered about that.

  “Well…yeah,” she admitted. Then she grabbed a fluffy towel and shoved it up her shirt. It didn’t work well since the folds of the towel showed through, but they both got the idea as they shared a tender look in the mirror. “I guess we’ll have to try again in my next cycle.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Fey assured her, taking her in her arms from behind, which was easier when the taller woman sat on the stool to look at her wife in the mirror.

  “I just wish it had taken the first time. I don’t know why–”

  “Shhh,” Fey stopped her, putting a finger across her wife’s lips. “We knew it might not work the first time. We are in no rush. Hell, it doesn’t happen every time with the horses or cows I impregnate.”

  Allyssa started to laugh as they both realized how that sounded.

  “I mean, the
horses and cows I artificially inseminate,” she corrected herself, but that sounded odd too.

  “Well, I’m not a heifer or a mare, and I hoped I would be different.”

  “No, you are not a cow or a horse, but you are mine,” Fey said huskily as she started to nuzzle her wife’s neck affectionately.

  “Want to conserve water and shower together?” Allyssa offered.

  “Gladly,” Fey answered and started pulling her wife’s shirt over her head, the towel dropping out easily.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Allyssa got up early the next day to cook breakfast for everyone, and Fey went out to check and recheck everything in the operating rooms. Her wife had laid everything out yesterday, but she needed to familiarize herself with how everything was set up. Jeremy rushed out and joined Fiona when he heard them stirring.

  “You’ve really got a great partner there. Bess wants nothing to do with the animal side of things. She’s a good receptionist, just not on the caliber of Allyssa,” he admitted ruefully.

  “Allyssa had the college courses, but she also has innate good sense,” her wife, the doctor admitted. She saw where Allyssa had set up operating trays with fresh knives and other instruments they would need, stacking them with thick towels in between the sets, so they stayed clean and ready for their patients. They had a limited supply of each instrument, but she’d prepared enough to get them started and they could wash and sterilize between patients. She’d learned how to do that back in Denver and based on their experience with the clinic last year, she realized they needed more tools and began fitting extra tools into their budget whenever she could. She’d set up trays for both the surgery in the addition and the surgery in the barn.

  Breakfast was a hurried affair because they all knew, despite the posted hours and the scheduled appointments, people would be arriving early. Rex was commanded to stay on the house porch. They locked the doors since a lot of people would be coming and going and they would be otherwise distracted. They were soon ready to greet the first of an avalanche of patients and their owners.

  Allyssa trotted back and forth between the theaters, cleaning up and organizing where she could, keeping Bess caught up, and generally making herself useful. She forced sandwiches on the two doctors when they didn’t stop at noon for a break. Some of the surgeries ran overtime, so they were running a bit behind, but they caught up as easier ones came along in the afternoon and they were even left waiting when a couple didn’t show up. The first day was an absolute madhouse, and they were all exhausted when they cleaned up a final time and collapsed into bed after a hurried dinner.

  The second day was worse but only because they were already physically tired. One or two of the patients turned nasty. Not happy with the strange location and smells, they tried to attack the doctors, and Jeremy got a bad bite on his arm from one patient. Still, the overall clinic proved to be enormously successful, even more so than the one they had held last year.

  They were very glad to see the end of their hectic clinic on Saturday night. Bess had taken several calls for Fiona to come out but had deferred them a few days because of the clinic. The stack of data input that Allyssa had on her desk was enormous. Bess felt bad until she saw the young woman was looking forward to all the work. She understood the blonde relished the challenge of helping Fiona make a success of the business. They counted, recounted, and then recorded the total receipts, and Allyssa cut a check then and there for their help as agreed.

  “Whew, I was going to suggest we drive back tonight, but I’m just too tired,” Jeremy admitted as they headed back to the house for a meal. He hoped they would have a barbeque again. He was starving despite the sandwiches Allyssa supplied them with.

  “Who is that?” Bess wondered as a car came flying over the hill, nearly becoming airborne on that last hill.

  “I don’t know, but they shouldn’t be driving like that,” Fiona began angrily as she turned around to give the person a piece of her mind.

  An obviously hysterical woman flew out of her car and called for help. They could only make out the words bite and snake, and they all hurried to help her carry an enormous German Shepherd into the clinic. Allyssa was glad they had cleaned up the clinic in preparation for future appointments as a matter of course and hadn’t left the cleaning for another day because of their fatigue. Everything they needed was at hand as the two doctors moved in to help the dog.

  Allyssa and Bess kept the obviously upset woman from getting in the doctors’ way as they worked feverishly to save the dog’s life. They got the story from her. The dog, named Khan by its owner, had been acting weird. The owner and her husband had rescued him a mere two weeks ago. They wanted him to grow up with their children, the youngest a ten-month-old toddler. He had been fine with the children and they trusted him.

  That day, they had all been enjoying the sunshine. The children were playing out back with their other dogs and Khan, who gave no sign of what was to come.

  “He was a rescue. That worried us, but he accepted our family despite the mistreatment and injustice he had received before we adopted him. We were his third home after they confiscated him from his original owners. The others just couldn’t handle him because he’s so big. Since we had two other shepherds, we thought we could take him. He seemed to return all the love we gave him,” the woman told the two women, who were listening avidly. “They starved him, and he had broken ribs from being beaten. They abused him so bad,” she explained. “He is so big that few can control him, but he was trying to understand. He’s very smart. You can see him thinking, figuring things out.

  “He grabbed little Charlotte and threw her across the backyard with a jerk of his head. I thought he was going to ravage her with his teeth. He looked so angry and fierce,” she relived what she had seen, staring absently into space as she recalled the scene. “Charlotte is only ten months old and barely walking. She couldn’t fight back, and he seemed to know that.

  “After he calmed and I scooped up Charlotte, who was hysterical, he wouldn’t let us approach the back steps where she had been playing. I know how she liked to play in the shade from the porch. He was growling and kept moving back and forth to prevent us going in. After a while, he just collapsed,” she sobbed as she remembered. “It was then my husband saw the rattlesnake. It was a big one, at least as big around as my arm,” she flexed her arm to show them how big the snake had been. “He must have been struck by the rattler. He prevented Charlotte from getting bitten!”

  “My husband chopped off the rattler’s head with a hoe as it coiled and turned to strike him. It was over four feet long. We didn’t know if there was hope for Khan. I had seen the vet’s van around the county and heard about the clinic, so I rushed Khan here, hoping he would still be here.”

  Listening avidly, both Allyssa and Bess ignored the woman’s assumption that the vet was male.

  “I remember you from the news,” she commented, looking at Allyssa, who nodded. “Isn’t your wife a vet too?”

  “Yes, that’s who is in with Doctor Dorcey,” Allyssa told her.

  “Oh, wait. If this is Doctor Herriot’s practice, then who is Doctor Dorcey?” she asked, confused.

  “That’s my husband. We were here to help with the low-cost inoculation, spaying, and neutering clinic this weekend,” Bess jumped in. “I’m Bess Dorcey,” she introduced herself.

  “Holly Winters,” the woman answered, calming as she told the brave story of Khan.

  “I’m Allyssa Herriot, and you have two of the best vets working on Khan, so don’t you worry,” the blonde assured the woman.

  “That snake was so big, and it could have gotten Charlotte. Khan saved her life! We have to save his….”

  “I’m sure they are doing the best they can,” Allyssa told her, wondering if it were possible to save the large dog. She knew snake venom was dangerous. She hadn’t known there were rattlesnakes up here, although Fiona had warned there could be. She explained that was why a lot of cowboy boots went up the le
g so far. She had naively thought that snakes, particularly rattlesnakes, didn’t come up this far since they got snow at this altitude. Fiona had explained that they hibernated when it got cold, but yes, they could get them up here so long as they could find food.

  After a couple hours, Fiona and Jeremy came out of the back of the cabin where they had been working feverishly on the shepherd. They both looked very serious. “Mrs.…” began Fiona carefully, looking at the woman sitting on their couch.

  The woman looked up eagerly, but her face fell at the two doctors’ expressions. “Winters,” she weakly supplied for them.

  “Mrs. Winters, as I’m sure you know, Khan is gravely ill. I don’t give him high chances of surviving. We are going to closely monitor him, but I don’t want to give you false hope.” She tried to be diplomatic, but she didn’t want the woman to think they were miracle workers. Some patients died. That was a fact of life. “Could you tell me what happened?” All she and Jeremy had heard was rattlesnake bite. The rest had been garbled as the hysterical woman cried. They’d quickly gotten to work because time was of the essence, and the dog’s life hung in the balance.

  Telling the story again seemed to help the poor woman, who held out hope for the miracle Fiona had hinted at. Holly Winters knew it had taken too long to drive out here, but she’d had to try. As she began to retell her story, it was different from what she’d told Allyssa and Bess. Her story was more detailed this time but still compelling. After she finished with a sob, Allyssa took her hand, squeezed it, and put her arm around the poor sobbing woman. “He doesn’t deserve to die. He saved Charlotte’s life!”

  “All we can do is try. We must wait and see what happens. If he didn’t get much of the venom in him…” Fiona’s voice trailed off. She was feeling useless and was unable to continue.

  “Is he in pain?” Holly asked, worried.