A veterinary nurse
There’s an electric candle on the front desk, and a sign in front of it that asks visitors to be respectful when the fake flame is lit.
You don’t have to spell out everything. That’s why they write ‘P.T.S.’ in the schedule when they have to do this, and why the shadow of this particular P.T.S.
has been looming over everyone at the practice all day.
It will be done last thing, once the final patient has been seen.
That way, Nimesh won’t have to put on a brave face for anyone afterwards.
‘Are you OK?’ the nurse asks, after that last patient has left.
Nimesh takes a slow breath. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘It’s not about me.’
Her boss wants to solve everything. To save everyone. It affects him, when he can’t. Most vets have to do this at least once a day. Sometimes, half a dozen times. How could that not take a toll?
They arrive late, a small bell above the door tinkling at their entrance.
First, Seb, beanie hat and flannel jacket, a leather lead in one hand.
Then Jasper, hobbling slowly across the threshold on legs that seem as if they’re made of wood.
He totters, his head bowed, waiting patiently to be pointed in which direction he should go.
‘Our favourite boy,’ the nurse says, giving Jasper a fuss.
And he is. Jasper is a minor celebrity at the practice.
And though she’s only ever known him as an older gent, he was still spry and puppyish when he started coming in a few years ago, still able to levitate his way into your lap if he thought you might be hiding a gravy bone or a stick of venison jerky.
Jasper’s owners are film people, so he’s often stayed with Nimesh for weeks on end, hanging around reception while they work, acting as a handsome assistant to the nurses and the admin team.
He rests his heavy head in her cupped hands now.
She promised herself she wouldn’t cry this early.
‘Where’s Clara?’ Nimesh says to Seb.
Seb’s voice is distant. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘How’s Maisie?’
Nimesh grips his friend’s shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
It feels strange to imagine Nimesh with a personal life.
To imagine him younger. If they subscribed to the concept of dog years, Jasper would be somewhere in his eighties.
Nimesh has told her about the day they brought him home, how Seb had laid newspaper over almost every inch of his parents’ flat, and the cheeky little newcomer had still sniffed out the only corner of bare carpet to use as a toilet.
She’s seen pictures of him back then. He looked like a mop head.
Now he’s finally caught up with his features, earning his snaggle tooth, his old-man eyebrows, the white streaks in that wizard’s beard.
‘Shall we?’ Nimesh says, keeping his voice as steady as he can.
It was Nimesh who inserted Jasper’s microchip, who doled out his wormers on a monthly basis, who X-rayed his leg when he got it caught in a fence chasing a squirrel and who pumped his stomach for socks and chocolate and, once, a whole ream of tinsel.
Since Nimesh moved here, Jasper has been only an occasional patient, appointments coinciding with weekend visits.
Still, it was Nimesh who’d diagnosed his arthritis, who’d first noticed the clouds forming in his eyes.
Jasper’s cocktail cabinet of medicine prescriptions had been penned in Nimesh’s hand.
His hand shakes a little, now, as it rests on the small of Seb’s back and leads him down the corridor, the dog hobbling alongside them.
The nurse follows behind at a respectful distance.
‘Thank you for doing this,’ Seb says, to Nimesh. ‘It couldn’t be anyone else.’
Nimesh says nothing, because he can’t. He opens the door of the examination room, and they head inside.
Jasper stands vacantly on unsteady legs until Seb scoops him up.
He holds Jasper close, squeezes him tightly.
Jasper’s at home here. How strange for a dog, to spend so much of your life visiting the place you’ll come to die.
It will be weird, Nimesh says. Imagining this room without him ever in it.
Seb simply nods, then hands Jasper over to Nimesh for one last cuddle.
It means a lot. It all does. They take their time.
Then, when they’ve taken all the time they can, they place Jasper within a blanket on top of a mat on the metal table between them.
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Nimesh says.
Seb scratches Jasper behind his grey-tufted ears.
The dog is already laying his chin on the table, gazing upwards.
The nurse steps forward. She knows that Nimesh is more than capable of inserting an IV, but she also knows how hard this is for him.
So, it’s she who takes the lead, locating a vein near Jasper’s paw.
She steps back. Jasper is stoic. He hasn’t taken his eyes off his owner.
Seb crouches, kisses him between those wiry eyebrows. He stays crouched, stays close.
‘We’re ready,’ he says.
On the front desk, they’re lighting a candle that cannot be snuffed out.
Away from that, in here, is a familiar tableau.
A man and his dog. Nimesh prepares the needle, takes a deep breath.
It doesn’t hurt. Seb doesn’t cry. He merely stays at Jasper’s level, talking quietly to him, burying his face in the fur on his neck.
A moment is all it takes. Seb cradles Jasper’s head, and he’s once again a younger dog, a doe-eyed puppy.
Then he drifts away, and there is no Jasper at all.