Chapter 21 #2
“You’re blue.” I bit back a snicker.
His cheeks flushed.
A snort giggle escaped me. “Did you have a Braveheart re-enactment after baseball? I’ve never heard of that kind of kink, but to each his own, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s Blu-Kote.”
“The old fogie wound treatment stuff? Do you use that?”
“No.” He wiped ineffectively at his face. “This morning, a horse owner poured it on the hoof while I was looking at the abscess before I could stop him. The mare kicked it all over me. It won’t come off my skin, and it ruined my shirt.”
“Oh.” I compressed my lips to stop the laughter bubbling. A head duck helped while I threw my oversized purse on the client sofa. I reached for the bottle of alcohol off the shelf above the sink and grabbed a few cotton balls. “Hold still.”
“Stop laughing.” He waved at me when I got close to keep me away.
“I’m going to help you.” I saturated a cotton ball in alcohol and wiped his cheek. It didn’t come off easily since it had set into the skin. I rubbed harder.
“Oww.” He tried to bat me away. “Are you trying to peel off my skin?”
I held up the cotton ball to show the blue coming off. “Stop being a wuss. How many clients did you see like this?”
He put the laptop on the counter and crossed his arms. “A few.”
“You need to come up with a better story than some horse kicking it all over you.” I kept rubbing.
“I’m not going with kink as my story.”
I laughed so hard I had to step away from him and put down the cleaning items. I rubbed my eyes. “You’d have the ladies wondering.”
“I’d rather not be known as the Blue Man of the bedroom.” His lips twitched up just a bit, but he didn’t laugh.
I doubled over laughing with a hand across my stomach. “I got most of the blue off.”
He rubbed his face where it was red from my scrubbing. “Are you staying or not?”
“I’m here for now. Vinny’s back in school. You got your baseball player back.” I replaced the alcohol and sat on the client sofa. “Since I own half this place and owe you money that I never signed my life away for, I’ll work here until we get that sorted out.”
“That’s not a commitment. Are you here for a month, a year, or what?”
“I don’t know.” One of my knees popped up and down. “Whether or not I work here or elsewhere is for me to figure out.”
“I have a business to run.” He clasped his hands together in front of him and bowed his head for a moment. In a cool tone he said, “I can’t have you quitting a few days into it. Should I have you sign a contract, so I know what I’m working with?”
“I’m pretty sure we’re equal owners here.”
“Equal owners? All right. Listen, Ms. Equal Owner, I’m grateful for you to stay instead of paying off the debt and walking away.” He didn’t look grateful. He looked like he wanted to yell.
“Would it be easier if I paid the debt and left?” I offered.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t not say it. Seemed like you wanted to say it.” I was being annoying. I was needling him out of habit, and I couldn’t help it. This wasn’t how I behaved at work.
“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.” He clenched and unclenched his fists.
I forced my leg to stop popping up and down. “Seems like you might like it better if I wasn’t here. Milly said you called me an annoyance that was bad for business. She made it sound like this was your pillow talk last night.”
“What?” He scowled. “I never said that. It’s better if you’re here. Helping. Working. It’s better for business.”
“Okay.” I crossed my legs and waited. “How do you propose we handle the debt?”
“Roland paid ten percent of his monthly salary toward it.”
“Interesting.” I wasn’t sure I could afford that right now.
“Here’s the work schedule.” He handed me a sheet of paper. “I changed your hours so that you can get off in time to pick up Vinny. I have some weekends I need off to do baseball games with the kids.”
In horror, I gazed at the paper with our names and a jumble of times for the upcoming weeks.
I hadn’t worked five days in a row since I was in vet school.
Usually, I worked three to four twelve hours shifts and then I got three to four days off.
How was I supposed to work five days on and every other Saturday morning?
And, at the same time do overnight emergency every other night? Was he insane?
“I don’t… No.” It came out before I could stop it. Why did saying it out loud make me feel like an even bigger jerk than I’d just been?
“What do you mean, no?” He stiffened as if gearing up for a fight.
“I’m not doing any farm animals. None of this on-call stuff.” I crossed my arms.
“This is a mixed practice. That means small animals in the hospital and big animals on farms. Sometimes barn cats or dogs. I can’t handle it alone.”
“Then you’ll have to cut back or hire help who’s trained to see the large animals. That cow was a fluke. It confirmed to me it’s not for me. I refuse to die by a flying horn or hoof.”
“You’re doing it.”
“It’s not happening.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to do pregnancy checks on the Lyman’s farm. I won’t be suturing up any of the horses up the road or waiting on-call at Southern Pines for equine events. I won’t be pulling another calf.”
Josh’s cheek muscle twitched. “This is how we do things here. Every vet pitches in.”
“You mean that’s how my dad used to do things.
He’s gone. I am not him. I’m trained to see dogs, cats, and small furry pets.
I’m best at emergencies and surgery. If that’s a problem, then maybe it is best I don’t work here.
We can figure out a repayment plan. I’ll get a job somewhere else, maybe up the road at the emergency clinic. ”
He pushed his glasses up his nose, which was sexy as hell and made him look so much smarter. “How about you see dogs and cats during the day? We will have to share the on call.”
“I’ll do small animal on-call only,” I said stubbornly.
“You’ll do whatever calls, at least until I can find us help with the farm calls.” He stared at his copy of the schedule. “I’ll handle day farm animal calls for now. I’ll have to be in the hospital sometimes for my clients with smaller pets.”
I let out a long breath, closing my eyes while I hunted for calm. Every part of me wanted to argue.
Becky knocked and stuck her head in. “Sorry to bother you two. Dr. Chomping, he vomited again.”
“Give me a sec, Josh.” I rose to go take care of Fisher.
Poor Fisher was laying in an upper kennel with a big pile of puke in front of him.
I grabbed gloves and a roll of paper towels before I pulled him out of the cage.
“What’s going on with him?’ Josh asked behind me.
I pulled out the soiled towels and started cleaning up the pug’s front end. “Do you have the lab work, Becky?”
She handed it to me. I stared at the numbers. “We need to ultrasound him.”
Josh pointed at a small room that housed the imaging equipment.
A part of me was surprised they had an ultrasound. When I saw the machine, I was doubly surprised by the high quality. Becky and Josh positioned the pug on his back in a padded trough. I doused his belly in alcohol and scanned.
“He’s got a bleeding splenic tumor,” I announced. “If they want to save him, he’s going to need surgery. Based on his blood work, I’ll need to give him a transfusion. Do you have a donor and supplies for that?”
“No,” he said. “We can get them for the future. For today, let me see what I can do.”
I spoke to Fisher’s mom who wanted his spleen removed. I warned her if we couldn’t get a transfusion going before surgery, she might have to drive him to another emergency clinic that had blood. She agreed to leave him with us to sort it out.
Moments after I left her, assuming she’d depart out the front, she burst through the door into the back treatment area. “Dr. Hurst… Dr. Hurst!” She hurled herself against Josh. “I can’t afford this. He’s going to die.” Tears fired out of her eyes like a sprinkler on full blast.
Josh gave her a squeeze and untangled himself from her. He reached for a tissue box I hadn’t noticed on the counter and handed her one. “Now, you know we’ll take care of Fisher. We can work out repayment like we have in the past.”
“Really?” She blew her nose loud and wet into the tissue.
Josh gave her a charming, confident smile. “We got this. Dr. Chomping is the best in the state to care for him.”
“God bless you.” She jumped in to hug him again. Before leaving, she gave me a stare of uncertainty mixed with gratefulness.
Josh followed her up front and reappeared moments later. “Marty will drive over to Raleigh to get blood.”
That seemed like an awful imposition. “His owner can drive him there, instead.”
“I think he’ll do better here with you, don’t you?” Josh conveyed quiet confidence in me.
Something about his faith in me squeezed my chest. I said a garbled, “Yeah.” Then I waved for Josh to follow me back to the exam room to continue our private chat. Inside, I said, “I’ll do the surgery right after we get the blood transfusion started. Can Becky handle that?”
“Marty can help you and Becky can go up front.”
I wished for Sarah. If I could convince her to move here, could we pay her what she deserved? Probably not.
Josh sat on the edge of his original chair, shoulders tight and back ramrod straight. The hint of blue along the roughness of his jaw almost made me smile again.
I glanced down at the complicated schedule. “I can’t commit to this schedule today. I need to look it over and think about it tonight. What do you need from me today and tomorrow?”
“Today, you can deal with this surgery and appointments here until you have to pick up Vinny. I really need for you to be on call tonight, if that’s possible. I’ve done a lot of days in a row and need a break.”
“All right. I’ll be on call.”
“You’ll see whatever calls for now?” His persistence bordering on bossiness was kind of hot, but compromising with him was so painful it felt like I’d swallowed a bunch of needles.
“For now,” I managed to say. “Why are you obsessed with being off tonight? Do you have a hot date?”
His cheeks flushed along the top.
“I’m going to take that as a yes.” A wave of something sharp and complicated hit me, but I pushed it down. “What about tomorrow?”
“I don’t have a date tomorrow. I scheduled farm calls in the morning, but I’ll open it all day for me to go out and see stuff. You can be here at the clinic for appointments.”
“I have one problem with overnights, in addition to not being qualified to do the farm animals.” I rocked my head back and forth. “Two problems, actually. First, I don’t feel comfortable going alone to see emergencies at night.”
“Why? We always go out alone.”
I shifted in the chair and crossed my arms. “I’m a woman. I don’t feel safe alone with unknown people at night. What if someone wants our controlled drugs or decides they want to hurt or rape me? What if they get upset when I ask them to pay, and they pull a gun?”
“We’ve never had that happen in…” He stopped talking. His brows furrowed. “I never thought about it. I’ll see if we can have one of the techs on call with you. I’ll also get you a panic button to carry.” His expression darkened further. “We’ll get you registered for a concealed carry permit class.”
“Second, what happens with Vinny if I get called in to see a pet in the middle of the night? I don’t think it’s smart to wake him up to go with me.”
“You can call me.”
“For what? You’ll go see the patient? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of rotating who’s on call?”
“If you get a call, I can go over to your place and sleep on the sofa while you’re out. I’ll be there for Vinny.”
Him sleeping on my sofa, then possibly staying for breakfast, or even giving Vinny a ride to school seemed too much of an intrusion into his life.
“Milly will escalate me from an annoyance to scheming bitch. That doesn’t mean I’m authorizing you to have a sex-athon at my house with her or.
..” I didn’t finish my thought, which was the word “me.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I won’t bring someone along while I babysit.”
“You better not.”
“Maybe if you get a call, you ask me about them, and we’ll just have you go out to the farms we know? Maybe we change our overnight to only be able to provide that service for regular patients.”
“Okay. Would be ideal if I wasn’t going alone but I understand for now.” What the hell was I saying? I wasn’t good. I didn’t want to be on-call at all. I didn’t want to see a bloated cow or colicky horse in the middle of the night.
Knock. Knock.
Marty called out, “We’ve got an appointment coming in.”