Chapter 5
Vivian woke up the next morning and decided to take the dogs with her to work.
There’d been a lot of excitement and a lot of upset.
She knew that they were picking up on her anxiety as well.
So, with Romeo and Juliet in tow, she headed to the clinic early.
Once there, she turned off the alarm, put on a pot of coffee, and let them out into one of the dog runs.
She had lots of space for them here and hated leaving them home alone all the time.
Her two cats never seemed to care but the dogs were a different story.
Every animal needed to know they were loved and looked after, and she felt she’d been neglecting them lately.
She hadn’t been, but that didn’t change the feeling that she could do more for them.
Ever since her business partner wanted out of the practice, it had been quite a challenge to make everything work. She’d been at work for longer, harder hours, and she had a never-ending stream of work, even on the weekends.
So, at least bringing her dogs to the clinic with her kept them near her and provided a chance to feel a bit better about leaving them so much. As soon as the coffee was done dripping, she opened some of the windows to let in fresh air, then headed to her computer.
She booted it up while she sipped her coffee, staring out the window and wondering what kind of a day she had in store.
It would be a busy one, and she already knew that.
She had surgeries and a couple more complicated cases, so one of her techs was coming in to help.
It was something she probably could do on her own, but, just for safety factors alone, it was easier if she had somebody with her.
It was hard to do everything by herself all the time.
Again, that’s where a business partner had been such a huge help.
As soon as she had her computer up and her emails open, she printed off her schedule, still preferring to have something concrete in front of her to study as she looked over her day, so she had a good idea of what was coming.
With the intention of it all working out well, she got up and set up for the first surgery, knowing that this one would be relatively easy, and she could breeze through it fairly quickly. But still, everything needed to be right.
With the first surgery room set up, she went to the second and set it up for the second surgery, as they would be back-to-back.
By the time she was done with that, she poured herself a second cup of coffee.
As she wandered into the main part of the office, her receptionist, Amelia, had just arrived. Vivian smiled at her. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Amelia replied.
She spoke with that same bright, cheerful smile she always seemed to have. Nothing ever really got her down, which was why she was perfect for the position.
It was hard to deal with animals that were both in good shape and those that would never be in good shape again.
It was a hard business. You did what you could for the ones that you could help, but you had little to offer to those others, and Amelia was really good at the emotional aspect of separating out the ones she could help and the ones that she couldn’t.
Amelia grabbed a coffee herself and then sat down at her desk. “Are you ready for today?”
“I should be,” Vivian replied. “I just set up the two surgical rooms in preparation for the first two coming in for surgery.”
“Right,” Amelia noted. “We’ve got that one with the hip joint that’s so bad.”
“Yes, and it’s the new system, a new joint that we’re putting in,” Vivian pointed out. “So, it’s not dicey at all, yet in another way, it’s quite dicey.”
“I think surgery is always dicey,” Amelia stated, looking over at her.
“Agreed, but if we can save a few lives or can make their lives better, it’s worth it.”
“I understand,” Amelia replied. “It just seems as if we’re putting them through so much sometimes.”
“I know, and we try not to do it unnecessarily,” Vivian clarified. “In this case, the dog is young and could easily live another ten years, … pain-free. Otherwise the better solution would be to put him down. Yet I’m not a big fan of doing that for anybody who’s got a chance.”
Amelia smiled at that. “That’s why I work here,” she declared. “If you were putting animals to sleep all the time for no other reason than people couldn’t be bothered to look after them, I don’t think I could show up every day.”
“Yeah, well, if that’s the best we could do, I wouldn’t be here either.” She smiled and then chuckled. “And that’s why I do what I do because these animals deserve a chance.”
Just then, the bell above the door rang, and the first client of the day walked in. It was not her surgery patient, so she went back to her office as Amelia handled the pick up of a medication refill and the pet food they wanted.
Vivian took a deep breath, mentally prepared herself, and got ready to start the day. By the time she had a chance to look up and breathe again, it was well past lunch.
Amelia came over as Vivian was cleaning up the surgery room and frowned, offering, “Let me give you a hand with that.” And, with the two of them, they made short work of it. “What happened to your tech?” Amelia asked.
“She was here for the surgeries, but then had to run,” Vivian explained. “So, I let her go, short of the cleanup.”
Amelia added, “You do realize she does that every time.”
“I know she does, and I need to find somebody else I can trust in a surgical setting,” Vivian admitted, “but not everybody is cut out for this.”
“The last one we had was really good,” Amelia stated.
“She was.” Vivian sighed, remembering the good old days. “Then she got married and had a baby, and her life’s just not the same anymore.”
Amelia chuckled. “That’s true enough, but she’ll want to come back at some point in time, even if just to prove she’s an adult in this world of diapers and formula.”
“And I don’t want to bug her about it because, if she wants to stay home and breastfeed all the time and look after her baby, that’s an honor and a privilege that a lot of women never really get a chance to have,” Vivian explained.
“So, I certainly won’t pressure her to cut short that bonding period. ”
“And yet you need help,” Amelia stated, studying her, “and you are in a position of offering her a part-time position and, for some cases, some on-call time.”
“Sure, but I don’t know that she wants this.”
“We always got along and communicated pretty well, so I could just ask her, if you want.”
“Sure, if you think she might be interested in that, then check it out—but no pressure. If she’s interested, I can always give her a call and talk to her about it more seriously. Lord knows I could use the help.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s the help that you need right now. Sometimes it’s easily found, and right now it’s not,” she pointed out. “So, it’s definitely something to consider.”
“You talk to her, and, if she’s interested at all, then I can see what arrangements we could make.” And, with that, Amelia headed back to the front. Vivian quickly removed her scrubs, then washed her hands and arms, checking the mirror to confirm she wasn’t a mess.
Sometimes she wound up blood-splattered. Although she did her best to keep everything where it should be, it didn’t always work out that way. Satisfied, she headed to her office. As she walked by the reception area, Jackson Russell sat there in his wheelchair, with Sarge at his feet.
She looked at him in surprise. “Hey, how are you doing this morning? I’m surprised to see you here. I was going to check up on you at your house today.”
He looked at her and asked, “Sarge is okay, right?”
She frowned. “He’s okay.” As she walked over to the dog and bent down, he gave her a joyous face cleaning, and she laughed. “What’s concerning you, Jackson?”
“He’s not going to die anytime soon, right?”
“What are you worried about specifically?”
“I had such a close call myself, and I realized I haven’t brought him in for a checkup or anything. He’s always seemed fine, so I just assumed he was. But, as you know, he’s the reason that I’m okay today, that I’m alive and out of there, and I just—well, I feel guilty.”
“So, you want me to check him over just to confirm he’s good to go?”
Jackson nodded.
So she checked Sarge over, and then she brought up his file from the other vet clinic in town, which had closed its doors a while back.
“His shots are up to date, so you’re good there.
” She wasn’t sure whether he just needed to be reassured or what, but she walked closer to Sarge and crouched in front of him.
He wagged his tail, and she laughed. “I’ll tell you one thing. He’s still got lots of love left to give.”
“I hope so,” Jackson muttered, a little bit of a sniffle in his tone, “because I’m not ready to lose him yet.”
“I don’t think that’s an issue,” she told him, looking over at him. “Did you end up with Dagger as well?”
He shook his head. “No, Wilden took him, but I am thinking, you know, wondering if Sarge would be okay with that.”
“They got along really well when we had them together yesterday,” she told him. “Did you see anything that would say otherwise?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, but I don’t want Sarge’s feelings hurt.”
She smiled and nodded, understanding where Jackson was coming from better now. “Sometimes it’s not about feelings. Sometimes it’s about them having a companion as well, somebody to play with, you know?”
He nodded. “That’s what I wondered, whether he would be okay with another friend. I don’t want him to … He’s not a service dog. I don’t want him to feel as if he has to work and look after me all the time.”