Ever by My Side (19 page)

Vaughn looked at me, looked at Shadow, and came back to me.

“Poor bugger,” he said. “I think we’ve got to try. I’ve never done one before. You think you can talk us through it?”

“Of course,” I said, because I was thinking to myself, “Isn’t this what a huge part of school is all about, learning to have faith, learning to trust the written and pictorial descriptions of a technique without actually having had the opportunity to put it into practice under a watchful eye?”

“Good,” said Vaughn into my reverie. “I’m going to call the Stoddarts, let them know what you’ve discovered, and see if they are okay with your plan.”

And as he went off to do so, I began to wonder where the blame might fall if any of this went wrong. Once again I could be about to lose my veterinary license before I even got it.

Vaughn came back, saying, “They want us to give it a shot,” and I remember thinking how this, of all the various diagnostic procedures out there, is not something a clinician can afford to be hit or miss about. Obtaining a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (a tiny quantity of the precious, transparent liquid located around the brain and spinal cord) necessitates the insertion of a long needle into the base of the skull of an anesthetized patient. The risk of accidentally penetrating Shadow’s central nervous system meant there was no margin for error.

Books open to the appropriate pages, I shaved a neat square into the base of Shadow’s skull, performed a surgical prep, and carefully flexed his neck to optimize access to the target.

“Two fingers on the wings of the Atlas,” I read out loud, “one on the occiput of the skull. Imagine a line drawn between the two points and insert the needle at the intersection.”

For an older man, Vaughn had great hands, rock steady in sterile latex gloves, incrementally advancing the needle through fat and muscle, withdrawing the central stylet with every tentative millimeter it poked forward, just in case he had already entered the spinal canal. He was, however, a top-lip licker during moments of intense concentration.

“Apparently you should feel a distinct tactile popping sensation when the needle tip goes through the ligament,” I said, as though nothing could be simpler, as though by saying it out loud I could will it to happen, as opposed to the alternative of Shadow suddenly twitching as the end of a steel spike slid inside his sleeping brain.

The top-lip licking stopped, Vaughn removed the stylet, and stood back as we watched a bead of clear, colorless liquid roll out of the hub of the needle and onto the floor. I swooped in to catch our sample inside a purple-topped sterile tube. Neither of us spoke. We let our eyes share the satisfaction of the moment.

Shadow woke up none the worse for wear and went home to await the results of the fluid analysis. Sadly I had to be going myself—my two-week externship coming to an end, a new term at college about to begin—but Vaughn promised to give me an update regarding my first patient.

It was several weeks later when a card arrived, along with a note on which was scrawled a single sentence:

See, it’s not about the winning. Vaughn
.

It was a thank-you card from Mr. and Mrs. Stoddart and directed primarily at Mr. Vaughn. It turned out the fluid analysis had come back as normal, or rather, no underlying cause of Shadow’s disease was detected. A course of steroids had been tried, with modest success for a few weeks, but when Shadow began to have seizures, the Stoddarts could not stand by and see him suffer any longer and they had him put to sleep. There was a paragraph dedicated to “Nick, the veterinary student,” for trying his hardest to get to the bottom of the problem, for going “above and beyond.” It was just a sentence or two but it hit me hard, gratitude and recognition in spite of failure. It was the first veterinary thank-you I ever received, and with it came the understanding and wisdom of a veteran—what matters most is how hard you try.

Invariably, while I gallivanted around the country, my father would continue to suggest I make use of our cottage in the Yorkshire Dales and avail myself of some
real
veterinary practice.

“It’s all well and good you broadening your horizons, son, but there’s only one place on God’s green earth where you can experience the real thrill of becoming a veterinarian, isn’t that right, Whiskey?”

My father would crank up the northern edge to his fake Yorkshire accent and offer his golden the appropriate visual cue (normally, mouthing a bark), and Whiskey dutifully bestowed his verbal agreement.

“There you have it. Straight from the dog’s mouth.”

There was an element of ritual to this, our playful banter, but at the same time, I sensed a genuine undercurrent of concern. I was approaching the end of my fifth year of vet school and naturally my father was beginning to brood over the future, Wasn’t it prudent to plan ahead, to be putting some feelers out for a potential job when all this training was over? But as yet, his son had failed to visit a practice anywhere near the Yorkshire Dales. Time was running out for me, and perhaps for him too. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work in the Yorkshire Dales, it was, after all, intoxicating, beautiful country, but at the same time, it wasn’t an obsession in the same way it seemed to be for my father. I was getting to the crux of my education—all those seemingly pointless hours in a lecture theater finally starting to have practical meaning. You could feel it falling into place. That “stuff” the teachers had thrown at me from so many different angles had percolated into something meaningful. Suddenly I was no longer that wallflower student playing his guessing game, and I didn’t want to discount any facet of veterinary life or be pinned down or committed to becoming a country vet in one specific part of the country. I wanted to keep my options open, and one day Dad caught me in the wrong mood for our passive-aggressive game.

“You really want me to?” I asked him.

My tone was all wrong, the question coming out like an ultimatum or a concession—if I do this now, you’ll stop bugging me and we can move on. It was as though I put it out there like I might be surprised by the answer, even though my falling in love with the
Dales was something Dad had clearly been craving for years, a desire akin to his old nicotine habit, a yearning that could still stop him in his tracks and cozy up when he least expected it.

“It’s entirely up to you, son,” he said, and I knew he had sensed the change in me, his phony accent abandoned.

I dropped my head, ashamed, realized I was merely pushing against his pull. I had resisted for as long as possible, like a shrewd politician dodging sanctions by evading talks, but eventually, as I had known all along, I would have to give his plan a chance. Maybe it would feel just right and if not, he could never say I didn’t try. Now seemed as good a time as ever for my obligatory James Herriot rehearsal.

I chose the first couple of weeks in the New Year, trying to give myself an unfair advantage, knowing a Yorkshire winter would make it hard to win me over.

I found a practice only a short drive down the dale from our cottage, and on a perfect cloudless morning that brought the bitterest cold I had ever known, I set out down a narrow winding road cut through a valley of frosty white fields. The veterinarian I would be working with was Brian Hastings, a man who hailed from the south of England and spent many years doing volunteer work in South America before finding his niche in Herriot country.

“How are the farmers and the pet owners to work with?” I asked at the earliest opportunity. “I mean, is it still like it was during Herriot’s day?”

Brian hoped I would be able to answer my own question at the end of my two-week stint and promised to remind me of it before I headed back to college. I liked this laid-back approach, his wanting me to find out for myself, not wanting to influence my opinion, but I particularly liked the fact that Brian didn’t fit the
All Creatures
caricature I had expected, what with his hippy hair and unruly
beard. He had more than a hint of Grizzly Adams about him and I couldn’t wait to get out and about and see how he fit in with the locals.

At least 80 percent of his practice involved farm animals and I quickly discovered three features particular to this line of work—endless driving, professional frustration, and physical exhaustion. It seemed as though we spent more time on the road getting from practice to practice than we did actually working on the creatures in need of our services. Farms were spread far and wide, and if we ever got stuck behind a milk tanker or a tractor, we were virtually guaranteed our Land Rover would obtain a geological sample from an adjacent drystone wall when we had an opportunity to pass. Thank goodness Brian knew the unmarked shortcuts, the high roads above the snow line that took us over the top rather than through the valleys. I couldn’t imagine how long it would have taken a stranger like me to navigate my way from farm to farm. By the time I arrived, the farmer would have given up all hope, the sick livestock shipped off to the slaughterhouse. And this proved to be another troubling discovery—the ruthless economics of farming. This was the era of Chernobyl, when British farmers feared a radioactive mushroom cloud might kill their livestock. And there was this little-known disease of cows that appeared to be making them “mad.” The diagnosis and treatment of diseases in sheep and cows and pigs was no less fascinating than caring for cats and dogs, the only problem being that all the doctoring in these cases—the workup, the medicines and the thrill of the cure—was, for the most part, theoretical. If a case of mastitis in a ewe did not respond to the first course of treatment, the animal found itself in the wrong column on a balance sheet—a financial loss, destined to be culled, denied a second chance. I knew this was how it had to be, with the emphasis on herd health, prevention over cure, but it was so frustrating, the feeling
that I could have turned an animal around, but I was denied the opportunity because it didn’t make good business sense. Standing in the back of a dark, wind-whipped barn watching Brian shake his head after examining the blackened udders of an accommodating sheep, I understood this harsh reality of rural practice would always be a major stumbling point.

The final realization came one afternoon after helping Brian remove the budding horns of eighty steers. No matter which way you cut it, farm practice can be grueling and potentially dangerous work. On the plus side, I got a taste for the camaraderie and playful banter that exists between vet and farmer, the way these kinds of physical endeavors and the sense of accomplishment that comes with them bring you together. It had an irresistible appeal and moreover, you never had to worry about getting to sleep at night.

When it came to my initial question, about whether much had changed in this part of the world since Herriot’s day, one particular farm visit provided the perfect answer.

Brian and I pulled into a farmyard of frozen mud, like brown concrete set in front of an isolated stone farmhouse with a sagging slate roof, and when we stepped out of the Land Rover we were greeted by a snapping border collie with a piercing, unrelenting bark.

“Easy, Shep,” said a hefty bald-headed man whose crown and cheeks were seared red and raw by the cold. He walked toward us and offered me an explanation for the dog’s hysteria. “Every time veterinary turns out our Shep thinks he’s gonna lose his knackers I reckon.”

The bald man laughed to himself as we shook hands and Shep went quiet.

“What you got for me, Trevor?” asked Brian as I trailed the two of them toward a distant barn.

“Three of me best ewes started coughing. Reckon we’d best nip it in t’ bud.”

“How long has this been going on?”

Trevor made to reply but was cut off by another round of incessant barking behind us in the yard. I turned, half expecting to see another vehicle pulling up but looked back to see Shep standing on the roof of the Land Rover, legs akimbo, savoring a moment of copious urination.

Brian ran back, cursing and waving his arms, as Trevor and I laughed from the doorway of the barn. Shep ignored all of Brian’s protestations until his bladder was completely empty and the front and sides of the vehicle were stained by a series of irregular yellow stripes.

Brian headed back our way, his face betraying his irritation.

“What’s wrong with that bloody dog of yours, Trevor?”

Trevor stifled a smile.

“Nah then, Veterinary. There’s nowt wrong with our Shep. He just wants to make sure you’ll be knockin’ summat off t’ bill. After all, he just gave you a free car wash.”