The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs: A Novel (25 page)

But I don’t
.

I wait and listen to her breathing. I wait and savor her proximity, her presence, and the faintest smell of apples that seems to be coming from her hair.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine. It’s processing.”

I risk waiting a little longer and reach for the switch.

“So, why is Dr. Cyrus Mills all alone?”

I freeze and the sound of my inhalation, the pause as I hold my breath, fills the tiny room. My index finger hovers. Cloaked in the security of darkness I reply, “I think you get used to being alone, of not needing to share a life, of believing you’re not missing out on much. You let the work take over, let it squeeze out all the rest. After a while you forget to think about any other type of future. I guess hope yields to frustration and eventually you become resigned to disappointment.”

I catch myself before the silence stretches too far. Can’t believe I let that get away from me. “Sorry, that sounded a lot more grim than it was meant to.”

I can almost sense her deliberation.

“No girlfriends? No wife?”

“I’ve known some women in my time,” I say, sounding almost offended.

“Really. Pretty women? Sexy women? Strong women?”

“Um … maybe.”

In the pause I wonder if her rosebud lips are smiling.

“But not the right woman.”

I don’t answer but flip the switch, hoping the red haze will mask any incriminating discoloration of my cheeks. “Here’s the film. Let’s take a look.”

I gesture for Amy to leave. She unlocks the door, steps into the halogen light of the work area, and I follow, blinking and confused, stumbling into the back of her.

“Ah, there you are, Dr. Mills. Been looking everywhere for you. The whiffy man just finished up. Apparently your cyber-net should be good to go.”

I think it might be easier to deal with Doris if she would act embarrassed or appalled to see Amy and I stumbling out of the pitch-black X-ray room. Instead she appears indifferent, as though she is used to her boss’s inability to keep it in his pants. She scurries off to her desk before I have a chance to explain.

I put up the image on the viewing box and the perils of the dark room fade away, to be replaced by a different quandary, the bright objectivity of confusing shades of gray.

“See anything?” asks Amy.

“I see lots of things.”

“Anything abnormal?”

I scrutinize the lungs, the heart, the bones of the spine. “I’m not sure.”

The bark, actually more of a yap, comes from the dog run, and we both turn to find Toby standing at the bars, swaying like he’s had one too many.

“Like father like son,” says Amy, opening the door, bending down and petting Toby’s head. Struck by her confidence I join her, my presence inciting a halfhearted grumble.

“Whoa. Someone’s feeling better. Could you hang on to him a second while I take his temperature.”

Amy holds Toby, and his grumble escalates to a growl until I extract the thermometer.

“Don’t think this dog likes you.”

“He hates me,” I say. “One hundred two point six, almost back to normal. No more ice and cold IV fluids for you.”

“Does this mean he wasn’t poisoned?”

An experienced veterinarian would probably be able to answer this question. I wonder if Amy can tell.

“Ever read any Conan Doyle?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“ ‘Silver Blaze’? The one with the curious incident of the dog in the night-time?”

“Uh-huh,” says Amy, as though everyone has at one time or another.

“Well, Greer told me he woke up because Toby did
not
bark.”

“How could the dog bark if he was poisoned?”

She has a point. Why am I getting hung up on this stupid failure-to-bark thing? Because, like Lewis said, I may not have been blessed with a sixth sense but there may be an advantage to seeing cases from a different perspective. For the past fourteen years, when some small detail niggled me, the least it deserved was consideration, even if I wasn’t smart enough to know where it fit in.

“Do you have to be somewhere?”

She checks her watch. It’s nearly eleven.

“I need to pick up a prescription for my grandpa. And I’m working the lunch shift. But I’m okay for a while, why?”

Once again I am making excuses to keep this woman around, hoping that eventually I might say the right thing. “Mr. Greer and your friend the Chief—”

“The Chief’s not my friend. We happened to go to the same high school, but, given our age difference, I was probably in kindergarten when he was a freshman.”

“My apologies. Mr. Greer and … what … your … vague acquaintance”—Amy gives me an approving nod—“Chief Devito, seem bent on blaming Toby’s illness on Sam because Sam vented about silencing the dog once and for all with rat bait.”

Amy looks confused. “When?”

“My first night at the diner.”

“That’s awful.”

“I’m pretty sure it was an empty threat. But, given what’s happened, I’d like to have proof. I wonder … no … you’ve got stuff to do, I can do it.”

“What?”

I meet her eyes and find a genuine desire to help. “I think Toby’s doing better. I want to prioritize Clint, but I’d hate for Mr. Greer to do something he might regret. If I take another view of Clint’s chest and two more views of her abdomen is there any chance you could look something up for me?”

Amy purses her lips, like she’s puckering up for a kiss. “You’re worried about another awkward moment in the darkroom?”

I don’t do witty comebacks.

“Sure,” she says. “Point me in the right direction.”

Knowing it will take a while to set up the new Wi-Fi on my laptop, I lead her over to the cabinet housing the textbooks and select a few on general and emergency medicine. “I’d look under ‘rodenticide poisoning’ in the …”

She turns me to stone with a look that says,
I think I know how to use an index
.

“You know where to find me,” I say, chastened.

Fifteen minutes later, having placed Clint in a nest of freshly laundered towels in the run next to Toby, I begin reviewing her new X-rays. It’s rare for me to study these cryptic images of disease. Why bother when you can touch and feel the real thing? Hard as I try, squinting, imagining, willing something to leap out of the shades of gray, I still cannot define the cause of Clint’s malaise.

“This might help.”

I join Amy where she has laid out three thick books.

“A few of Toby’s signs do seem to fit for rat poison. But according to this, he should be much sicker by now.”

I inch closer, careful not to make physical contact, my eyes darting over the text, sucking down visible information.

“It’s hard to remember all these details, you know.”

“Sure it is.” She doesn’t sound convinced.

I run my fingers down a list of differential diagnoses, other toxins that could be mistaken for rat bait poisoning. And then my finger stops. There, to my surprise, is the answer to why Toby had not barked.

“We need to make Toby vomit,” I say sounding ridiculously frantic.

Amy looks confused. “Okay. How do you want to do it?”

Suddenly I have no idea except the certainty that I should. No excuses for not knowing this one and no way to look it up in a textbook with her standing beside me.

“You want to try a little hydrogen peroxide solution?” she asks.

Is this a trap?

“Of course, I just don’t know where Doc Cobb kept it.”

If she suspects my flawed knowledge of the practical aspects of the job I can’t read it in her face as she begins opening cabinets and drawers. And it doesn’t help that she finds it before me.

“You got a syringe?”

I head through the back door to the examination room and return with the biggest one I can find.

“Come on, Toby’s a terrier not a Great Dane.”

Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have invited her back here. I say nothing. Use your brain, Cyrus. If the biggest is appropriate for a Dane, then a tiny 3-cc syringe should be about right for a terrier. I go back, grab one, and hand it over. Amy approves and, with confident dexterity, loads it with a small volume of the peroxide solution.

“Here you go.” About to give me the syringe, she snatches it back. “You going to tell me why you want to make him throw up?”

“Not yet,” I say, taking the syringe as we round on Toby. My attempt to get near his head is greeted with what, for Toby, are tepid, mouthy lunges at my hands.

“Here, let me,” says Amy, kneeling down, soothing Satan’s sidekick as, with an unnerving ease and a magician’s sleight of hand, she has the contents of the syringe unloaded into his lip folds and down his gullet. “Grew up with dogs. Help me up?”

I reach down, grab her hand, pull her to her feet, but she refuses to loosen her grip, inspecting my wrists, my forearm, and finally the front and back of my hand.

“Don’t tell me you read palms?” I ask.

“If I did I’d never guess you were a veterinarian.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because your hands are wrong. When did you graduate?”

“Fourteen years ago.”

“Plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time for what?”

“Plenty of time to get bitten, to get scratched. There’s not a scar, not a blemish, not a mark anywhere on your hands or forearms. How can that be, working with animals for fourteen years?”

For a moment, I feel like I have a flock of hummingbirds trapped inside my rib cage. I can’t read her features. Disparaging? No, I don’t think so. Perhaps I should keep my mouth shut, but there is something about this woman that makes me want to stop running from the past, stop living this facade. “Dead dogs don’t bite or scratch.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m saying that before I came back to Bedside Manor the only animals I’ve ever worked on have been dead. Yes, I graduated vet school, I’m a qualified veterinarian, but I trained to be a veterinary pathologist not a general practitioner. As you can tell I skipped the lecture on how to make a corpse puke.”

I brace for an acerbic comeback, but Amy surprises me with a look that feels more lenient than judgmental, a look that encourages me to go on. Relief and the weightlessness of a secret shared suffuse me. “It was my mother’s fault. She was a perfectionist, and back here in this house she haunts me. I mean that in a good way. Even if I’m not sure what I’m doing I’m always striving for excellence. I hate not knowing enough, not being practical enough. Ruth Mills taught me never to do mediocre.”

“And what did your father teach you?”

I am open, ready to vent, but I hold back. “Indirectly, he taught me it was dangerous to get too attached, to care too much.”

She tips her head back, narrows those brown and blue eyes, and with just enough humor to give me hope says, “Really? And how’s that working for you?”

And that’s when Toby comes to my rescue.

“What the …”

“Chewed macadamia nuts,” I say, squatting down to examine a large pool of vomit at my feet. “They’re poisonous to dogs. I noticed them on the list of poisons causing clinical signs similar to rat bait poisoning. Last night, I was over at Greer’s house being interviewed about delivering Denise’s baby, and he had a big bowl of macadamias sitting out on a coffee table. Now it makes sense. Toby barks every morning because he wants his breakfast.”

Amy smiles, catching up.

“And Toby doesn’t bark if he’s already eaten his breakfast. I like it.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s brilliant.”

“Not really.”

“No, it is,” she says with a sassy smile, “for someone pretending to be a veterinarian.”

And that’s when Lewis charges into the center of the room and, nearly stepping into the puddle of vomit, cries out, “Tell me that’s from the dog and not one of you two.”

“And that’s when you walked in,” I say, joining Lewis on the floor. I insisted he give me a second opinion by examining Clint. It’s time for him to share some of my guilt for not discovering what’s wrong with the poor dog.

“I’m pleased you’ve found someone you can open up to,” he says, lifting up a lip, pressing his thumb into Clint’s upper gum, releasing his thumb, watching as the tissue blanches white and blushes pink.

I wonder if he feels slighted, like I chose Amy over him.

“When’s she coming back?”

“Around three,” I say. “You think I should have kept quiet?”

Lewis places his fingers on Clint’s lower jaw, gently pries open her mouth, and takes a good look at the back of her throat.

“Did you mention the license?”

“Course not,” I say, though part of me wishes I’d got that off my chest as well.

“Good. If she’s any relative of Harry Carp she’s not going to say anything. Like I said, I’m glad to see you let your guard down. You should do it more often. Folks prefer someone who’s flawed over someone who needs to be a perfectionist.”

“Hey, I opened a crack, if that, with one person, in private. The rest of Eden Falls can take me on face value.”

Lewis glances my way, squeezes the lymph nodes around Clint’s throat, causing her to swallow. “It’s not your fault, the way you come across.” Like an experienced chiropractor he begins to manipulate Clint’s neck, up and down, side to side, gently flex, gently extend. “Why the long face? You know exactly what I’m talking about … aloof. Like Dr. Minch only less round.”

“Please,” I say, rising to his temerity, “there’s a big difference between being antisocial and preferring my privacy.”

“It’s one thing to be private.” The old man acts casual as he slips on his stethoscope. “It’s another to be a recluse.”

“Just because I don’t see the point of inane conversation, doesn’t make me a recluse.”

“Okay, then answer me this. For the past fourteen years what have you been doing with yourself when you’re not at work?”

The fact that I need to think about the answer only adds to my frustration. “I consider myself something of a movie buff .” Saying this out loud only affirms my status as a total geek.

“Okay. What else?”

“I read.”

“Let me guess. Journals, textbooks.”

“I travel.”

“Yes, where?”

“All over. Peru. China. Egypt. Iceland.”

Lewis raises an index finger, requesting silence as he hangs on the rhythms and breezes inside Clint’s chest. He removes the earbuds and slings the scope around his neck.