The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs: A Novel (7 page)

“I am,” I say, accepting his injectable snake oil as I make for the examination room.

“Oh, and Cyrus,” says Lewis. “Did you meet Doris this morning?”

“Doris?”

“Our receptionist.”

Ah, the second employee on the payroll. “There was no one here.”

Lewis does not look surprised. “You’ll meet her later. She must have turned up when you were in with Mrs. Silverman.”

“Where is she now?”

“She had some errands to run. We were quiet. She’ll be back later. Oh, and she had a couple of messages for you.”

I wait a beat.

“Well, she said there were two messages on the practice answering machine.”

“She didn’t tell you what they were? She didn’t write them down before she left?”

Lewis laughs at my naïveté. “When you meet Doris, you’ll understand.”

I say nothing but think,
Can’t wait
.

Back in my exam room I’m greeted by, “You took your time.”

Whoa, tough customer.

“Sorry, just a few more questions, Mrs. Silverman, and I’ll have you on your way.”

Mrs. Silverman rolls her eyes, and suddenly I’m struck by her misplaced aggravation and Lewis’s words of wisdom, and it is all the encouragement I need to harden my inquiry.

“You don’t feed Kai regular dog food, do you?”

“Why?” she barks.

I will myself to keep going. “Because I’m betting you feed him something you concocted yourself, some kind of homemade diet.”

Ethel Silverman fastens her eyes on mine. “I checked with his breeder first,” she says, sounding way too uptight. “He said it would be okay, so long as I added a vitamin supplement, especially calcium for growing bones.”

I’ve never played poker. Maybe I should take it up. Inside a fist-pump is brewing because this is exactly what I am looking for. Perhaps I can do assertive after all. “So what
does
he eat?”

Ethel sucks on her fake teeth, as though she can almost taste the answer. “Cottage cheese and cornflakes. It was meant to be temporary. Dog’s a finicky eater.”

“Well,” I say. “I very much appreciate your honesty, ma’am, but here’s the thing. Kai’s diet is all wrong—too much calcium, too much cereal, and it’s causing a deficiency in an essential mineral—zinc.” I gesture to Kai. “That’s why your dog’s skin looks more like a crocodile than a husky.”

Mrs. Silverman pulls out a practiced sideways glance. “How do we treat it, bearing in mind he’ll turn his nose up at almost everything?”

“Simple,” I say, “stop the cottage cheese, the cornflakes, and the supplements and begin feeding Kai regular dog food.”

“You’re not listening. I told you he don’t like regular dog food.”

She eases back in her chair, letting her chin fold into the tired wattle of her neck, and smirks.

What to do? I should have a decisive comeback. Instead I’m dumbstruck. I go with a sweaty forefinger and thumb stroking my naked chin, hoping this might pass as meaningful contemplation.
Veterinary Dermatology
didn’t say anything about the patient with a sensitive palate and an owner with an attitude.

Eventually I ask, “You try dry or canned food?”

“Dry, of course. Canned food’s messy, bulky, and besides, it’s more expensive. You ever lived on Social Security?”

“Okay then,” I say, rushing past her, out in the waiting room (still empty), to a shelf containing a selection of canned and dry dog food on display. I grab half a dozen cans, cradle them, and offer them to Mrs. Silverman.

“Told you, can’t afford them.”

I look down at Kai and he looks up at me, tail sweeping back and forth. He’s not thinking about the food, he’s thinking about the possibility of another scratch. It’s that simple, and his need reaches out to grab me. I look back at Ethel. She’s still scowling, and I can’t help but let loose with a genuine smile as I shake my head.

“What?” she says after a beat, but her tone tells me she’s actually more curious than annoyed.

I choose my words carefully. “Mrs. Silverman, you don’t know me and I doubt you know what kind of doctor I am, but I’m hoping that you trust Doc Lewis, that you appreciate Doc Lewis must have some faith in me, and that if nothing else, I truly want to fix your dog’s horrible skin problem so that you and I will not have to see one another again for a long, long time.”

For a few seconds, the grimace distorting Ethel’s face tells me this brutally honest approach may have backfired. Time to backpedal.

“Look, I’ll pay for the food,” I say. “Let me grab you a bag.”

“Here,” says Ethel, quick to root through the pocket of her winter coat and pull out a plastic shopping bag, no doubt previously destined for a date with Kai’s poop. I deposit my cache. “Now, you’ll pay for them?” she repeats.

“This is the deal,” I say. “You try the diet, Kai likes it, his skin gets better, and you find a way to pay me back. Preferably before the end of this week. Kai won’t eat it or his skin fails to improve, we’ll say we’re even.”

To my amazement, despite my offer and my plea, the inimitable Ethel Silverman still looks unconvinced. Then I remember the steroid shot.

“And before you go, I need to give Kai a quick injection. Make him feel better.”

And like that, just as Lewis predicted, this obstinate old woman thaws enough to offer a nod of approval to my plan.

Like a dutiful sherpa I lug Kai’s food out to Mrs. Silverman’s salt-licked Subaru, her appreciation little more than a grunt when I wish her a good day.

“Nicely done, Cyrus,” says Lewis, taking me by the arm before I can even wipe my snowy shoes on the waiting room doormat. “Now, I have another challenge for you.”

I’m in a daze as he leads me toward the reception desk in the waiting room. It’s still unmanned. Time to look into Doris’s job description.

“I just gave away a boatload of free dog food,” I confess, embarrassed that I’m setting such a bad example. “Somehow we’re going to have to get totally ruthless about making money.”

Lewis is busy with a pen and paper, blithe to the particulars of my transaction with Ethel Silverman, as though finagling such deals with difficult clients comes with the territory. He stops writing and looks up at me. “And how d’you propose to do that?” he says. “Drive around the streets, trying to hit passing cats and dogs?”

“No idea, but if Bedside Manor is going to be”—I think about saying
sellable
but settle on—“profitable … then you and I are going to have to come up with ways to make that stupid doorbell chime more frequently. By the way, you okay if we work this Saturday? Try to pick up some extra business.”

“Of course,” says Lewis, “but right now I need you to go on a house call.”

“Whoa there, I’m not ready to fly solo. At least here I’ve got you to back me up and a library of out-of-date textbooks. If my experience with Ethel Silverman is anything to go by, I’ve underestimated how different this work is from what I’m used to.”

Lewis meets my eyes. “Rubbish. It’s one more sick animal in search of a cure.”

“Yeah, but you and I are used to looking at the same disease from a completely different perspective.”

“I’m not with you,” he says.

I hesitate. What’s the best way to explain? “See, it may be the same disease, but you’re used to being at one end, and I’m used to being at the other. You’re the clinician, the hands-on guy, caught up with the client and the animal in the now. You’re trying to define the disease and stop it in its tracks. As a pathologist, if I’m involved in a case, more often than not, it’s already too late.”

Lewis frowns. “I don’t agree. Same disease, same treasure hunt. Whether you’re a pathologist looking down a microscope or a clinician listening to a chest, you’re hunting for clues that will yield the exact same prize—a diagnosis.”

“But when you’re a pathologist, time is on your side. Think about it, it’s not as though the outcome can get any worse. A corpse rarely requires a prognosis.”

“You’re still searching for clues about a particular disease, working backward is all.”

“Yeah, but in a treasure hunt you need to follow the clues in a logical sequence, and sometimes my mind is like a frog on speed, it jumps all over the place.”

Lewis scoffs. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a smart man. You’re just rusty.”

“No, I’m not, I wish it were that simple. In my final year of veterinary school I was assigned a dachshund with a digestive disorder. Every morning, before rounds, I’d find a colossal turd sitting in the dog’s cage, almost as big as the dog itself. It made no sense. I became obsessed, trying to figure out how this tiny dog could possibly generate such a humongous stool.”

“What was the dog’s problem?”

“The dog’s problem was me. The joker in our group eventually confessed to transplanting a fresh turd from
his
patient to
my
dachshund.”

“And what kind of a dog was his patient?”

My cheeks grow warm. “Great Dane. As soon as I knew, it seemed so obvious.”

“You’re simply too trusting.”

I shake my head. “I have a weakness for the obscure diagnosis. Can’t help it. My training has me attentive to the smallest details. General practitioners don’t need my help nailing down the easy stuff . They need me to unmask the weird and the wonderful. In my world a vomiting dog puts me on high alert for gastric ulcers, stomach cancer,
Helicobacter
, Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, and a whole lot more. I’m never going to see simple food poisoning or motion sickness, or likes to lick frogs, or needs to be wormed.”

“Hey, you play to your strengths.” He pauses. “I’m told your mother was the same way,” he says in a softer voice, as though he knows he’s taking a risk broaching the subject.

I take in Bobby Cobb’s best friend. There’s not a hint of retribution or malice in the old man’s eyes. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s like he’s pleading, begging me to clear the air. I can only imagine what Cobb must have told him about his son. For that matter, how much did Cobb share with the devoted pet owners of Eden Falls?

“I wanted to be a pathologist, like her,” I say. “She always taught me to relish order, logic, and the challenge of working a case from back to front, long before I discovered the upside of
not
being face-to-face with the person who loves a sick animal.”

Lewis looks into me, and I notice his eyes smile before his lips.

“You get used to it. You do. Give it time.”

“There’s a lot less pressure when a disease has had its fun. Everything is in the past tense. It’s like reading a murder mystery and going straight to the end to find out whodunit. It’s like standing at the bottom of a cliff with the dead body and all you have to do is look up and wonder,
did he fall or was he pushed
and why. No one’s going to ask you to save him.”

Lewis squeezes my upper arm, and I shy away as politely as possible. “What matters is you’re here, that you came back to accept the terms of your father’s will.”

I should point out that I have not been exactly forthcoming about my plans for Bedside Manor, but I say nothing. I know, I know, but right now I don’t have the heart to tell Lewis that, one way or another, I’m determined to sell the place and he’s going to be out of a job. Truth is, I still need him to show me the ropes.

“Don’t give me that look,” he says.

“What look?”

“Like you just sucked on a lemon. Eden Falls isn’t such a bad place to hang your hat. You like to ski?”

“Not really.”

“Spectacular hiking. Especially in the fall.”

“I prefer to be near the ocean.”

“If you like culture, Burlington’s not far.”

“I live in Charleston, one of the most cultural small cities in the country.”

Lewis regards me like a teacher regarding a student who’s always armed with a surly comeback. “I’m not going to lie,” he says, “the residents of this town are an odd, wary bunch, slow to warm up to visitors. But I promise you, once they do, a more genuine, straightforward but kind group of folks you will not meet.”

I breathe out. The sound is something between a growl and an exasperated sigh. Lewis means well, but he should know that Eden Falls ranks somewhere between the Strait of Hormuz and the Korengal Valley as places in the world I would least like to visit, let alone “hang my hat.” Fourteen years and a thousand miles away was morphine for my past. Back in Eden Falls, my father’s will (what an apt term) promises nothing but flashbacks, ghosts, and whispers behind cupped hands. Trouble is, the only way out is through.

“Look,” Lewis releases his grip but remains close by, “this house call is for one of my favorite clients. I told him all about you. I am drawing you a map.”

Lewis scribbles lines and the names of certain landmarks as points of reference. He doesn’t notice my concern over the phrase,
I told him all about you
.

“How much did you tell him?”

Fielding stops his map making and looks at me. Though his shaggy gray thatch of hair defies his years, time has furrowed the leather of his face into creases and crow’s-feet that beg to differ. He has to angle his head up to make eye contact, but when he does the wisdom wrinkles create an expression verging on disappointment.

“I told him you were a good man,” he says, his tone soft but even. “I told him I’d trust you to look after my own dog. Should I have said more?”

My eyes fall to the floor. Like I said, I tend to jump to conclusions, and they’re not always the right ones. I shake my head and come back with a weak, “No.”

There’s that reassuring squeeze on my upper arm again. I wince with a whistling inhalation. I can’t help it. I’m not into gratuitous physical contact with anyone. It’s just the way I am. It’s not personal. I happen to like this man and I can see why Robert Cobb liked him as well. Lewis exudes so much more than professional geniality. Somehow he makes you know that he really cares. Yes, I’m tuning in to the difference between Lewis and Cobb. I can’t help it. Perhaps I should be asking a bigger question—why didn’t Cobb care as much about me?

“Hate to break it to you,” says Lewis, “but if you want to make this practice work, you need to earn some trust. This client is very different from Ethel Silverman. A perfect opportunity to develop your communication skills.”