Vet on the Loose (13 page)

I cringed once more, thinking about how I had slumped helplessly on a bale of hay as Jim had single-handedly herded the cattle into the crush.

‘Oh, don’t worry, Jim. We could have managed fine on our own. Just one thing though; just remind me where you are again.’ I tried to sound casual.

Jim sounded a bit puzzled as he replied. ‘We’re over at the yard – same place as we tested them. I got the cattle in this morning. We’ll have to run them through the crush to read them, won’t we?’

‘Oh, of course we will, of course,’ I laughed, ‘but if you could just remind me where the yard is …’

Silence.

‘But you were here with us on Friday.’

‘Em, yes, that’s right, I was.’

Silence.

‘So, you know how to get here?’

‘Em, no.’

Silence.

‘Oh.’

I was beginning to think he had hung up when he began again, slowly and simply explaining as though to a particularly dim child.

‘Just go into the village, past the cemetery and …’

I interrupted him.

‘Sorry, Jim. Er … which village was that again?’

At least, this time around, the reading was done in record time. I was so embarrassed that I kept my head down and the cattle moving as fast as possible through the crush, concentrating with extra diligence on the top and bottom clippings on the side of the necks.

Jim, although courteously friendly, seemed a little bit distant as we made our way through the herd, which, thankfully, was all clear. His conversation was slightly strained. When the job was completed, we headed into the milking parlour for the customary wash and I tried to engage in some light-hearted banter. I left Jim finishing off the clean-up and went back to the jeep.

‘Gillian!’ he called out after me as I turned on the engine. He thrust a sheet of paper in the window at me. ‘You might need this on the way home.’

I had turned out the driveway when I glanced over at the crumpled piece of paper on the passenger seat. I cringed with embarrassment yet again as I recognised the carefully drawn map, beginning at his yard, and detailing exactly how to get back to the office …

I
t was hard to believe that my first spring as a
veterinary
surgeon was almost over. Despite the adrenalin rush, I could feel the long weeks of late nights and interrupted sleep starting to take its toll on me. Tonight, the evening surgery was quiet and, so far, there were no calls. I decided to make the most of it and head home.

Passing the local takeaway, I was tempted, and I pulled in to order the usual chicken curry for myself, the roast duck with orange for Donal and a bag of the prawn
crackers
that Slug was so partial to. She crunched contentedly on the passenger seat all the way home.

By the time we got home, Spook and Judy, with their Labrador instinct for food, were waiting patiently for us, and they stared with rapt concentration at the brown paper bag as though willing it to open.

‘Sorry, Judy, you know what happened last time,’ I said, pushing the three sorrowful-looking dogs out the door and closing it firmly behind them. Despite her breeding, Judy had a sensitive stomach and I had already discovered that it didn’t mix well with chicken curry.

Deciding to be civilised, we opened a bottle of wine with the meal and I was feeling slightly more human as I ran a hot bath. By ten o’clock I was in bed, enjoying a rare early night. I picked up a book that I’d started reading over three months previously and lazily flicked through a few pages. Without noticing, I passed from wakefulness to sleep. I was back at a college reunion, in the local from our student days. We were all busy discussing our new jobs until, suddenly, the barman turned into the dean. He told us that we all had to re-sit our Leaving Certificate exams as it had come to light that we had never passed it in the first place; maths – paper one, was at nine o’clock the next morning. I was in a panic because I knew that I had to read a herd test at the same time. I was trying to ring Donal to ask him if he would read the test for me when the phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and knocked the off button but still it rang. It rang four or five times, until, with a start, I awoke from my dream. I looked in surprise to see Donal lying in the bed beside me and then saw the flashing light on the phone.

The anxious voice on the other end of the phone quickly brought me back to reality with a jolt.

‘It’s Kevin Ryan here. I’m really sorry to ring you at this hour but I’m a bit worried about Jill. She’s been off form for the last few days and she won’t get out of her bed now. It’s not at all like her.’

Jill was the farm collie and I had often admired her, though only from a distance. She was a typical working dog and lived only for her job. She had no interest in the usual comforts of life or in the silly antics of the other yard dogs; remaining aloof from them, she waited only for the command to work. Although I had often seen her slinking around in the distance or disappearing at speed after some rebel sheep, until now, I had never come into close
contact
with her. My presence was of absolutely no interest to her and I always felt that she was somewhat dismissive of Slug, refusing to join in any of the frenzied barking matches that usually accompanied my arrival.

Kevin had first expressed his concerns to me a few weeks previously as I’d struggled to deliver an oversized calf from a nervous and resentful heifer. Jill was ten years old and had never had pups. But during her last heat, she had escaped for a few minutes one day and, six weeks later, the telltale signs of pregnancy were all too obvious. Tonight, it seemed that Kevin’s fears were justified. According to him, she was now four days overdue, a delay which was very significant in dog terms. Apparently, they had tried to leave her in the yard to rest as her time approached but, in her desperation to get on with her job and the life that she knew, she had managed to scale a high wall and escape.

The first the Ryans knew of it was when a shaggy form came hurtling across the fields towards them, although they had had a fifteen-minute drive to the out-farm. Because Jill was so determined, they had decided she would be happier working and so she had spent a blissful day doing what she knew best. Although she seemed tired that evening, she was equally determined to join in again on the two following days and reluctantly they allowed her, fearing the worst if they left her behind. Now, at the end of the third day, Jill had returned and then collapsed in a corner of the shed.

I lay back on the warm pillows and closed my eyes for just a couple of moments before hauling myself out and throwing on some clothes. There is an art with night calls which, with practice, allows you to time perfectly the moment at which you come out of automatic pilot mode and actually wake up. When perfected, it allows you to dress and drive to the call while still feeling like you are actually in bed.

‘Will you be long?’ muttered Donal drowsily as I dressed.

‘Not sure,’ I replied. ‘Maybe not.’ It doesn’t take long to put a dog to sleep.

Slug eyed me balefully as I picked up the car keys and with a martyred look made her way down the stairs. Spook and Judy awoke from where they slumbered in front of the warm stove. They gallantly escorted us to the door, nails clicking on the tiled floor, but weren’t in any way anxious to join us. When I opened the jeep door for Slug, instead of jumping in as she usually does, she just stood there.
Obviously
she was good at automatic pilot mode too. I picked her up and deposited her on the passenger seat where she slumped into a ball and never stirred for the rest of the journey.

I was very worried. Dogs like Jill can be incredibly
difficult
to treat because they often refuse to acknowledge pain. It is not unknown for a tough collie to work the day out on a broken leg and only show signs of lameness when the job is finished. If Jill had collapsed, something was very seriously amiss.

Despite my best efforts to stay asleep, my mind buzzed as I drove the thirty miles to the surgery where I had arranged to meet Kevin. There was no point in going directly to the farm as I was sure that Jill would need
drastic
treatment if she was to pull through this crisis. Minutes of delay could prove fatal.

Kevin was waiting for me when I got there. I was shocked to see Jill lying collapsed in a bundle. The towel in which she was wrapped was stained with a mixture of fresh and clotted blood. When I probed deep in her tense abdomen, shrill yelps interrupted her gasping breath. I shuddered when I saw the ghostly white of the mucous membranes in her mouth. Jill was clearly dying.

I shook my head sadly at Kevin. ‘I’m sorry, but she’s in big trouble. I think she should have had those pups a couple of days ago. Something’s gone drastically wrong.’

I could barely hear him as he whispered, ‘Is there
nothing
at all we can do?’

I hesitated. My initial reaction was to put Jill to sleep but I was repulsed by the thought of being responsible for the demise of such a wonderful dog.

‘I could try opening her up to see exactly what has
happened
, but I doubt she’d survive the anaesthetic.’

‘Please try anyway, Gillian!’ he begged.

I ushered Kevin out the door with no more assurance than, ‘I’ll let you know – either way.’

I checked my watch: it was ten past one. I was suddenly acutely aware of my limited surgical skills but at this hour of night I was reluctant to ring for help, especially as I knew that Seamus had worked through until after four the previous morning, while Arthur was off on a week’s leave. The necessity for speed didn’t allow me to think as I set up the warm intravenous drip, infused with steroids to
counteract
the shock. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I worried about the potential side-effects such as gastric ulceration, delayed tissue healing and increased risk of infection, but I dismissed them just as quickly as I felt that Jill was too far gone to worry about such things.

Cautiously, I administered half the calculated dose of anaesthetic and thanked God for my habit, born of
inexperience
, of always under-dosing through lack of
confidence
; within seconds Jill was deeply anaesthetised – any more and the night’s work would have been over.

Having clipped and prepped my sleeping patient, I stood, with scalpel in hand, poised over her still form draped in surgical green. I rapidly incised the thin skin and the fibrous muscle midline. A stream of curses erupted to match the gush of putrid, green-black fluid that sprayed from my neat incision. I was sure I hadn’t incised the uterus and yet how else could I have released all this fluid? I tried to reassure myself that the dog would have died anyway and it wasn’t purely due to my incompetence, as I enlarged the opening and eased out the rotting womb.

With a surge of mixed relief and shock, I noticed a large tear in the cranial horn that couldn’t possibly have been caused by my scalpel. The shrivelled edges indicated that it had been torn for some time, thus explaining the large blood clots. I glanced anxiously at Jill’s chest and was relieved to notice a faint yet perceptible movement. As I groped the stodgy mass, I could feel several afterbirths and one lifeless pup swilling around in the ruptured uterus. There had to be more than one.

As I tried to extract the mass from the abdomen I could feel something hard, just out of reach, under the loops of intestine. Quickly, I fished out another pup. With
increasing
disbelief, I recovered two more – one from deep down beside the bladder and one tucked neatly under the liver. No textbook could ever have prepared me for this freakish occurrence. I wondered just how long these pups had been floating around, suffocated in their own fluid, as Jill continued to work. I felt a twinge of pity for the four
lifeless
forms lying on the stainless steel tray among the debris of afterbirths and placental fluid but, right now, my thoughts were more for Jill.

I couldn’t believe that any animal could survive so much. Should I call a halt now? And yet, we had come this far and it seemed a shame not to give her a chance.

I swabbed out as much of the mucky fluid as I could, in order to allow me to see what I was operating on. By now the floor was littered with dozens of soiled swabs as the clinical waste bucket was literally overflowing. It didn’t worry me that I hadn’t obtained Kevin’s permission to remove Jill’s womb beforehand: I was quite sure that under the circumstances he would understand.

The stretched ligament of the heavily pregnant uterus made it easy to pull up the ovaries and ligate them. When it came to tying off the neck of the womb, I laughed grimly to myself, thinking of the tidy diagrams of fancy suture
patterns
that we had so painstakingly learnt in college, for situations less dire than this. I did my best to imitate the picture as I worked on the rotting tissue and wasn’t
surprised
when it just didn’t look the same. With dismay I examined the remaining contents of the abdomen, awash with rotted tissue fragments bathed in the green-black fluid.

By now, my back ached with tension and it seemed a long time since I had been asleep in bed. I thought with envy of the veterinary programmes on TV, where a fresh team of surgeons, aided by a horde of trained nurses, would take over at this stage. I shivered as the coldness that comes only with exhaustion penetrated deep into my bones. Tonight, it was only myself and Slug, sitting patiently at my feet, wrinkling her nose slightly when the smell got too much even for her.

By the time I had flushed four litres of warmed fluids through the abdomen, it was starting to look a bit healthier and, taking a last reluctant look, I began the final stitch-up. Jill’s shallow and irregular breathing penetrated my
consciousness
as I wearily placed the last few sutures.

I seemed to be working in slow motion as I dried as much of her soaked coat as possible. I then wrapped her up in some heavy blankets and propped her up with a row of hot water bottles in the heated kennel. I suspended the remainder of her drip from the hook that served as a drip stand. The rest was up to Jill.

I roughly hosed down the worst of the mess and decided to leave the final clean-up until the next morning, too tired to worry about incurring Niamh’s wrath. It was by now after two o’clock, and I was surprised when Kevin answered the phone on the first ring. I explained as briefly as I could and told him that, although Jill had come this far, I still didn’t think that she could possibly make it. His voice was subdued as he thanked me for trying.

It was almost three o’clock in the morning by the time I got home for the second time that day. Spook and Judy were eagerly waiting at the door, having heard the approaching car. After a quick sniff, Slug jumped up on to the recently vacated couch, worn out by the day’s events.

Wearily, I gave Donal a brief outline of what had happened.

‘Sounds like a nightmare. Will she live?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know,’ I replied gloomily.

I tossed and turned in the bed, trying to relieve my aching back. I slept fitfully, interrupted by nightmarish scenes of drowning pups and dying dogs.

By six o’clock, I could bear it no longer and I got up, not bothering to shower, and drove back to the surgery. I unlocked the door and felt sick thinking of the sight of the dead dog that might await me.

I stared in disbelief as I looked at a thin, but alert, figure sitting upright in her kennel, still attached to the drip, glancing upwards occasionally with interest at the cat who was boarded on the top row. With growing amazement, I checked over the docile patient. Temperature, normal; colour, still pale but with a decidedly pinkish hue;
abdomen
, no pain or tenseness; wound, looking good.

Over the next few days, Jill improved with a speed that I didn’t think possible. Soon she was home with her delighted owner. I felt overjoyed that, finally, I had,
without
doubt, saved the life of an animal. So many days are spent administering treatments and wondering what, if any, real effect they will have on the final outcome. On that day, I basked in the knowledge that, without me, Jill would most certainly have died.