Must Be Love (8 page)

‘I know, but you’re different. You’re kind, capable … and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.’

‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ I murmur.

‘That’s what I’m hoping.’ Alex kisses the tip of my nose. ‘I do love you, Maz.’

Where has that come from? I wonder. We’ve been going out together for four months now and that’s the third time he’s volunteered that in words, not merely with gestures. You see, it’s such a novelty, I’m still counting. I look up into his eyes, his pupils dark and dilated, his expression gentle.

‘I love you too,’ I say, melting into his embrace until Alex tears himself away, his breathing rough and ragged, to check his watch.

‘The first race is at ten past ten,’ he says, with a groan of regret that matches mine. ‘I’ll grab a coffee and breakfast, then we’ll get going. You are coming with me?’

‘Yes … I’ll need to drop home to change,’ I say, glancing down at Alex’s robe. It’s hardly suitable attire for a day at the races – I don’t want to let Alex down when the Talyton Manor Vets are on duty at the course.

‘I’d like to see if they’d let you in the Members’ Enclosure in that.’ Alex grins. ‘I expect I could persuade them, but I don’t think I’d be able to concentrate, knowing what you’re wearing underneath.’

‘I’m not wearing anything,’ I say, then realise he’s teasing as he reaches out for the tie at my waist. ‘I thought you were in a hurry,’ I go on, my voice faint with anticipation.

‘I am, but sometimes everything else has to wait …’

Chapter Four

First Cut

‘Would you like a tapeworm with that?’ Izzy asks me as I pour a strong black coffee from the machine in the staffroom first thing. It’s Thursday, a few days after the New Year do up at the Manor, and I still feel upset at Sophia and her comments about ladettes and chavs. Whether she meant it or not, it was extremely tactless and bad-mannered.

‘Mrs King brought it in for you.’ Izzy holds out a jam jar.

‘How kind,’ I say, examining it, ‘and straight after breakfast too.’

‘I said we’d put up some wormer and flea control for Cleo.’

‘I’ll do it.’ I print out labels in the consulting room and stick them on the required boxes before taking them into Reception, where I catch up with Izzy again. She’s apparently taken issue with Shannon’s hair. Yesterday, it was her uniform, and the day before, it was the fact she was two minutes late for work.

‘I’m not wearing that thing,’ Shannon says, her voice quavering. ‘I don’t know where it’s been.’

‘It’s a rubber band,’ Izzy says, pinging it off a bundle of post. ‘Now, put it on.’

Shannon takes it from her, holding it by the tips of her finger and thumb, and it occurs to me that if she’s squeamish over a rubber band, what’s she going to be like when faced with something truly repellent like a cat abscess?

‘Izzy, you sound like one of those trainers on
Dog Borstal
,’ I say, stepping in. ‘Shannon, if you get your hair caught, you could end up scalped.’

‘Could I?’ she says, in a way that makes me start worrying she’s into self-harm as well as vampires. (I found her absorbed in reading
Twilight
during her lunchbreak.)

‘It’s unhygienic,’ Izzy says. ‘Vets don’t like hair dangling in their ops.’

Slowly, Shannon pulls back her hair, twists it up and fastens it back with a couple of throws of the rubber band.

‘That’s better,’ says Izzy. ‘Let’s see if we can find you something to do.’

‘Shannon can help out with the ops later this morning,’ I suggest. ‘There’s always something to do in theatre.’

‘The freezer could do with defrosting,’ Izzy says.

It isn’t vet nursing though, is it? How will Shannon learn anything useful if all Izzy lets her do is the cleaning?

I have a quiet word with Izzy later, while we’re preparing Petra, a white German shepherd dog, for surgery.

‘I can’t let her loose on the patients yet,’ Izzy says, muzzling Petra, who’s an HWC or Handle With Care, and bringing her over to the prep bench. ‘She has to start from the bottom like I did. When I started my training, the first thing I had to do was clean the flat above the practice – it wasn’t here, of course – and the vet who lived in it was rearing a baby pigeon. It was disgusting.’

I try arguing that you don’t have to inflict the same trials and tribulations on the next generation of trainee nurses, but it doesn’t wash with Izzy.

‘It’s character-building,’ she insists. ‘I didn’t get where I am today –’

‘All right, I get the message.’

Izzy passes me a swab and syringe.

‘No puppies for you, Petra,’ I tell her as she falls unconscious on the end of my needle. I remove Petra’s muzzle, and Izzy passes me an ET tube, which I slide into Petra’s windpipe and attach to the hose on the anaesthetic machine before turning it on. Izzy inflates the cuff on the ET tube with air from a syringe. The procedure runs like clockwork and I wonder how long it will be before Shannon gets close to matching Izzy’s competence and efficiency.

Soon, I’m in theatre up to my wrists in Petra’s belly, fishing about for the womb, while Izzy monitors the anaesthetic and Shannon looks on. Izzy is doing her best to unravel the mystique of spaying, but Shannon retains a mask of indifference. At least, I hope it’s a mask. It’s difficult to tell. The expression in her panda eyes is guarded, her bloodless – and wordless – lips pressed together.

‘Would you mind moving the light over for me, Shannon?’ I ask, and she looks at me as if I’ve asked her to finish the op herself.

‘There’s a handle on the theatre light,’ says Izzy.

Shannon reaches up and tilts the light to give me a better view of Petra’s innards. When I thank her, she yawns.

‘I hope we aren’t boring you,’ Izzy comments sarcastically.

‘Abdominal surgery isn’t much of a spectator sport,’ I say lightly, although I do feel that if you’re just setting out on a career as a vet nurse, it might be politic to at least pretend to have some interest in the procedure. ‘Move a little closer, Shannon. Don’t touch the drapes, though – they’re sterile.’

I give Shannon a guided tour of the bitch’s reproductive system, a miracle of nature that never ceases to amaze me, but Shannon doesn’t seem to share my fascination. I don’t know what it is: the creamy fat glistening beneath the bright lights, the delicate pink of the uterus itself, or the pulsating coils of the blood vessels, but one moment Shannon is there, and the next she’s disappearing, crumpling from my view. And then my confidence starts crumpling too, as pictures of Shannon lying like a ghost on a hospital bed and a pack of Dobermanns from the Health and Safety Executive come snapping through my brain. What have I gone and done?

Izzy abandons her post at the dog’s head. I can’t abandon mine because I’m at a critical point in the surgery, so I keep going, removing Petra’s womb and ovaries, complete with attached artery forceps, plonking the complete ensemble onto my instrument tray, and turning my attention to checking the stumps inside her belly. No bleeding. Ligatures all secure.

I glance towards Izzy, who’s kneeling at Shannon’s side. ‘Is she okay?’

Shannon raises one hand to her temple, pressing at her skull with her long pale fingers.

‘Keep still.’ Izzy dashes out to fetch a piece of Vetbed, which she rolls up and slides beneath Shannon’s head. ‘No, don’t try to get up yet.’

‘What happened?’ Shannon mutters.

‘You fainted.’ Izzy doesn’t sound overly sympathetic as she returns to the operating table.

‘I, er – everything went swimmy …’ Shannon groans, hiding her eyes with her hands. ‘Oh-mi-God, I’m so embarrassed.’

‘You’ll get over it,’ Izzy says.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. Shannon’s expression reminds me of another, similar situation, which I’d rather forget. ‘I should have thought.’ I unclip the towel clips that keep the drapes attached to the patient’s skin in their vicious grip – you only ever trap your finger in a towel clip once in your life – and drop them onto the instrument tray. ‘I should have let you see some minor ops first so you could get used to it. I really am sorry, Shannon.’

Shannon mumbles a response, but I can’t hear what she says.

‘I can’t do this,’ she says aloud, when I ask her to repeat herself.

‘Of course you can,’ I say. ‘I know what it’s like. It happened to me.’

‘You?’ Shannon frowns as I continue, ‘It was the day I met Emma at vet school.’

I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was our first session in the dissection room. The professor – Professor Vincent – had allocated a dead greyhound to me, Emma and another student. Emma said I could have the honour of making the first cut, so, flushed with the glow of new-found friendship, I rolled up my sleeves and attached a blade to my scalpel handle.

‘Come along.’ Professor Vincent tapped his wrist-watch. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

I took a deep breath, placed the fingertips of my left hand onto the skin over the greyhound’s shoulder blade and drew a line with the scalpel.

‘You’ll have to press a bit harder than that.’ Professor Vincent peered over my shoulder, one eyebrow arched and bristling with impatience.

I tried again. I don’t know what happened, whether I pressed too hard this time, whether the blade glanced off the bone, but fresh red blood came pulsing from the crook of my elbow, creating a spray-paint effect across the table, the dog and the floor, and Emma’s pristine white coat. All I could do was watch it, filled with a growing sense of shame and self-doubt and then, as the room began to spin, of dying.

I had reason to be grateful to Professor Vincent, even though I never got used to his sarcasm. He probably saved my life, while forty aspiring vet students looked helplessly on.

I came round briefly in the ambulance with Emma by my side, and again after surgery to restore the circulation to my arm. Emma was with me then as well, keeping me up to date with the gossip and lecture notes. I told her not to bother.

‘But it’s no trouble,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong, Maz?’

‘I don’t think I can do it, Emma.’ I glanced down at the dressing on my arm. My stomach was sore and my mouth was filled with the bitter taste of bile and defeat. I felt wretched as I went on, ‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be a vet, after all.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly. Everyone faints now and then. You’ll get used to the blood.’

‘It isn’t just the blood I’m worried about.’ I was always the first to sit down to watch any surgery on the telly, and I’d watched plenty of operations without fainting at the vet practice where I’d helped out on Saturdays and after school. ‘I didn’t realise I was so cack-handed. How am I going to explain that to my clients? I’m so sorry I missed that tiny wart on Rover’s eyelid, but I’ve lopped his tail off for you instead.’

Emma burst out laughing, prompting a ‘Shh’ from a passing nurse.

‘It isn’t funny,’ I said, smiling in spite of myself.

‘I know,’ she said, sobering up, ‘but you’ll be okay in the end. We’ve got six years to get it right.’

‘Emma was right,’ I tell Shannon once I’ve explained to her what happened. ‘For a long time afterwards, whenever I went into an operating theatre I’d go all hot and shaky, thinking I was going to faint, but I didn’t. So don’t give up just yet. Give it another go.’

Shannon looks up from the floor, her face paler than ever.

‘If I faint again, then that’s it,’ she says, ‘end of.’

Relieved, I arrange for Frances to look after her with sweet tea and biscuits in Reception, while Izzy and I move Petra back to her kennel, next to Sally’s, and spend a few minutes watching her recovery.

‘She’ll have to go, you know,’ Izzy says. ‘It has to be said.’

‘Yes, but not so loud if you don’t mind.’ The saying ‘Walls have ears’ holds particularly true at Otter House.

‘I need someone I can rely on. I can’t be responsible for the patients and Shannon. It’s too much.’

‘Izzy, I understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t see we have any choice. We need to have someone here trained up and ready to cover for you when you go away. Haven’t you and Chris booked the honeymoon?’

At the word ‘honeymoon’, Izzy’s face lights up.

‘I’m not supposed to know, but Chris is hopeless at keeping secrets. I found an email confirming the booking on the computer the other day.’

‘You don’t have to tell me …’

‘I have to tell someone otherwise I shall burst. At first, I thought we were off to Perth in Scotland, but it turns out we’re going to Perth in Australia.’

‘Wow, that’s fantastic.’

‘We’re going to have two weeks on the beach, then another two with one of Chris’s cousins on his farm in the outback. Chris wants to take a look at some of his rams.’

‘Sheep?’ I feel my forehead tighten. ‘What is it, a honeymoon or busman’s holiday?’

Izzy looks a little hurt.

‘I’m sure it’ll be really romantic, swimming and lazing on the beach, hiking through the bush – just you and Chris.’ I refrain from adding, ‘And his cousins and gazillions of sheep.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Izzy sighs, ‘and you’re right about Shannon, Maz. I should be more tolerant, I suppose, although I can’t understand why anyone wants to walk around looking as if they’ve walked into a wall.’

‘It’s like camouflage,’ I say in Shannon’s defence. ‘Underneath all the black, she’s an ordinary girl, insecure and shy.’ I stick with the illusion, keeping the memory of Shannon dancing on the table up at the Manor to myself.

‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba,’ says Izzy. ‘It’s okay, Maz, I’ll give her another chance.’

I decide, though, to take Shannon under my wing as much as I can, and when Emma’s finished consulting for the afternoon, and I’m in charge of sending the inpatients home, Shannon’s with me in Kennels.

‘We’ll have Petra first,’ I say, then as Shannon looks around rather helplessly – for inspiration, or a lead perhaps – I remember in time that Petra is an HWC and fetch her from her kennel myself.

Shannon brings Petra’s painkillers when we join Clive, Petra’s owner, in the consulting room. He greets Petra, but she isn’t all that pleased to see him. He ruffles her coat as she settles herself on his size-thirteen or -fourteen feet, holding her lead in her mouth, and keeping her eyes on Shannon, who perches on the stool in the corner beside the monitor to keep out of the way.