The Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club in a big city emergency room has nothing on Monday mornings in a busy veterinarian clinic. Not that the animals come in bleeding to death, or half eaten. It is more that if they aren’t bleeding to death or half eaten, their owners wait until Monday morning to haul their asses into the vet. Super Bowl weekends is the worst; the poor pet might be pretty close to empty in the blood department before arriving at the clinic. Minor infections and dangling limbs certainly wait. This Monday was no different. And, the fun started early.
While on her way to work at the Central City Animal Clinic, Allison Spark, the tall, lanky, dark haired, mildly tattooed veterinary technologist with a tasteful nose ring , glances something moving behind a garbage can on the side of the road. At first, she thinks it’s an apparition– the ghost of too many cocktails from the weekend. Then, she sees a trail of something dark that she quickly recognizes as blood, even through blood shot eyes. Seeing blood, Allison goes straight into triage mode, standing on her brakes, bringing the SUV to a neck snapping stop and hopping out. Approaching the garbage can with all due respect of seeing a full sized tiger while on safari, she peers behind the can. There, see spies a smallish cat covered in blood that appears to be coming from a mangled front leg.
“Oh, sweetie, you are quite a mess,” Allison says in her most calming voice. Slowly moving as close to the cat as she dares, Allison continues to try to sooth the cat with her voice. “You stay right there and I’ll be right back”. The cat responds with a very light meow, as if acknowledging Allison as a friend, rather than a foe. This cat knows she’s in trouble, thinks Allison and is most likely not a stray. Back at the car, Allison grabs a blanket, quickly returns to the cat, expertly scoops it up, careful to keep her hands under the blanket to prevent the cat from scratching her and then quickly returns to the car. There, she carefully places the cat bundle on the floor of the passenger side and hauls ass to the Central City Animal Clinic where she had worked for almost a decade, since she turned eighteen. The cat remains quiet as a mouse for the few blocks to the clinic and as Allison swishes her into the clinic door.
The clinic is already in full swing: no time for coffee or weekend stories on Monday mornings. “Where is Margo? Please tell me she is already here!” Allison bellows to no one in particular, so everyone would hear.
“Yes, she’s out front with Pam Baker and Chester, ” replies Juanita at the front desk.
“I am going to go grab her. Can you please make sure a surgical bed is available? I am not sure how long this little darling will last.”
Margo Rice started the Central City Animal Clinic right out of vet school. The easy thing to do at the time would have been to join another practice. But, Margo was not particularly interested in easy things. Plus, she didn’t need to be interested in easy money. Both her parents had died before she made it through vet school and they had left her enough money to travel the world and be a total bum – or start her own vet clinic. Easy choice for her. She grew up around the area, knew most of the people in town and they all knew that although she was a major league smart ass, that energy would transfer into the way she cared for their pets. It was not due to sympathy that the town brought their pets to Margo’s clinic. It was due to her kind ferociousness, the very trait that helped her thrive in the absence of her parents. Margo: the mamma bear for her animal patients.
Now in her early 40s, Margo easily passes for 30, even now while 4 months pregnant and restlessly sleeping as if in a strange room every night. Luckily for her and the town’s cats and dogs, she never needed much sleep. Since starting the clinic twelve years ago, Margo and her staff grew it to support 8 full time vets and 16 technologists. Commonly, it was listed as the best veterinarian clinic in all of Southern California, a destination clinic where people bring their precious packages hundreds of miles for microsurgery, a specialty at the clinic.
This Monday morning, Margo is walking Pam Baker, a good friend of her mother’s, and her dog Chester out to the lobby. Once a stylish gal, Pam’s style started to “bloom” when she hit menopause. Some say it was “hormonal change”, others that she just started caring more about the brownies with chocolate icing from Kay’s bakery than how she looked. Most couldn’t blame her for that. However, more recently she bought a bull dog and was teaching him very bad habits. Nobody wants to be fat alone. Margo could not, would not let that slide.
“Pam, when I told you to walk the dog at “I really need to pee” speed, I meant your need to pee. Not his sniff around a dozen trees finding the perfect spot to pee speed. He weighs 2 lbs. more than 6 months ago. So, no more table scraps for Chester. And, I want to see him back here in 3 months, weighing 2 lbs. lighter,” Margo tells Pam, perhaps a bit too snarkily.
Pam knows Margo is right, but doesn’t appreciate being schooled by her old friend’s mother on what she already knows: she and her dog had long passed the pleasing plumb stage. Perhaps it was time to walk in the opposite direction from Kay’s. But really, Margo herself had looked better. “Sorry Margo. I will seriously put US on a diet this time. And, you look like age might finally be catching up with you, too, doctor big shot,” she scolds Margo.
On the spot, Margo decides that it the time is ripe to let the world know about the future Klinger coming into the world. It couldn’t be kept a secret much longer, not with her belly ripening. Telling Pam would spread the news faster than Pam could spread butter on hot bread. “Mrs. Baker, I have a good excuse – I am over 40 and 4 months pregnant,” Margo tells Pam, trying her best not to sound snarky, but failing as usual. “If either you or Chester are pregnant, then we are writing a book.”
Just then, Margo hears the cry from Allison and quickly excuses herself. As Allison was not normally a screamer, this certainly meant “code blue”. Margo rushes with Allison to the cat now laying on an exam bed and after a quick examination of the bundle, Margo lets out a very unprofessional “Yuk”. Then she leans into the cat’s face and in her soft voice informed the cat, “Darling, we most likely will need to remove this leg of yours. I promise you that you will be much happier in the long run. Trust me. “The cat was in no condition to question or complain. Looking at Allison, she adds, “this isn’t just severed, there are no arteries available for me to reattach. But, her vital signs look fine, so she should make it through the surgery and live a very happy life with three limbs.”
Allison nods, indicating she understands. Carol enters the room and informs them the surgical room is ready.
Once in surgery, Margo looks at the chart and sees the name “Darwin, Darwin” on the chart. Years ago, they had started calling all strays or otherwise unknown animals Darling for the females and “Devil” for the males, the equivalent of Jane and John Doe. Allison, the ever observant tech, sees the confusion in Margo’s eyes, even though the mask hides the rest of her face.
Tracing Margo’s eyes to the chart, Allison understands the confusion. “It is a little female cat, but I couldn’t call her Darling like a normal stray, not since I found her. So, I changed her name to Darwin”, Allison explained.
“You know what happens next, though. You end up adopting her! And I know she looks bad, but I’m pretty sure she’ll pull through,“ Margo exclaims. The Darling / Devil rule was put in place after most of the people working in the clinic owned 5 or 6 pets and teetered on breaking local codes for the number of pets allowed in a household. Since they worked in the clinic, it was somewhat easy to circumvent the law, and much easier to rationalize their defiance with reasoning such as “ I may have 10 dogs and cats, but they only weigh 40 lbs, total. That is less than half of a single, baby Great Dane.”
As Margo checks all the cat’s vital signs, she begins to wonder about the name and ask, “ Why Darwin?”
“We didn’t have much time, Allison shrugged, “and there were only a few letters than needed to be changed.”
“That makes sense. So, a little boy cat would be called Wevil? “Margo asks and Allison laughs and says, replies, “Luckily, it’s a female.”
Before she starts cutting, Margo looks down at Darwin now fully under and says to her, “OK, Darwin, time to lose a limb”.