Parkside vet clinic Chapter 1
Matthew’s Replacement
“Hold her, Matthew. If she gets away, she could attack!” Dr. Ben Hughes shouted above the deafening screams of an enraged sow. Ben was attempting to sew up an incision he’d made to remove an unusual lump. At forty years of age, Dr. Ben Hughes was still fit and had most of his hair, although the brown was graying at the temples.
His young helper, Matthew MacDougal, was tall, at six feet one. Matthew stood over Ben by three inches. He’d played football in high school and had a muscular build. Matthew was not afraid of tackling tough animals and dangerous situations like the present one. He was a city boy who’d learned to handle sheep, cattle, a few pigs, and, most importantly, horses during the last few years. Sadly, his work at Parkside Veterinary Clinic was coming to an end. Matthew would go to college in a few weeks. Young student recruits would replace him just as he had replaced others.
“Keep the bucket on her head, boy.” Irwin Hart, the gruff pig owner, was wary of the pig’s ability to cause damage. “If she escapes, she’ll go for the mother lode, and yours will be in her direct line of vision.” He emphasized the point by looking straight at the boy’s “crown jewels.”
Matthew was not about to let anyone get hurt, especially himself. This was his second-to-last shift at the clinic. No one gets hurt on my watch, he thought, and it sure as heck won’t be these babies. He looked down protectively at the aforementioned anatomical area.
Suddenly, the sow lurched and threw Matthew down into the mud. Despite a mouthful of— well, there is no more apt term for it than what it was—pig shit, Matthew somehow kept the bucket over the sow’s head while his boss finished stitching up the incision near the pig’s flank. The animal’s bellowing was like standing next to the speakers at a high-school dance when the band was warming up—sort of a Jimi-Hendrix-on-steroids sound.
“Okay, everyone out!” Ben yelled as he climbed over the side of the pen. “Matthew, let her go on five.” Irwin clambered out of the enclosure, leaving Matthew holding the bucket over the sow’s head.
“One, two, five.” Ben shortened the count. Matthew knew he would. They’d worked together for three years, and he was ready. Matthew pulled the bucket off the pig’s head and ran for the fence. But, as he jumped for the guardrail, his hand slipped, and he lost his footing. Ben quickly grabbed Matthew’s muddy pants and pulled him over in time to escape the charging pig.
Matthew looked down dismayed to see that his clothes were covered in blood, mud, and pig poop.
The men were laughing now but more from relief. Mad sows had attacked Ben and Irwin before, and they knew the danger.
“I hope you’ve got a change of clothes, boy.” Irwin now adopted a more sympathetic tone. Matthew didn’t. He hadn’t planned to spend his almost-last Saturday at work wallowing in a pigpen.
“Hey, let’s get back to the clinic. I think I have a suture removal coming in,” Ben shouted above the squealing of the sows in the nearby pens.
As they approached Ben’s truck, Matthew checked out the dog chained in the backyard. They were supposed to vaccinate the dog before leaving Irwin’s pig farm.
“Try to hold her a little more tightly, Matthew. It’s Cleo, and you know how vicious those rottys can be. I’ll stop by your house, and you can quickly change.”
Matthew held the leather collar and braced the dog against his knee as Ben quickly jabbed the vaccine in the scruff of her neck. Cleo wagged her tail and tried to lick Matthew. “So dangerous. Do I get extra pay for keeping you safe today?”
“Uh, no.” Dr. Ben Hughes was used to Matthew’s request for extra pay. It was a running joke. “I might let you clean up before we return to the clinic, though.”
Matthew stunk. Ben was reluctant even to allow him in the truck. “I should make you walk.” Ben scowled, but he finally laughed.
“Hey, I just took a bullet for you, Dr. Hughes. You should be grateful.”
“Okay, you can ride in the front, but wind the window down, and let’s hope we don’t see any of your girlfriends.”
“Not likely,” Matthew quipped back.
Matthew certainly hoped he wouldn’t see anyone he knew. Only one girl mattered these days, and they were on the skids, anyway. He was going to State College, and she would attend an all- girl Eastern snob school.
Ben halted the truck in front of Matthew’s house. “You’ve got five minutes, Pig Boy.” Ben laughed as he tossed a CD into the player.
***
The morning run was over. The clients and their pets were gone from Parkside Veterinary Clinic. All that was left were some mopping and a single medical record to write up. Ben looked up from the computer and noticed Matthew mopping the foyer floor outside the waiting room. Darn,
he was going to miss this kid. Matthew had worked after school and during the summer at Parkside Veterinary Clinic for how many years? He was almost part of the furniture.
“Matthew, how long have you worked here?” No response. Ben noticed Matthew’s earpieces. Boy, did that irritate Ben. Those damn cell phones and that awful music. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
Matthew glanced up and realized Ben was speaking to him. He was getting to the good part, too, but he obediently switched off his phone.
“Sorry, Dr. Hughes, I was only ….
Ben cut him off. “What if Cleo attacked me? You wouldn’t have heard anything.” Ben and Matthew knew that the nine-year-old rottweiler was about as likely to attack him as Ben’s four- year-old daughter.
“You kids and your punk-rock music.”
“Well, Dr. Hughes, most kids listen to alternative music these days, not punk, but this is a talk about physics. I’m taking physics in my first semester at college, and I need to bone up on it. And I will say, pun intended. As far as I know, Cleo’s still on a chain at the pig farm.” Matthew sensed he had the advantage. Score!
Ben often listened to audiobooks as he traveled around to his clients. It usually drove his young passengers nuts. Coming in on the middle of any book was either bland or so interesting that you wanted to know how the story ended. The passengers never did find out because Ben was into another book as soon as that book was finished.
“How long have you worked here, Matthew?” Ben repeated, feeling almost but not quite chagrined.
“Three of the best years of my life. Is that the right answer?” Score again, Matthew thought, still believing he had the upper hand in the exchange.
“And you leave for college in two weeks, or is it three? So, I guess I need to find a replacement for you in the next few weeks?” Ben experienced a small moment of panic.
“I start at State in four weeks, but I must leave here in two weeks. Dr.-Mrs. Hughes has my resignation letter. I assumed she would have told you, but.” Ben cut him off once again.
“Wait a minute. What about your offsiders?”
Matthew worked alongside the twins, Gina and Rachael. They weren’t actually twins, but they both had blonde hair in ponytails and wore similar clothes. Hence, Malcolm Carter, the regular kennel man, called them the twins. It stuck. All three graduated from Clearview High in June and were accepted into college programs.
Gina, Rachael, and Matthew were the second group of student assistants to work at Parkside. The first group left a few years ago after finishing high school. They were now at State, trying to get into vet school. One had become a vet nurse and worked at Grantham’s Vet Clinic in Riverton, the next town down the highway, during her summer breaks.
“Dr. Hughes, we all finish August 15.” Man, did the Hugheses ever talk to one another?
Matthew wondered. Well, he wouldn’t be the first to ask that question.
Dr.-Mrs. Hughes, or Helen, was Ben’s wife. Both were veterinarians who owned the Parkside Veterinary Clinic. To distinguish between them, Ben was Dr. Hughes to the young staff members, and Helen was referred to as Dr.-Mrs. Hughes. The older staff members called them by their first names, but the student workers were required to address them formally. In general, however, this was a relaxed, friendly clinic, and most clients were on a first-name basis with Ben and Helen.
Ben handled most of the large animal calls, and Helen cared for the small animals. Helen also ran the business end of the practice, including the hiring and firing. Ben was frequently the last to know what was going on. He conducted the financing and interfacing with the banks and brokers, while Helen took care of their three kids: young James-nine, Sarah-six, and Maggie, the four-year-old. Household management was somewhat chaotic, but that arrangement seemed to suit the family’s needs. Jodie Newland was their part-time nanny.
Dr. Amy Wang was hired to assist Helen with the small animals two years earlier. Poor Amy had been thrown into the thick of it from day one. She saw a snail-bait poisoning in a cat, which didn’t survive; a pyometra in a collie; and a dog with a hemangiosarcoma, which is a sizeable blood-vessel tumor in the abdomen. The pyometra, or infection of the uterus, took precedence, and went to surgery that afternoon after the cat died. The pus-filled uterus and ovaries were removed. The anesthesia was problematic for the older dog, and she took hours to recover.
Dr. Wang hospitalized the dog with an abdominal tumor and scheduled him for surgery the following morning. Amy instinctively seemed to know what to do as if she had been doing it for years. Fortunately, dramatic days like that were rare. Amy, in fact, thrived on drama and secretly would have wanted more days like that initial one. Amy didn’t do large animals, and she preferred to avoid birds, but Helen didn’t mind—she was just thrilled with the extra help.
Ben realized he needed to finish his medical records and get home. I sure hope Helen’s put out an ad for new students. The thought of breaking in the newbie students was not on Ben’s list of enjoyable tasks, but neither was not having assistance at all. He recognized that the practice was growing, and someday he would retire. The best insurance for succession and retirement was to hire a vet with local ties, who wanted to return to the town to take over Parkside. The students were an investment into retirement. Occasionally, they were fun, too. Matthew was Ben’s favorite student employee. Matthew gave as good as he got, and it was such a shame the kid had to leave.
Matthew went back to the joys of a physics lecture he’d found on the net. Thank you, Mr. Khan. Matthew, who discovered the Khan Academy on YouTube several years previously, often used
the tutorials in his studies. He finished cleaning inside the clinic and headed to restock the truck. He knew there’d been a stitch job last night, and the car was still a mess from the pig call.
Matthew would miss the smell of that truck: medicine, betadine, and cinnamon chewing gum.
Dr. Hughes was the best boss for whom Matthew had ever worked. All right, he was the sole boss Matthew had ever worked for. He was even allowed to help with some surgeries the prior month and held instruments. He had many memorable experiences working at Parkside. His favorite was pulling a live foal out of a mare one snowy morning. Ben let him stick his arm into the mare and pull a bent leg where it was flexed at the knee. After the leg had straightened, the foal came out so fast it landed in Matthew’s lap. He still remembered the smell of the placental fluid that soaked his clothes.
After three years, Matthew knew the truck from front to back. He would have it sorted out quickly. Matthew hoped to come back to work here when he completed vet school. How many years? If he was lucky, it would be six, but more likely eight.
Ben began writing up the bill and record for the Tanners from the previous evening. Their paint show mare had lacerated her mouth from a nail inside the feeder. It was an easy stitch job, but the mare was not in a cooperative mood. Drugs, and lots of them, made a difficult job easy. The trick with her was inserting a needle into her jugular vein, which coursed down her neck.
The best approach was a dart gun, but that wasn’t going to happen. Ben loaded a syringe with the sedation and performed the prudent stab-and-step-away trick, while the mare did a mini-rear and allowed him to approach again. Oh, please be in the vein. Yes, it was. Phew! After that, she was milk toast. To be safe, he’d positioned her head across the gate and applied a twitch to her nose to steady her as he infiltrated the skin edges with lidocaine. The rest was textbook. With the endorphin release from the twitch, combined with sedation, she complied without protest. With three horizontal mattress sutures, the edges came together flawlessly. Ben remembered a saying from vet school, where suturing could be related to the Hokey Pokey: “You put the needle in, take the needle out ….” Ben chuckled as he wrote up the bill.
As Ben added the tetanus vaccine onto the account, a tall boy with red hair and freckles walked in. “Hello.” The tall teen made no eye contact. “I want to turn in my resume.” He handed the single sheet over the counter, looking everywhere but at Ben. No hope for this kid. He took the resume and thanked him. Whew, thank God for Helen. He realized she must have posted an ad for the position in the local newspaper. Ben glanced down at the computer screen and suddenly yelped aloud. It was blank with white lines running across it.
“Shit!” he exclaimed. The young stranger blushed as he peered over the counter at the screen.
This computer glitch had occurred before, and the last time it was expensive. Not only did it mean a new hard drive, but today was Saturday, and he couldn’t get it to the repair shop before Monday. Ben tapped his foot in annoyance. He looked up at this twerp of a kid who was still standing there.
“Sorry.” Ben thought this must be the only teenager in Clearview who would blush at a swear word. “Look, we’ll let you know.” Ben was trying to push the kid out of the office, so he could relieve his feelings with a few more choice words.
Matthew had returned from the truck and was in the lab to clean the surgical instruments. He observed the boy hand over his resume. Matthew didn’t recognize him from school. He would have remembered the red hair. He was either new or from Riverton.
“I can fix that for you. At least, I think I can.” The boy stared intently at the screen.
“Huh?” Ben was about to dial Helen with the bad news, but now he paused. “You couldn’t fix this, Red. It’s dead. I’ve seen this before.” Ben was now irritated and wanted this kid gone. Ben’s working knowledge of computers was limited to the off-and-on switch. When anything went wrong, Helen was the one to deal with it.
“Yes, I can, really. I’m pretty sure.” The strange kid sounded quite confident.
Ben understood the computer was backed up every night, and only his bill for Tanner’s mare and today’s in-house cases were new. Since Irwin had paid for the pig surgery and vaccination of his dog, Ben had the money for that. He could write up the small-animal charges in an invoice book to be entered after the computer was repaired.
“Okay, Red, go for it.” Oh, what the hell. He would have to purchase a new computer anyway, so what did it matter?
The boy came around the counter and politely stood until Ben moved out of the chair. He sat down and, in a few minutes, had everything back to normal. Ben silently revised his assessment of this application. He might be worth a look, after all.
“My name is Tom Griffith, not Red.” Tom’s eyes were still fixed on the screen. “I can see you don’t have malware protection.” Ben looked down at him quizzically.
“Malware protection is like a tetanus vaccine for computers.”
Ben said nothing. He knew what malware was, but he feigned ignorance. Tom headed for the door.
“Hey, Red, I mean Tom, can you come by next Saturday for an interview? Maybe we could discuss some malware protection, too?”
“Sure, what time?”
“Oh, call the office on Friday.” Ben wondered how this kid knew about the tetanus vaccine.
Ben looked back at the computer screen in amazement as Tom walked out of the office toward a minivan, in which a man sat waiting.
Tom nodded to his father and, with his back to the office, so he couldn’t be seen, he gave his father the thumbs-up. Ben glanced at Matthew, who had silently witnessed the event. Ben gave Matthew the thumbs-up, as well. “I think you may have been replaced.”
Ben returned to his Tanner bill. He remembered the antibiotic he had dispensed. Let’s see: 250 ml of procaine penicillin to be administered at 25 ml in the muscle twice daily. He’d shown the owners how to pinch the mare’s skin to dull the needle’s sharp point. Yeah, good luck with that. Ben chuckled, knowing they would be back on Monday to replace the injectable antibiotics with oral powder, but they had insisted on penicillin. They thought the sun shone out of her, you know where. It didn’t, but she certainly was gorgeous.
Ben finished his invoices and shut down the computer for the weekend. How did this kid know how to fix computers? Red appeared like your average city boy. Ben looked at Matthew, and both shrugged in puzzlement.
