A Matter of Time – The Travels of Dr. Rebecca Harper
Dr. Rebecca Harper travels to Nevada following graduation from veterinary school. She leaves her husband and small daughter to interview at a veterinary clinic near Lake Tahoe. Rebecca is introduced to an area where the mythical television series, Comstock, was filmed.
She is involved in an accident while riding in the Eastern Sierras. Injured and disoriented, Rebecca must fight to survive. She eventually walks out of the mountains and into the set where the television series was filmed. There she meets actors who resemble the beloved 1950s characters of the canceled television series. It must be a revival.
Or is it? Is she trapped in a time warp? Are these real people? How can she return to her husband and daughter? Can she survive in the 1850s without the modern conveniences she is now accustomed to, such as radiographs, Oreos, and Tampons? A Matter of Time is the first book about a young woman’s life in the 1800s as she searches to find a way back to her time.
Graduation 1981—Oh my God, I’m a vet. A real vet. No more practicing writing my name as Rebecca Ann Harper, DVM—or better yet, Dr. Rebecca Harper—in the margins of my class notes. No more calculating my GPA daily in my spiral notebook while Dr. Fitzgerald drones on about accreditation exams. Considering the last three years, this is a miracle. I have it all.
With my diploma in hand and Pomp and Circumstance droning from the loudspeaker, I rushed off the graduation stage. I walked past my beaming husband, Jeff. He had Lauren, our three-year-old daughter, in tow and intended to keep her from screaming as I walked past without a hug.
Jeff and I met when he started his residency in equine reproduction four years ago. A kinder man you will never meet. “He’s tall, muscular, sandy-haired, and the best husband and father you could ever ask for. The cliché is gag-worthy, but it’s true.” He opted out of his theriogenology residency program for one year with only a few months to go, so I could continue my schooling.
He’d been in practice at a small, rural veterinary clinic when it dawned on him that his passion for all things repro needed to be satisfied. We met when he came to the vet school to complete his doctorate and residency in equine reproduction. Now, Jeff has only six months left to complete his studies, and then we are out of here. Well, I’m out of here next week.
Don’t get me wrong. Vet school has been the best part of my life so far. I’m a bit slow, so it took me longer than most to be accepted into vet school but, once that happened, I became a student with a passion. I graduated with honors and received plenty of job offers.
Like Jeff, horses are my passion.
I grew up on a horse ranch with my older sister, Sherry, and my parents. Well, up until I was fifteen, when my mom died. Septicemia from a ruptured appendix was the cause of her death, but she’d had problems for years. I just pray I haven’t inherited her gastric intolerances. Sherry went off the deep end after that, and we don’t even know where she is. In the end, it was Dad and me, and now just Dad.
Our ranch is in the high country of Montana, so I’m accustomed to rough winters and the hardships of rural life. We had cattle, but Dad’s primary income was from horses. We bred ranch stock. Most were quarter horses, but we had a bit of everything.
Dad had three stallions and about twenty mares. He had around fifteen foals every year. My father also accepted outside horses for breaking. Well-known for having a way with horses, he even did training for a few movies and one long-running T.V. show. It may have been Gunsmoke.
Dad was in the graduation audience, and I looked around to find him in the crowd. I waved at him, and he beamed back at me. I was the first college graduate in the family. When I married and became pregnant, I think he thought the gig was up.
I knew he loved me, but I could hear the yelling four states away when I hung up after telling him, “Dad, I’ll go back and finish. I promise.” He was not persuaded. I think he considered coming down to castrate Jeff. He performed all the colt castrations on our ranch where we lived. Thankfully for all concerned, we were going to come and assume that job.
Jeff loved the ranch and the streams. We both loved to fish. Up in that remote area of Montana, the fishing was easy. Jeff was a fly fisherman, and he was showing me how to cast a line the summer before I got pregnant.
Well, I did graduate on time, and because Jeff sacrificed his studies so I could finish mine, my dad put away the emasculators when he came to see our beautiful daughter. When he heard that we might be moving to Nevada, the fight was on again for one and all.
“I didn’t raise you and put you through college so you could run off and live a thousand miles away. I have a right to see my granddaughter at least once a month, and I’m not getting any younger. I’m gonna need help this spring, and I don’t mean a few days of vaccinating, castrating, and floating teeth.” If you don’t know about horses, floating teeth means filing down the sharp points on the molars.
“Dad, there isn’t enough work in Mountain Laurel to support a vet, and you know it. I’m going to pay you and the bank back. I have six months until the student loan payments start. Jeff is still receiving a pitiful salary as a resident. I’m trying. Please believe me. If we could find jobs closer to you, we would. Besides, we are even farther from Jeff’s family. Like it or not, I have two families now.”
A truce was declared. The plan was for me to visit a mixed practice with a significant horse component near Lake Tahoe. I would go the week after graduation and check out the Nevada veterinary practice. The owners were Mac and Julie Smyth.
They were both vets, but Julie had not worked as a vet in twenty years. She gave up practice when their kids were born. She ran the office and raised the kids while Mac did the rest.
An up-and-coming vet had planned to take over the veterinary practice in three years, but one kick to the shoulder and the young vet checked out of the clinic and never returned. Mac had a progressive neurological condition and was not going to be around much longer.
The practice was put on the market for a song. Mac and Julie had done well and had properties and investments all over the area. Selling the veterinary practice was not a retirement deal. They loved their staff and clients, and they wanted to make sure all their staff and clients were looked after.
Mac figured he had a year or two to do the things he’d never done. He was going to take Julie and the kids to ride the John Muir Trail. If that went well, he and Julie were doing the Pacific Crest Trail the following year.
The Smyths knew we couldn’t afford to buy anything. They just wanted out. They asked us to take over the practice this summer, so they could get the John Muir done. They would hire me and provide a nanny, and Jeff would join us in January. We would buy the practice, and they would finance it.
