Listen to the Child

“Well, peachy,” Nancy said, lifting her eyes to heaven. “You do that.” She took Kit’s arm. “In the meantime, Dr. Mac’s got one more cat to spay.”

Kit gathered up Kevlar, put his harness on him gently and lowered him to the floor. He sat at once and looked up at her expectantly. “Home,” she said.

He stood and walked off at her heel.

“Now that’s the kind of dog to have,” Nancy said.

“Pretty high-handed, aren’t you?” Mac jabbed.

“Absolutely. You know how she went deaf?”

“No idea.”

“Me neither. But I’ll sure find out.”

Mac pressed his palms against his eyes. “Okay, where’s this cat?”

“There isn’t one. I just said that because if you don’t have at least some peanut butter crackers and potato chips out of the machine, you’re going to pass out facedown in somebody’s intestines.”

“What about you?”

“I brought myself a healthy lunch. Turkey sandwich and an apple. I just finished. You might consider packing yourself a lunch. Or don’t you do that sort of thing?”

“Even I, Miss Mayfield, can make a turkey sandwich,” he said and headed for the conference room.

As he munched his peanut butter crackers, he remembered that he’d promised to drop by Kit’s house in a couple of days to check on Kevlar. In the meantime, he could consult with his partners about trying her out on a part-time basis. The scrubbing and cleaning part of the job required no special skills. She said she had the computer skills already. Why not give her a chance?

MAC HAD PROMISED to check on Kevlar. Tonight— Wednesday—was the night. He nearly lost his nerve when he saw a dark-green van parked behind Kit’s Jeep. Then he told himself that since this was a purely professional call, and since he couldn’t have telephoned ahead to let Kit know he was coming, he’d simply ring the bell and assume she wasn’t having a party.

The instant the bell sounded, he heard Kevlar’s bark from inside the door, and a moment later, Kit opened it.

“Dr. Thorn?” She sounded surprised.

He felt tongue-tied and dry-mouthed. Ridiculous. He drew himself up to his six feet four. “I’m checking to see that you’re looking after Kevlar properly.”

“Oh, really. See for yourself.”

“I don’t want to intrude. You have company.”

“Hey, Doc,” a male voice called from the living room. A stocky young man with a buzz cut stuck his head around the corner of the door. “It’s me, Vince Calandruccio. Adam’s daddy.”

A moment later the largest black German shepherd Mac knew—and he knew plenty—stuck his head around the door as well.

Mac grinned and said, “Hey, Adam, how’s the arthritis?”

At a hand signal from Vince, Adam came forward, carefully sidestepping Kevlar, who stood quietly beside Kit. Mac dropped to one knee and began to ruffle the shepherd’s ears.

“Adam moves a whole lot better, Doc, since you put him on that new stuff. You should have seen him do the police obstacle course last Friday. Fast as he was when he was a pup, weren’t you, boy?”

Mac looked up and saw that Kit was getting only a few words of their conversation because Vince was behind her and Mac had bent his head over Adam. He stood, looked at Kit and spoke slowly. “Since Kevlar seems to be doing well, I’ll be on my way.”

“How would you know?” Kit said. “You’ve barely looked at him.”

“Hey, no, Doc,” Vince said. “Stay long enough to have a beer.”

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Interrupt, hell. Me’n Kit been friends since police academy. She worked the Dog Squad for a while until they found out what a great sniper she was.”

“A sniper?” He turned to stare at her. “A police sniper?”

“First woman in the T.A.C.T. squad. First woman sniper,” Vince said proudly. “Best in the business. Take out a gnat’s eye at a thousand yards. You ever get into a hostage situation, Doc, you better pray they send our gal Kit out to save you.”

“Not any longer.” Kit sat in a wing chair beside the fireplace. Kevlar immediately jumped into her lap, turned in a circle and settled down. “Men are supposed to be better snipers than women because their pulse and heart rate are slower, but mine used to be so low that every time they took it they wondered if I was actually alive.”

She shrugged her shoulders as though it didn’t matter, but Mac could tell it mattered terribly. “I could probably train hard enough to get it down again, but my depth perception’s all screwed up.” She touched the scar that bisected her eyebrow. “Besides, who needs a sniper who can’t hear the order to fire?”

Mac had never registered that Kit’s sardonic look came from the thin scar that raised her left eyebrow slightly. “The scar is barely visible. Good stitching.”

“As good as yours?” She raised that eyebrow at him.

He lifted his shoulders. “Close.”

“So how ’bout that beer?” Vince headed for the kitchen with easy familiarity.

Adam followed his master with his eyes, but didn’t rise from his place beside the couch.

When Vince came back with the drink, Mac took the beer, which he really didn’t want, and sat opposite Kit so that she could see both his face and Vince’s. “Where is your daughter?” he asked.

“Upstairs doing homework.”

Vince stretched out his thick legs in front of him and leaned his head on the back of the sofa. “Doc, as long as you’re here, how about some advice.”

Mac nodded.

“See, you’re keeping Adam here going fine, but he’s seven years old now and close to retiring as a police dog. The canine unit likes younger dogs.” Vince reached down and scratched behind the dog’s ears. “He’ll be going home with me for good when he does. See, right now we either get dogs from Germany—that’s where Adam came from—or from a guy in Ohio who breeds German shepherds specifically for police departments.”

“I know that.”

“He assesses the pups and does basic training for the first two years, then if he thinks a dog’s a good candidate, he recommends we buy it. So far he’s been a hundred percent on the nose. We’re paying upward of ten thousand bucks a pup, then we have to complete the training and train the handlers ourselves.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Mac said. “Isn’t that a bit steep even for a good shepherd?”

“Not for these guys,” Vince said. “The imported Belgian Malinois cost even more. Thing is, I think with the right female, I could breed some pretty good pups from old Adam here.”

“Possibly.”

“I got my eye on a great big old girl from outside Leipzig in what used to be East Germany—that’s where Adam came from. I’ve got permission to breed her to him if I can get her over here. I could undercut the guy from Ohio and still make one heck of a profit, even if I only sold one pup a litter to a police department and the rest for pets.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Think Kit here could manage a kennel?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I want to set up a kennel on some land I’ve got over in Hardeman County. If I can persuade Kit, we could go in together on the female and split the profits. I could keep working while she looked after the kennel.”

“It would certainly be worth investigating,” Mac said, trying to keep the dismay out of his voice. He wanted to keep Kit in his sight, not fifty miles away. “Since Kit will be working at Creature Comfort now, she should certainly be getting some excellent training.” He spoke to her. “Do you have any experience running a kennel?”

“Of course not. The whole idea is crazy, Vince. Where would Em go to school? What about Jimmy’s visitation rights? This house?” She turned to Mac. “Who said for sure I’ll be working for Creature Comfort? Did I miss something?”

“We talked it over at the staff meeting. Nancy put in a good word for you and they agreed to hire you part-time. It’s all settled. I thought we might discuss salary tonight.” He glanced at Vince. He liked Vince but he wished he’d take the hint and leave.

“Hey, it’s okay if you don’t want to go in with me. Maybe it’s too soon,” Vince said. “I’m still going to try to buy that female, though. I can raise a litter of puppies in my backyard, see how it goes. I’m glad you’re going to be getting out of the house more, Kit. When are you going to come down to the gym and start working out with the boys in blue again?”

“Don’t forget I’m not in blue any longer.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’ll always be one of us. You know that. Well, old Adam and me have to get home.”

Vince stood and Adam came to attention beside him, eyes on his face. Vince gave him a hand signal, and he fell in beside his master.

Kit walked into the front hall with Vince.

Vince hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. “Bye, sweet thing. Come on down and see us, y’ hear?”

Mac felt a jolt of adrenaline when Vince hugged Kit. Were they really just friends? He didn’t want there to be anything between them—between Kit and anybody.

As Kit stood in the door and waved goodbye to Vince and Adam, the telephone on the hall table rang. He could see the red light blinking, but Kit was facing away from it.

Instantly Kevlar jumped up and bumped her hand. She turned, saw the light and picked up the telephone. “Just a minute, whoever you are. This is the wrong phone. Hang on.” She said to Mac, “The phone I use is upstairs in my bedroom. Excuse me.”

He started to tell her goodbye, but she turned and took the steps two at a time before he could. Incredible legs. Great rear end too. He’d never much liked muscles in a woman, but the thought of those legs locked around him started a chain reaction that he’d prefer Kit not see when she came downstairs. He went back to the living room to wait for her.

It was a comfortable room with bookshelves packed with current fiction on either side of the fireplace. A few pieces of furniture that his mother would probably approve of, but mostly an accumulation selected with taste but without much money. He had picked up a picture of a much younger Emma, when he heard Kit coming downstairs.

“Sorry. Jimmy wanted to change his night to have Emma sleep over. One of these days I am going to kill him.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Jimmy Lockhart, Emma’s father, my ex-husband. He rides a patrol car. He makes me so mad. He thinks having Emma sleep over is something he does when one of his bimbos cancels.” She sank into the recliner. “God, I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear my problems.”

“At Creature Comfort we all interact like family.” He felt his face flaming. Of all the stuffy, stupid things to say! “Now, I really must go. Thanks for the beer.”

“When do you want me to show up at Creature Comfort?”

“Would next Monday be too soon?”

“Not at all. We can talk about how much I can pay toward my bill out of my salary.”

“Don’t worry about your bill.”

She put her hand on his arm to turn him to face her. “Can’t lip-read your back, Doctor.”

“Sorry. I said, don’t worry about your bill.” God, he loved the way she watched him, the way her lips parted and almost spoke the words as he did.

If he didn’t look out, he was going to grab her and kiss her.

And probably wind up flat on his back with a karate chop to the throat.

“Uh, see you Monday.”

He practically fled from the house. As he jumped into his car, he saw the curtains behind one of the upstairs windows flutter. Emma. He started the car and burned rubber getting away.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN KIT OPENED the door to the Creature Comfort conference room early the following Monday morning, Nancy looked up from the comics section of the morning paper. “I wasn’t sure you’d show up.”

“Neither was I,” Kit replied, taking her outstretched hand. “I nearly lost my nerve. I’m not sure I can do this job without a good set of ears.”

The early-morning mist still hadn’t lifted from the Creature Comfort parking lot, although the weather was supposed to clear later in the day. About time. Everybody was sick of the unending late-February rain. Even the jonquils beside the roads looked dispirited.

Kit had dropped Emma at school, then had driven straight to Creature Comfort. Until the accident, she’d loved being surrounded by people. Now she realized that for eight months she’d seen almost no one except her doctors, the audio-clinic staff and her immediate family—if she could still consider Jimmy Lockhart family. She felt shy and out of place. These people knew one another well, worked together all the time. Could she possibly fit in? Would she see conversations around her that she couldn’t interpret? The speech pathology people had warned her against becoming paranoid. It was easy to imagine others were gossiping about her.

Nancy bent to ruffle Kevlar’s ears, then tilted her face up so that Kit could read her lips. “Around here you may find it a plus not being able to hear. All the barking and yapping gets to you after a while. Come on, I’ll show you around and introduce you to the staff that’s here. Later I can fill you in on them over lunch. Did you bring your lunch?”

“You’re going to have to speak more slowly,” Kit said. “I only got about half of that.”

“Oops. Sorry. Did–you–bring–your–lunch?”

Kit laughed. “Not that slowly! The way it works is that I catch some of the words and fill in the blanks from what seems logical. B’s and P’s and M’s look almost alike, but if somebody says, ‘How about you blank me after work?’ the chances are she’s saying ‘meet’ me after work, not ‘beat’ me after work. Not unless you’re talking to somebody deeply weird.”

“As the Mad Hatter told Alice in Wonderland, we’re all mad here,” Nancy said as she shoved through the doors to the kennel. “And overworked, as you’re about to see.”

With Kev trotting at her heels, Kit followed Nancy to the large-animal area.

Nancy knocked on the first door on her left, waited a moment, then opened it and stood back for Kit to follow.

A pretty woman in a lab coat sat behind a desk piled high with reports. A happy baby toddled around the edges of a large playpen beside her desk.

Nancy pointedly looked back so that she was facing Kit. “Dr. Sarah Scott, this is Kit Lockhart. She’s going to be working part-time with us in the small-animal area. Kit, this is Dr. Sarah Scott, head of our large-animal section.”

The baby bounced up and down. “And this,” Nancy said, “is Nell, known to all and sundry as Muggs.”

At the mention of her nickname, the baby opened her mouth and began to make what must be crows of delight. Kit stiffened. She’d never be able to hear her own grandchild’s voice—assuming she ever had a grandchild!

Sarah came around her desk with her hand outstretched. “Hi. Welcome to the nuthouse.”

“Thanks. Can’t be any nuttier than what I’m used to.”

“Keep that thought.”

Nancy took Kit’s arm and led her down the hall. At the far end a wizened elf of a man was giving the Percheron mare a shot in her neck.

“Jack Renfro. He does for Sarah and Eleanor Chadwick, our other large-animal vet, what I do for Mac.” She paused. “But not half as well.”

He pointed a crooked finger at her. “None of that now, missy.” He took Sarah’s hand. His felt like old leather and twisted twigs. “Happy to meet you, lass. Nancy told me already we’re to have you with us part of the day.”

“We also have Kenny Nichols part-time,” Nancy told Kit. “He comes in after school three days a week. He’s off to Mississippi State to do pre-vet as soon as he graduates. You’ll meet him and Dr. Chadwick later.”

Kit learned that Bill Chumney—the veterinarian who handled exotic animals—was on assignment in the Black Hills and wouldn’t be back for several weeks. And Dr. Weinstock was off in Kentucky doing something with horses for the next month.

As she followed Nancy back through the door that separated the small-animal area from the large, she hoped she’d run into Dr. Thorn. Nancy had made a few comments about his bearish reputation, but so far Kit had seen nothing from him but kindness. He might be a little gruff, but he had been charming to Emma and had taken the trouble to make a house call on Kevlar on Wednesday evening. She wanted to thank him for giving her the chance to work again. Besides, he was the first man she’d met since her divorce who attracted her. Big, competent men always had. She’d actually thought Jimmy was competent.

She felt certain Dr. Thorn was the genuine article.

“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED to train another surgical assistant,” Rick Hazard said as he poured himself a third cup of coffee and took it back to the conference table.

“Kit’s bright,” Mac said. “She could learn.”

“That’s about the only job she can’t do around here. She can’t hear you and she won’t be able to read your lips through your face mask.”

Mac flushed. “So Nancy will train her to take over the other duties—dispensing meds, draining wounds, aftercare, checking on ICU patients. Big still gets confused sometimes and doesn’t want the responsibility. Except for the occasional parrot, our clients don’t generally communicate in words. I think Nancy can bring her along fast.”

“I just wish you’d let me at least interview the woman before you brought her on board.”

“Mark approved the expenditure. You agreed to try her at the staff meeting. Don’t go back on your word now.”

Rick raised his hands. “Don’t get huffy. I’m sure she’ll be fine. When can I meet this paragon?”

“This afternoon. According to Nancy, she had an appointment scheduled with her doctor. She’ll be back for a bit after that. Nancy already had her fill out employment forms, so she can start learning her responsibilities this afternoon and really get started tomorrow.”

“Fine. I’ve got a lunch meeting scheduled with Mark and my esteemed father-in-law at Buchanan Industries’ corporate dining room.” Rick crumpled up his cup and lobbed it expertly into the trash. “I can meet her this afternoon.”

“Money problems?” Mac asked. He knew that Coy Buchanan was a tough old coot whose only soft spot seemed to be his daughter, Margot.

“For once, apparently not. Creature Comfort’s more than meeting objectives.”

“Good. Then maybe we can afford another trained vet tech on staff and a couple of clerks.”

“Whoa!” Rick said. “We may be meeting our objectives, but we’re still not rolling in money.”

As he followed Rick out of the staff lounge, Mac said, “Kit Lockhart will be bringing her dog to work with her.”

“Another one?” Rick stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “We’ve already got Mark’s Nasdaq running around, and Big sneaks Daisy in every chance he gets. The last thing we need is another—” He stopped in midsentence. “Oh, damn, I forgot. He’s a helper dog, isn’t he?” He shrugged. “I guess she needs him.”

“He’s well-behaved. I promise he won’t eat the patients.”

“SOMETIMES I WISH the Internet had never been invented.”

Dr. Reuben Zales rubbed his hand across his completely bald head and took a deep breath. “I’ve read the same articles you found on that site, Kit, and a great many more in medical journals. The operation they’re talking about is experimental, and I mean very experimental. At the moment it’s far, far too risky.”

Kit leaned forward and put her hands on the edge of his desk, palms up as though in supplication. “But it sounds perfect for me, Reuben.”

“Sure it does. And maybe in five years, or even two or three if they have good results, we’ll look into it.”

“But it said—”

“I said I am familiar with the Internet site, Kit.”

She couldn’t hear his tone, but she suspected there was an edge of exasperation creeping in. He didn’t like to have his judgment questioned. He admitted he was conservative. Maybe it was a good thing all she got was the words.

He ran his tongue over his lips. It was a constant gesture, almost a tic, and it drove Kit crazy because he spoke while he did it. What she read came out like some archaic Far Eastern language. “Stop that,” she snapped.

He looked at her blankly.

“The tongue thing. I can’t hear you when you do that.”

“What tongue thing?” He dismissed her comment at once. He obviously wasn’t even aware he did it. “Okay. Let’s make it simple. Yes, regular cochlear implants can be miracles. For some people, not for you. You know that. We’ve consulted and discussed a dozen times. The operation you found on the Internet is far more than a simple cochlear implant. I can do those all day with excellent success rates and almost no complications. What you’re talking about is a cochlear implant with a computer chip and wires into the brain—almost like an antenna hard-wired into your head. Yes, it might work. Yes, it would be wonderful, and no, not yet. You could wind up with seizures or God forbid a brain hemorrhage or throw a clot from the operation itself.”

“But the success rate is eighty percent…”

“According to the Internet. It might be eighty percent out of a total of ten patients. Even eight hundred out of a thousand means two hundred failures. Listen, ten years ago bone marrow transplants were very dangerous. They still are, but the success rate and the new techniques make them much less so. We transplant hearts and kidneys and implant pacemakers and defibrillators like garage mechanics. Now. But we didn’t when we started. Let those geniuses practice on some other people before they work on you.”

“But—”

“You are young, smart, tough, healthy, quick and you’ve made incredible strides in lipreading. You have closed captioning on your television. Your computer lets you talk on the telephone—”

“Only at my own computer in my own house.”

“Still. And now you’ve got Kevlar…”

The little dog that lay beside Kit’s chair raised his head and wagged his stumpy tail when he heard his name.

“You’re functioning better than nine-tenths of my patients.”

“That’s because I’m working so hard at pretending this deafness thing is only a small inconvenience. Reuben, you deal with deaf patients every day, but you don’t have a clue what it’s really like to be locked into this silent world. If I thought it would last forever I don’t know what I’d do—I can wait if you make me, but I miss hearing Emma’s voice. And music. Emma hates having me like this. She doesn’t say much, but she’s stopped having her friends for sleepovers, and she practically dives into the car when I pick her up at school for fear some of her classmates will come over to chat with me. God, Reuben, what if I can’t hear her say ‘I do’? What if I never hear my grandchildren laugh?”

He threw up his hands. “I wasn’t aware that she was engaged. Obviously we’d better fly you to Boston this evening.”

“All right. So she’s only ten years old. But all I can see is this blasted silence stretching away until the day I die. Sometimes I don’t think I can take it any longer.”

“By the time Emma is married and pregnant—in that order, I hope—you’ll have had the operation. You’ll hear your grandchildren laugh.”

“Promise?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“But you think?”

“Yeah. They’ll probably have something even better by then. So far I’m told that with the successful procedures, the patient only gets hearing like a scratchy old Caruso record.”

“Reuben, at the moment I’d kill for a scratchy Caruso.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, Lord, if I don’t get out of here I’m going to be late getting back to my new job.”

“Job?”

She picked up Kevlar’s leash. “I’m working as a grunt at Creature Comfort, the vet clinic.”

“Lisa takes Biff and Shorty there. Great place.”

“They saved Kevlar’s life. He had to have a kidney removed.”

“He’s okay now?”

“Fine. Thanks to Dr. Thorn. Do you know him?”

“Lisa’s mentioned him. Great with his hands, very, very bad with his bedside manner. If you’re going to work there, it’s probably a good thing you can’t hear him.”

“So I’ve been told. Okay, Reuben. If you’re absolutely dead set against it, I won’t risk that operation right this minute. But you have to promise me you’ll research it and talk to the guys in Boston. Try to figure out the absolute first minute it’ll be safe for me to have it.”