Tennessee Vet

Getting him actually loose didn’t prove to be as difficult as Barbara had thought. “I wish I had a real raptors’ hood,” she said as she held the bird, snugly, under one arm, while she kept the towel taut over the eagle’s head. “If I can keep his head covered until we get him on the table, I can give him a little gas. Then we’ll see what’s going on. Come on. We need to move fast.”

CHAPTER THREE

STEPHEN MACDONALD GLANCED at the pieces of his grille lying on the tarmac of the parking lot. Small price to pay to save this living creature. He now understood what an eagle eye was. The bird had glared at him as though to say, “This is your fault. Fix it!” He was already too involved, as though his life had become intertwined with the eagle’s. He’d been helpless to save Nina, watching her fade away. And he hadn’t been able to heal his own injuries, either. Somehow, he had to help this wounded creature. That was nuts, but it was the way he felt.

He followed Barbara toward the back door of the clinic.

He’d managed to hold the eagle’s feet until the doctor had the bird free. He gave thanks for his fancy driving gloves. The thing’s talons looked as long as a grizzly bear’s and twice as sharp.

The motion-sensor lights stayed on, so they could see where they were walking.

“Hey,” Dr. Carew called, “I need a hand here. Open the back door of the clinic, turn on the lights on the left, open the door to exam room one and help me get this sucker on the table. Now! Before he kills me.”

And he thought his daughters were bossy. He hobbled as fast as he could and opened the back door of the clinic, then realized he’d left his cane in the car. He felt for the light switch, found himself in a hall with doors on either side, opened the first one, turned on that light and got out of the vet’s way.

“I had no idea they were this big,” Stephen said. The eagle wasn’t fighting at the moment. It was, however, dripping blood from a gash in one of its legs—what would have been the drumstick in a turkey.

“Here, hold him still.” Barbara brought up some sort of plastic mask and stuck the eagle’s beak into it. Amazingly enough, it had not dislodged the towel covering its eyes, so it was lying quietly.

“These guys are not as tough as you’d think,” Barbara said. “When people talk about bird bones, they aren’t kidding. We need to x-ray that wing and see if anything else is busted. Internal injuries, fractured skull. I’m amazed he made it this long. Come on. Help me carry him to the X-ray room. He’s heavier than he looks.”

Together, they managed to get the bird situated on the X-ray table. Barbara pulled an X-ray shield over her shoulders and handed one to him.

“Do we have to wait while you develop the pictures?” Stephen asked as he settled the shield in front of his chest.

“Comes up on the screen right here. Animals don’t wait while you develop anything. Want to see what you did?”

“I keep telling you it hit me.”

“I know. You’re the innocent victim. Hold him down. I have to stretch that wing out far enough to see the bones. We don’t dare let him go. See that?” she said and pointed to the screen. “Looks like a clean break to that left wing. I’m not seeing any other breaks, but that cut on the thigh needs to be cleaned and stitched. He needs antibiotics. Too soon to talk about internal injuries, but I don’t see anything obvious. Maybe a concussion, but apparently not a fractured skull. You, sir—” she nodded to the eagle “—are one lucky bird.”

“How do you fix the wing?”

“I’ll straighten it as much as I dare, try to line the bones up, fold it correctly and tape it tight to his body for tonight. Then tomorrow, if he makes it, we’ll see whether he can get by with a splint or whether we’ll need to pin it. Come on, he’s waking up. We need a trifle more happy gas, then we stitch, give him antibiotics, strap that wing in place, put him down in a nice tight cage so he doesn’t flail and worry about him all night.”

“Isn’t there anything else you can do to stabilize the wing right now? You have the X-rays. Can’t you at least splint it?”

She glanced at him from under her eyebrows. “Ever hear of swelling, doctor? Birds are notorious for going into shock and dying on you. I’m not about to put more pressure on him until we’re sure he’s going to survive the night. How many eagles have you worked on?”

“None. But...”

Barbara turned to him. “I would suggest you say a few earnest prayers he survives, because, if we lose this eagle, you owe the United States a big fat fine for hitting him.” He started to speak, but she held up her hands to forestall him. “Who are you, anyway? And how do you know Emma?”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M STEPHEN MACDONALD,” he said. “Emma and Seth’s new tenant. And why should I owe the government anything? It hit me.”

“It’s a bird. And you’re a human being—the one with the big brain and the opposable thumbs. Heck of an introduction to the neighborhood.”

Stephen watched Barbara clean and close the eagle’s cut with small, neat stitches. He’d never been fond of the sight of blood, but then usually it came from a scrape or a bloody nose on one of his daughters. This was different. This woman was obviously good at what she did. His own blood hadn’t bothered him after the accident that had nearly cost him a leg, but then, he’d been in shock and unconscious for the worst part—the part when the surgeons had worked to keep him alive and with both legs attached to his body.

He realized that he didn’t even know what this vet looked like. At first, she’d been behind her flashlight, then he’d been paying so much attention to the eagle he hadn’t even glanced at her, and now she was wearing a surgical mask.

She finished her stitching, and between them they moved the eagle—already stirring—into a cage. “I have to clean up the mess,” she said. She pulled off her mask and tossed it into the trash receptacle, then turned to look at him.

He felt a jolt go through his solar plexus. She was probably five foot five and not model-thin. He guessed in her thirties. Chestnut-brown hair was pulled back in a scrunchie, but escaping in tendrils around her face.

Those eyes. Extraordinary. The color of Barbados rum with flecks of what looked like 24-carat gold in them. They were wide eyes, as though she could take in the whole world without turning her head the way that eagle could. Wise, aware eyes, as though she’d seen it all and knew she could handle it. He had a feeling that she didn’t simply look, she saw. Not a beautiful face, exactly, but he didn’t think he’d forget those high cheekbones or that broad forehead. His first impression was that she was a person of value. Worth knowing. He also noted that she had great legs.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m spitting cotton and hungry as a coyote,” she said. “You do with some sweet tea and a pimento cheese sandwich? It’s homemade.”

“I could probably eat the coyote. I was headed to the overnight gas station to get some snacks when I hit our friend in there. I didn’t have sense enough to go to the grocery before I drove back up here from Memphis this afternoon. I’m not used to having to think about those things ahead of time. In town I’m five minutes away from a supermarket. Here, the closest place is eight miles away.”

“You get used to planning ahead.” As she chatted, she straightened, cleaned, put instruments into the sterilizer, scrubbed down the table and tossed her trash. “I can go over all this again and scrub the floors tomorrow morning. Come on.”

“Shouldn’t we stay with him tonight?” Stephen asked.

Barbara shook her head. “We’ve done all we can do before morning. He needs to rest.” She turned out the lights, locked the clinic and flashed her light on Stephen’s mauled grill. “Sorry about your car. I think you can drive it, though. He doesn’t seem to have punctured the radiator or slashed any hoses. After I feed us, I’ll follow you home to be sure you get there.”

“You don’t...”

“All part of the service. Sorry, my apartment’s off the back of the barn.”

He followed her out of the clinic, across the parking lot, through the barn and to a door at the end. With all but a couple of lights off, he couldn’t see much of the animals in the stalls, but he heard a couple of horses snoring. “I’ll be glad to stay with him and let you get some sleep. I can call you if—”

“If what? You don’t know what you’re looking at. I promise you there is nothing more I can do tonight. It’s up to him. He’s alive, which is amazing. ’Course, he may never be able to be released back into the wild...”

“After you fix his wing and he convalesces, of course you can release him.”

“Not necessarily. Come in.” She turned on lights in her apartment. He followed her in.

“Bathroom’s down that hall past the bedroom,” she said and pointed. “Look, I have no idea at this point whether I can fix his wing or not. It may not knit properly or at all. It may have to be amputated.”

He was halfway down the hall, but he spun to look at her. “No! You can’t do that. He has to fly again. Be whole again.”

“Don’t freak, Mr. MacDonald. Even if he can’t fly, he’ll live a comfortable life in one of the zoo’s animal training programs. He’ll be well fed and possibly even find another mate.”

“Another mate?”

“Bird his age will almost certainly have a mate. I assume he belongs up at Reelfoot Lake. No idea how he got down here. He and his family are probably nesting in the same nest they’ve used for fifty years or longer.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. Eagles keep their nests. There’s a nest on a river in the Grand Tetons that they think has been there a couple of hundred years.”

“He’s hurt, broken, possibly disabled, not knowing where his mate is or whether his eaglets are surviving, unable to care for them and he may spend his life in a cage. Being stared at and pitied, unable to fly free. What kind of life is that for him? I should have let him die.” A wave of depression washed over him. He’d learned to fight it most of the time by refusing to feel anything at all, but this depression was for another creature, one whose situation was too close to his own. How did he guard against that?

“You do know what anthropomorphism means, don’t you?” she asked.

“Of course I do. It’s giving human characteristics to animals. The more research is done, however, the more we find there is precious little difference between us and them. He has to fly again. Find his way back.”

“So he can land and say, ‘Honey, I’m home?’ All I can do is my best, Mr. MacDonald. Now, about that sandwich.”

* * *

OF ALL THE crazy ways to spend an evening, Barbara thought as she spread mayonnaise on slices of the French baguette she’d picked up at the bakery in Williamston. She was always as ravenous after a difficult surgery as if she’d bicycled twenty miles or run a marathon. Her body had long since used up whatever energy she’d gained from that second-rate diet meat loaf.

She glanced up from the kitchen island where she was working. MacDonald was pacing around her living room staring at the books on the shelves. Lots of shelves, lots of books. Not in matching leather bindings. Not alphabetized. Her books and John’s were as intermingled as they had been the day he died.

Barbara had a simple filing system. Total recall.

When she and John had built the barn and created their apartment, they’d planned to give themselves plenty of room for books. Originally, they’d planned a big deck off the back, but after John had died she’d never gotten around to it. Or to anything else domestic for that matter. Who had the time? Or the interest when there was no one to share it with.

She saw the room as Stephen saw it. It was squeaky clean, but all it needed was a thick layer of dust and a bunch of hanging cobwebs to turn it into Miss Havisham’s wedding feast in Dickens’s Great Expectations. And she acknowledged the truth—that she hadn’t yet built the deck because finishing a project alone that she and John had planned together seemed like a betrayal. She’d never admit to a soul that she felt that way. Her friends, her clients and even her children talked about how well she had coped with John’s loss, how she had kept growing and changing. She knew better. Emotionally, she was as empty as she had been the day John died. She told herself she was happy being alone with no one to answer to except her children and her clients.

But sometimes in the night, when she reached for the place beside her where once she had felt John’s chest rise and fall, she hated knowing that she’d never love again.

Her fallback position was physical and mental exhaustion. She considered herself meticulous when it came to keeping the clinic immaculate. But when half the time she fell into bed after working flat out for twelve or more hours, it really didn’t matter when the coffee table had last been dusted. She managed to keep the kitchen and bathroom clean and the papers and magazines at least in separate piles, but that was as far as it went.

She wasn’t exactly embarrassed to have Stephen MacDonald scrub up in her bathroom, but this MacDonald guy in his vintage Triumph and polo shirt with the proper logo on it did not belong either in Emma’s rental cottage or Barbara’s apartment.

When he came back from the bathroom, she saw he had run water over his face and hair as well as scrubbed his hands and forearms.

She took her first good look at him. Oh, boy. Talk about the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood! Grandmother, what big eyes you have. And how bright blue. She didn’t think his eyes were the result of those fake colored contacts, but you never knew.

Further perpetuating the wolfish image was his short gray hair and what Shakespeare would have called a “lean and hungry” look. Actually, she seemed to recall Shakespeare was talking about an assassin. He stood a bit over six feet tall and had kept his stomach flat. Golf, maybe. Barbara sucked in her own stomach on a big breath, but she couldn’t hold it in for long.

“Sorry, I made kind of a mess,” he said. “I tried to get the blood out of my khakis. Unsuccessfully.”

“When you get back to The Hovel, put everything into the washer on cold. If there is anything I know about, it’s how to get blood out of cloth.”

“Does it ever bother you?” He propped himself up on the wall beside the refrigerator and stuck his hands into his damp pockets.

“Blood?” She picked up a wicked kitchen knife and sliced the sandwiches crossways, then slid two halves apiece onto plates and added pickles and potato chips. “I grew up on a farm. I was pulling piglets out of sows when I was five or six years old. Gangrene bothers me... Sorry, not the proper social chitchat over snacks. Death bothers me. Creatures in pain bother me. Damage I can’t fix bothers me. If it can live a happy life, then whatever I have to do to get the animal to that point is merely repair work. The same thing your mechanic will have to do with your radiator grille—I just do it with flesh and bone instead of metal.”

“Did you always want to be a vet?”

She laid out silverware and napkins and handed him a plate. “I wanted to be an Olympic three-day event rider. Jumping incredibly large and athletic horses over humongous fences at death-defying speeds.” She looked down at herself and let out a rueful sigh. “That was twenty pounds ago when I was seventeen. I was a good enough rider for local over-fences horse shows, but even if my pop had been able to afford a million-dollar jumper or the training and travel to go along with it, I wouldn’t have been good enough.”

“Why not?”

“Most three-day eventers at the Olympic level are certifiably insane. I have too much imagination. I could always visualize what would happen to the horse if I crashed.”

“The horse? Not you?”

This time she laughed. “Human doctors say ‘First, do no harm.’ We say ‘The animal always comes first.’”

“So my eagle took precedence over my antique automobile grille?”

“Of course it did, as you knew at the time. A lot of people would have sliced up the bird to avoid nicking their chrome. You didn’t.”

“As dearly as I love and baby that car, it is not alive. That bird, as he told us in no uncertain terms, is. No contest.”

“I have to keep warning you. He may not make it.”

“I did. He will, too.”

At the back of the kitchen was a banquette breakfast nook. He took his sandwich, slid in to one of the seats and stretched his right leg out to the side. “Be careful of my bum leg. I can be a hazard to navigation.”

“Beer, wine, water, soda?”

* * *

“I WOULD KILL for a beer.” What Stephen really wanted was a handful of opioids to cut the ache in his right leg and knee. That was what he got for being macho. He’d left his cane on the front seat of the car. And he didn’t take opioids. It would have been too easy to get hooked on them in rehab. Even if reality sucked, he preferred it to living in cloud-cuckoo-land.

“What’s with the leg?” Barbara said as she started on her sandwich.

“Hey, you’re not kidding. I know Southerners and their pimento cheese. This is exceptional.”

“Thank you. All my own work, as the street artists say in London. So, do we not mention the leg?”

“Most people don’t. They avoid staring, but I can tell they’re dying to ask about it. That’s part of the reason I’m at Emma’s. Sometimes I feel as if I am one gigantic leg with tiny little arms, legs and head sewed on around the edges.”

“I’m sorry...”

“No! Please. I don’t mind talking about it, if you don’t start every conversation from here on out with ‘And how are you today, Stephen?’”

She chuckled. “Promise.”

“Okay. I was headed home from a faculty dinner. I had not touched a drop of alcohol. I was driving a small SUV that had belonged to my wife, and a guy in a gigantic diesel pickup truck T-boned me when he ran a light. He, by the way, had three DUIs pending already. They used the Jaws of Life and several miracles to get me as far as the trauma center at the Med Hospital Trauma Center. Very much the way we got our eagle disentangled from my grille. I spent the next year getting operated on, going through rehab, getting operated on some more, more rehab, lots of titanium pins in my bones, skin grafts, yada, yada, yada. In the end, I kept my bionic leg and knee, and I’m down to a cane after a wheelchair and a walker. But I still limp, more when I’m tired.”

“And you hurt.”

He nodded. “They say that more exercises like walking and swimming will help diminish the pain. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

“Good luck with finding a public swimming pool this side of Jackson. Even this late in September, it’s still warm enough to take a dip in the little lake where Seth and Emma have their cabin, but not for much longer. And if you walk on our road out there—” she pointed toward the front of the clinic “—watch out for crazy drivers, and the occasional deer in your face.”

“Boy, are you Miss Comfort!”

“Just sayin’. I have nothing to offer you for dessert,” she said.

He took a final swig of his beer. “That was wonderful. I can make it to morning without hunger pangs.”

“I can front you breakfast stuff—eggs, bacon, bread for toast, even coffee.”

“Not necessary. Emma is taking me to Williamston so that she can introduce me to the denizens of the café. I feel as though I’m being presented at court.”

“Around here, you’re pretty much right. What are you planning to do about your poor car?”

“Call my mechanical genius in Memphis to come get it and try to locate a grille for it. In the meantime, I’ll have to rent a car. I assume there is some place to do that in town?”

Barbara waggled a hand. “If you’re lucky, our esteemed mayor, Sonny Prather, will rent you a baby truck. I assume you can’t borrow one from your wife. Obviously, her SUV didn’t survive your accident.”

He caught his breath. “Slight miscommunication. Nina, my wife, died several years ago of cancer. The night of my accident I was driving her SUV because the Triumph was in the shop. It often is. I just kept her old car as a backup for me and my daughters to use in case one of our cars was out of commission. I decided to drive my Triumph up here today instead of the sedan I bought to replace the SUV. At the moment, my younger daughter, Anne, is driving that while her car is being worked on.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry! I thought your wife was in Memphis.”

He reached out and laid his hand on her other arm. “Don’t be. You had no way of knowing from the way I talked. Took me a couple of years to be able even to say ‘cancer.’ Now, I think I’ve turned that last year into a kind of myth. It’s as though every time I mention it I add one more layer of scar tissue I can use to protect myself.”

“I know exactly what you mean. John—my vet partner in the clinic as well as my husband and the father of our two children—died several years ago. One of those young heart attacks, unsuspected and nearly always fatal. I felt as though someone had turned off the sun like flipping a light switch. The only thing that saved me was that I had to take over the clinic alone to support the family or starve. I had good friends who helped keep me sane. Apparently, I did a decent job, but I have almost no recollection of the first two years after John’s death. The children helped. I have a son and a daughter, Mark and Caitlyn. Those are their pictures on the mantelpiece. Suddenly, I was the sole support of the family.”

“Must have been tough. I managed to act sane until my accident, then I was doped up until I was aware enough to refuse anymore opioids, and being rehabilitated—a synonym for attempted murder. Anyway, I’ve been planning to buy a new car. This may be a good time to go ahead and do it. Let’s face it, the Triumph is my toy, but it’s not practical. I had to have the entire transmission replaced with an automatic so I could drive it safely with one completely functional foot and leg. I’ve about made up my mind to buy a small truck, except I have no idea what to buy or where to buy it.”

“You are deep in the land of the pickup. After breakfast, get Emma to take you shopping and introduce you around. Tomorrow is not one of her days doing receptionist duty here, so she’ll be free.”

“I can’t drag Emma around, the shape she’s in.”

“Don’t tell her that. Now, how about we see if you can drive your car to your house. I’ll follow you.”

“You don’t have to do that. It’s only a couple of miles. If I get stuck on the side of the road I can walk home.”

“This is the country. You do not want to be walking down this road in the middle of the night or you’ll be the one stuck on somebody’s grille.”

“Let me at least help you clean up the dishes.”

“That’s what God gave us dishwashers for.”

“May I check on our patient before we leave?”

Barbara sighed. “I’d rather check him myself after I come back from following you home. I want him kept as quiet as possible. Hey—my clinic, my rules.”

Stephen drew himself up but did not actually protest. He was not used to being questioned about his decisions. No doubt she knew her business, but she hadn’t a clue how invested he already was in the eagle. It was obvious she wanted him out of the way.

Climbing into the Triumph always took some doing. Before he attempted it, Stephen checked to see that there was no coolant leakage behind his radiator and collected a couple of small pieces of grille he’d missed earlier. The little car started and ran smoothly. The headlights of Barbara’s truck came on, and their small convoy eased out of the parking lot onto the road.

Accompanied by worrying clinks, he drove slowly and carefully, but the car ran smoothly. He pulled into the driveway in front of his new abode, shut off the engine, levered himself out from behind the wheel, grabbed his cane from the passenger’s seat and limped up to Barbara’s truck. “Thank you for everything. I’ll come by to check on him as soon as I can after breakfast.”