Читать книгу What She Wants for Christmas - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 9

“DAMN IT, WE’LL JUST send you, anyway.” Eric dropped his scalpel and reached for a handful of gauze sponges. He was working on a shepherd with an ear hematoma. Teresa had anesthetized the dog and now stood watching her partner. It was a pleasure—in more ways than one. He worked quickly and neatly. He also looked damned good while he was doing it. Tall and rangy, he had close-cropped blond hair, a narrow intelligent face and gray-green eyes that could be as sharp as his scalpel. He didn’t stir up her hormones, though, and she couldn’t figure out why. In his own way, he was as sexy as Joe Hughes.

“What can they say?” Eric continued. “Even if you were incompetent, it’s not as though you could do any damage on a preg check.”

“Except be wrong,” she said. Knowing as early as possible that a breeding had taken was critical to the dairy farmers—thus the monthly pregnancy checks.

He grunted and clipped off a piece of suture material. “You know, we’ve been letting a few of the old farts keep you from doing farm calls. Truth is, plenty of the younger dairy farmers wouldn’t mind a woman. Some of them have wives who are darn near equal partners. All they care is whether you can do the job.”

“I can do it.”

“Then you take the farm calls today.” He nodded toward the office. “It’ll be a hell of a day. Ten farms, I think. You’ll be shoulder deep in—”

She didn’t need him to tell her what she’d be shoulder deep in. Cows—especially dairy cows—made a toddler with diarrhea seem like a poor producer. “I don’t mind,” she said.

Eric flashed her a quick grin. “Have fun.”

“And if we make someone mad?”

“We can afford to lose some customers. They get damned good service from us. If they go with another veterinarian, so be it. Their loss.”

“You’re a prince,” Teresa told him, and headed off to finish loading up the truck.

An hour later, she was driving through one of the mountain valleys, where an early snowfall already gleamed on the peaks. She found the first farm with no problem. A Dairy of Merit sign hung proudly out front. Long low red barns and green fenced pastures beyond made a postcard-pretty scene.

Teresa parked in front of the nearest barn and climbed out. She already wore rubber boots and overalls over a heavy flannel shirt. She was shrugging into the vinyl vest and reaching for a plastic sleeve to cover her arm when the farmer appeared in the barn door.

“Hi,” she said, holding out a hand. “Eric was tied up today. I’m Dr. Burkett, his new partner.”

The middle-aged man in the dairyman’s customary costume of jeans and high rubber boots shook her hand without noticeable enthusiasm. “Know dairy cows?”

“You bet.” She’d done some reading to update her knowledge, acquired during an internship in Minnesota. After that year, she’d looked forward to working in a warm clinic on animals she outweighed. But the cold stinky physical parts of the job had faded quickly from her memory, leaving the good parts: the satisfaction of helping with a difficult birth, of curing instantly a cow down with milk fever, the relationships with farmers. She’d come to miss the Jerseys and Holsteins, with their generally good natures and soft brown eyes.

This farmer jerked his head toward the open double doors. “I have the first batch locked in.”

Figuring he’d prefer someone laconic, she only nodded and grabbed her tray of syringes, prepared with anything she might need.

They passed the milking parlor, spotlessly clean. A dozen black-and-white Holsteins were lined up, heads locked into stanchions, in a concrete holding area. Teresa breathed in the odors, which she’d never found objectionable. Setting down the tray, she went straight to work.

“Number 23,” she said, peering at the ear tag.

The farmer nodded and referred to his clipboard. “Bred September 5.”

Teresa inserted her hand into the cow’s rectum and began cleaning it out. Green manure splashed at her feet. Eventually, concentrating, she reached in deep, feeling through the wall of the rectum for the uterus and the pea-size growth of a new calf. She smiled when she found it.

“Pregnant.”

The farmer nodded and made a check on his list.

“Number 138,” she said, moving on to the next cow. The rump shifted away and she grabbed the tail.

“September 10.”

“Nope,” she concluded at last.

They fell into a rhythm that she remembered and enjoyed; few words were exchanged, and those were to the point. Along with the pregnancy checks, she examined the cows that had recently given birth, treating a few for infections.

When she finished the first batch, the farmer released the metal stanchions and waved the animals out into a loafing area. Another man chased the next ten in. Grain lured them to thrust their heads through the locking mechanism. Teresa shook liquid manure off her arm, clad in clear plastic, and called out the first number.

When she was done, she threw away her plastic sleeve and hosed herself down. Manure sluiced off her boots and overalls.

The farmer asked if she wanted to look around, and she agreed. In a separate barn, she paused, gazing down at the calves. She scratched a snowy white soft head, and lips nuzzled her hand.

“Daughter takes care of those,” the farmer said.

Teresa nodded. Bottle-feeding the calves was often a woman’s job on a dairy farm. Typically the newborn calves were allowed to nurse for the first three to four days, for the sake of the health-giving colostrum, then bottle-raised on a milk replacer so the more valuable milk could be sold. By the time they were a month old, the calves were weaned even from that.

“Do you raise your own heifers?” Teresa asked.

He shook his head. “We send ours at three or four months to a farm in eastern Washington to be raised. Don’t have enough pasture here.”

That, too, she’d gathered, was typical of dairies on this side of the mountains. This farmer had a dairy herd of perhaps 160 cows, and as little as fifty or sixty acres. He wouldn’t be growing his own hay, either, as a larger farm might. Yet she was impressed with the cleanliness of the barns and the condition of the herd. The pregnancy rate was high, too, a sign that everything else was going well.

The tour over, the farmer walked her out to her truck. “Eric be back next month?”

Her heart sank at the question. “Probably,” she said, “although eventually we’d like me to be handling half the calls.”

“You’re quicker at the preg checks than he is,” the dairyman said unexpectedly.

A compliment? Or was he implying that she’d gone so fast as to seem careless?

“I always had a knack.”

“Either of you want to handle calls here, that’s fine.”

She felt like babbling gratefully. Instead, she nodded and offered him a smile with enough wattage to hint that he’d given her a gift. “You have a nice place. I look forward to working with you.”

He nodded now; she climbed into the truck, waved and drove away. Barely out of his sight, she began caroling, “Oh, what a beautiful morning!”

Of course, her whole day couldn’t be that easy. Three of the remaining farmers greeted her matter-of-factly. Three were wary and noncommittal. Two refused to let her do the preg checks. The last grudgingly let her into the barn only because he had two cases of milk fever and desperately needed her to wield the syringe that would have his cows leaping to their feet and strolling off to the loafing shed as though nothing had ever been wrong.

He watched them go suspiciously, as though she might somehow have tricked both the cows and him. After a moment he grunted. “Since you’re already here…”

She was tempted to try to work even faster to impress him. She curtailed the temptation. A mistake would kill her reputation for good. Instead, she worked deliberately, calling out numbers, wrestling with recalcitrant cow butts, confirming and denying pregnancy.

She was examining a pretty little Jersey when the farmer said gruffly, “That one has a blocked teat. Feels like a pea in there.”

“I’ll take a look when I’m done,” she said.

They herded the Jersey into a station in the milking parlor, where Teresa could stand in the center aisle, three feet below the stall level. As the cow shifted restlessly, she manipulated the long pale teat.

“Let me tranquilize her,” Teresa said after a moment. She chose the base of the tail for the injection and waited until the cow swayed. Then she pulled out her forceps and probed inside. It took only a moment to remove the hard whitish blob.

She showed it to the farmer. “Scar tissue. Probably left over from mastitis.”

He grunted. “Snipped the teat, did you? I suppose we’d better treat her for mastitis now.”

“I didn’t have to cut it,” Teresa said. “Just keep an eye on her.”

“Ah.” The look he gave Teresa wasn’t warm, but it had thawed. Treating for mastitis meant the cow’s milk was unusable. She’d just saved him some bucks.

He, too, walked her out to the truck. “So you’re the new partner.”

“That’s right.” She unbuckled the rubber overalls and peeled them down.

“I suppose I’ll be seeing you again.”

“We’ll try to accommodate preferences,” she said evenly. “But that may not always be possible.”

He nodded, which could have meant anything from understanding to acquiescence. Teresa chose to take it as the latter. She’d done well.

Eric agreed when she got back to the hospital. “Two phone calls saying they liked you,” he informed her when she’d tracked him down to the kennel. Their resident cat, a huge fat tortoiseshell, sat slavishly at his feet. He was petting the still-groggy shepherd, who now had one floppy ear.

She crossed her arms. “And the two who wouldn’t let me in their barns?”

“One wants to know when I can come. The other says he’s changing services.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She stomped across the room, then swung around violently. “If they’d just give me a chance…”

Eric closed the cage door and rose to his feet, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Ol’ Man Eide says he did only because he couldn’t wait. He sounded grudging, but he’s willing to concede you’re okay.”

“Eide? That was my last call.”

“Yup.”

“And he phoned you to praise me?”

“I think ‘okay’ is praise in his book.”

Teresa pumped her fist. “Yes!”

Eric slapped her on the back. “You’ll win ’em over.”

Already, she reflected as she unloaded the truck, it felt as if she and Eric had worked together forever. As if they were best friends. It was a good thing they didn’t stir each other’s hormones.

“HE’S HERE AGAIN,” Nicole said into the telephone to her best friend from Bellevue. “He didn’t even make an excuse for stopping by this time!”

“He?” Jayne echoed. “Oh. You mean that guy. The one your mom is seeing.”

“If she marries him, we’ll be stuck here forever!” Nicole said hopelessly.

“Hold on. My call waiting is beeping.”

While Nicole sat listening to silence, she brooded. Couldn’t Jayne tell how upset she was? Like some other phone call was so important.

Leaning against her bed, her door shut, she could still hear voices drifting up the stairs. Laughter. She felt…shut out. Even though she knew she wasn’t really. Mark was down there in the kitchen with them. But she didn’t belong.

Five minutes must have passed before her friend came back on the line with a rush. “That was him,” she said dramatically.

“Him?” But Nicole knew.

“Russ Harlan. He wanted to know if I’m going to a party tomorrow night. As if I’m going to say no.”

Nicole’s chest burned with envy and hurt. She struggled to say something. Cool. I hope he asks you out. Something. But she couldn’t. It was a relief to hear a beep in her ear.

“My call waiting,” she said. “Just a sec.”

The voice was hesitant and male. “Can I talk to Nicole?”

“Speaking,” she said coolly.

“Hi. This is Bill Nelson. I’m, uh, I sit next to you in English.” He waited for her to agree that she knew who he was. When she didn’t, he stumbled on, “I have brown hair. I play football. I’m, you know, a linebacker. We…we talked yesterday. After class.”

She could hear him sweating. Bill Nelson was an okay guy, just kind of big and dumb. But she didn’t care right now. Did he really think she’d go out with him?

“What do you want?”

He swallowed, making a gulping sound. “I…well, there’s this movie in town. Steven Seagal. I thought…that is, I hoped… Would you go with me?”

She felt mean suddenly. “You’re joking.”

Pause. His voice got a lot quieter. “No.”

He must be the tenth guy to hit on her since school started. She’d been nicer to the others. They were all such hicks they didn’t deserve it. Hicks, like the one sitting at her kitchen table right now.

“I have a boyfriend. In Bellevue. I’m really not interested.”

“Oh.” Bill cleared his throat. “Okay. I, uh… Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No big deal,” she said ungraciously. “See ya.” She pushed the button to cut him off and bring Jayne back onto the line.

“Who was that?” Jayne asked.

“Some guy.” Nicole felt a little sick. She shouldn’t have been so hateful. It wasn’t Bill Nelson’s fault that her best friend in the whole world had just snatched the coolest guy she knew away from her.

“Are the guys all lame?” Jayne sounded pitying.

Nicole gritted her teeth. “Of course not. You ought to see the quarterback of the football team. He’s really fine. If I can just figure out how to meet a senior…”

“How hard can it be in a school that small?” Jayne didn’t let her answer. “Well, listen, I gotta go. I’m supposed to help Mom with dinner. Then I need to call Kelly and Roz and tell them all about Russ.”

“Sure.”

“Wow, I wish you were here like you used to be.”

Nicole strained to decide if Jayne meant it or not. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Me, too.”

She had other friends she could have called, but they’d been sounding distant, too. It just wasn’t the same, when she hadn’t been there at school to see Liza tell off her boyfriend, or hear the new government teacher make an ass of himself, or watch Coach Murphy get a speeding ticket right in front of the high school. Everything was different. One-sided. They told her all the latest, and she grumbled about being stuck in this backwater town. But life hadn’t changed for them.

The kitchen door slammed. Nicole lifted her head. Was he leaving? But she could hear Mark talking excitedly and a low calm counterpoint. Careful not to be seen, she went to the window. Sure enough, Mark the traitor was taking a football out onto the lawn with Joe Hughes. They started throwing it, Mark’s passes wobbling, Joe’s perfect spirals.

Like Joe was his dad or something. Didn’t Mark have any discrimination?

What made her maddest was that she was jealous. He never offered to do stuff with her. Actually, she thought she made him uncomfortable. Well, that was how he made her feel. Like neither of them belonged when the other one was around.

But watching her brother and him through the window, Mark chattering, Joe not saying much but making every catch look easy, as though her little brother had a great arm, she had this flash of déjà vu. Their yard in Bellevue hadn’t been very big, but she remembered looking out from her bedroom window seat because she heard her father’s voice out there and seeing him and Mark throwing a football. In her memory, it was bright blue—probably a Nerf ball. But there’d been some connection between them, a closeness that had made her feel jealous for a moment, before she’d heard footsteps on the stairs and her mother’s voice calling her. She’d jumped off the window seat and run to her bedroom door—

She shook her head, jolted out of the dream remembrance. Had she heard her mother calling? But the house was silent. And when she looked out again, standing to one side of her window, she saw that her mother sat on the back porch steps, arms wrapped around her knees, watching Mark and that guy. Why would she bother calling her, Nicole?

Nicole yanked the ugly curtains closed and threw herself facedown on her bed. She told herself she was crying because she missed her father. Sometimes it was hard even to picture him. But she’d just now seen him so vividly, as though it was Dad down there right now, not that redneck logger. She remembered stuff they’d done together, like the time he’d taught her ballroom dancing. Sometimes while Mom was cooking dinner, her father would put on a CD, a waltz, maybe, and bow to her. He was a really good dancer. She could almost forget he was her father. They’d twirl and twirl and twirl, perfectly in time. She guessed that was his way of throwing a ball with her. Maybe that was why she loved to dance so much.