The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,26

no one was near him. Aurora had told me he’d come out of anesthesia fighting, thrashing around and banging his head against the sides of his kennel. She’d had to hold him down until he was fully conscious. I ignored his ferocious sounds and rubbed his broad wildcat nose until I eventually earned a grudging purr.

“How’s your arm?” Aurora asked when she came in. “Do we need to switch today?”

Mondays and Wednesdays were my surgery mornings, Tuesdays and Thursdays were hers. Whoever wasn’t in surgery saw patients. I flexed my fingers. “I think I’m okay.”

“Are you?” Aurora asked, and again I felt ashamed for withholding from her. “What’s going on with you, Cam?”

I looked into her kind, concerned eyes and lied that I was fine.

My first procedure was a tracheal wash on a dog who’d been coughing and vomiting for a month. Since I hadn’t scrubbed in yet, I checked my phone and computer again for word from Bobby while Bridget, my technician, and Zayna prepped the dog. Nothing.

After the procedure (we retrieved a sample for lab analysis), I checked again. Nothing.

Sweet Zayna took away the coughing dog and brought in my next surgery. She didn’t let on to anyone else that she knew anything unusual about my weekend.

After a routine spay on a labradoodle, still no messages.

After a cat neuter, and another cat neuter, nothing.

I’d gotten all the routine surgeries out of the way and into recovery so I could concentrate on this last, likely to be complicated, case—a chow with a huge abdominal mass. I operated with a poor prognosis and ended up removing an enormous spleen full of tumors. The rest of the abdomen looked “clean”—no obvious tumors in the liver, lymph nodes, or intestinal tract. Probably still a poor prognosis, but we’d see what the pathologist said.

All through the afternoon appointments—in between a cat with an eye infection, two spay follow-ups, the Rottweiler with heartworm, and the expectant rabbit—I frequently stopped in the hall outside the exam rooms, braced my arms on the walls, and took deep breaths to stop my stampeding pulse.

Aurora caught me doing my brace-and-breathe routine. “I’m fine,” I said, a rote answer. Aurora narrowed her eyes. Over her shoulder, I saw that Zayna had witnessed this act.

The only e-mail that came was from Olive: “I have big news to tell you! It must be in person! We need a GNO!” She obviously had no idea what Bobby had done or she wouldn’t wait for a GNO. The fact that he hadn’t told her made me hopeful that perhaps his leaving wasn’t permanent, that perhaps he’d come home.

The only voice mail that came was from Gabriella: “Dad called me. I’m going to meet him for coffee after school. Tyler said he’d do my kennel work for me, okay?”

Her voice brimmed with giddy relief.

When we sent the surgeries home, that chow who’d lost his spleen walked out five pounds lighter. I watched his happy owners drive him away and figured I’d bought him some time.

Time.

Maybe I could buy some time with Bobby, too. Maybe I could get him back home before anyone else knew what had happened.

WHEN I LEFT ANIMAL KIND THAT EVENING, I AVOIDED MY own home and drove instead to my parents’ to check on the foster horses.

I walked to the barn, wandering from immaculate stall to tidy paddock until I found the two rescue fillies. Their manes and tails were clean and tangle-free and their legs and jaws trimmed. I sheepishly pictured the biter’s appearance at my own farm.

“Hello, Camden.” My mother walked out of the barn, dressed in black field boots, suede tan breeches, and a green sweater I knew was cashmere. She stroked the fillies’ foreheads. “If I’m not careful, your father will want to keep these two.”

I grinned. “That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“You’re no help,” Mom said, but I knew it was only in jest. Just then Dad came around the corner in the slow shuffle he’d had since his accident five years ago. He carried a saddle.

“Camden.” He rested his gloved hand on my arm. “How are you doing?”

I nodded, touched by his concern. I knew this was all I could expect him to say about Bobby leaving.

“Caroline, are you going to ride?”

“Yes, I’m going to school the Burgans’ mare,” she said.

“All right, then, I’ll leave you the Passier,” he said of the saddle they’d had for . . . it had to be nearly twenty-five years. He set the saddle on the fence beside