In the Animal Hospital
By Angela Townsend
You know more and less than the emergency vet, and you cannot tell him all that you know.
It is not his fault that you are forty minutes in the second waiting room. You saw the pug with the tongue, a pink noisemaker unrolled from a flat face. You saw the pug-woman in lavender, afraid unto the ends of her hair. She looked you in the eyes. You want him to be with the pug.
You learn in the second waiting room. The emergency vet has three diplomas from Montreal. The emergency vet has a bulletin board, rowdy with cards. Six are from Magnus, who appears to be a coconut cake with eyes. Magnus dresses as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Magnus fits in a bicycle basket. Magnus has diabetes and acromegaly. No, Magnus has died. The thank-you’s persist, and the emergency vet tacks them with the others. You want to knit something soft for the family of Magnus.
There are vet techs laughing in the hallway. They spin down the volume dial as they pass the door to the second waiting room. You want them to remain loud. You want to tell them what you know. Laughter belongs to the static between stations. While your grandfather died, your uncle drew fat gnomes playing leapfrog. You watched him carefully color their suspenders. Resurrection begins in advance or not at all. There is a place for the preemptive strike. Everybody knows this, but nobody tells.
You said too much in the first waiting room, and you try to scrape off shame before the emergency vet arrives. They did not need to know that you do the PR for an animal shelter, or that you understand the alphabet soup of feline retroviruses, FIV and FeLV and FIP. Their eyes turned eggy as you explained what you have learned by osmosis. You know that you know just enough to be dangerous. The receptionist did not find you dangerous, just a “pet parent” turning more haggard by the hour. She has seen your unwashed ponytail and baggy sweatpants before. It does not matter what you know. You show her pictures of the cats before this cat anyway.
The emergency vet is apologetic, but first he is adolescent. He filches a giggle from your reserve supply before you know what is happening. He extends a fist-bump and growls “bonjour.” He is wearing a cargo vest and glasses his son approved. You know the logo on the vest is Walmart’s cool brand. This emergency vet is known for his oozing. Precious fluids seep with no cure. Animal shelters talk. This emergency vet takes home stained dogs and cats whose keepers requested “economic euthanasia.” Emergency vets make less than other specialists. You know he chose this in Montreal. He fist-bumps you again. You know he does not have regrets.
Fine needle aspirates are inconclusive, but the emergency vet does not like to brandish biopsies. He sheathes invasive diagnostics. We don’t have to go there. Your cat is young. Your cat did not bite when given good reason, not like Genghis Khan with hemolytic anemia next door. The emergency vet swears you to secrecy that he loves but does not like every patient.
You know the emergency vet has received unbidden theological education and several crash doctorates in counseling. His eyes leak. He says he knows how much you love your cat because safe cats behave differently. He knows how much you love your cat because there is some sort of romantic comedy behind a name like “Kankipanks.” You don’t have to tell him the story of a name, but he listens, even though that takes time.
The emergency vet spins on his stool as though it is a ride, and you know he holds on tight every day. We are almost certainly looking at inflammatory bowel disease. Did you know you would someday love that diagnosis? Kankipanks will live. Kankipanks will need more steroids than an Austrian powerlifter. The emergency vet makes jokes about the World’s Strongest Men, celestial Kazakhs with names like Lothar and Magnus, pulling semis by their index fingers. Kankipanks shall excel them all. The emergency vet knows Magnus is not a Kazakh name. You suggest that Lothar sounds like a powerful gnome.
The vet tech brings Kankipanks into the second waiting room, and you fall upon his mane in tears. You know this is the paragraph where your alphabet absconds. You fall into gibberish. You tell the emergency vet about the lion of Narnia, and Kankipanks’ consultations with the Holy Spirit, and the fact that you made your grandfather a cat lover in the end. The emergency vet fist-bumps you. He attempts to fist-bump Kankipanks, and you laugh, and you know that a laugh can be a hymn.
You cannot tell the emergency vet that he is a powerful shaman, or else he may disappear. You cannot thank him for running up and down the ladder to God all day, or he will be recalled to his cloud. You can only confirm that Kankipanks gets his steroid twice a day—you know what “BID” means—and that you do not need to follow up for two months. You cannot ask about the pug.
The emergency vet fist-bumps you again. You compliment his vest. You take your soft cat home. There is so much you cannot know.
Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Paris Lit Up, Pleiades, and Terrain.org, among others. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 33 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.