Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [10]
Lucy grimaced. Hello … hello … did I sense a little antagonism between these two?
‘What’s your name?’ shrieked Cedric unperturbed by Mandy’s dismissive manner – though Lucy seemed a trifle ruffled.
She raised her eyebrows at me and whispered, ‘Good luck,’ before quietly slipping out.
‘Now,’ said Mandy briskly. ‘I’ve sterilized all the instruments I think you’ll need.’ She waved at the operating trolley.
Looking lost in the centre of a vast, green drape was a small pile of instruments consisting of a tiny pair of scissors, scalpel, fine eyebrow tweezers and some forceps normally used for eye operations.
Mandy pulled the anaesthetic trolley round to the side of the table and, from the labyrinth of valves, bottles and pipes, plucked out a narrow black tube which ended in a rubber cone. She snaked it on to the table and fastened it down with a sandbag, checked the level of halothane, adjusted the valve setting slightly and then declared herself ready to start.
I quickly looked round the room to make sure all the windows and doors were closed.
‘I’ve already checked,’ said Mandy.
Grrrr … I picked up a towel and turned to the cage. Opening the door, I pounced on Cedric, enfolded him in one swoop, and scooped out the wriggling bundle.
‘My name’s Cedric,’ he spluttered as I levered his head out of the towel and Mandy plunged the cone over his beak.
‘Sleepy-byes for you, Cedric,’ she said in a no-nonsense tone of voice – a tone I was to become all too familiar with over the subsequent months. She turned up the flow of the halothane-oxygen mixture with a deft twist of the valve.
I felt Cedric’s chest heaving through the towel. There was a rattle of beak against cone as he shook his head, fighting against the anaesthetic. Suddenly, he went still. I relaxed my grip, uncertain as to what was happening. Then in Miss McEwan’s precise, tinkling voice, Cedric exclaimed, ‘You’re a dirty dick.’
I just collapsed with laughter. In doing so my grip on the towel slackened. It was enough. Cedric wriggled free and with ruffled black feathers sticking out in all directions, hopped across the operating table, paused, then sprung on to the instruments where he promptly lifted his tail and relieved himself.
Mandy was far from amused; she didn’t see the funny side of it at all. ‘Oh really, Paul,’ she snapped, turning off the anaesthetic machine while I tried to wipe the smile off my face.
With a quavery wolf-whistle, Cedric lurched off the trolley and skidded on to the floor where he waddled like a pickled duck towards the prep room. Fighting back another wave of giggles, I ran round the ops table, towel in hand, and pinned him down. But not before he’d left a liquid trail behind him.
‘What a mess,’ declared Mandy, her face like a slab of unleavened dough, not a crack of a smile evident.
A muffled raspberry made me start quaking again. I squeezed my lips together desperate not to let a snort of laughter escape as, under Mandy’s steely gaze, I popped Cedric back in his cage. I was only allowed to start the operation again once everything had been mopped down, disinfected and the instruments re-sterilized.
‘OK, matey,’ I declared. ‘Second time lucky.’ With Cedric’s head this time safely secured in the cone, he slipped into unconsciousness with a series of sleepy wolf-whistles.
Mandy then whisked the towel away, stretched him out, taped down his wings and deftly plucked the feathers from around the preening gland. I was actually grateful for her obvious expertise. At least someone knew what they were doing. When she’d finished, she stepped back. ‘You can start now,’ she instructed.
Yes, ma’am, here goes, I thought, my fingers hovering over the tiny pile of instruments. The ugly mass of red tissue took some cutting out. Blood welled up from the wound and soaked into the drapes.