Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [11]
Mandy leaned over and sniffed. ‘It’s bleeding rather a lot.’
I was only too aware of the fact. The haemorrhage did seem rather excessive. If nothing else, I did know birds couldn’t afford to lose too much of their blood volume and here was Cedric’s vital fluids draining into the drapes. Would he survive me poking around like this? Would he survive the shock? I pressed on, beads of sweat coursing down my arms as the circle of blood grew wider.
‘You may find this of help.’ Mandy held up a bottle. ‘It’s dissolvable gauze. Crystal finds it useful. Not that she gets much bleeding.’
Grrrr …
She tipped some out on to the operating trolley.
By now I’d dissected out the preening gland – or at least the blob of tissue that vaguely resembled it. What was left was a ragged hole which rapidly filled with blood every time I swabbed it out. I was grateful for the gauze; and rammed a wodge of it into the crimson crater, pressing it firmly in, before stitching a flap of skin across.
With Cedric returned to his cage to lie on a pad of cotton-wool, Mandy summoned Lucy to take him back to the ward while she, as she put it, ‘cleaned up the mess’. It was said with just the merest flicker of her long eyelashes in my direction.
I helped Lucy manoeuvre the cage on to a table next to a radiator in the ward and then stood back, biting my lower lip, looking at the limp bird stretched out on the pad, waiting for him to come round from the anaesthetic.
‘He’ll be OK,’ said Lucy, trying to sound reassuring. ‘You’ll see.’
And I did see. Within ten minutes, Cedric had started to twist and turn, his wings flapping, his legs waving in the air. Within a further five, he was wobbling about his cage, trying to climb up the bars and falling off at every attempt. After 20 minutes, he had made it to his perch and sat there swaying. He looked at us bleary-eyed and in a croaky voice uttered his first post-operative ‘What’s your name?’
Lucy’s freckled face lit up. ‘There. What did I tell you?’
I still wasn’t convinced. OK, Cedric had got through the operation. But the next 24 hours would be crucial to his survival.
I phoned through to the hospital that evening. Lucy was on duty.
‘Cedric’s fine,’ she informed me. He’s not pecked at his stitches. And there’s been no bleeding.’
As I put the phone down, a voice rang out from down the hallway. ‘Everything all right?’ It was Mrs Paget, my landlady as of last weekend, standing in the doorway of her lounge. The digs were a temporary measure until such time as the practice cottage promised me by the Sharpes became available. It was on Beryl Wagstaff’s recommendation that I took the room at Mrs Paget’s. She assured me I’d get a warm welcome as her friend, Cynthia, a middle-aged divorcee, apparently ‘simply adored animals’ and would be ‘thrilled to the core to have a young vet under her roof’. I wasn’t so thrilled when her chihuahua charged down the hall and gave me a savage nip on my ankle before I’d even stepped across the threshold. But being just a few hundred yards down the road from Prospect House, the lodgings were convenient, even if the pooch was a pain, as the many subsequent bites on my ankles proved.
This evening was no exception. Chico had barged up to the telephone table and was now baring his teeth waiting to pounce on any flesh I chose to expose. But I had got wise to him now and never ventured out of my room unless wearing thick socks and trainers.
It was a shame that I had to run the gauntlet of Chico’s teeth in order to use the phone in the hall; but since my mobile had no signal in the house and the roar of traffic outside made conversation impossible, I found myself with no choice. I had to grit my teeth while Chico bared his.
‘Just checking on one of my patients,’ I explained as Mrs Paget shuffled down the hall, cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth and, with an ineffectual wave, said, ‘Shoo … shoo … ’ to an unresponsive Chico whose sole focus was on what was only two feet away – my two feet.
I retreated to my room to spend a restless night fretting about Cedric.
But all seemed