Tough to Tame / Her Lone Cowboy: Tough to Tame

“I can irrigate him and pump drugs into him and keep him alive for another month,” he said through his teeth. “And he’ll be in agony all that time. I can do dialysis and prolong it even more. Or do you think that animals don’t really feel pain at all?”

She still hadn’t spoken. She just looked at him.

“Dialysis!” he scoffed. “I love animals, too, Dr. King, and I’d never give up on one that had a ghost of a chance of a normal life. But this cat isn’t having a normal life—he’s going through hell on a daily basis. Or haven’t you ever seen a human being in the final stages of kidney failure?” he demanded.

“No, I haven’t,” Dr. King said, in an unusually gentle tone.

“You can take it from me that it’s the closest thing to hell on earth. And I am not, repeat not, putting the cat on dialysis and that’s the advice I’m giving his owner.”

“Okay.”

He frowned. “Okay?”

She didn’t smile. “It must have been very hard to watch,” she added quietly.

His face, for an instant, betrayed the anguish of a personal loss of some magnitude. He turned away and went back into his office. He didn’t even slam the door.

Cappie and Keely flanked Dr. King, all big eyes and unspoken questions.

“You don’t know, do you?” she asked. She motioned them off into the chart room and closed the door. “You didn’t hear me say this,” she instructed, and waited until they both nodded. “His mother was sixty when they diagnosed her with kidney failure three years ago. They put her on dialysis and gave her medications to help put off the inevitable, but she lost the battle just a year later when they discovered an inoperable tumor in her bladder. She was in agony. All that time, she had only her social security and Medicaid to help. Her husband, Dr. Rydel’s stepfather, wouldn’t let him help at all. In fact, Dr. Rydel had to fight just to see his mother. He and his stepfather have been enemies for years, and it just got worse when his mother was so ill. His mother died and he blames his stepfather, first for not letting her go to a doctor for tests in the first place, and then for not letting him help with the costs afterward. She lived in terrible poverty. Her husband was too proud to accept a dime from any other source, and he worked as a night watchman in a manufacturing company.”

No wonder Dr. Rydel was so adamant about health care, Cappie thought. She saw him through different eyes. She also understood his frustration.

“He’s right, too, about Harry’s owner,” Dr. King added. “Mrs. Trammel doesn’t have much left after she pays her own medicine bills and utilities and groceries. Certainly she doesn’t have enough to afford expensive treatments for an elderly cat who doesn’t have long to live no matter what we do.” She grimaced. “It’s wonderful that we have all these new treatments for our pets. But it’s not good that we sometimes make decisions that aren’t realistic. The cat is elderly and in constant pain. Are we doing it a favor to order thousands of dollars of treatments that its owner can’t afford, just to prolong the suffering?”

Keely shrugged. “Bailey, Boone’s German shepherd, would have died if Dr. Rydel hadn’t operated on him when he got bloat,” she ventured.

“Yes, and he’s old, too,” Dr. King agreed. “But Boone could afford it.”

“Good point,” Keely agreed.

“We do have medical insurance for pets now,” Cappie pointed out.

“It’s the same moral question, though,” Dr. King pointed out. “Should we do something just because we can do it?”

The phone rang, both lines at once, and a woman with a cat in a blanket and red, tearfilled eyes rushed in the door calling for help.

“It’s going to be a long day,” Dr. King sighed.

Cappie told her brother about Dr. Rydel’s mother. “I guess we’re not the only people who wish we had adequate health care,” she said, smiling gently.

“I guess not. Poor guy.” He frowned. “How do you make a decision like that for a pet?” he added.

“We didn’t. We recommend what we thought best, but let Mrs. Trammel make the final decision. She was more philosophical than all of us put together. She said Harry had lived for nineteen good years, been spoiled rotten and shame on us for thinking death was a bitter end. She thinks cats go to a better place, too, and that they have green fields to run through and no cars to run over them.” She smiled. “In the end, she decided that it was kinder to just let Dr. Rydel do what was necessary. Keely’s barn cat has a new litter of kittens, solid white with blue eyes. She promised Mrs. Trammel one. Life goes on.”

“Yes.” He was somber. “It does.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Any day now, there’s going to be a breakthrough in medical research and you’re going to have an operation that will put you back on your feet and give you a new lease on life.”

“After which I’ll win the British Open, effect détente with the eastern communists and perfect a cure for cancer,” he added dryly.

“One miracle at a time,” she interrupted. “And just how would you win the British Open? You don’t even play tennis!”

“Don’t confuse me with a bunch of irrelevant facts.” He sank back into his pillows and grimaced. “Besides, the pain is going to kill me long before they find any miraculous surgical techniques.” He closed his eyes with a long sigh. “One day without pain,” he said quietly. “Just one day. I’d do almost anything for it.”

She knew, as many other people didn’t, that chronic pain brought on a kind of depression that was pervasive and dangerous. Even the drugs he took for pain only took the edge off. Nothing they’d ever given him had stopped it.

“What you need is a nice chocolate milkshake and some evil, fattening, over-salted French fries and a cholesterol-dripping hamburger,” she said.

He made a tortured face. “Go ahead, torment me!”

She grinned. “I overpaid the hardware bill and got sent a ten dollar refund,” she said, reaching into her purse. “I’ll go to the bank, cash it and we’ll eat out tonight!”

“You beauty!” he exclaimed.

She curtsied. “I’ll be back before you know it.” She glanced at her watch. “Oops, better hurry or the bank will be closed!”

She grabbed her old denim jacket and her purse and ran out the door.

The ancient car was temperamental. It had over two hundred thousand miles on it, and it looked like a piece of junk. She coaxed it into life and grimaced as she read the gas gauge. She had a fourth of a tank left. Well, it was only a five-minute drive to Jacobsville from Comanche Wells. She’d have enough to get her to work and back for one more day. Then she’d worry about gas. The ten-dollar check would have come in handy for that, but Kell needed cheering up more. These spells of depression were very bad for him, and they were becoming more frequent. She’d have done anything to keep him optimistic. Even walking to work.

She cashed the check with two minutes to spare before the bank closed. Then she drove to the local fast-food joint and ordered burgers and fries and milkshakes. She paid for them—had five cents left over—and pulled out into the road. Then two things went wrong at once. The engine quit and a car flew out of a side road and right into the passenger side of her car.

She sat, shaking, amid the ruins of her car, with chocolate milkshake all over her jeans and jacket, and pieces of hamburgers on the dirty floorboard. It was quite an impact. She couldn’t move for a minute. She sat, staring at the dash, wondering how she’d manage without a car, because her insurance only covered liability. She had nothing that would even pay to repair the car, if it could be repaired.

She turned her head in slow motion and looked at the car that had hit her. The driver got out, staggering. He laughed. That explained why he’d shot through a stop sign without braking. He leaned against his ruined fender and laughed some more.

Cappie wondered if he had insurance. She also wondered if she didn’t have a tire iron that she could get to, before the police came to save the man.

Her car door was jerked open. She looked up into a pair of steely ice-blue eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She blinked. Dr. Rydel. She wondered where he’d come from.

“Cappie, are you all right?” he repeated. His voice was very soft, nothing like the glitter in those pale eyes.

“I think so,” she said. Time seemed to have slowed to a stop. She couldn’t get her sluggish brain to work. “I was taking hamburgers and shakes home to Kell,” she said. “He was so depressed. I thought it would cheer him up. I was worried about spending the money on treats instead of gas.” She laughed dully. “I guess I won’t need to worry about gas, now,” she added, looking around at the damage.

“You’re lucky you weren’t in one of the newer little cars. You’d be dead.”

She looked toward the other driver. “Dr. Rydel, do you have a tire tool I could borrow?” she asked conversationally.

He saw where she was looking. “You don’t want to upset the police, Cappie.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Before he could reply, a Jacobsville police car roared up, lights flashing, and stopped. Obviously somebody in the fast-food place had called them.