‘And…and you can help the lady doctor make the dog better.’
‘You know I’m a doctor, too, Paige,’ Niall said gently. ‘It’s my job. If you agree.’
The child touched the dog’s soft ears.
‘He really could die?’
‘He really could die.’
The little girl sighed-the sigh of someone letting something precious go out of sight and not knowing if she’d ever see it again-but willing to take the risk. For something as priceless as the life of this dog.
‘You’ll be longer than when you go to the shops?’
‘Much longer, Paige. But Hugo will still be here.’
‘OK,’ Paige whispered. ‘But…But hurry back…’
The drive to the clinic was in near-silence. Jessie sat on the passenger side of Niall Mountmarche’s gleaming Range Rover with the dog cradled against her and let a thousand questions crowd through her mind as Niall drove.
There were answers to none of them.
The dog whimpered and stirred in her arms and Jessie’s hold on him tightened.
‘Soon,’ she whispered to the big collie.
It couldn’t be soon enough for Harry.
They operated on Harry fifteen minutes later.
‘Instructions, please,’ Niall said briefly as they carried the dog into Theatre.
Niall listened with care as Jess outlined the anaesthetic procedure. It wasn’t so different from human intubation. Niall flung fast questions at her and Jess began to relax as she responded. She not only had a skilled doctor here. In Niall Mountmarche, Jess had found someone who was prepared to learn and learn fast.
There was minimal delay.
As soon as the anaesthetic took effect the dreadful trap was removed, allowing Jessie to see what she was facing.
It was bad-but it could have been worse.
Swiftly, moving as a team with this strange new doctor, Jessie staunched the blood flow and X-rayed. Three of the metacarpals were fractured which meant that she’d have to fix the bones. There was necrotic tissue on the front of the pad and up the dog’s foreleg, as though infection had spread, but Niall was right. There was still circulation.
There was still hope.
Niall Mountmarche intubated the dog with skill, moving his obvious skills with human anaesthesia to the animal arena with thoughtfulness and intelligence. The questions he needed to know he asked before Jessie thought of telling him and she was left alone to concentrate on the wound.
It was enough.
She never could have coped with such a severely traumatised dog and vicious wound if she’d had to do the anaesthetic herself. Over and over in her head as she operated Jessie was offering silent prayers of thankfulness for this man’s arrival.
The dog would be dead without him.
It was a nasty piece of surgery, requiring all her skill.
The rotten flesh had to be cut away and dirt, grass and hay seeds carefully cleaned from the festering wound. It was a time-consuming task, made more difficult by the small number of blood vessels remaining viable.
Then the metacarpals had to be fixed into position with K-wire. If only one of the outer metacarpals had been broken Jess could have let it be but with three fractured the dog would lose function if they weren’t fixed.
A huge job…
Jess could amputate if she had to-but the shock of such radical surgery could be enough to kill an already weakened, frail animal. Even taking the trap from his foot without an anaesthetic might have been enough to send him over the edge.
At least the pad still had circulation because, miraculously, the rotten flesh hadn’t invaded the major blood vessels. Yet…Another half a day and it would have been too late.
Too late for both the leg and for Harry, Jessie thought grimly as she worked. He would have been dead from starvation and infection.
Not now…Please…If they gave him maximum dose antibiotic and intravenous fluid to rehydrate the body…
Niall Mountmarche had given the dog a chance at life. She had to be grateful.
Niall…
Even though her whole concentration was needed for the job in hand, Jessie couldn’t help being aware of the man working silently by her side. He was watching everything she did, she knew, and the thought, instead of making her feel nervous, in fact steadied her.
What on earth was such a man doing in a place like this? Growing wine? The thought seemed ridiculous and yet only hours ago the thought of him being a doctor had seemed ridiculous. And what was wrong with the little girl?
Such questions had to be put aside until later…Much later.
Finally, she’d done all she could. Carefully she dressed the wound and moved to help Niall reverse the anaesthetic.
Now…
Now it was up to Harry.
Jess smiled as she finally stepped back from the table and stripped off her gloves. ‘Thank you, Dr Mountmarche,’ she said simply. Her face was showing more exhaustion than she knew.
‘It’s the least I can do,’ Niall Mountmarche told her brusquely. He’d adjusted the antibiotic through the intravenous drip and was now looking at Jess as if he couldn’t really believe what he was seeing. ‘That was a fine piece of work, Dr Harvey. I’m sorry I doubted your qualifications.’
Jessie stared. An apology from the Ogre of Barega. What next?
‘You don’t make such a bad vet yourself,’ she smiled at him. ‘For a human doctor.’
For a human doctor…
All of a sudden he was. Immensely human.
And immensely male.
He smiled then, his smile reflecting her relief, and Jess felt her heart give an unexpected jolt. What a smile…
Crazy…
She turned swiftly to the sink before her colour began to rise.
Or maybe it already had.
Maybe it was too late to disguise what she was feeling.
Niall Mountmarche was watching her with a look that she didn’t understand in the least. It made her feel…
Vulnerable.
And slightly afraid.
She struggled with the tapes of her gown and Niall moved swiftly to release them. The gown was lifted away, revealing once more her dust-stained shorts and shirt and bare arms and legs.
‘Back to Jessica Harvey, adolescent in need of a good bath,’ Niall grinned, and Jessie was forced to smile.
‘It’s hard being clinically clean when you’re a vet.’
‘There are not a lot of vets I know who crawl round under grapevines looking for patients.’ Niall motioned to Harry. ‘Will you leave him here?’
‘I’ll take him into the kitchen,’ Jessie told him. ‘It’s warm by the stove and I can watch him recover and make myself lunch at the same time.’ She hesitated and glanced at her watch. It was almost two in the afternoon. ‘Would you…would you like some lunch?’
‘No. I have to get back.’
Back to being the Ogre of Barega. Back to Paige.
‘Please…’ Jess put out a hand and laid it on his bare arm-and then wished she hadn’t. The feel of his skin against her fingers did something odd to her legs.
