Page 9 of Doc Showmance
“This isn’t me committing. I don’t think I can pull this off with Ian Todd.”
“You’re tough enough to do just about anything you put your mind to.”
I might’ve nodded, but inside I screamed. I’d rather poison Ian’s soda with a diarrhea-inducing drug—of course, I knew how to do that—than pretend to like him.
I could handle Mr. Sexiest Vet Alive for a few months, right?
4
Amber
Ahalf hour and two appointments later, Susan stopped me. “Mac’s bleeding out. You’ve got to do something. His blood pressure’s tanking. Kovac’s not telling us what to do. It’s like he gave up.Please.”
Crap and super crap. “Has he called Wade yet? Got to have Wade involved in the decision to keep trying to save Mac or quit.”
“No. Dr. Kovac keeps blaming everything on the fact it wasn’t the spleen.”
“I said it wasn’t the spleen before he started. Give me Wade’s phone number.”
Susan thrust a sticky note at me like the superstar she was, already one step ahead.
Heart thrashing against my ribcage, I dialed from the nearest phone. Wade answered on the third ring.
“Wade, it’s Dr. Hardin. I’m going to be your friend instead of your vet right now. Mac’s dying on the table because Kovac… Let’s just say your buddy needs me to give him an extra shot by doing this surgery. Not Dr. Kovac.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aw, Jesus I hate doing this. I’m not the person who wants to do this, but I need your permission to go balls to the wall and get Kovac out of the surgery suite. I swear I’ll save Mac. Dr. Kovac doesn’t know how to do this surgery, and I do.”
“But he said everything would be all right.”
I despised doing this, but I reminded myself this was about Mac. “It’s not going well. I’m only going to say this because I consider us refrigerator friends and I want to try my best to save Mac’s life. Kovac isn’t Mac’s best bet right now. I am. I’m the better surgeon and I need your permission to take over the surgery.”
“Can you save him, or do you think it’s hopeless? Kovac’s been around a long time. Maybe we should put Mac down. I don’t want him to suffer, especially if this is cancer.”
Hated this. Absolutely last thing I wanted was to throw a colleague under the bus, but this wasn’t about professional solidarity. It was about the poor dog on the table. “I’ve done this procedure before. I’m not sure Dr. Kovac has. Mac’s lost a lot of blood and will need a transfusion. I can’t make any guarantees. I also can’t tell you how much all this will cost.”
“If he can’t do the surgery but said he could, I’m not paying for any of this. I’ll sue him if Mac dies and I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“I completely get that. I’d be there too. We’ll get it sorted. I can’t stress about money right now. I need to think about Mac. When I get in there, there’s still a chance this might not work. Please, Wade, will you give me a chance to try to save him? I don’t know if I can, but I want to try. What’s happening right now isn’t working.”
“All right. But you’ll call if you check it out and there’s nothing you can do?” The tears in his tone killed me. Softly, he asked, “I’d like to see him before…and say goodbye.”
“I promise. If it’s hopeless, we’ll close him up and call you to come see him one more time.” I hung up and stormed to the surgery room.
I found Kovac elbow deep in Mac’s abdomen without a gown. Lazy jerk. At least he had on a mask and gloves. He was leaning over and not doing anything about the pool of blood spilling over the surgical drape.
I pointed at the cameraman who’d followed me into surgery. “Stay out of my way. Prefer you to stay outside.”
Martin glared around his camera, conflicted.
“You get out,” Kovac said.
What I want to yell is:Where the hell’s your gown? Did you even scrub in? And, crap, is that suction container full of blood?Instead, I said in as steady a tone as I could muster, “Dr. Kovac, it’s my turn. We established it wasn’t in the spleen when I did the ultrasound. If you’d looked at the films or my ultrasound report before starting or maybe listened to me, you would’ve known this is a liver lobe resection.”
“He’s a lost cause.” Kovac pulled his hands out of the dog’s abdomen and shrugged as if the announcement would get him agreement.
My temper spiked. Hangry words gushed out of my mouth. “This is real life, damn it, not a TV daytime drama. This dog had an isolated, possibly resectablelivermass. Not an easy surgery, but one I can do.”
