Page 6 of Doc Showmance
“She’s something, isn’t she? It was good while it lasted.”
A snort laugh escaped before I could suppress it. “How long was that? Twenty-four hours?”
“It wasn’t going anywhere. We both knew it.” He patted Mac’s head. The bassett hound shook his dangly ears.Thwap. Thwap.
“I’m sorry. I love Joley. I’d give her my kidney if she needed it, but she should come with a warning label. She eats through men like they’re M&Ms.”
A hiss of released air came from my left. Damn it, I’d forgotten about Martin filming this. He held one hand over his mouth as if trying not to laugh.
Time I redirected this conversation. “What’s going on with Mac?”
“He’s not better. His tummy looks bigger, and he’s not eating. He won’t even touch hotdogs or bacon. This guy never pukes, but he brought up everything last night.”
I knelt in front of Wade and touched the hound’s head. “Hey, Mac. Too bad you can’t tell me what’s wrong.” As I listened to his heart and worked back to his swollen abdomen my heart sank. “There’s something in his abdomen that I don’t think is just an enlarged liver due to Cushing syndrome.”
I glanced up, awkwardly finding myself almost lodged between Wade’s legs at crotch level. I rolled back to a sit and pushed up to a stand.
“We need to do some radiographs.” At his blank stare, I amended, “X-rays.”
“Oh, okay. Can you do them now?”
I nodded. “You all right if I borrow Mac for a few minutes?”
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up the digital images in the exam room for Wade and pointed. “There’s a mass here. I put the ultrasound on it while I had him back there. It’s a liver tumor. It only seems to involve one liver lobe, but there’s fluid in his abdomen. I took a sample, and its blood. That means the tumor is bleeding and needs to come out in the next twenty-four hours. If we wait, he could die. Our only other alternative is to put him down. Now, the surgery comes with risks, and even trying to remove it, he might not make it. But we have to make a decision. There’s a chance that his entire liver is riddled with tumor, which I won’t know until I’m in there. Looked okay when I ultrasounded it. If he was mine, I’d go for it. I’m good at this surgery and feel pretty sure I can get it out.”
Wade’s eyes widened. The glaze of shock fell across his face. This look was the kiss of death for an owner hearing anything more I said.
“You okay, Wade?” I touched his arm to draw his attention back to the moment.
He nodded then shook his head. “Yeah… No. I didn’t expect… Last time I was here, Dr. Kovac said it was treatable. Thought we’d need to adjust his drugs or something.”
“Liver masses can be tricky, but I didn’t see obvious metastasis or movement of the mass throughout the liver or into the lungs. But—”
The door opened. In stalked Kovac with his own cameraman. His dark hair with gray at the sides gave him a distinguished air that matched his suave Bulgarian accent. “Mac’s not any better, I hear? Got a mass in his tummy.”
Kovac deserved an Academy Award for the sympathetic look he cast Wade. This was why his clients loved him. I sometimes wished I could harness even a smidgeon of his charm. “I’ll do the surgery this afternoon. Let’s get that spleen out and make him better.”
Oh, no no no.“It’s not his spleen. It’s—”
“I got it from here, Dr. Hardin,” Kovac said dismissively. He gave me a sympathetic once-over that made me want to deck him in the nose. “I know you’re busy. I’ll take over.”
I met Wade’s confused gaze. I wanted him, needed him, to tell Kovac to take a hike. Not happening. No sane client got in the middle of an ego war between two vets.
Wade didn’t know Kovac’s small animal surgery skills ranked somewhere in the super sucky closing in on scary unqualified range. Removing a spleen was moderately challenging, and most vets decent at surgery could handle it—if they didn’t flip out over the blood loss. Removing a liver lobe? Uh, no. Most didn’t have the balls to touch the liver. But me? Yeah, I could kick ass in surgery. It was my superpower.
“Let me know if you need anything from me, Wade.” Weak. I should’ve done a lot better. I should’ve held my ground. For Mac.
But I was hungry, exhausted, and frankly, the thought of fighting Kovac in front of Wade on camera wasn’t a battle I had the energy for.
Outside the exam room I shook my head as I approached Susan. “Kovac took over. He’s doing the surgery.”
Susan grimaced. No need to vocalize what we both thought. Kovac had a terrible record when it came to complicated surgery. But maybe just this once he’d excel.
“Keep me posted,” I said. “He’ll probably have you help him with the procedure since you’re the most senior surgical tech on the clock this afternoon. Find me if you’re worried. Don’t let Mac die today.” I hated putting Susan in the position of needing to tattletale on Kovac if he got in over his head, but our mantra in this field was do no harm. Or maybe more correctly it was to give patients the best possible chance.
“Amber, we need to talk.” The director of the hospital, Dr. Caleb Morris, sighed out an annoyed noise. “My office. Now.”
I tried to interpret the meaning behind the tenseness of his shoulders. The sixty-something hospital director with perfectly styled gray hair and shaved face, wearing a tie and button down, seemed on edge. He handed out compliments about as often as a lunar eclipse, but he worked hard and held everyone around him to the same give-one-hundred-percent work ethic, which I respected.
