maintained that I was strong enough to handle this, and I wanted to be
strong enough to handle more than this. I went to work the next day and
continued forth. I would not stop; I had to succeed.
The following week held the semi-annual spay and neuter clinic
that provides these sterilization procedures to pets at the lowest possible
cost. These appointments removed costs by not requiring a pre-surgery
exam and used a lower grade anesthetic protocol. As soon as I came in,
my favorite technician, Jerry, a friendly, compassionate man, greeted me
with the revelation that today was about to be my very busiest day at
the hospitals so far. He could not have been more right because when
I looked at the schedule I saw that 8 spays and 7 neuters had been split
between the two doctors in the office. It was my first day of full surgery; I
was a walking ball of nerves. Jerry took me under his wing and taught me
all of the things that he had learned in technician school. His kind, eyes
watched me, and his apt hands seemed, to me, like magic when treating
the animals. I planned to stick close to him throughout the day.
Our first patient came in: a young, orange and white marbled
male tabby, and Jerry and I were assigned to Dr. Ellis. Though a great
veterinarian, Dr. Ellis was a stern woman with quick intelligence, black
beady eyes, and no moral compass whatsoever. During the brief time that
I had spent with the hospital, I learned to avoid her service and stay away
from her cases. Between the insufferable mood swings and the blatant
favoritism, she made her employees feel worthless and incompetent. As
luck would have it, Jerry and I were stuck with her for the remainder of
the day. With little to no conflict, though, the three of us managed to get
the first sets of surgery finished well before lunchtime.
After a peaceful lunch, we set to work on our next patient: a
visibly malnourished boxer pup named Nero. This poor thing could not
have weighed anymore than fifty pounds and patches of his fur were
missing entirely from his coat. His claws, overgrown and curling under
his paws, clicked incessantly as Nero sat, shaking on the cold linoleum.
Clearly, this animal was not healthy eno Vv