Love Is the Best Medicine (10 page)

“And?” I said, assuming my asking was rhetorical given their visit today.

“She didn’t really like it and, again, it was difficult to tell whether it was making a difference.”

“Okay,” I said and stood up, thinking we had caught up to the present, ready to begin my examination. “So we’re back to good old Western medicine?”

Mrs. Nadworny gave me a practiced mischievous smile as she confessed, “Not exactly.”

“Look,” she said, as I backed down into my seat, “I am the biggest cynic ever. But my husband and I felt like we had tried everything so we thought, why not, what harm can it do?”

“What harm can what do?” I said.

“A pet psychic,” she replied, wincing with each word, her shoulders
rising up, neck shrinking down, as if bracing for my outrage, or perhaps the intensity of my guffaws.

I should have taken the opportunity to study her over the rims of my glasses, removing them slowly, with a heavy sigh of disappointment, a deliberate shake of the head as though she had gone too far. But I never had a chance—she was already into her next sentence, defending her position.

“I know, I know, but you have to understand that I’m the kind of person who believes in God because I’m afraid not to. I read my horoscope every day. And occasionally, on a girls’ night out and after a few margaritas, I’ve even had my fortune read.”

I thought again about Dr. Sweet’s comment about the shape of last night’s moon—he may have been on to something.

“Our town has this annual fair, you know, stuff for the family to do, bring along the kids, and there’s this New Age store, one of those places you’d never go into with kids because it’s all crystals and glass.” Mrs. Nadworny gave a little shake of her head as she said, “But whatever—anyway, I saw they were advertising psychic readings for animals and I’m thinking, hey, for twenty bucks compared to what I’ve already spent, why not.”

I nodded a “can’t argue with that.”

“So Rory and I go and check it out.”

“Is this during the day or the night?” I asked and watched as this question caught her off guard.

“Ten o’clock in the morning.”

I didn’t reply because I was too busy imagining Mrs. Nadworny rapping her knuckles to the rhythm of a secret knock and whispering a Wiccan password through a sliding peephole before being engulfed in plumes of swirling incense and the music of Enya.

I came back to reality.

“Forgive me but all I’m seeing is a dark creepy room, candles, long shadows, and a swarm of carnie folk.”

Mrs. Nadworny shook her head.

“No, nothing like that at all. When Rory and I entered the store we were led to a back room. There were about a dozen ‘readers’ sitting at tables,” she said, miming quotation marks with her fingers. “A few people were seated opposite them, and everyone was speaking in hushed tones. I may have been looking for the woman in the black shawl or at the very least, a neck tattoo and numerous body piercings, but I was introduced to this well-dressed, fortysomething woman who looked like a soccer mom.”

My raised eyebrows conveyed surprise. I kept the disappointment to myself.

“She seemed very nice, very comfortable around Rory.”

“How much did you tell her about the lameness?” I said.

Mrs. Nadworny immediately understood where I was going.

“Yes, I decided to give her a little but not a lot. I simply told her Rory had been lame for some time in her left front leg but no one seemed to know why.”

Rory had a tendency to hold her left foot off the ground when seated, in the manner of “giving paw,” so essentially Mrs. Nadworny had given the psychic nothing.

“So she rubs and squeezes and Rory trembles, but other than that Rory just sits there.”

I’m still imagining faraway looks, pensive nods, a one-sided dialogue broken by intense moments of apparent concentration, ear lined up with snout, waiting for the silent communication to get through.

“Then she told me two things that grabbed my attention. First she said Rory was stressed because there was something troubling going on in
my
life. Now I know this is incredibly vague and superficial but at the time my husband had just been laid off and I was coming to the end of my contract at work so, to be honest, the term
stressful
was an understatement.”

“What was the second thing?”

Mrs. Nadworny paused and studied me, as if anticipating my response.

“You were always convinced that the problem was in Rory’s shoulder.”

She was right. Rory’s shoulder was still my prime suspect.

“Well, completely without prompting, the psychic says, ‘You know it’s not her shoulder. It’s her wrist.’”

Narrowed eyes and a sideways glance betrayed my skepticism as I asked, “And you never mentioned anything about the shoulder?”

Mrs. Nadworny shook her head.

“That’s why we’re here,” she said. “I want you to check out Rory’s wrist.”

I deliberated a beat, considering her request to abandon a scientific workup in favor of a metaphysical inkling divined by a canine swami.

“Sure,” I said, crossing the room and squatting down on the floor next to Rory. “Let’s find out what she will tell me, aside from ‘Not you again!’”

I did the elbow thing, I did the shoulder thing, and once again I struck out with nothing. Mrs. Nadworny arched her eyebrows as I hovered over Rory’s wrist, as though I had been keeping her on tenterhooks. Out of a misplaced sense of courtesy I arched mine back, trying to hide the fact that I was simply going through the motions, indulging her and her fanciful pet psycho.

Confident, embracing this cynicism, I flexed and extended the joints of the wrist, thinking about how best to break the news when I felt a palpable click between the bones.

Subconsciously I must have hesitated long enough for Mrs. Nadworny to pounce.

“Did you find something?”

My fake smile became a nervous smile as I repeated the maneuver and once again my fingertips discerned the alignment of the small bones of Rory’s wrist, feeling them jostle and settle with an unnatural and reproducible snap.

How could I have missed it? Suddenly this malady seemed so
obvious. Had I been bested by an animal guru with supernatural powers?

“Um … well … I’m not sure why, but there
does
appear to be something unsual about Rory’s wrist.”

Mrs. Nadworny studied me with a mix of surprise and downright satisfaction.

Still reeling, I tried to regain control by suggesting we get an X-ray of Rory’s wrist, and half an hour later my humiliation was upgraded after objective black-and-white proof revealed that one of the small bones at the back of her wrist appeared to have been displaced.

Poise abandoned, my mouth suddenly dry, I sputtered:

“It’s … well … unusual… this bone here … this bone here shouldn’t be here. It’s the kind of injury we occasionally see in racing greyhounds.”

Mrs. Nadworny looked at me, astonished.

“I can’t believe you said that. People were always telling me that Rory races around like a greyhound.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love Labradors and there are few breeds out there with better endurance skills or a better work ethic, but I felt like Mrs. Nadworny was comparing a Toyota Land Cruiser with a Lamborghini. I knew the comment was meant as nothing more than a dog park compliment for Rory’s enthusiastic play during her heyday but somehow the improbability of the statement and the peculiarity of the injury suddenly hit me like a two-by-four. The clinician in me, temporarily waylaid and bullied by the talents of a paranormal canine communicator, finally came to his senses.

“Excuse me a moment,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, even an experienced vet will forget that our four-legged patients are kind enough to bring along a perfectly good and normal opposite leg for comparison. Rory’s front right leg had never had a problem. It was the “control” I had foolishly chosen to ignore.

I checked out her other wrist and convinced the radiologist that
our ability to interpret the first X-ray would be enhanced by getting the same view of the opposite side. This was done, and armed with new discoveries I sought out the devoted and long-suffering Mrs. Nadworny.

“Your pet psychic was right, there is something strange about Rory’s wrist, but I can feel the same click in her opposite wrist and look,” I positioned the images of the left and right leg on a viewing box, side by side for comparison.

“They’re identical. The bones may not be in perfect alignment but this is normal for Rory. She’s simply a dog who can click the joints in her wrist.”

Mrs. Nadworny took another look at the X-rays. I could tell she saw the truth hidden amid their shades of gray and it had burst her bubble.

She turned to me unable to hide her disappointment and I wanted her to see that I too shared this sentiment, buying into her psychic’s hunch as much as she had because we were both frustrated and motivated by a desire to help this poor Labrador. If Rory entrusted her secret to a soccer mom in a New Age store that was fine by me. Cut me a slice of humble pie if it means the patient gets better! Of course it was quirky and unconventional but it was rooted in what counts—trying to advocate for a creature in pain. I might joke about the cycles of the moon and crazy clients but there is a big difference between well-intentioned and irrational, indulgent behavior.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Once again I can tell you what it is not, and not what it is.”

Mrs. Nadworny patted my elbow, gave me an appreciative smile, and then cracked up laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I was just remembering how I was so impressed by what she told me about Rory that I instantly slapped down another twenty bucks and demanded she give me a reading.”

I really didn’t want to ask and fortunately Mrs. Nadworny bailed me out.

“I should have known better because how many real psychics start out by asking ‘What seems to be the problem?’ I mean, isn’t that what they are supposed to be telling you?”

T
HERE
was a package of X-rays waiting for me outside my examination room door, no doubt a gift from my final patient of the day. I stole a peek and my memory conjured a conversation with a referring vet in Bermuda. Time to put a face with a fracture.

If I’m being honest, the miniature pinscher is not in my all-time top-ten favorite canines when it comes to veterinary bonhomie. Please believe me when I say I have nothing against the breed (ranked twenty-second in popularity by the American Kennel Club in 2008). This is purely professional negativity based on the fact that, for some reason, most of my experiences with Min Pins have involved them becoming genuinely bipolar around people in white coats, transformed from angelic lapdog to homicidal junkyard dog with the first touch of toenail on metallic examination room table. When I think of Min Pins I imagine the kind of dog that might force Cesar Millan to reach for his rabies pole or tranquilizer-laden dart gun, the kind of dog that comes with an owner warning “Yeah, sometimes she doesn’t like vets,” which we all recognize as international code for “Dial 911 now, so the ambulance arrives before you bleed out!”

Sonja Rasmussen may have stood alone in the waiting room but the small pet carrier seated on the bench beside her was the giveaway. It bore a sticker with the airport letters for Bermuda—BDA. She was tall, in a long winter coat buttoned up tight, with her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, long red hair in contrast to pale winter skin, shy freckles in hibernation. Taking tiny steps back and forth,
arms folded across her chest, she was keeping vigil, features at the mercy of one all-consuming, all-powerful force—anxiety.

“Ms. Rasmussen?”

Preoccupied with her worries, she was taken by surprise, and gave me a nervous smile as I reached out to shake her icy hand.

“Dr. Trout?”

I nodded and she looked relieved.

“Thanks for seeing us at such short notice.”

I shook off her unnecessary gratitude.

“Please, you’re the ones with a two-hour flight to get here.”

And with this I dipped down and risked a peek at the savage behind the bars.

“And this must be Cleo.”

My body braced for a playful “great white” lunge, a flash of ivory, and a throaty growl. Instead a docile, polite detainee in a black-and-tan jumpsuit stepped forward, pressed her nose up to the bars, and began sniffing my fingertips. She didn’t make a sound, not a cry or a whimper. She simply wanted to say hello. I berated myself for my foolish rush to judgment.

We small-talked our way back to my exam room, Ms. Rasmussen clearly impressed with the hospital although she confessed she had already done plenty of homework on both Angell and me.

Once inside, I placed the carrier in the center of the room and opened the little plastic door. Cleo stretched, dipping on extended front legs, a perfect downward-facing dog yoga position, before hopping out, talented and nimble on three legs. The right hind leg hung at an unnatural angle, toes lightly scuffing the floor as she picked up the many layers of scent from previous patients.

Sonja unbuttoned her coat and squatted down, calling her name as Cleo hopscotched over. Wag would be too strong a word for the movement in that little nubbin of a tail. Frenetic twitching might be more appropriate. Regardless of what it was, the rate definitely picked up in response to Sonja’s call and I remember wondering,
does a dog’s tail beat to the rhythm of her own heartbeat, or to the rhythm of ours?

“Please, take a seat, Ms. Rasmussen. Cleo seems quite happy to explore while we chat about her history.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said, “but Cleo’s not my dog. She belongs to my mother. I’m just looking after her for …”

Sonja’s sentence stopped short, as though she had been stung by her own words, her being here the ultimate indictment of her failure.

“Why don’t you start with what brought you to your vet, to Dr. Glynn, in Bermuda,” I said, easing my interjection into this awkward pause between us, though, even to me, it seemed clumsy and affected.

She leaned forward in her seat, knees together, hands together, working something small and invisible between her fingertips, like imaginary worry beads.