Stephannie+Morin


 * After 20 years..**

The silence on the streets of London was so enduring that not even the freshly painted Mercedes, cheerfully colored Fiats, or the sporty Ford cars and trucks that were whizzing past did not seem to wake the slumbering giant of a city. Inside my cozy office, I had just completed my summary on a pregnant tortoiseshell that was admitted in hours ago, when a wealthy business man had noticed his cat was lactating and acting aggressive. Tapping my pointer finger to the beat of the ancient Coldplay song “Paradise” and perusing the summary before I could print it, I was so lost in thought that I didn't even hear my Samsung Galaxy S29 buzz form inside my color changing Arctic Fox fur purse. Ring,ring It droned. “Now who could be calling at this ungodly hour?” I muttered to myself. Disgusted, I file through my purse, fish my phone out of a never ending sea of Chap stick, and answer it. “Hello, who is this?” I sighed, annoyed. Corrine’s drastic, panicked voice shouted back, “Steph! Thank God you’re here! Come down into the vet room and //FAST//!” I froze in mid tap at the word “fast”; Corrine had been so friendly with the business man and very polite with the other folks who had come in, that I had forgotten that even she never knew what to expect. After the shocked pause, I answer quickly, “I’ll be right down. Let me print the summary”, and hang up. Hurriedly, I jabbed the print button on my Windows 1000 laptop. Sensing no response, I jump down the stairs, sprinted past the receptionist’s office, nearly caused an accident in the puppy ward, and into the rush of the sliding glass doors that welcomed me into the vet room. In the middle of it all, I began to sense a feeling: chaos. A black and white pit bull puppy lay sprawled on the hard linoleum floor with bullet holes dotting every square inch of his stocky body; where his forehead should have been was replaced with a half-dollar sized bullet hole. Corrine was staring at the dog with tear filled eyes, muttering, “Who would do this to such a sweet dog? WHO?!” to no one in particular. As if in answer, the dog glanced upward and shed something that wasn't a tear, but blood! I felt my eyes welling up with tears; I felt my lungs being sucked in with my gut. This example of the sheer wanton violence people can use on their animals was too gruesome to stand. Despite the anguish of the chaotic scene, I whistled for my staff to muster and decide what to do. “Well what //should// we do?” I whispered, crestfallen. “Put him down,” one of my assistants, Julio, inquired, “there’s nothing we can do.” “No,” Corrine shouted desperately next to me, “there’s still hope!” Corrine began pointing frantically across the room to each of the surgeons that were present. “Julio, anesthetic, Jil, scalpel, Matthew, stitches, Kirsti, bullet cream! We have to save him NOW!” Corrine commanded. Immediately, the surgeons returned carrying scalpels, stitches, and finally, in the back of the mad rush, Kirsti with the bullet cream, all handled like they were ornate with uranium. We called out at various intervals “Pass the So-and-so!’ or, “Check his heartbeat, he is about to flat line!” The heart rate machine buzzed as an infinite horizontal line appeared on the screen. Sadly swiping the latex gloves and whipping the mask off my face, I turned to Corrine. “It’s over”, I tell her softly “the dog is dead.” Corrine wept.