and he couldn’t see her any more and he was going out of his mind.
And finally, when he reached the beach, things weren’t any better.
He dumped his board and ran, but what he found made him feel cold and sick. The hollow where Bonnie had lain was almost awash with blood.
So much blood…How could she survive blood loss like this?
Where was she?
He turned and saw three letters scrawled in the sand, rough, as if done with a foot.
‘VET.’
Sensible. Dear God, sensible. But where? Where was the closest vet?
Staring at Bonnie’s blood…It was so hard to think.
Think.
There was a vet’s surgery near the hospital, the one he normally took Bonnie to. It was the closest. Surely whoever it was knew that.
He was heading up the beach, ripping his wetsuit off as he ran.
So much blood…It was impossible that she would survive.
She had to survive. Without Bonnie he had nothing left.
The veterinary hospital was open and amazingly, wonderfully, a vet came out to meet her. Maybe it was the way she’d spun into the entrance, burning rubber. Medics were clued in to hints like that, she decided, because by the time she was out of her car, a middle-aged guy wearing a clinical coat was there to help her.
‘Road trauma,’ she said, wasting no words, somehow shifting into medical mode. What she must look like…She’d ripped off her shirt to stop the blood flow. She was wearing a lacy bra and jeans and sandals and she was smeared with blood from the neck down—or even higher, but she wasn’t looking. But the vet was looking. He took her arm and hauled her round so he could see her face on, before he even looked at the dog.
‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded, and she caught herself, realising he needed reassurance. Triage dictated humans before animals, even for a vet, so she needed to waste a few words.
‘A buggy hit her on the beach,’ she said. ‘I saw it happen but, no, I’m not hurt. This is all her blood. She’s not my dog—her owner’s out surfing but I didn’t have time to wait for him to get back in. She’s bleeding out from the back leg.’
‘Not now she’s not,’ the vet said, and he was already leaning into the car. He could see the tourniquet she’d fashioned with her shirt and he cast her a glance of approval. ‘She’s Bonnie,’ he said, flipping the name tag on her collar. ‘I know her—she’s one of the local docs’ dogs. Sam Webster. You’re not medical yourself, are you?’
‘I’m a nurse.’
‘Great. I’m the only one here and I’ll need help. You up for it?’
‘Of course,’ she said, but he hadn’t waited for a response. He was already carrying the dog through the entrance to his surgery beyond.
HE’D COME TO the right place. As soon as he pulled into the entrance to the veterinary surgery he could guess Bonnie had been brought here.
An ancient car was parked across the emergency entrance. It looked battered and rusty, it had obviously seen far better days, and right now the back door was swinging wide and all he could see on the back seat was blood.
There were spatters of blood on the ramp. There were spatters of blood leading to the entrance.
He felt sick.
He’d got rid of his wetsuit. He was wearing board shorts and nothing else, his feet were bare and so was his chest. He felt exposed, but the feeling was nothing to do with his lack of clothes.
Get a grip. You’re a doctor, he told himself harshly. Let’s treat this as a medical emergency.
At this time of night the vet surgery was deserted, apart from a cleaner attacking the floor with a look of disgust. He looked at Sam with even more disgust.
‘Sand as well as blood. I’ve just cleaned this.’
‘Where’s my dog?’
‘If you mean the half-dead Labrador the girl brought in, Doc’s got her in Theatre.’ He motioned to the swing doors at the end of Reception. ‘Girl went in, too. You want to sit down and wait? Hey, you can’t go in there. Wait…’
But Sam was gone, striding across the shiny wet floor, through the green baize doors and to what lay beyond.
He stopped as soon as the doors swung wide.
He might be an emotionally-distraught owner, he might be going out of his mind with worry, but Sam Webster was still a doctor. He was a cardiac surgeon, with additional training in paediatric cardiology. The theatres where he operated were so sterile that no bacteria would dare come within fifty feet, and he was trained enough So that barging into an operating theatre and heading straight for the dog on the table wasn’t going to happen. So he stood at the door and took in the scene before him.
Bonnie was stretched out on the operating bench. There was already a drip set up in her front leg and a bag of saline hung above. The vet, Doug—he knew this guy, he was the vet who gave Bonnie his yearly shots—was filling a syringe.
There were paddles lying on the floor as if tossed aside.
Paddles.
He had it in one. Catastrophic blood loss. Heart failure.
But the vet was inserting the syringe, the girl at the head of the table was holding Bonnie’s head and whispering to her and they wouldn’t do that to a dead dog.
Doug glanced up and saw him. ‘That’d be right,’ he growled. ‘Doctor arriving after the hard work’s done. Isn’t that right, Nurse?’ He heard the tension in Doug’s voice and he knew Bonnie wasn’t out of the woods yet, but he also knew that this girl had got his dog here in time—or maybe not in time, but at least she stood a chance.
If she’d gone into cardiac arrest on the beach…
‘How are you at anaesthetics?’ Doug snapped, and he forced himself to focus on the question. Medical emergency. How many times had he had the rules drilled into him during training? Take the personal distress out of it until the crisis is over.
‘I’m rusty but grounded,’ he managed.
‘Rusty but grounded is better than nothing. Humans, dogs, what’s the difference? I’ll give you the doses. I want her under and intubated and Zoe here doesn’t have the skills. I’ve called for back-up but I can’t get hold of my partner in time. You want to make yourself useful, scrub and help.’
‘What’s…what’s the situation?’ He was watching Bonnie, but he was also watching the girl—Zoe?—holding Bonnie still. They wouldn’t have had time to knock her out yet, he thought. They’d
