An Animal Life: A Chance to Cut (Series Book 2)

Praise for

An Animal Life: The Beginning

AWARDS/EDITORIAL REVIEWS

• Winner – 2014 Beverly Hills Book Awards • Winner – 2014 Readers’ Favorite Awards • Finalist – International Book Awards • Awesome Indies Approved • IndieReader Approved • Finalist – 2014 Indie Excellence Awards • Winner – 2014 eLit Book Awards • Winner – 2014 IndieReader Discovery Awards • Gold Medal Winner – Global eBook Awards • Winner – 2014 CIPA EVVY • Honorable Mention – 2014 New York Book Festival • Honoree B.R.A.G. Medallion • Winner – 2014 Hollywood Book Festival • and more…

"Howard Krum brings the experiences of first year veterinary school students to life in his funny and heart-warming book An Animal Life: The Beginning. The Death Row Inmates will remind some of the M*A*S*H characters whose pranks and practical jokes made even the harshest situations somehow bearable. In An Animal Life, there’s little time for sleeping, dozens of exams, thousands of terms and definitions to memorize, larger than life professors and senior advisers, Friday Night Happy Hours… and the animals. It’s all about the animals, and it works so incredibly well. I loved this book. It answered all the questions I’ve ever entertained about becoming a vet and what that journey would have been like — marvelous, grueling, insane, and incredible all at once. An Animal Life: The Beginning is remarkable, powerful, and beautifully written. It’s very highly recommended."

— Readers’ Favorite (5-Stars)

…Fast-paced and humorous, this detailed account of a first year at vet school brims with cringe-worthy moments and rich descriptions. The witty, believable characters fumble through their relationships much as they muddle their way through their studies. Those interested in animals as well as people will find much to admire in this work. A zany and heartfelt account of life in veterinary school.

— Kirkus Reviews

"This book has everything you need — it is smart, well written, bright, and features intelligent characters that have a knack for stirring up trouble, as well as a clear insight to the odd life veterinary students, professors, and staff lead… The unusual and downright hilarious antics the students get into… makes you want to drop everything and apply to vet school… [AN] ANIMAL LIFE is a wonderful book for those considering veterinary school to get a glimpse of what is coming, and still a great book for everyday readers…"

— IndieReader

For those knowledgeable on and interested in the science of animals, this is easily a hands-down 5-star book…

— Awesome Indies

"It’s a great read … I’ve got shelves of books by veterinarians, [but with An Animal Life] you’re able to get the personality behind them, and you’re able to get into the stories. It’s not so much about the medicine … It’s about the people themselves and I love that aspect of it. I also love that [the authors are] donating back to charity with this."

— Pet World Insider

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a vet. I always loved animals and I still do, although I never made it to veterinary school. Being able to jump into this book was the next best thing… You get to run the full gamut of emotions… and I have to wonder how any of them make it out alive… Thanks to the wonderful descriptions you truly feel like you are one of the students… I laughed more than anything with some of the situations and the characters of the book. It is so well written and delightful that I would recommend this one highly.

— Readers’ Favorite (5-Stars)

"… This book is so much fun, and so much a period piece — an updated version of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ crossed with ‘M*A*S*H’ and taken into veterinary school — that I never did put the book down for much longer than it took to get a fresh glass of iced tea."

— Kingdom Books

An Animal Life: A Chance to Cut

Howard Krum

Copyright © 2014 by Fluid Design Foundation.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Published in 2014 by Fluid Design Foundation (FDF)

890 Hunt Road

Windsor, Vermont 05089

Edited by Andrew Palmer and Rachael Cohen

Cover and interior design by Lufkin Graphic Designs

Full-sized versions of illustrations available at: AnAnimalLife.com

ISBN: 978-0-9884885-3-3

eISBN: 978-0-9884885-4-0

First Edition

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. As such, this book is not a veterinary or human medical reference text and is not to be used as a guide for the diagnosis and/or treatment of any animal or human disease. This work of fiction was inspired by the authors’ real-life experiences as veterinary students; however, names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

Dedication

In loving memory of Lawrence J. Nowlan, Jr.: artist, mentor, husband, father, and true friend — one of the finest men ever to sculpt our world.

Table of Contents

TIMELINE

PREFACE

An Animal Life

10:00 AM — MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

People often ask: What took so long?

We usually reply: Three broken hearts.

A Chance to Cut picks up where The Beginning (Book 1) left off.

To recap (and to save you pages of re-exposition):

Jack Doyle (a former K-9 cop, now first-year class president) defied his predilection for poor judgement with women and began to fall for a fiery classmate, Anna Heywood, despite the lure of Avery Banks (a gorgeous pet food rep) and her various curvy assets.

At one point Jack said to Anna, Uh, I think you’re great.

Anna is terse, chronically severe, and ultimately could be Jack’s salvation (and vice versa). But, since the loss of her adoptive parents to a drunk driver and her diagnosis with ALS, Anna has risked love only once — for her faithful service dog, Petunia.

Anna replied (to Jack), Petunia, sit.

The Death Row Crew (Jack; Hoss, the son of a Nevada cattle rancher; Sam, a dyslexic commercial fisherman from Maine; and Kerri, a boy-crazy Jewish American Princess with a photographic memory) settled into An Animal Life (competing at Dead Horse Steeplechase, etc.) and grew to love JJ, an entirely lovable FRoG (Front Row Geek).

Hoss interjected, Aw shucks.

Eventually, Anna discovered that a shifty classmate (Rick Larson) was actually an imposter who sold keys for the school’s ALS research lab to a radical animal rights group.

Anna skewered Rick, YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!

Then Jack helped Violet Marie Green (a zoo vet extraordinaire) and Stan the Path Man (a goofy-sweet, brilliant former FRoG) solve a mysterious epidemic where horses, birds, and even people were dropping dead. Ultimately, they discover West Nile Virus and reveal that the Peaceable Kingdom’s lead animal keeper, William Digby (with obvious designs to bed Violet), has been selling the zoo’s offspring to a sport-hunting ranch in Texas.

Stan yelled, YOU SON OF A BITCH! (just before he

cleaned Digby’s clock — lesson to self, keep your clock clean).

Throughout the whole first semester of vet school, Jack, Anna and the other first years were guided by their wise and wooly fourth-year advisors (Mike London and Trisha Maxwell). Trisha met and became engaged to a gentle rodeo cowboy, while Mike (a well-worn lady’s man and veterinary superstar) cruised towards graduation extolling the virtues of True Love and Friday Night Happy Hour. Mike was a supercharged paragon of unflappability, or at least he appeared to be until now, when it seems as if A Chance to Cut might be his only chance to heal.*

* Selected terms, medical jargon and phrases can be found in the glossary (like, A chance to cut… on page 248).

An Animal Life:

A Chance to Cut

PROLOGUE, PART I

Come and Listen to a Story about a Man Named Mike

FALL, 1973

The seal exhibit at the Coney Island Aquarium in Brooklyn, New York

He’s back.

The head trainer took a pull on his Pall Mall, peered through the one-way glass and puffed his reply, Third time this week. Shouldn’t he be in school?

The other kids must be merciless.

The trainer sighed, They always are, then added, Is he mute?

The vet shook his head. He’s sharp as a whip.

How sharp is that, exactly?

The vet huffed a quiet laugh, Good point. But, guess why I put Rigel on Gent eye drops?

Your whip-sharp medical skills?

The zoo vet shook his head, When that kid’s alone out there with the seals, he talks up a storm. Last week I overheard him say, ‘Why are you squinting?’ and damned if Rigel didn’t have a corneal abrasion. The vet sighed, We missed it.

They looked on as the little boy placed a palm flat on the exhibit glass and splayed his fingers. A robust harbor seal with big brown eyes and curving whiskers motored up and swished his hind flippers as he hung in the water.

The vet whispered, Watch this. He raised a hand above the one-way glass, made a fist and pumped it twice. The seal opened his mouth and responded with a garbled but unmistakable sound, MHHIIKE, and then nodded its chin rapidly up and down.

Little Mike London’s eyes sprang open nearly as wide as Rigel’s.

The trainer smiled, What the…?

Positive reinforcement. The vet shook his head again. All you need is love.

Little Mike began to dance and jump around, You and I are the same! We can… but before he could finish the sentence a tower in black descended.

A MARRIAGE LICENSE MAKES ME YOUR ‘FATHER’ BUT I AIN’T NO TRUANT OFFICER. The bulk snared the child by the earlobe, What’s the st-st-story this time?

The little boy twisted around the mitt clamped to his ear. I sp… sp… speak for them…

Psh… The tower mocked, Jelly Lips, you can’t even speak for yourself, you little defect.

Before the vet could reach the public side, they were gone.

CHAPTER ONE

Mike, Petunia and Anna

11:25 PM — SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 1989

Anna’s one-room apartment on Locust Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Petunia sat up in the darkness.

The snooze button could have been a challenge to reach, but only a Murphy bed furnished the tiny efficiency so the clock and its cord lay sprawled on the cold, hard floor. After WXPN finished Brown Eyed Girl (requested by a guy named Jack), Petunia depressed the snooze button with her fleshy black nose. The transition from song to silence usually did the trick.

To say this dog was gentle would be true. To say she was persistent, well, that was just the tip — Petunia was paired with the ideal partner and with no response, the tenacious black lab rooted under the covers until she found the mass of silky black hair. Using the snooze button technique, she gave a soft poke to Anna’s neck then sat and waited again.

Anna didn’t budge. Her eyelids didn’t flutter. Her breathing, shallow but audible to the finely tuned ears of a loving service dog, did not change tempo.

In anticipation of the inevitable, Anna had attached a length of string to the short pull chain of the only light in the room — a bare bulb mounted high on the dingy ceiling. It had taken all of 14 seconds to teach Petunia to give the string a soft tug at the word, Light. So, when all else failed, like now, she’d mouth the cord to flood the room with a naked 60 watts. Still, no response.

Though Petunia’s formal training only took her so far, she wasn’t pedestrian. No yapping lapdog, she improvised: After ambling to the foot of the bed and snuffling between the sheets, Petunia found the curving arch of Anna’s left foot — the part that had already begun to wither — and gave it a long lick. This time she got what she wanted. Anna gave a start and drew a deep breath. Though Petunia couldn’t know, it was this deep, full breath that made all the difference to Anna. Since the day of her ALS diagnosis, her first thought at each waking was gratitude for automatic lungs.

Anna blinked into her reality. It was nearly midnight. Nearly time for her shift in the small animal Emergency Service at school. She lay, staring at the cracked, heaving plaster overhead and imagined an orbital view — as if she were on the International Space Station soaring over Nepal. The next few seconds of every day were her Everest. She closed her eyes to concentrate on her legs. For a moment, she thought they tensed but then was unsure; they felt heavy. Dead. She bent her neck, pushing her chin toward her chest. There, piled two deep and turning her thick comforter into a straitjacket, lay her new tormentors: Dyce, Sack and Wensing; Miller; Guyton; Ettinger; and the Merck Manual. She took another breath and crawled out from under the texts.

Anna’s morning routine was simple if not easy. She pulled on the scrubs she’d stashed under her pillow, rose slowly and walked the four-inch-wide beam she’d taped to the dirty linoleum from her bed to the pantry. As an eight-year-old Olympic hopeful, this routine began with a forward walkover, followed by a handspring, then a cartwheel. Most mornings it ended with a dismount into her mom’s loving arms. But now, even though the stakes were higher, her only aim was to span the empty space without falling. She felt both the masking edge under her still-callused feet and the pull of her mom’s plain wooden cross mounted above the sink. Petunia, her work for the moment complete, sat next to her bowl.

After a dozen tenuous steps with only one wobble, Anna reached the counter. She ripped the label off the last can of dog food and muttered, I can’t believe I’m using this stuff. It was bad enough that she was forced to take handouts, she sure as hell wasn’t going to look at that bold AVIS logo.

After hours — and midnight was definitely after hours — the transition between frozen, deserted Philly street and the ES waiting zoo was abrupt. As the door swooshed open, an adult macaw with a shimmering blue three-foot wingspan flapped squawking over Anna’s left shoulder out into the night. Anna didn’t flinch; her focus was at ankle-level. She and Petunia sidestepped the sensor beam so that the auto doors halted the escape of a lop-eared bunny.

The student who Anna was replacing at the admissions desk, a second-year with frizzy brown hair and hollow eyes, handed off a clipboard and grunted, They’re all checked in, pulled on a jacket and just before she vanished, grumbled, My bird’ll get home before me.

Anna didn’t reply. She knew the drill. To make ends almost meet, she’d been on duty every night of the holiday break. The school’s official stance on students taking extracurricular employment was clear — it was prohibited. But, like so many impossible rules, this one was never enforced. School was expensive. Anna’s clinical trial meds were currently free but the rest of her health care was not. Besides, who would have been brave enough to tell Anna Heywood she couldn’t earn money to eat?

The differences between your standard feudal-age castle and the small animal Emergency Service at the University of Philadelphia are largely cosmetic. A castle usually has: more folks wearing chainmail, fewer EKG machines, and a more spacious dungeon. But functionally, their structures and staff serve the same purpose: to repel marauders and save lives.

Philly, being a modern, city-sized city, of course presents a real and present need for protection from druggies and street thugs. This is to be expected. But what’s not expected is the attractive, hypnotic, almost magnetic effect a dimly lit sign combining the words Animal and Emergency can have on humanoids at night. As a general rule, with each passing hour from midnight to 3:00 AM, the incidence of attempted serf-style incursion increases logarithmically. The only factor that can make things more interesting is a full moon.

Every night, traffic into and out of the entire vet school is funneled through a singular port of entry, the double set of automatic sliding glass doors (the drawbridge) that Anna had just used. Immediately inside is a formidable looking — but in reality soft and cuddly — sentry: the security guard. If these defenses fail, there is still a vast moat of stark linoleum between the guard and the towering admissions desk. From this high ground, the staff can rain down form after form and spindly shafts of dried-up pens. If necessary, it’s possible to keep most ruffians at bay until the waxing tide of dawn.

Anna opened the half door to the admissions counter and let Petunia crawl under the desk. She then removed her coat and surveyed the antechamber.

Sitting in a corner next to the room’s only window, which faced the old vet school quad, was Beatrice (AKA Aunt Bee). She was a regular irregular — an every nighter of indeterminate age. At worst a benign mass, at best Aunt Bee could be helpful in a pinch. She lodged in this recess most every evening with balls of yarn, knitting caps and mittens for ICU kittens (and dogs). Her own cat, Mr. Belvedere, lounged on the windowsill with his head propped up on Bee’s left shoulder. Aunt Bee had a perfectly good apartment in a house next to Alpha Mu. What she lacked was a television. And though no TV tube flickered in the ES waiting area, some pretty good action, drama and comedy could be had (and the price was right).

Anna ran the clipboard: first there were the twin sisters from Columbia with their dachshund, Jesu Christo — one woman gripped Jesu’s forelegs, the other his hind as a whippy tail wagged. Their presenting complaint read, Ownership dispute, surgery requested. Next was the guy with the lop-eared bunny who hopped by at midnight worried that his rabbit had a case of unlucky feet. But before Anna could consider the woman with three crates of ferrets (who didn’t want the one with the sniffles to be lonely) the sliding glass doors flew open with an icy blast and an attractive, graying woman in a full-length camelhair topcoat stormed the counter.

He can’t breathe… She clutched a cat to her chest.

Anna signaled for the guard to stand down and pressed the student on-call button as she grabbed Petunia’s harness and ventured into the moat.

Who’s this?

The woman didn’t look up. "Romeo. Something’s wrong."

Anna released her grip on Petunia’s harness and stretched out both arms, Hurry… I want to help. Then, with a dexterity Anna was thankful she still possessed, she uncurled the lady’s fingers and gently laid the cat across the counter. Its cream-colored coat and black-tipped ears perfectly matched its mistress. Anna counted 10 panting respirations in five seconds and noticed that the protruding tongue matched the rapidly dilating pale-blue eyes. Romeo regurgitated a teaspoon of clear fluid just as Mike London sashayed through the swinging double doors.

He looked to Anna, Signalment?

Adult, male Siamese, in respiratory distress.

Mike looked to the woman and then her husband. We don’t have much time — do you know what happened?

The man casually flipped his hands in the air, palms up. The motion triggered a flash of disgust in the woman’s tone, You never know anything, do you?

Mike interrupted, Ma’am, please…

The woman wrenched her stare back to Mike and through gritted teeth replied, He’s been quiet, sleeping more than usual for the last few days and then this started, she raised her left wrist, an hour ago.

Mike focused solely on the woman, Any other pets ill?

She shook her head.

We’re going to have to run a few tests and I may need to give him oxygen and fluids, is that okay?

The woman responded efficiently, Go! then added, Do everything you can, he’s my only friend. This triggered an exaggerated eye-roll by the husband.

Mike scooped up the limp animal form, motioned for Anna to follow, then performed a vertical barrel roll to push through the swinging doors into the castle’s keep.

Anna glanced toward the waiting room’s corner and gave a quick nod. This was the moment for which Aunt Bee had been waiting. She sprang from her seat and crab-walked across the moat toward the high ground of the admissions desk with a knitting needle in each hand, Don’t none of you crazies move.

The instant the swinging doors closed, a practiced ballet began. Mike unslung the stethoscope from around his neck to listen to the little cat’s chest, but all he could hear was a rasping freight train as the feline gasped for air. He raised his left hand to request silence and strained to hear a muffled but rapid lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, then whispered to Anna without raising his head, Like soap in your ears. He smiled, It’s cardiac tamponade. Let’s get this animal on oxygen, then page Dr. Kimball and the surgeon on call.

A nurse appeared at Mike’s shoulder (a nurse was always at Mike’s shoulder). Oxygen chamber?

Good idea, but I also want to run an EKG, he stroked his goatee calmly. Cardiac involvement, cyanotic mucous membranes, a CRT of five seconds or more… Can you wheel over that anesthesia machine and dial in 100 percent O2?

You want to intubate?

Not yet, just gimme a cone of silence, about schnauzer-sized. The nurse twisted a clear piece of conical plastic onto the ribbed air hose and Mike slid the bell over the feline’s head. There you go, kitty in space — dogs playing poker gots nothing on Astro-Cat. Mike chuckled at his own joke as he clipped multicolored EKG leads on folds of skin then flipped a switch. A green glow traced across the oscilloscope screen. There wasn’t any beeping, it wasn’t wired that way, but the senior veterinary student saw what he needed. The QRS complex is alternating between large and small. The R wave’s peak is high one time, low another. Mike raised his head and then his eyebrows, Anna?

Electrical alternans.

Most likely caused by?

Anna didn’t hesitate, Pericardial effusion.

Mike grinned.

Without asking, the nurse produced clippers and squirt bottles of betadine and alcohol. Mike shaved a swath of hair from Romeo’s heaving thorax. Just before he pierced the skin, he faced Anna, who was being steadied by Petunia’s harness, Landmarks?

Seventh or eighth intercostal space and — of course — stay close to the anterior edge of the rib.

"Why, of course?"

As Big Moe taught us, a neurovascular bundle runs along the caudal aspect of each rib.

Mike London smiled as broadly as his face would allow while he uncapped the 3-inch pipe of a needle and proceeded to slice three crescent chunks from the business end. Dr. Kimball recommends a fenestrated tip for better drainage, Mike paused.

The one thing I’m worried about is going too far.

The nurse perked up, Since when?

Mike smirked as he pushed the needle through the skin and into the muscle beneath. Anna, in order of appearance, what am I going through?

Skin, fascia, intercostal muscles, peritoneum, and hopefully the pericardial sac.

Despite the intensity of the situation, this fourth-year vet student held the catheter in his right hand lightly, almost with nonchalance. Mike advanced the needle slowly. Just after he whispered, I felt a pop… a port wine flash filled the needle’s hub triggering his home-grown version of the Beverly Hillbillies’ theme:

Come ’n listen to a story about a man named Mike

A poor vet-in-eer who could barely ride a bike,

Then one day he was chewin’ at some cud,

And up from the cat came a bubblin’ blood…

The nurse joined in, "…Black gold, Texas tea!" as she attached a heavy-bodied syringe, the barrel filling with a dark fluid.

As the first full syringe was decanted into a red-topped tube, Romeo’s body begin to relax — the panting replaced with deep, calm excursions of his chest which led to a pathetic but sweet, Mee-uew.

Anna smiled, His tongue is pinking up.

Looking to the nurse, Mike said, "Let’s get