“I can hold him for you,” Kenny says with a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Sadly, that would, I fear, be unhygienic. He will stay in his corner and sleep. But when we are finished here, I would like the doctor to take a look at his leg.” Mathias moves to the operating table. “It was caught in a snare. Casey did an excellent nursing job, but I would appreciate your opinion, Casey’s sister. When surgery is over, of course.”
“I’m not a veterinarian,” April says.
“The cub will not mind.”
“Mathias?” I point to the operating table.
The cub pitches to his feet and toddles after Mathias.
Dalton scoops up the canine. “I’ll take him on my rounds.”
“Excellent idea,” Mathias says. “He requires socialization to enhance his dog nature. Not too much, though. It would not befit my carefully crafted personae to have a friendly wolf-dog.”
Dalton shakes his head and leaves.
“Can we start now?” I ask.
“I will scrub up,” Mathias says.
April nods at Mathias as he crosses the room. “I take it he’s your psychiatrist.”
“Non,” Mathias says. “Casey does not require a psychiatrist. An occasional therapist perhaps, but we all do at times. My specialty is psychopathy and sociopathy, with the occasional borderline personality thrown in for good measure, but only if he has committed the requisite number of atrocities. I have very exacting standards.”
“Mathias?” I say. “Scrub.”
“Have you ever conducted surgery?” April asks him.
“Not medically. However, I am the town butcher.”
“Yeah,” Kenny says. “No offense, Doc, but I think we’ll let Casey’s sister do the cutting.”
“I cut very well,” Mathias says. “And the human anatomy is not so different from—”
“Mathias?” I say. “Stop freaking out the patient. April is the surgeon. Will is assisting. You’re the gofer.”
“Gofer? That is rather degrading. What are you doing?”
“I’ll be playing anesthetist today. Unless you plan to talk him to sleep. Now go scrub up while I put Kenny down.”
I catch Kenny’s look.
“Under,” I say as Anders chuckles. “I mean put you under. Sorry.”
April sighs, and we begin.
FOUR
The bullet is out. And right now, that’s all we can say.
“The bullet had shifted,” April says as we’re cleaning up. “There is still a possibility of permanent damage, and if that is the case, it is due to the movement of the bullet before I arrived.”
“No one’s going to blame you if Kenny isn’t up and running tomorrow,” Anders says. “We know how delicate an operation that was, and it went perfectly. Anything after this is because of unavoidable shifts in the bullet’s location.”
“They were not unavoidable,” she says, and I wince behind Anders.
She continues. “The patient should have been kept immobile after the bullet struck. I realize that he had to be transported, but proper precautions were not taken.”