I Want to Go Where They Went (eBook)

Chapter 2

Ginger Harriman

I could feel the tightening of my skin, the swelling of the flesh, and the burning that indicated the first stages of an infection. I’d experienced it many times before. I fished an amoxicillin pill from my pocket and gulped it down without water. As I did this, I took note of my damaged arms. Even in the dim light I could tell they were a mess.

Carefully, I opened the door from the garage into the laundry room and placed my knapsack on top of the dryer. I then gently padded from the tiled laundry room into the carpeted living room. I was trying to avoid waking my sleeping family. The house was completely quiet. It was pitch-black outside and mostly dark inside. I dragged myself over to the nearest soft spot and eased myself down. That’s as far as I could make it. There was a little halo of light coming from the kitchen range hood. More light peeked out from around the master bedroom door on the second floor.

I took an inventory of myself. The front half of my left tennis shoe was soaked in urine thanks to a dog who’d peed on me four hours earlier. My khaki pants were coated with a combination of saliva, blood, and vomit. My plaid short-sleeved shirt was stiff with old sweat and coated with cat fur. I had six more shirts just like it stowed in the closet upstairs. This one might have served out its term. My mouth was dry and gritty, and my breath was terrible. My grandmother would have said it could scare a cat off a gut wagon. My hair was rigid with sweat and grime and was sticking up in some random places. The worst part, though, was my arms, showcasing an interlacing network of scratches. They started at my wrists as shallow grooves and deepened as they approached my elbow. Others went in the reverse direction. Some of the worst scratches ended abruptly where the claw got “stuck” and dug into my flesh. In these areas there was a blob of dried blood clotted over the deepest part of the wound. My right hand had four deep punctures. Two on the back of my hand and two on the palm. Some of the wounds were developing a circle of puffy tissue that surrounded the primary wound. I pushed off each of my shoes with the opposite foot. Man, what a day.

In a few moments I could hear the click-clack of toenails coming from the family room on the other side of the stairs. My buff-colored terrier, Sally, slowly made her way over to me from where she’d been sleeping on her spot in the den. She was still bleary-eyed. Her butt swayed in a sleepy wag as she made her way over and rested her head on my lap. I rubbed her neck as she sniffed me all over. Nothing smells as interesting to a dog as a vet coming home after a long day at work. Her sniffing stopped at my arms, and she began licking my wounds. I appreciated the sentiment, but it hurt a little, so I pushed her away. I’d had enough. I gathered enough energy to push myself up and start the climb upstairs. I’d just finished a thirty-six-hour shift at a twenty-four-hour veterinary hospital. I’d left the house early yesterday morning. I’d only slept for two hours during my shift and caught myself nodding off a few times on my drive home. The effort I took to get up the stairs was rewarded by seeing my wife cozy in bed reading by the light of her bedside lamp. She was engrossed in one of her torrid romance novels with a shirtless barbarian on the cover. She folded over the page and set it on her lap as I entered the room.

“How’d it go?” she said. “Pretty long day, huh?”

“Pretty long two days,” I said. “I’m beat.”

“Riley’s been asleep for a couple of hours,” she said. Riley is the younger of my two daughters. She is four years old. She was famous for conking out thirty seconds after her head hit the pillow. Once asleep, she wouldn’t wake up for anything. There could be a Rolling Stones concert and she would continue to snooze away.

“But Casey’s still awake. She asked when you were coming home. I told her you would say goodnight when you got here.”

“OK, I’ll do that. I’m just going to brush my teeth first. I’m a stinky mess.”

“Casey,” I say in a mock whisper. “Are you awake?”

“Hi, Dad. Yep, I’m awake.”

“Good,” I said. “I wanted to come tuck you in.”

I padded across her bedroom over to her small bed. The room was lit by a single dinosaur night-light in the corner. I’d learned the hard way that walking across a toddler’s room in the dark was a hazardous endeavor. At any moment, a Lego brick could become embedded in your instep. I made it over without incident. Her bed was only two feet off the floor, so I knelt next to it. Casey was six years old. She’d had a growth spurt recently and had stretched out a bit. She was at the stage where she was growing out of her chubby little body and looking like a little girl. My firstborn daughter wasn’t a baby anymore. I gave Casey a hug and kiss on her cheek. Her face was flushed, and her strawberry-blonde hair was stuck to her face on one side where she’d gotten hot and sweaty. She looked like maybe she had been sleeping.

Me & Casey

“How did things go at work?” she asked. “Did you take care of a lot of animals?”

“Things went pretty well,” I said. “I was super busy though and didn’t get much sleep. I’m really tired.”

“Did you see any puppies?” she asked.

I had to think about this for a moment. My brain was bogged down from lack of sleep. I furrowed my brow trying to remember.

“I don’t think I saw any puppies today,” I said. “But I did see two little kittens. They were named Oscar and Sadie. They were brother and sister. Oscar was gray and Sadie was a tabby. They were adorable and super friendly. Sadie climbed up my leg and chest, then sat up on my shoulder while I was typing on the computer.”

Sadie on my shoulder

As I picked up the edge of her blanket to pull it over her, Casey noticed the ugly wounds on my right arm, touching it with her little hands. With a look of serious contemplation, she asked, “Ginger Harriman?”

“Yes,” I said. “You called it.”

“I hate that cat.”

“I know. But I’m fine. You’d better get some sleep.”

Ginger, the cat, was on the feisty side. “Spicy,” one might say. Nope, on second thought, I’m being too kind. She was pretty much the meanest damn cat I had ever seen. She hated EVERYONE. She even seemed to hate her owner and biggest advocate, Mr. Harriman. You’d think this wouldn’t be a very good survival strategy. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” and all that. But Ginger never heard this idiom. Even if she did, I’m quite sure her response would have been F-You.

I met Ginger and her dad, Mr. Harriman, twenty-five years ago while working as a staff veterinarian at Largis Veterinary Clinic in California. I’d started working at Largis right out of veterinary school when I successfully applied for a one-year internship. The internship eventually changed into a permanent position. Largis is a town on the outskirts of Sacramento and fifty miles from my house in Davis. It was the biggest veterinary clinic in the region. They were open twenty-four hours for emergencies and daily for routine vet care. The main building, which had recently been remodeled and modernized, was the small animal hospital. Behind this was the large animal hospital with a spacious barn and large animal surgery area. Largis was a wonderful place to work as a young veterinarian. They employed an internal medicine specialist and a board-certified surgeon. It was always busy with a variety of good learning cases. The small animal clinic was staffed with seven licensed veterinarians ranging in age from thirty to sixty. These staff vets were all kind and generous with their time. I considered myself lucky to work in an environment that was so stimulating and supportive.

Largis had an unusual, and often frustrating, method of scheduling appointments. They didn’t reserve a specific appointment slot for a particular doctor. Instead, if there were five doctors on duty, they would just schedule five 10 a.m. appointments. They’d just assume it would somehow sort itself out. Most of the time it did. Sometimes it was an absolute disaster. So, when I met Mr. Harriman, it was a random grab of his chart out of the file slot outside exam room two. I opened it up, gave it a quick review, and headed in.

Mr. Harriman was in his forties. He was a good-looking gentleman with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a quiet demeanor. He had the lean, fit body of a runner and always moved in a deliberate, meticulous manner. I never knew what he did for a living, but he seemed meek and shy and quiet and kind. I always pictured him as a kindergarten teacher or running a daycare center.

He calmly explained that he’d brought in his eight-year-old cat, Ginger, for her routine yearly vaccines and a physical exam. Ginger’s chart displayed a red “CAUTION” sticker on the inside of it. This was a warning to the uninitiated that you needed to be on your toes. Hands and fingers may be at risk. Muzzles and quick...