On His Bended Knee

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Maggie looked down at the sleeping animal on the surgery table. The bright lights of the surgical theater illuminated the room, casting no shadows on her performance. The blade in her hand wasn't working its normal magic, and she had no more tricks up her sleeve. The dog would lose both its hind legs.

Though the dog was asleep, his lower lip trembled as though he knew what was about to happen to him. It looked as though he was trying to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. She, of all people, understood that. Life had beaten the little guy up and spit him back out to deal with it on his own.

He had no tags. No collar. He'd been left on the doorstep of the veterinary clinic sometime in the early morning. Maggie had arrived to see the animal bleeding on the pristine steps. He'd eyed her warily, too tired to snarl. His eyes had simply closed in resignation while he waited for her to try and do worse to him. What she did was scoop him up and set down to work.

The dog could tell Maggie's own life story. Though she'd never been physically beaten, she'd taken more than her share of emotional hits. She'd been abandoned by her parents while in elementary school. Literally, while she was in elementary school. They had simply left her there and never picked her up.

She'd gone into the foster system to wait them out. They never came back.

At first, she took it as her due. She knew that many animals abandoned their children at young ages. But that reasoning hadn't stuck long as she continued to see parents picking up their kids from school, loading them in their car, and taking them home. She watched as siblings and kids from the same neighborhood or kids with the same interest formed packs and stuck together, preying on anyone who was a lone kid.

Maggie was alone. The other kids in the foster system either hadn't accepted her into their group or they got adopted and never came back. Maggie had never had a pack; not a human one at least.

No adult had ever advocated for her. She'd been left to rot in the system, never finding a family to adopt her as their own. She'd been fostered, another word for used for a paycheck or cheap labor, until she came of age and picked herself up and out of the vicious cycle.

But this poor dog could no longer stand on its own four feet due to its injury. It would never run again. No one would want a disabled dog. It had no one to stick up for him and now it would be put down permanently.

Maggie put down the blade and picked up the needle filled with blue juice. The pentobarbital would be a mercy to the poor creature. She knew that. She'd seen countless cases that began with a different wound or illness and ended up right back here on this table, under these lights, in the middle of a surgical theater with no one watching or caring about the show.

"Maggie, let's hurry this up. I have a 2 pm tee time on the golf course."

Dr. Art Cooper was the owner of the theater Maggie was currently performing in. He had a script for times like these, and the story always ended the same way.

"Just prick the mutt already so I can close shop." He said the words without glancing up at her or the animal at the end of his life.

A sound on the other side of the door had Dr. Cooper glancing up. He slipped on his interested face as one of the new vet nurses walked by. Of course, he smiled at her. He had to keep up the facade that he was a decent human being.

A second later, his interested face turned over to his excited face as a client presented her ancient, smelly, arthritic cat to him. She was a very good client; coming for every screening he suggested, buying the most expensive brand of pet food that he was pushing that month, and always ready to take a look at the newest pet insurance offerings. The moment the cat lady and her cat were gone, the animated expression melted off his face and was replaced with disgust.

Maggie hated the man. How could anyone work with animals and have no care for them? They were all nothing but a paycheck to him. As a vet tech, she had the luxury of not making enough to be so callous.

She really had no luxuries at all. Definitely not enough to care for another wounded animal. Maggie looked down on the table at the sleeping dog. A single tear slid down his cheek, and the floodgates opened.

Maggie looked up at Dr. Cooper and painted on a smile to rival his performance. "Why don't you go ahead and head out. I can take care of this and close up shop for you."

Dr. Cooper eyed her suspiciously. Then he looked down at the dog. "We're not going to have another problem, are we? You've already had one strike, another and I'll let you go."

That was one thing about being a doctor, they were some of the smartest people. The last time Maggie had been asked to put a dog down, she'd snuck him out the back door of the clinic. He was now resting comfortably in her home. Probably in her closet on a pile of her shoes.

"This animal won't have any quality of life," Dr. Cooper was saying. "It would take hundreds of dollars a month to maintain him."

Wasn't a single life worth that, she wanted to say. But she hadn't. Instead, she told the truth. "I understand. I've learned my lesson. I need this job to take care of the animals I do have."

She had four dogs, all of whom had severe injuries and illnesses that cost her more than her rent to care for. If she lost this job, she wouldn't have the money to care for them or keep a roof over her head.

Maggie picked up the needle and gave it a few flicks with her index finger.

Dr. Cooper looked at the time. Then he looked back at her. His tee time won out like she knew it would. He turned in his expensive gator boots and walked out the door.

Maggie breathed a sigh of relief and put the needle down. She bandaged the dog. The damage had been done long before she'd gotten to him and healing had already begun. Now she just needed to heal his spirit alongside his body.

Maggie wrapped the dog up in a blanket, and she made her way to the back. She was nearly out of the door when she rounded a corner. Dr. Cooper looked up from his watch at her. And of course, that's when the dog decided to wake up from his meds and bark.

It was a low, groggy bark that she might have been able to play off as her own stomach grumbling. She had missed lunch again. But the trickle of liquid that streamed out of the blanket and onto Dr. Cooper's expensive boots, she had no excuse for. In fact, she was quite pleased by it.

The little dog was a good boy. She wasn't sure how she'd feed and care for him now that she was out of a job, but she was keeping him.