Page 3 of Unlikely to Stay
Brant Billings looked at the clock and tried not to sigh in frustration.It was only two o’clock in the afternoon.Three hours to go until the small clinic he currently ran in Parker, Oklahoma was closed for the evening.Three hours that were going to feel like thirty if the day continued the way it was going.
First thing that morning as soon as Brant opened the clinic doors, June Adams had been waiting for himwithher pet donkey, Rambo.June explained Rambo had a cut on his leg from the barbed-wire fence surrounding June’s property.When Brant explained he wasn’t avetand that June should take Rambo to Sophie’s Haven and see Gretchen, the vet Annie Holloway had hired to care for all the animals in her animal sanctuary, big crocodile tears began running down the woman’s cheeks.
“But Gretchen is onvacation,” she had wailed.“What if hedies?I don’t know what I’ll do without my Rambo!”
Brant tried to assure her Rambo’s wound wasn’t life-threatening, but June wasn’t hearing it.She went on and on about how she raised him on a bottle when his mother died in a freak lightning accident and how he was like her four-legged son.She also told him how she had created a special language with him that involved some sort of leg kicks and special braying.She offered to show Brant but he just shook his head, grabbed a suture kit from inside the clinic, and stitched up the donkey’s leg.He was thanked with a huge hug, June successfully shoving his head between her ample breasts before being asked if the visit would be covered by insurance.Brant had told her there would be no charge.Luckily, he successfully jumped out of the way before he got another lung-crushing, boob-suffocating hug.
It had gotten even worse as the day had progressed.He had gotten puked on by two kids with the stomach virus and Madge Perkins had scheduled an appointment for a fourth time in the month for a nonexistent illness.When he wouldn’t prescribe her an antibiotic, she gave him an earful about how Harry Donovan, the lawyer in town, was her nephew and she was going to have Harry sue Brant for all he was worth.
Currently, Brant was staring at the wrinkly old derriere of eighty-eight-year-old Marty Samson.It wasn’tthe herpes, as Marty so eloquently put it, but it was indeed a very large, infected abscess.An abscess Brant had to lance.And lancing was one messy business.
“Mr.Samson, it’s not herpes,” he said.“But itisa really infected abscess, so I will have to lance it.”
“Abscess?You mean I got aboilon my ass?”
“Well, an abscess is a little deeper infection than a boil but—”
“I bet it’s from that damn cat at Kelda’s!”
“Abscesses aren’t contagious and you definitely can’t get one from an ani—” Brant started to explain but was interrupted by the old man whose pants were around his ankles and ass was shining brightly from the examination table in room one.
“I know they aren’t contagious!What do you take me for, an idiot?”Marty complained, his voice muffled by the examination table that was currently smashing his face.“I was visiting Burt with that damned woman he’s shacked up with and she has two devil cats.I got up to use the john and one of them jumped on me and dug its claws right in my derriere!”
Brant tried his best not to smile.The old geezer probably had eyes in the back of his head.“Let me go get some tools and I can get this taken care of for you.”
Stepping out into the hallway, Brant grabbed a scalpel, numbing cream, sterile towels, antiseptic, gauze, and tape out of the cabinet.
“Okay, Mr.Samson.First, I’m going to put some of this numbing cream on and around the abscess so you can’t feel what I’m doing.”
“Just get on with it, sonny,” Marty grumped.“I served in the Korean War.I ain’t afraid of no tiny little knife.”
Brant shrugged his shoulders.So be it.He worked in silence, rubbing the area with antiseptic after the numbing cream had taken effect and then placing sterile towels around it.Grabbing the scalpel, he said, “I’m getting ready to make a small incision to release the pus inside the infection.Are you ready?”
“I already told you!I’m fi—”
As soon as Brant made the incision on Marty’s skin, the old man about came off the table.
“Sweet baby Jesus!What thehelldid you do?”
“I told you I had to make an incision to drain the pus, Mr.Samson.”
“You didn’t make asmallincision, you cut half my ass off!I thought you put some stuff on it so I wouldn’t feel anything!”
“I did.”
“Well, itdidn’twork!Or else you just plain suck at your job!Where’d you go to medical school?”
Brant ignored the old man’s comments, instead focusing on draining the pus as fast as possible so he could bandage him and send him on his way.Using his fingers, he began squeezing around the opening his scalpel made, grimacing when the blood and pus oozed out of the wound.
Marty flailed his hand behind him, trying to find Brant to hit.“For the love of everything holy!Damn it, kid!What are youdoing?”
“I told you, Mr.Samson, I’m drain—”
“Stop!Stop what you’re doingright.Now.And give me some privacy to pull up my damn pants.I’m leaving.”
“Mr.Samson, I am not going to let you walk out of here without at least dressing the wound so it doesn’t get even more infected.”
“I said I’mleaving!”