The Nine Lessons (8 page)

Jessalynn says that I should do it—that she and the baby should not get in the way of my dreams. I think my dreams must be changing, because my heart is torn on the matter.

CHAPTER 9

I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.

—Arnold Palmer

T
urtles and I
have a long and illustrious history together. When I was a boy I would sneak out in the evenings onto the golf course by our house and hunt the hard-shelled creatures that populated a large pond on the thirteenth fairway. I loved to catch them, study them, scare them into their shells, and then toss them back along the surface of the water to see how many times they would skip. That was, of course, before my sense of compassion for living things was fully developed. But even now, having devoted my life to the care and keeping of animals, I believe that turtles are much better off in golf ponds, where insensitive little boys can toss them around like polished skipping stones, than they are being stuck in a glass aquarium on some kid’s dresser. What does one do with a pet turtle other than feed it? They don’t play, they don’t fetch, they won’t cuddle up with you on the couch, and after a few weeks in a lonely tank they really begin to stink. They are, in this veterinarian’s opinion, useless pets.

Nevertheless, every so often a parent comes into my clinic with a teary-eyed child holding a dear sweet pet turtle, which has mysteriously become lethargic. I use these opportunities to tell the children that the life expectancy of most domesticated turtles is not very long, that their turtle will likely die soon, and that there is very little that I can do to help. When the parents find out what turtle health care costs as compared to the ten-dollar price tag of a brand-new turtle at a pet store, they usually thank me for my time and head off in search of a final resting place for their beloved reptiles. But once in a while I encounter customers who either do not know how to tell their crying child “no” or are themselves so fond of their pet that they’ll do anything to save it, so I embark on very expensive treatments, which usually still result in a dead turtle.

In the first week of Erin’s third month of pregnancy I was involved in just such a case. I had treated a large western painted turtle named Fertile, owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, with antibiotics for more than a week, but its condition was not improving. When Fertile did not respond to the treatment, I called and asked for their permission to euthanize rather than prolong the suffering. Within thirty minutes of my call, Skip Jenkins had left his place of employment and was seated in my office to explore other options.

“You don’t understand, Doctor Witte. Fertile
has
to make it! You have to keep trying!” Beads of sweat were dripping from his forehead. Skip was probably three or four years younger than myself, and other than the nervous panic that he exuded, he seemed like a real sharp guy.

“Mr. Jenkins—”

“Skip,” he interrupted. “Call me Skip.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his slacks.

“Okay.
Skip
. There’s really only so much we can do. Turtles just aren’t meant to live in—”

“What
haven’t
you done?” he interrupted again. “It’s really important that you try everything possible.”

I leaned back in my chair and studied the man carefully. He was certainly the most determined pet owner I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. Skip’s unblinking eyes remained focused on me as I tapped my index finger on my lips. “I understand how much you love your pet, but I really think we need to let nature take its course. There’s just nothing more I can do for her.”

“Him,” he corrected. “I’m pretty sure Fertile is a guy.”

“I knew that,” I replied with a smile, though in all honesty I hadn’t checked. “But still, why spend so much money to save
him
?”

“Do you know why my wife named him Fertile?”

I shook my head.

“Get this. For like two years—since right after we got married—my wife has been hounding me to have kids, and all along I’ve been saying, ‘Not yet, honey. Let’s wait a while.’ ” Skip couldn’t have known why, but he had my full and undivided attention. “Now don’t get me wrong, I want to have kids—
someday.
But I just don’t feel ready yet. So anyway, last month, when she started harassing me again, I came up with this great idea. I told her I’d be willing to have a baby, but not until after we’ve had some practice taking care of a pet.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Exactly. I told her that by the time our pet dies, we’ll have enough experience under our belt to step up to full-fledged parenthood.”

“Uh-oh,” I said again, more dramatically.

“I know. I figured we’d get a dog or something that would live for years. So we went to the pet store and I found this cute little labradoodle puppy. What woman can resist a labradoodle?”

“A woman who wants a baby.”

“Exactly! When we made the deal, apparently I didn’t specify what kind of pet, so she goes up to the store owner and asks which animal in his store is likely to die the soonest, and we come home with—”

“Fertile the Turtle.”

“Exactly. She named the dumb thing that just to remind me that
she
is fertile—and waiting patiently for our pet to die so I can make good on our deal. She was practically walking on air when I came home from work and she told me that Fertile was sick. It’s not right, you know?”

“Believe me, I know.”

Skip sighed audibly. “I guess I should be grateful that store was out of goldfish.”

Once I understood his plight, I promised Skip that I would do everything in my power to save Fertile, and it wouldn’t cost him a dime. Heck, for all I knew Mrs. Jenkins had secretly slipped poor Fertile some bad cabbage, and far be it from me to send a poisoned turtle to the grave prematurely.

I stayed late that night running all sorts of tests. Against all odds, after doing an ultrasound with equipment designed for rabbits, I spotted what looked like a small blockage in the creature’s intestines. The next day, with all of my assistants at the ready, I performed my first—and only—turtle trans-rectal surgery. Every person in the room, with the exception of myself, fully expected the little critter to die right there on the operating table. But Fertile had other plans. Somehow his heart kept on beating throughout the entire ordeal. I found the blockage and was just about to remove it when my receptionist, Janet, came running through the doors of our little operating room.

“Doctor Witte!” she screamed, “Let the turtle die! You’ve got to go!”

I’d known Janet for about two and a half years, and during that time I found her to be an exceptionally jittery sort, always overreacting to the smallest things. She was an excellent receptionist, but not the kind of calm, steady personality you’d want around if there were a real crisis.

“Janet,” I said smoothly while removing a small scope from the animal’s tough hide, “whatever it is I’m sure it can wait another twenty minutes for me to wrap this up. Believe it or not, I think this lucky little guy is going to make it. Skip Jenkins really owes me for—”

“For the love of Pete!” she yelled back. “It’s Erin! She’s been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. A friend at work found her on the floor with blood all over!”

I immediately dropped everything on the table and rushed out the door as fast as I could. I never saw Fertile—or Skip—again.

When I arrived at the hospital Erin was sitting up in bed in the emergency room connected to an IV drip. Her nose was wrapped in bandages and her eyes were black and blue.

“What happened?” I said as I rushed to her side.

She smiled bravely. “Dehydration. I guess I’ve been puking out more that I’ve been taking in. I passed out while vomiting in the bathroom during my break.”

“So why the bandages?”

She blushed slightly. “When I passed out I was leaning over the toilet. My face hit the porcelain as I was falling and I broke my nose. I’m told it bled all over the place.”

For as bad as she looked, I was thankful that Erin’s condition wasn’t any worse. The friend who’d found her was waiting in the lobby downstairs, and I took a few minutes to thank her for coming to the rescue. Erin’s doctors decided that they did not want her to undergo surgery to reset her nose until after the baby was born, so a few hours later she was given a prescription to help with the nausea and released to go home with a crooked nose.

The rest of the third month was more or less uneventful. I kept my promise to my father and showed up at the appointed time to play golf. He was waiting for me on a wet bench under the protection of an extra-large umbrella. The next installment of his odd scorecard diaries was resting on his lap in a sealed plastic bag to keep them dry. It was raining hard enough outside that large puddles were forming on the fairways, and golf carts were strictly prohibited from going anywhere but on the paved cart path.

I joined London beneath his handheld shelter. “You really want to play in this mess?” I asked, hoping he would say no.

My father was staring off into the distance. He didn’t respond immediately, which made me wonder whether my question had even registered. When he did eventually speak, his voice was almost fragile. “Rain happens,” he said quietly. “But you just keep playing.”

I sat waiting for him to say something more, but nothing came. “So how’d you make out with Delores last month after I left?”

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, but his focus remained somewhere off in the dark clouds that blanketed Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak. “You shouldn’t have left me alone with her. She’ll get the wrong idea.”

“So you’re not interested in her?”

He fidgeted with the wedding band he still wore on his finger. “Of course not. She’s a customer. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“Like I tried to tell you before—life is meant to be lived.” I waited to see if he was going to respond, but he didn’t. “Well… shall we start, then? The sooner we head out into this weather, the sooner we can get out of it. Did you have something in mind today? Something to teach me about golf, perhaps?”

London didn’t reply for a long while. Instead his attention drifted off, as he perused the depths of his own reflective world. Eventually, he came back from wherever he’d gone and turned to look at me. “I heard from a friend that Erin took a fall. I only got bits and pieces of the story, but it sounds like she’s pretty lucky.”

“Lucky to have fallen?” I joked. “That’s a bit cruel, don’t you think?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry I didn’t call and tell you about it.” I wasn’t really sorry, but I said so anyway. The truth was that I never called to tell him about anything, but then he never called me either—it’s just how it had always been between us. “She is lucky. A friend found her passed out and bleeding on the bathroom floor at work. I was scared to death when I found out.”

“Is she recovering well?”

“The swelling is going down, but poor Erin still looks like she’s been pummeled. When I look at her I get a little sick to my stomach imagining how much worse things could have ended up.”

London’s eyes focused on me more intently. “What was running through your mind on the way to the hospital?”