Page 100 of Vetted for Vengeance
“Noah, that's enough.”
I nod and dry my hands on the towel, the act undoing all my scrubbing efforts.
“Stand there,” Rhys directs. “Noah, meet Mr. Peter Whittle.”
I glance at the man, noticing his eyes are fixed on me. Groggy, but fixed.
“Hello,” I greet nervously.
“Mr. Whittle organizes illegal dog fighting,” Rhys explains, his tone perfectly pitched for my podcast.
“Oh. Then I am very pleased to meet you here.” What a horrible man. He deserves to die. I've never thought that about anyone before, not even Derek and Frank.
“Let's begin.” Rhys smiles. “Scalpel.”
I turn to the tray of instruments laid out beside me.
“Scalpel,” I repeat, handing him the instruments exactly as they do on Follow the Vet. Despite the heavy-duty painkillers he’s been given, Mr. Whittle screams as Rhys makes the first incision. A line down his abdomen, just like Honey's caesarean.
My stomach twists. Not enough to stop. Just enough to remind me this isn’t normal.
“Oh God, oh God!” Whittle wails.
“Got a bleed!” Rhys narrates.
“Thingamajigger,” I hand him the clamp thing he used when Honey was bleeding.
“Spencer Wells,” Rhys smirks, keeping his eyes on the body. “Okay, look at that and tell me what you see.”
I look into the abdominal cavity. Honey's had been full of uterus and pups, but this one looks exactly like I've seen in textbooks. It’s different from Honey. Yet too similar. The smell, the sounds. Especially the squelching.
“Intestines.” They’re obvious enough. “Is that the liver?”
“Yes,” Rhys nods, sounding a little proud. “What should we remove first?”
“His testicles?” I suggest trying to sound more torturous than I feel.
“From the abdominal cavity.”
“Oh. You want me to push the tentacles back inside?” That… would work, I think?
“No testicles. This is education.”
“Oh, right.” Silly me, I thought this was torture. “I’m interested in the bladder and kidneys. We're running a follow-up on Poppy, the ancient Yorkshire Terrier, on TV.”
I elaborate for Whittle's benefit. He's shaking with fear, lifting his head to look, then dropping it back on the table in disbelief, over and over. I guess the pain meds make it easy to forget what is happening when he can't see it.
“Perfect. First, we need to move the intestines out of the way.”
He makes me help him move the slippery bowels up onto Whittle's chest. They squelch in my hands as I drop them as quickly as possible. Whittle makes a shrieking sound.
“Can I ask, he isn't screaming as much as I probably would be. Frank and Derek, too. They didn't scream enough. I know about the pain killers, but even so, I think I'd be frantic.”
Seeing Honey so uncomfortable after her operation, even with painkillers, makes it hard to understand Whittle's behavior.
“I've given him powerful painkillers.” Rhys explains. “No pain means less shock on the body. Keeps them still. But it also makes it all feel disconnected. He knows what is happening to him, but his brain is refusing to accept it. Makes him more helpless, in a way.”
I nod slowly. That makes sense. The screams I heard weren't from pain. They were from the horror of seeing their own organs.
