Free Must Be Love by Cathy Woodman Page A

situation, which I’d rather forget. ‘I should have thought.’ I unclip the towel clips that keep the drapes attached to the patient’s skin in their vicious grip – you only ever trap your finger in a towel clip once in your life – and drop them onto the instrument tray. ‘I should have let you see some minor ops first so you could get used to it. I really am sorry, Shannon.’
    Shannon mumbles a response, but I can’t hear what she says.
    ‘I can’t do this,’ she says aloud, when I ask her to repeat herself.
    ‘Of course you can,’ I say. ‘I know what it’s like. It happened to me.’
    ‘You?’ Shannon frowns as I continue, ‘It was the day I met Emma at vet school.’
    I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was our first session in the dissection room. The professor – Professor Vincent – had allocated a dead greyhound to me, Emma and another student. Emma said I could have the honour of making the first cut, so, flushed with the glow of new-found friendship, I rolled up my sleeves and attached a blade to my scalpel handle.
    ‘Come along.’ Professor Vincent tapped his wrist-watch. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
    I took a deep breath, placed the fingertips of my left hand onto the skin over the greyhound’s shoulder blade and drew a line with the scalpel.
    ‘You’ll have to press a bit harder than that.’ Professor Vincent peered over my shoulder, one eyebrow arched and bristling with impatience.
    I tried again. I don’t know what happened, whether I pressed too hard this time, whether the blade glanced off the bone, but fresh red blood came pulsing from the crook of my elbow, creating a spray-paint effect across the table, the dog and the floor, and Emma’s pristine white coat. All I could do was watch it, filled with a growing sense of shame and self-doubt and then, as the room began to spin, of dying.
    I had reason to be grateful to Professor Vincent, even though I never got used to his sarcasm. He probably saved my life, while forty aspiring vet students looked helplessly on.
    I came round briefly in the ambulance with Emma by my side, and again after surgery to restore the circulation to my arm. Emma was with me then as well, keeping me up to date with the gossip and lecture notes. I told her not to bother.
    ‘But it’s no trouble,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong, Maz?’
    ‘I don’t think I can do it, Emma.’ I glanced down at the dressing on my arm. My stomach was sore and my mouth was filled with the bitter taste of bile and defeat. I felt wretched as I went on, ‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be a vet, after all.’
    ‘Oh, don’t be silly. Everyone faints now and then. You’ll get used to the blood.’
    ‘It isn’t just the blood I’m worried about.’ I was always the first to sit down to watch any surgery on the telly, and I’d watched plenty of operations without fainting at the vet practice where I’d helped out on Saturdays and after school. ‘I didn’t realise I was so cack-handed. How am I going to explain that to my clients? I’m so sorry I missed that tiny wart on Rover’s eyelid, but I’ve lopped his tail off for you instead.’
    Emma burst out laughing, prompting a ‘Shh’ from a passing nurse.
    ‘It isn’t funny,’ I said, smiling in spite of myself.
    ‘I know,’ she said, sobering up, ‘but you’ll be okay in the end. We’ve got six years to get it right.’
    ‘Emma was right,’ I tell Shannon once I’ve explained to her what happened. ‘For a long time afterwards, whenever I went into an operating theatre I’d go all hot and shaky, thinking I was going to faint, but I didn’t. So don’t give up just yet. Give it another go.’
    Shannon looks up from the floor, her face paler than ever.
    ‘If I faint again, then that’s it,’ she says, ‘end of.’
    Relieved, I arrange for Frances to look after her with sweet tea and biscuits in Reception, while Izzy and I move Petra back to her kennel, next to Sally’s, and spend a few