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“Ok,” I started, “I need you to take over the pressure on the wound.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

His voice was heightened, fear and panic strangling his words.

“This dog’s going to need an operation. And I’m going to need some help. I need you to keep pressure on the wound while I ring for a vet nurse and get the equipment ready.”

His face was growing greyer, almost green, like his eyes.

“Right,” he said quietly, staring momentarily at the hand stained in red, the colour in his face ebbing away a little more.

“You’ve got this,” I encouraged, closing my fingers round his wrist and guiding it towards the blood-soaked t-shirt stuffed into the dog’s stomach. “You’ve already done it. I just need you to do it a little more, just till my vet nurse gets here. Can you do that for me?”

I gazed at him, into the green orbs flecked with hazel, flooded with trepidation and the face tight with anxiety, dark blond stubble coating his chin. The man nodded, his lips straightening further, and quietly he took a deep breath before turning back to the dog on the table.

“Ok, good,” I said, pushing his hand tight against the gauze swabs I’d now swapped for his t-shirt. Then I turned away, crooking my neck to keep my mobile in place as I moved to the locked cabinets on the other side of the room.

The phone rang for what seemed like a lifetime. A steady burr, an unanswered rhythm. Come on, come on. And then eventually that rhythm was interrupted.

“Al. Really?”

“I’m sorry Abbie. I’ve got a customer come in and a dog with a bullet wound. I’m gonna need some help. I can’t do this one on my own.”

“Fuck’s sake. Stuart wants to get some more fucking staff. I’ve only just come off the rota.”

“I don’t think I’ve been off for over a week,” I grumbled, pulling a bag of blood out of the fridge and glancing over my shoulder at the half naked man with his hand in a dog’s stomach and then lowering my voice, “I’m gonna need you to be quick. Don’t know how much time this dog has left.”

The phone cut off, and I turned back to the four-legged patient. It moved its head as I approached, watching me with tired eyes, but no sign of malice and either it was giving up or it knew I was here to help. I hoped it was the latter.

“What’s her name?” I asked as I gently shaved the fur from its paw.

“What?” he asked, not moving his eyes from the dog.

“What’s her name?” I asked again. “I like to know my patients.”

“Kinobi. Dobi One Kinobi,” he continued, a faint smile pulling at one corner of his mouth but fading quickly as a fresh wave of sadness washed over his face.

“She yours?” Kinobi moved slightly as I pushed the needle into her vein.

He shook his head, blond hair falling over his forehead. “Demon’s. She’s Demon’s dog.”

“Demon?”

“My mate,” he answered after a split-second pause.

“How come he didn’t bring her in?” I slid the catheter into place, securing the bag of blood and hanging it onto the tall metal stand at the dog’s head.

“He’s pretty banged up, too.” His voice was quiet, his words vague. Covering something. And now this whole situation, a bullet wound to a dog, a man stood naked to his waist in my operating room, blood clinging to the muscles in his chest and dripping over his stomach, was off-the-grid weird.

The door behind us opened, the nurse dressed in the same green scrubs as me, bounding in. She stopped just a few steps inside, her eyes sweeping the room, crossing to me and then settling back on the naked man holding the pressure onto the Doberman’s stomach. I shook my head, staring at her hard. There was no time for questions, no matter how many of them we both had.

“This is Abbie.” I tilted my head towards the woman with the blonde hair piled into a messy bun on the top of her head. “She’ll take over from you now.” The man nodded silently, glancing over his shoulder at her before returning his eyes to me. “She’s the best veterinary nurse we have. Let her do her job,” I instructed, recognising the uncertainty and distrust on his face.

Once Abbie’s hands were against the wound in the dog’s abdomen, he moved back. Only a foot, barely out of our way. I ignored him for a few moments, setting my equipment out, pulling the drugs onto the petri dish on the top of the little table on wheels. And then we were ready. Ready to go into this dog’s stomach and see if there was anything possible we could do.

“You’d be best to go home. I’ll ring you when we’re finished here,” I spoke at the dog’s paw, not looking up as I thumbed over the skin of her leg, searching for a vein to inject the anaesthetic into.

Her body was shutting down fast, the vein shrinking back from the skin, making an almost impossible task of saving this animal even harder. I exhaled.

“No. I’ll just stay here,” he answered, and I knew if I looked up now his eyes would bore a hole into mine.

“This, here, is about to get really messy,” I continued, stepping round the dog and testing another leg, finding nothing. “Shit,” I breathed, barely audible.

“What’s happening?” He asked, panic making his voice rise from the velvety manly rumble.

“I can’t find a vein. She’s lost too much blood.” I reached back to the drawers behind me, rifling through with one hand as the other cradled the injection, the end pointed up into the air. The coolness of rubber tickled my fingertips, and the back of my hand brushed over the polyester-cotton fabric. I pulled out both. “When I open her up properly, there is going to be a huge amount of blood and mushed up gut. I can’t have you fainting on me. I need you to go out there and wait. You need to let do my job.” I tossed the green scrubs at him.

For a moment, his eyes darkened. A sea of green consumed by a storm. But it passed quickly. The half-naked man nodded, ran a blood-stained hand through the mass of floppy blond hair and then retreated, casting a last look behind him as I wrapped the rubber round the dog’s leg, and turning the pen I’d pushed through the loop to tighten it. The door hissed shut. I didn’t look again to see if he’d left, my fingers feeling for the little swell of a vein, something just big enough to push the needle into and let the anaesthetic seep into the wretched animal’s body.