Page 1 of Hard Bargain

Lynton

Lynton Brooke crouched down with his arm around the shoulders of his patient’s owner. The ginger cat lay in her arms, drip tubing snaking back from his paw into the cage in the ICU. Lynton had just euthanized the patient and was now listening as unobtrusively with his stethoscope as he could for a fading heartbeat while Charlie’s owner wept.

“He’s gone now,” he said softly, tightening his arm, trying to communicate comfort as best he could.

She nodded, kissing the cat on his head and swiping tears away with one hand.

“Shall I give you a few minutes?”

“Yes.”

Lynton stood up, legs cramping. He disposed of his syringe and threw his gloves away before washing his hands. He then stepped outside into the corridor and leaned against the wall with his eyes shut. Fuck, he loved his job, but he loathed this part of it. Of course it was right to end suffering, but how could he comfort the devastated owner left behind after ten, fifteen, twenty years of loving their pet? This time it had been eighteen. After a full life, Charlie had succumbed to renal failure. It had been a long, slow slide down with only one outcome inevitable.

He walked on down to the staff room and took a drink of water from the cooler to wash away the lump in his throat. It didn’t get any easier and he should have been grateful for that. When he did euthanize an animal without feeling deep regret and pain, it would be time to retire. He sighed and allowed himself to sink into a chair. A couple of minutes was all he had. There were plenty of other patients in the waiting room.

Lynton was married to his job. It had always been that way since he’d qualified as a vet. After twelve-hour shifts five days a week, he was left with little energy to devote to his personal life. What personal life? Lynton liked men but didn’t often get the opportunity to be with one. After taking this job in Montpelier, Vermont, he’d left his parents and school friends behind in Seattle and traded in relationships for work. Now, his only friends were work colleagues and he doubted any of them would want to cruise gay bars with him.

He guessed he’d made his bed and had to lie in it, but lying alone night after night slowly became soul-destroying.

The door burst open, startling him from his maudlin thoughts. Head nurse Christina Buckley shouted at him. “Just got an emergency from the parking lot. Dog versus car. You need to come. Exam room four.”

“All right.” Lynton was calm and collected and didn’t speak a whole lot unless he had something important to say. He never lost it in a crisis. He never shouted or bawled for equipment during an emergency. He never showed anything but ultimate respect for his colleagues. He knew what they thought about him. Solid, dependable, with a wealth of knowledge. What he was, was lonely, working his life away, a tired man who was sick at heart. He stood and threw his cup into the wastebasket before he followed Christina out.

He heard a dog whining and soft sobs as he pushed open the door to exam room four. He didn’t want to see any more human or animal suffering this shift. He’d had enough. But there was always one more crisis. A man sat in the corner, a fully-grown German Shepherd lying somehow over his knees.

Lynton’s first professional glance took in the patient. The dog was whimpering in pain, dripping blood onto the floor from beneath a towel that the owner held to its right back leg. It had multiple abrasions to the rest of its body and was breathing hard, its tongue lolling from its mouth. His second, less professional glance, took in the owner as he looked up. A man in his early thirties, who was red-eyed and tear-streaked, but that didn’t detract from a startling attractiveness—grey eyes and short dark hair, high cheekbones, pale skin and plump lips. Beautiful.

Lynton tried to jerk his thoughts away, concentrate on his job and the immediate treatment this patient needed. “Good morning, I’m Doctor Brooke, Mr.…” He glanced down at the chart Christina had thrust at him.

“Bale. Austin Bale.” The man’s voice trembled. “I just…looked away for a minute. He ran into the road. I couldn’t…”

“All right, bring him over to the exam table.”

Austin lifted the dog with difficulty and the dog moaned its protests as it was placed onto the table. Lynton stood on the opposite side of the owner.

“What’s his name?” He started his top-to-toe exam, shining his torch in the dog’s eyes, looking in the ears for blood and opening the mouth to note the pale color of the gums. The dog was in serious shock. He couldn’t waste much time on this before he took it through to the resus room.

“Rupert.” Austin stroked his dog, his bloodstained hand colliding with Lynton’s. “Sorry.”

Lynton took the stethoscope from around his neck and listened to the dog’s racing heart, then his lungs. He moved down to the injured leg. Austin drew the towel away and revealed a compound fracture of the femur.

“Okay, I need to take him through, give him some fluids and stabilize him. Tomorrow we can do surgery on this. Put a pin in the femur, then close it up. It’s a big operation, but we can do it.” He waited a moment. All owners always agreed immediately, then some started worrying about the money. Austin wore a faded black T-shirt with a heavy metal band’s logo, jeans, and cheap sneakers. Lynton doubted he had any spare cash to speak of.

“Yes, yes, thank you,” Austin said as Lynton scooped Rupert up. God, the dog weighed an absolute ton. He tried not to stagger under the weight with Rupert’s hot owner watching him. Hot owners tended to be frequent at the animal hospital. Hot, gay, unattached owners not so much. In fact, non-existent. Lynton had missed that bus. Nobody his age was free anymore. He had blinked and missed his thirties and settling down, and now forty knocked on the door.

“Wait in the waiting room and when he’s stable and I’ve taken an X-ray, I’ll come out and have a chat with you.”

Austin followed him to the door, opening it for him. They tangled awkwardly in the doorway as Austin lowered his head to give Rupert a kiss. Their gazes held for long moments. Lynton opened his mouth to speak. He didn’t know what he was going to say. Some platitude he felt the need to offer about Rupert being okay, even though the outcome was far from certain and he wasn’t one to make false promises.

He closed it again when Austin spoke.

“I’ll be here, sweet boy.” Austin’s hair brushed Lynton’s shoulder. Lynton’s nostrils twitched. Austin smelled good. His body was lean and compact; he was a couple of inches shorter than Lynton. His dick responded with surprising rapidity at Austin’s proximity and he chastised himself.

You’re so fucking unprofessional when the dog’s half dead. What’s the matter with you?

“I’ll see you shortly.” Lynton carried Rupert into the corridor and shouldered open the door to the resus room. He glanced back once at the loitering Austin. Christ, he was something else. Their eyes held for the longest moment before the door swung shut behind Lynton.

“Can I have some help here?” He laid Rupert down on an exam table. “I need a catheter in him stat, and an iodine soak for this leg. Let’s get some buprenorphine drawn up, please, this big guy’s in a lot of pain.”

Christina descended on Rupert, shaver in hand, working on his foreleg, while another nurse went for dressings. Dr. Toby Thomas wandered over, petting Rupert, who lay there limply, huge resigned eyes rolling from one person to the other.

“He’s a lovely dog.”

“Yeah, he is,” Lynton replied. You should see his owner. Even now, his blood tingled with the memory of Austin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so strongly drawn to someone at first sight. The feeling both excited and dismayed him. Austin was a client. His patient’s owner. Austin was distraught—hardly in the frame of mind to notice his vet giving him the eye.

He shook himself out of it. The catheter was in, the pain relief given. He ordered the IV fluids, then groaned at the dog’s blood pressure. “Okay, open it fully. When it comes up, we’ll take him to X-ray. Shouldn’t need to sedate him.” He watched Rupert’s injured leg being bandaged. He hoped the dog didn’t die.

“Mr. Bale.”

Austin sat in the waiting room with his head lowered between his knees, as though dizzy or controlling the urge to vomit. His head jerked up. His tears had dried, but his pale face was blotchy with crying, his eyes swollen. “Austin,” he said, standing.

“All right, Austin. Call me Lynton. Come through with me.”

Austin followed Lynton to his office where he had left the X-rays on the light box. He flicked off the main lights and gestured for Austin to stand next to him.

“Okay, so here’s Rupert’s injured leg. Here’s the femur, the main bone of the hind leg, equating to our thigh bone. The fracture’s a nice simple one, a clean break across the shaft—apart from the fact that it’s open of course, one end of the bone penetrating the skin. The risk of infection is great, but we’ve got him on antibiotics and fluids. His blood pressure has come up and I’m hoping he’ll be fit to go under anesthetic tomorrow. After the pin is placed, he’ll have a cast on, then it’s a long road to recovery. He’ll need extensive physical therapy.” He didn’t move, aware of the warmth and solidity of Austin’s body beside him, his clean smell. He should have put the lights back on; he should have moved away, but he didn’t. They stood together in the dark.

Austin nodded. He bit his lip, staring at the X-rays.

“Any questions?”

Austin’s gaze slid to his. Here it came. “Yeah, I…” He flushed and fidgeted. “I hate to have to ask this but…”

“How much will it cost?”

“Yeah.”

“Somewhere in the region of twenty-seven hundred dollars, excluding follow up care and physical therapy.”

Austin’s grey eyes remained on his for the longest moment. Then he sighed and stumbled back, sinking into a chair where he put his head in his hands. “I haven’t got that sort of money.”

Lynton reached to the light switch. Then he stood by the X-rays and waited patiently. He had seen all this before. He had seen perfectly healthy animals euthanized because their owners couldn’t afford to treat them and it broke his heart every time. It was a crime how much veterinary treatment cost, he knew that. But he also knew that a smart owner took out insurance for their pet. He didn’t need to ask if Austin had it.

Austin looked up at him with fresh tears dewing those soft grey eyes. “What am I going to do?”

“We’ll keep him here and let you work on it until tomorrow. Perhaps friends, your parents…”

Austin shook his head. “I don’t have anybody.”

Austin’s plight moved him no less than anyone else’s did. Lynton felt for him. He felt like offering him the money himself, as he always did, but if he did this for everybody who had ever needed help, he would have been bankrupt and living in a cardboard box by now.

“Do you do a…” Austin stumbled over his words, “payment plan?”

“You’d have to speak to reception. I think they do something, but you’d have to put down twenty-five percent to start with. Something like that.”

“I haven’t got that.”

To Lynton’s horror, tears started to roll down Austin’s pale cheeks. Oh no, please not that, anything but that. Lynton bit his lip, his throat growing thick with emotion.

“What am I going to do? I’ve had Rupert for five years. I don’t have anybody but him. I can’t lose him, he’s everything to me. Everything.” Austin started to sob.

“I understand.” Lynton had to clear his throat because his voice didn’t sound like his own. He wished he could leave the discussion of money to Christina or the reception staff. He wished he didn’t have to know that Austin couldn’t afford the operation. He wished he was anywhere now but here. Instead, he pulled a tissue from the box on his desk and handed it over. He clamped his jaws together so his treacherous mouth didn’t offer Austin the money. No. Be professional. A pretty face doesn’t get you offering money to a complete stranger.

“All I can say is, go home and think about it. Give me a call later in the day.”

Austin stared up at him. He swiped at his eyes with the tissue. Nothing is going to change, his gaze told Lynton. I can think about it until the cows come home, but that money isn’t going to just appear.

Austin stood. “Thank you for your time, Doctor.” He held out his hand.

“Lynton, please.” Lynton shook it. Austin’s hand was small, his fingertips calloused, perhaps from manual work. Their gazes caught and held for the longest while before Austin pulled his hand free and strode to the door.

Lynton sighed. He switched off the light box and pulled the X-rays down before he left his office to go to the ICU. Rupert was curled inside his cage, looking mournfully up with big brown eyes. Lynton knelt before him and opened the door, reaching inside to pet him.

“Hey, boy, how are you doing?” Rupert nuzzled his hand weakly. “You’re a good dog. It’s going to be okay.” He shouldn’t make such promises. Austin wasn’t going to find that money unless he robbed a bank.

This time tomorrow, Rupert would be dead.