Leashed to Love Read online

  Leashed to Love

  by

  Vicky Kaseorg

  Copyright 2018 Vicky Kaseorg

  All rights reserved to author.

  ISBN: 9781728915982

  Cover Design: Asherel Herman, Asherel.com

  This is a work of fiction. As with most fictional work, some of the characters and situations are developed from a compilation of people the author has encountered. No character or event is based on a single factual person or event. No character is intended to represent a specific person, living or dead…other than Jesus.

  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

  1 Corinthians 13:12

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Author’s Note

  To Connect with Vicky Kaseorg

  Other Books by Vicky Kaseorg

  Chapter One

  A s I opened the Vet’s office door with the usual automated “woof” greeting, I could hear funny scraping noises from under the receptionist desk. Dr. Harried was nowhere in sight, but her voice tunneled out from under the desk.

  “Come here you rascal.”

  Had she lost a dog under there?

  I peeped over the desk top to see her on hands and knees, head hidden beneath the desk.

  “Did one of the dogs get loose?” I asked.

  “Oh…no…hi Ruth. Just a sec. I almost got him.” More scuffling noises, a satisfied, “There!”, and her head reappeared. In her hands was a Dixie cup with a piece of cardboard over it. She held her hand across the cardboard pushing it against the top of the cup so whatever was inside would not escape.

  “Ruth, would you open the door for me?”

  I hurried to do so. She scurried out the door and flung the contents to the sidewalk. A large cockroach scuttled away.

  “You rescued a cockroach?” I asked.

  “I love all creatures great and small.”

  She smiled till deep dimples caved in and re-entered the office.

  “Now I will smack a mosquito now and then,” she admitted. “So how did the send-off go for all the pups?”

  Dr. Harried had closely monitored the weaning and then final weeks of my dog Bo’s puppies before placing them in their new homes. I had thought I would be grateful to have those little walking disasters out of my kitchen, but I missed them.

  “It went fine,” I said. “Bo seems a little sad.”

  “She’ll get over it. How’s her boyfriend doing?”

  Bo was in love with the unruly, crazy dog owned by my friend Timothy. That big black dog, Dumbo, had only recently had a cast removed from a broken leg after slipping his collar and trying to play with traffic. That’s right…not IN traffic…WITH traffic. The car won.

  “He is back to his usual self.”

  “So, should I reserve an operating room for him?” she asked, grinning.

  “Probably.” I smiled back at Dr. Harried. What a contrast she was to my last boss, Dr. Thanatos of the Mirror Lake Women’s Health Center. Dr. Harried was as kind and life-affirming as Dr. Thanatos was cruel and an agent of death.

  We still had ten minutes before officially opening, but at that moment the door barked, and slammed open.

  I was about to tell the wild-eyed man who sprinted in that we were not quite ready for patients, but Dr. Harried laid her hand on my arm.

  “Can we help you?” she asked.

  “There’s been an accident!” he said.

  “Has a dog been hit?” I asked, wondering if Dumbo had managed to slip his collar for round two.

  “No, a man! A man…he might be dead.”

  “We are a veterinary office…” I started to explain.

  Dr. Harried didn’t even pause. She raced out the door, telling me to call 911. I did, while following her. The accident had occurred directly in front of the office. It was not a busy street, but a small car was smashed up against the mailbox right at our driveway. A larger car with a crumpled front end was wedged against it. In all likelihood, the little car had been turning into the vet office and the driver had not seen the car that now pinned his car against the mailbox.

  Unable to make out the driver due to the mess of twisted metal and shattered windshield, I could not imagine he was in one piece in the midst of all that tangled destruction. The driver of the other car, standing nearby, looking dazed. He had blood dripping down his face from a gash in his forehead. My guess was he would not be standing for long.

  Dr. Harried was already wrenching open the smashed-in door of the mangled car. I still could hardly discern the human form in the driver seat as the air bag, though now deflated, covered most of him. He was a he…I could tell that much. He was crumpled against the steering wheel. He was not moving which made me feel faint. I had not ever seen a dead body…unless you count all those aborted babies in my former job with the women’s clinic. I did count them. That is why I was no longer with the clinic.

  Dr. Harried had her finger tips on the man’s neck.

  “He’s alive,” she said.

  We heard sirens now and within seconds the medics had arrived. Dr. Harried stepped back. The medics took over, talking to the man who did not respond. They pulled a stretcher out of the ambulance, and then three of them worked together to carefully extract his body from the wreckage. He groaned.

  Not as loudly as I did.

  It was my old boss, the abortionist from the women’s clinic. Dr. Thanatos.

  “Are you ok?” Dr. Harried asked me, laying her hand on my arm.

  “I know him,” I whispered.

  “Is he a friend?” she asked.

  “Hardly.”

  Dr. Thanatos’s eyes fluttered open. He was cut up all over his face and arms. Blood oozed out of a million wounds.

  Fitting. Maybe not nice of me to say that but still.

  “My dog,” he croaked.

  “Of course,” Dr. Harried said, “He was turning into the driveway. He must have a pet in that car.”

  HAD a pet more likely judging from the mangled vehicle before us.

  The medics were rolling the stretcher to the ambulance as Dr. Harried moved quickly to the car. Trying to avoid the shards of glass, she peered inside.

  “Come here,” she cooed to a hidden creature.

  Despite the definite lack of wisdom in doing so, she climbed onto the glass spattered seat, and reached into the back of the car. She emerged with a small black and white dog. Surprisingly alive and in one piece. It yelped when Dr. Harried adjusted her arms to gather the dog against her. Poor thing. Something hurt.

  With more compassion than I would muster for Dr. Thanatos, she carried the little dog to his side. His eyes were closed again, but he was mumbling, “Lucy…Lucy.”

  “Lucy is ok,” Dr. Harried said. “I will take care of her.”

  He did not respond.

  The medics rolled the stretcher into the ambulance and told Dr. Harried the name of the hospital where they were taking him. Then they climbed in with him and slammed the doors. Sirens blaring, the ambulance squealed out of the driveway.

  “Well Ruth, it looks like we have our first patient of the day.”

  I wondered if “Lucy” was short for “Lucifer.” That would be a fitting name for the dog of Dr. Thanatos. It h
ad been a month since I had last seen him, and I would have been happy to never have laid eyes on him again. Why did my past keep creeping back into my present?

  Dr. Harried had never asked me much about my past job. She knew the clinic was an abortion center, but she never expressed a single opinion about abortion, or asked me how I could have worked in such a place. I was pretty sure that someone who rescued cockroaches was likely pro-life. However, I had also assumed that Dr. Thanatos was the sort that would kick dogs and maybe bet on them in dogfights. I wouldn’t expect him to own one as a pet and spare his dying words expressing concern for her.

  “I think she may have broken something…maybe her hip. Amazing she is alive considering the condition of the car.”

  I held the door open as Dr. Harried cradled the whimpering dog. She called out to Brendan, her assistant. He opened the door to the surgery area in the back of the clinic. Dr. Harried told me that Dr. Harris would be in soon and I would need to talk with him about taking the first patients for the day.

  I nodded and began the routine I had loved for the past couple of months in my new job with the Mirror Lake Veterinary Practice of Drs. Harried and Harris. I booted up the computer and sat at the desk waiting for the screen to finish all the gobbledygook of coming to life. My thoughts were on the bloodied face of Dr. Thanatos. I expected to feel more glee at a vision of him in a similar condition to the little babies he slaughtered each day. Instead, I just felt sorrow.

  That was not unusual. Lots of things would inexplicably spark deep revulsion and mourning since leaving the Mirror Lake Women’s Center. Well, actually, those feelings had been with me for a long time. I did not have the most sunny upbringing that would dredge up warm memories. And frankly, the past three years working at the clinic was just the icing on the moldy cake of a crumbled life.

  So as the computer went through its wake-up procedure, I wanted to crawl into a hole and cry. Sometimes the flashbacks happened at home, which was good. My amazing dog Bo had an uncanny ability to figure out when I needed her comfort and she was always instantly at my side. She often offered words of comfort.

  Yes.

  Don’t laugh. I am not kidding. I did mean to say words.

  Now her English was not perfect, but it was not bad for a dog. I’d only had her about two months after finding her half-dead from starvation and pregnant with five pups. She birthed four living puppies on my kitchen floor. Almost immediately, her linguistic skills surfaced.

  Don’t get me wrong. She didn’t exactly speak like those goofy dog videos all over the internet. However, it was clear she was trying to. I didn’t understand everything she said, but the longer I was with her, the more I deciphered her communication.

  I could have used her words of consolation now.

  Fortunately, the front door barked to interrupt the downward spiral. (Yes…that wasn’t a typo either. Dr. Harried rigged the door so it barked when it opened and meowed when it closed.) The first client of the day walked in with a shoebox. You never knew what you were going to get when they showed up with shoeboxes. On the first week of my work there, it was a baby squirrel.

  “Hello,” the young woman carrying the box said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I found this trying to make it across the highway. I think it is injured.”

  Great. Must be a turtle. We got those periodically, usually with a broken shell.

  I opened the box.

  A large crab pointed its eyes at me, the beady orbs balanced on the end of stalks. Instantly it scuttled to a corner of the box and started snapping large pincers in the air. It flopped over almost immediately. One leg appeared to be partially crushed.

  “I can’t imagine how he got here,” she said. “The ocean is 100 miles away.”

  “Maybe he busted out of The Scarlet Crustacean.”

  That was our local fresh seafood restaurant. It was famous in our little village of Mirror Lake.

  “Maybe,” the woman said. “I felt sorry for him. Obviously, he isn’t going to survive long without some help.”

  I really could not imagine what kind of help she expected our vets to provide. However, Dr. Harried did have a reputation for pandering to the craziest requests to save lives. The door barked again, and Dr. Harris entered. He was by far the more normal of the two vets. He smiled at me and peeked in the box.

  “Lunch?” he asked.

  The woman gasped.

  “He’s hurt,” I explained. “This nice lady rescued him.”

  Dr. Harris peered at the woman, a slight frown on his face.

  “We normally do not work with injured sea creatures,” he said. “The aquarium shop on Lafayette Street might be better able to help him.”

  “Oh! I should have thought of that. Thank you.” She closed the box and snatched it under her arm. The door meowed on her heels.

  Dr. Harris shook his head, chuckling.

  “There was some excitement this morning,” I told him.

  “You mean other than a Good Samaritan saving seafood?”

  “A car crashed in our driveway. The driver was taken away by ambulance and Dr. Harried is in the back treating the dog that was injured in the accident.”

  “Oh, I’ll go see if she needs any help. How was the driver?”

  “Pretty cut up.”

  “He didn’t crash avoiding the crab, did he?”

  “No…I don’t think so.”

  Dr. Harris nodded and hurried into the back room.

  The rest of the morning was busy and noisy. Since Dr. Harried was detained setting the dog’s broken leg, Dr. Harris took both their patients and the waiting room piled up with barking dogs and hissing cats. I was grateful when lunch hour rolled around, and the last patient was shuffled back out the door.

  I jogged home like I did every lunch hour to have time to walk Bo and gobble down a quick meal before the vet reopened in the afternoon. When the door squeaked open, Bo was waiting. She wagged her tail. “Waaaaaahk.”

  Yes. That is correct. You heard what she said as plainly as I did. I warned you.

  I snapped her leash on her pretty red collar, and we headed to her favorite patch of grass just outside the door. It might have been my imagination, but she looked depressed. Her huge, normally erect ears appeared to be a little wilted. Her eyes looked sad.

  “Do you miss your babies?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. She rarely spoke while engaged in her toilette. I should have known better by now. Two of her babies lived nearby. Flim and Flam were nearly identical pups, now residing with a crazy abortion protester I befriended when I left the abortion clinic work for good. In fact, Talia was the one who found me the job with Dr. Harried, and I was super grateful to her for that. She was a little clingy and touchy-feely for my taste, but she did have a good heart.

  I unpocketed my cell phone and punched in her number. I knew she would be finishing her morning volunteering on the sidewalk now. She was retired. Honestly, I don’t know what kind of work she had done, or how she survived, but she volunteered on the sidewalk of the abortion clinic every morning. She tried to convince women determined to abort their babies that it was a bad idea and she could help them if they would change their minds. Not many did, but those who did choose to let their babies live were honestly helped by Talia. I had observed it first hand when she and I had helped a young lady just a few weeks earlier. Bo glanced at me like she could read my mind…which I am pretty sure she could.

  “Yes…you helped too,” I told her.

  Talia answered her phone.

  “Hi Ruth! How are you!?”

  Talia always spoke in exclamation points. She was the most excitable, energetic old lady I knew. She always sounded like she was about to rush across town and throw her arms around me. To tell you the truth, I kind of recoiled from that sort of emotionality and certainly from touch…but I tolerated it with Talia since she really had helped save my life.

  “I’m fine. We rescued a crab today at work…”

  Talia laughed. She kne
w all about the crazy vet I worked for.

  “Actually, we sent her on to the aquarium store…but Dr. Thanatos won’t be at the clinic today.”

  “I noticed that. They are sending women home now. How did you know that?”

  “He crashed his car in our driveway.”

  “What! Oh my! Is he okay?”

  Her obvious concern gave me pause. I knew she considered him a murderer…the source of thousands of unborn babies’ deaths at the Women’s Center. I had expected cheers from her over his accident.

  “Not too okay. He was barely conscious and pretty badly injured. His dog will be ok, though she had a broken leg.”

  “His dog?”

  “Yeh…she was in the car with him. We think maybe he was heading to our office and that’s how the accident happened.”

  “Is he a client there?”

  “Not in the past. Maybe it is a new dog.”

  “Wow. This was just this morning?”

  “Yes. Right when we opened.”

  “I guess they couldn’t find a doctor to replace him today. It looks like all the cars in the clinic parking lot are gone and as far as we know, no other abortionist arrived.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I meant that too. I had made a 180-degree turnaround in my feelings about abortion after leaving that job. I honestly could not believe I had ever thought it was anything but evil.

  “It probably means tomorrow will be a busy day, but it gives those rescheduled women another day for God to convict their hearts.”

  I did not share Talia’s faith. If you had grown up in my shoes, you would know why. God and I did not exactly see eye to eye in how my life should have been arranged. Still, I admired that Talia put her money where her mouth was. She believed in God so completely that she gave up whatever else old retired people usually do in order to stand on the sidewalk in front of the clinic to try and help people who mostly just tried to run her over on their rush to abort their kids.

  “I was actually calling to ask a favor,” I said.

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  Talia was like that. She would probably offer me her arm if I had to amputate mine. Seriously. She was that deranged over the whole “love thy neighbor as thyself” deal.