Listen to the Child. Carolyn McSparren

the important thing for a cop is to go home alive at the end of the shift. Take as few risks as possible, but be aware that the risks are always present. Now I’m stuck in a situation where I can’t even assess the danger.

      “The last thing I want is to stick Emma and my parents with somebody who has seizures or is half-blind. Emma’s had too much put on her as it is. No wonder she’s scared. A ten-year-old shouldn’t have to play momma’s little helper. Momma’s supposed to help her.”

      Kevlar leaned over as far as his car seat allowed and licked her ear.

      “Okay, so you’re momma’s little helper.” She laughed and wiped her ear. “You better keep your mind on your work once we get to the clinic. Stay away from the big dogs that could scarf you up as a morning snack.”

      WEDNESDAY MORNING of her first week she’d come in earlier than usual because Emma had some sort of early breakfast thing at school. Kit stuck her head into the first treatment room because the light was on.

      Liz Carlyle hovered over a tiny red dog that lay on its side on the table. She looked up when Kit opened the door and said, “Thank goodness. Come on in here, will you? Nobody else is in yet.”

      Kit came in and sent Kevlar to the corner of the room to lie down.

      Liz looked up at Kit and said slowly, “She’s a Brussels griffon. Her owner dropped her off just before midnight. She couldn’t stay. She’s got kids at home. These little folks almost never have more than one pup per litter, but I think she’s got two squeezed in there. If she doesn’t deliver at least one in the next five minutes I’ll have to cut her.”

      Kit nodded. “I’ve never been around anything like this.”

      “Just don’t faint or scream,” Liz said. “Hey! I think we’ve finally got some action!”

      The pup looked more like a wet, red gerbil than a dog. At Liz’s instructions, Kit wrapped it warmly in a towel and jiggled it until it began to breathe. Meanwhile Liz ignored her as she gently pried the second pup out of its mother with the tips of her fingers. As Kit bundled that one against her chest, Liz began to work furiously over the little dog. Five minutes later Kit held a third pup.

      “Enough!” Liz said and turned to Kit. “Can you handle all three of those guys while I carry the mother to the whelping box?”

      Kit nodded again. “Sure.”

      “You’re going to have to sit beside them and watch until everybody’s suckling.”

      Once the pups and mother were installed in the warm box, Liz put her hand on Kit’s arm. “I heard Rick come in. I’ll tell him what’s going on. He can take over. I’ve got to get some sleep.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “Thanks.”

      “You’re welcome.”

      Liz looked down at the little dog that was already nuzzling her tiny pups into place against her nipples. “Three pups! That’s practically a record.”

      An hour later Nancy came in and sank onto her haunches to look at the pups. “Ooh, they’re teensy.” She grinned at Kit. “That’ll teach you to come in early.”

      In the next week and a half, Kit taught abandoned kittens how to nurse from a baby bottle, sat with a Labrador puppy that had been hit by a car, until it came out of anesthetic, and helped deliver a baker’s dozen of puppies from a Great Dane. Whenever a small animal needed a baby-sitter, everyone seemed to turn to Kit. Even Dr. Sarah requested her services to stay beside a foal whose crooked front legs had been straightened and splinted.

      “Pups from tiny to giant,” Kit told her father over dinner Friday night.

      “Can I see the puppies?” Emma asked. “I’d a lot rather see the puppies than spend the night with Daddy.”

      “They’ve gone home, baby,” Kit said. “But the way things are happening, I suspect there’ll be plenty more. Seems like this is the season for babies. Dr. Carlyle says those three Brussels griffon puppies she delivered last week are worth at least a thousand dollars each and the Great Danes yesterday will sell for about eight hundred. The owners want good vets to deliver as many healthy babies as possible, not to mention saving the mother if she gets into trouble.”

      After Emma reluctantly left to spend the night with her father, Kit sank into the wing chair in her living room opposite her father.

      “So, you like this job?” Tom Barclay asked.

      “Love it so far. Nice people, good hours, and nobody seems to mind that I can’t hear.”

      “How about that Dr. Thorn who saved Kevlar? You work with him at all?”

      “Good grief no, Dad. As a matter of fact, I seldom see him. He’s always in surgery with Nancy.” She moved uncomfortably in her chair.

      “I’ve heard he has quite a reputation with the ladies.”

      “Really?” Kit tried to sound casual.

      “He dated the daughter of one of Catherine’s clients. She decorated his apartment.”

      Kit shrugged. “He’s management, Dad, I’m definitely labor.”

      “He’s not married. You ought to start thinking about dating again.”

      Kit put up her hands. “Please, Dad. No men in my life ever, ever again. Jimmy gave me enough problems for a lifetime. Besides, I’m a deaf woman with a kid. Hardly marketable goods.”

      “A good man wouldn’t care.”

      “Find me a good man. So far I’ve come up empty.”

      Her father stood and Kevlar jumped off Kit’s lap to stand beside him. “Your mother ought to be home from her meeting by now. See you at church on Sunday?”

      “Maybe.” She kissed her father’s cheek and let him out the front door. As she watched him climb into his car, she said to Kevlar, “My father, the incurable romantic. The eye of an eagle. But he can’t possibly know Mac Thorn turns me on. Come on, Kev, let’s hit the treadmill.”

      KIT FELT HIM before she turned and saw him. She didn’t react to other people that way. It wasn’t that she smelled him. She’d learned to identify the odor of her mother’s familiar perfume and her dad’s scent of wood chips and sawdust. She smelled Emma’s little-girl scent sometimes, but Mac Thorn didn’t have a discernible scent. No aftershave, not even that antiseptic odor that lingered around some of the doctors who’d treated her in the hospital.