AN: So I was planning on getting this chapter out days ago, but then work got super duper busy. So here it is, a bit later than I intended. After actually reading Rocket's origination, I've changed how this whole thing pans out.
There is still going to be gratuitous cockle warming.
Next chapter will take a while as we're now in the Wind Up to Christmas. I also apologise for any tense switches. I've been writing in present tense for one of my fics and it's just a wee bit woobly there.
To those who have reviewed and/or faved/watched this - I love you guys. You keep me motivated to write more. Flattery will always get you more fic.
Things you may not be familiar with:
Convenia - broad spectrum antibiotic injection, absolute veterinary godsend for difficult-to-pill cats.
Bactroban - topical antibiotic ointment. Really useful for torn claws.
Temgesic - opioid-based oral painkiller.
Disclaimer:
I own nothing you recognise. I am also not a vet or a medical professional of any sort, so despite making reasonable endeavours to be correct, I do expect there to be some inaccuracies. This is all completely un-beta'd and totally fresh off the top of my brain!
Magdalena began with a general check first, starting first with her stethoscope. Pushing it to the splayed chest, she felt around for a moment to find the lungs. Shallow but steady breathing, no burbling, nothing to indicate fluid in the chest cavity. She moved the stethoscope higher and to the side, listening intently, until she found the quick, but strong, thrum of its heart. No murmurs or arrhythmia. Placing that down, she moved onto her organ inspection.
Due to the deformities in the pelvis and chest of the animal, the internal organs themselves may be located differently. Or utterly deficient. Well, only one place to start for organs: the large intestine. Locate the descending colon and you can usually trace your way through everything else. It was easily locatable, and felt in good condition – no inflammation. No stool, which was a bit peculiar... it was actually very empty. Upwards into the transverse and ascending colon, small intestine, check. Two kidneys, a bit distended and something she'd need to look into if it – sorry he, not even neutered – made it through the night. Side track to a mostly empty bladder. Upwards to a stomach, also empty, and a borderline-swollen feeling liver.
Internal organs all more-or-less in order, Magd moved on to the extremities. Curiously splayed forepaws were missing claws on each toe-tip, instead bloodied stumps cap them off. Massive infection risk. Break to the left ulna, fortunately not bad, most likely a fracture to the radius as well – the golden rule was if one was broken, the other would be damaged. The ulna and radius were formed in such a way that allowed massive increase in movement over a dog or cat fore-leg. What felt like severe bruising in the right humerus, leading up to, rather than a straight socket joint to the scapula, a ball-and-socket joint in a terrifyingly humanoid shoulder. The joint itself was swollen. Fingers carefully ran up scapula and clavicle to encounter the first severely contaminated laceration.
It arched back over the clavicle and forward almost to the sternum. Gentle probing of the wound had Magd throwing herself away from the body, taking deep gulps of air to prevent herself from vomiting. They weren't cuts, they were implants of some kind, metal grafted to the underlying bone, skin weeping at the trauma of foreign objects. She bent down, lowering her head as tingles crawled up her spine. No, no, no throwing up or passing out was allowed.
It took her a good minute before she felt she could hold everything in. Stepped back up to the table, grimly feeling past the metal, running her fingers down sternum and splayed ribs – it felt like a number of them could be cracked – and further down to the pelvis. Once again, instead of the quadruped pelvis and hip, it was the broad and splayed pelvic system found in bipeds. The hip joints, like the shoulders, were badly swollen. No breaks or fractures to the femur, inflamed stifle, in tact tibia and fibula and a very normal tarsal joint.
Toes flexed normally, all with ripped or missing claws.
She rolled him carefully onto his stomach. Her stomach rolled at the mess that was his back. It was a raw wound, meat with stubs of metal poking through, covered in dirt and decaying foliage from his hiding place in the ground. This would need the most aggressive treatment, and would be the most problematic. Such massive trauma never healed well or easily. Adding the unknown quantity of the metal 'implants'...
Magd pursed her lips, took up her electric razor, and set to work.
First order of business was setting and securing the ulna break. Clearing the hair from the foreleg, she took the time to really probe the area with her fingers. Without x-rays, she couldn't know how bad the fracture really was, but the physical examination gave her a good gauge to work off. A cast would be ideal, but for the interim a splint and bandage would suffice. She could bring him in tomorrow for x-rays – no one would be at the clinic, and Daisy lived just around the corner if she really wanted some company.
Securing the bandaging with an extra layer of the glorious self-adhesive tape, she moved onto the next and most daunting task. The back was bared muscle, with barely a shred of skin on it. Fibres gleamed sickly in the light, metal shrapnel interspersed amongst the tissue. Detritus stuck to the flesh. The scissors came out, chopping off bloody clumps of fur from the edges of the wound. She picked up her razor to clear the hair from a much wider area. She grabbed her saline, sterile cotton swabs and tweezers and began cleaning. By far the biggest piece of implant looked to be affixed on the thoracic curve of the spine, a large, thumb-sized glob of metal. Her stomach twitched as she wiped it.
When the time came to apply cream and wrap it up, Magd went whole-hog. Every millimetre of damage was smothered in medical-grade honey, which at this stage of treatment was a bloody miracle-worker. Thick gauze padding went over the top, taped down to prevent it from moving about.
Another careful roll over allowed Magd to access the implants over his clavicles. These were much longer, but thinner, than the lump on his spine. They were also more precisely inserted, so rather than the broad skin-loss on his back, there were straight incisions around the implant. In contrast with the back, there was very little foreign object contamination. A brief clean later and it was ready for dressing. Once again, she spread a liberal amount of honey across these incisions, making sure the honey was pressed down and into the gaps between metal and skin, before applying thick gauze and tape.
Now came a more interesting problem. Based on the peculiarities of this creature's skeletal structure – something she was no longer quite sure was purely congenital deformity, and adamantly not thinking about right now – he would have a wider range of movement in virtually all of his joints, more in line with simian range. This would absolutely cause problematic for the healing of his back and shoulders. The back being the most sensitive and most potential for infection. This would involve some very inventive bandaging to restrict movement and a cone of shame.
She pulled out her bandages and began wrapping, beginning from the chest and going straight under the armpits, around the back, then back to the front. That was repeated a couple of times, ensuring the bottom of the gauze on the back initially covered, before going up under an armpit, over the shoulder and down across the chest. Loop around the chest again, across and up the back, over the shoulder and back under the armpit. This would protect the back and the clavicle gauzes, and assist in reducing movement in the shoulder. Although she had to make sure it wasn't too tight so as to restrict breathing.
A few more repeats of that and she brought out the heavy duty self-adhesive bandages to do a few laps in. This would provide additional protection, and wasn't very easy to take off.
Daisy had laughed when they had first received the self-adhesive bandages. Much to Madg's delight, they came in all sorts of colours and patterns. The ones she had selected were pink paw prints. There was also a large supply of blue paw printed bandages back at the clinic, but a small portion of the pink ones had made their way into her own stash. It cheered her up to see her patient wrapped up in pink paw printed bandages.
Finally came the toes. These, she wouldn't be able to bandage. Rather, she cleaned them with saline and applied bactroban ointment to each, using a cotton bud to ensure the cream reached all of the affected nailbed. A convenia injection would top off the treatment, as well as a decent dose of oral temgesic for the pain. This would also help keep him spaced out and not incredibly mobile for most of the night, which would allow everything to settle.
Magd quickly removed her gloves and tidied up the mess she'd made. Shoving her kit under the table, she rushed over to the crate in the corner – set up for the borzoi to wander in and out of as they pleased. She stripped the whole thing, dumping newspapers and towels and bedding into her laundry to be dealt with later. A quick spray with trigene and a thorough clean down to steralise as best as she could before relining it with newspapers and clean towels. A little bowl of water followed, all she'd allow for now, and a plastic kiddies' stool with a sheet thrown over it for a hiding place.
She fitted on a new pair of gloves to administer the anaesthetic reversal, and carefully picked up the wee creature, placing him his stomach in the crate. Now she could let her hands shake, and shake they did. So much so that she sat down next to the crate door and shoved them between her thighs, resting her head against the bars of the cage, eyes glued to the gentle rise-and-fall of the creature's bandaged back.
She'd have to think about what this all meant, and soon. The totally altered state of the skeletal system in this little animal was terrifying. But she wouldn't go down that road yet, because the thought that he'd been engineered was just too much. Add the metal implants and her brain was in all kinds of clusterfuck mode. She'd take him in for x-rays once he was stable – hopefully as early as tomorrow – and take it from there. That would also give her a good idea of just how the implants were attached to him. Perhaps she could remove the clavicle pieces. The spinal implant she wouldn't touch with a barge pole, unless it turned out to be far enough away from his column that she could do it safely.
But for now, she'd keep it quiet. The people who had done this to him, regardless of whether he'd been engineered or not, would no doubt be looking for him. Bringing him to the SPCA's attention would only provide unwanted media attention, and the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to fall back into the hands of those responsible. Once she got more of an idea of what was going on, once she'd done some research, she'd reassess then.
The breathing hitched, paused. She waited, fingers curling into her palms, for that next breath. When it came it was shuddering, but the next breath was quicker. He was rousing. As soon as his little eyes had opened and his head had started to sway, she pulled down the sheet that covered the cage and secured the door, spinning a piece of wire around the latch as an extra precaution. Only a little sliver of light would disturb the wee lad as he recovered, and that was only for her to peek in without disturbing him overly. Plenty of cozy dark space for an easy transition from unconsciousness to drugged-up semi-wakefulness.
Magd stood up, stripped off her last round of gloves, and began to clear up the mess of her kitchen table.
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