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‘You’re going to knock him out just to clean up a wound?’
‘It’s the only way to keep a snake still. They’re actually very sensitive to pain.’
As Lucy set up the gas cylinders, her mind raced ahead, planning each step of the procedure. She would place a wooden board between the python and the metal table to keep him that little bit warmer. And she needed something to hold the wounded section steady while she worked on it. Masking tape would do the least damage to the python’s sensitive skin.
Quickly she assembled everything she needed –scissors, scalpels, tweezers, swabs, needles – and then she donned sterile gloves. ‘OK, let’s get this gas into him.’
Will held the snake’s head steady while she fed the tube down its mouth, and she was amazed that she wasn’t scared any more.
‘How many pythons’ lives have you saved?’ Will asked as they waited for the anaesthetic to take effect.
‘This is the first.’
He smiled. ‘I can remember your very first patient.’
She frowned at him, puzzled. ‘You were in Argentina when I started to work as a vet.’
‘Before that. Don’t you remember the chicken you brought to school in a woolly sock?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She grinned. ‘The poor little thing hatched on a very cold winter’s morning and I was worried that it wouldn’t make it through the day.’
‘You kept it hidden under the desk.’
‘Until, Mr. Sanderson discovered it during biology and turned it into a lecture on imprinting.’
Their eyes met and they smiled and for a heady moment, Lucy was sixteen again and Will Carruthers was –
No, for heaven’s sake.
Shocked by how easily she was distracted by him, she centred her thoughts on cleaning the outside of the python’s wound with alcohol wipes and foaming solution. Then, when her patient was completely under, she began to debride the damaged tissue.
All the time she worked, Will was silent, watching her with a curious smile that she tried very hard to ignore.
‘I guess this isn’t quite how you expected to spend your evening,’ she said as she finally began to suture the delicate skin together.
‘Wouldn’t have missed this for the world.’ He chuckled softly. ‘You have to admit, it’s a unique experience. How many guys have watched a barefoot bridesmaid stitch up a python at midnight?’
Lucy couldn’t help smiling. ‘You make it sound like some kind of medieval witches’ ritual.’
‘The rites of spring?’
‘Maybe, but then again, how many vets have been assisted by a hun – a guy in best man’s clobber?’
Lucy thanked heavens she’d retracted the wordhunk. For heaven’s sake. It was the dinner suit factor. Stick the plainestman in a tuxedo and his looks were improved two hundred percent. Will in a tuxedo was downright dangerous.
But she was grateful for his help. Working side by side with him again, she’d felt good in a weirdly unsettled-yet-comfortable way. They’d always worked well together.
‘You’re a tough cookie,’ Will told her. ‘You were white as a ghost and shaking when I came in and yet you morphed into a steady handed snake surgeon.’
‘It’s my job,’ she said, trying not to look too pleased.
She dropped the suture needles into the tray and snapped off her sterile gloves, removed the paper apron and rolled up the disposable sheet she’d used to drape over the wound.
‘So where will we put this fellow while he sleeps off his ordeal?’ Will asked.
‘He’ll have to go in one of the cages out the back.’ Carefully, she peeled away the masking tape that had kept the snake straight.
‘Shall I do the honours?’
