This time, the boss didn’t attend the surgery. Two clown women who ordinarily took care of the animals dressed up like nurses and assisted the vet. They batted their long blue eyelashes at him and honked their red noses every time they handed the doctor a tool. The vet told them it was unsanitary to touch their noses like that, but they seemed to do it impulsively.
As he performed the operation, with the lion’s face peeled back, the meaty tumor exposed, it reminded him of the time his oldest daughter cracked her head open on the driveway. It was one of the most frightening days of his life. For a moment there, when he saw her lying in a pool of blood, he thought he’d lost her.
“This is why I told you to wear a helmet!” Earl’s wife yelled at their teenage daughter as she lay in the driveway. “I told you this was going to happen. Didn’t I tell you?”
Sarah was trembling. She gripped her father’s hand tightly as he examined her scalp.
The mother hovered over her daughter, blocking out the sunlight. “I never should have let you get that skateboard! Only boys can ride skateboards. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck!”
Earl looked up at his wife. “Laurie, calm down. She’s in shock.”
Laurie ignored him. “This is going in the trash.” She picked up the skateboard and tossed it in the garbage can.
Sarah reached out. “My skateboard…”
“And I forbid you from hanging out with those spike-haired friends of yours. They’re responsible for this.”
“Can you drop it already?” Earl said. “Help me get her inside.”
The wife huffed at him. She was so furious he didn’t want to go near her. Complaining was the only way she knew how to deal with situations like this. It was the only way she could keep her mind off the seriousness of what was happening. She did the same thing to Earl when he broke his leg in a car accident a year after they were married.
“Come on,” Earl said.
Laurie took her daughter’s legs and helped carry her into the house. She groaned when Sarah’s blood got all over her. “Eww, there’s blood everywhere…Don’t get any on the carpet.”
Inside, they put Sarah on the couch. She was able to sit upright, but was visibly dizzy.
Laurie looked down at the blood on her clothes. “Damn it, you ruined my dress.”
Earl got a better look at his daughter’s head. The bottom half of her scalp was shaved, so it was easy to see the wound through her hair. A flap of skin dangled open. He could see a pink skull behind the flesh. “She’s going to need stitches. We should take her to the emergency room.”
“We can’t afford that,” Laurie said. “You can fix her up.”
“I’m a veterinarian.”
“So?”
“So it’s illegal. I could lose my license.”
“Just do it. Who’s going to find out? You’d probably do a better job than the ER doctors anyway.”
Earl didn’t want to argue. “Fine. Get my stuff.”
Earl’s youngest daughter, Mandy, stood behind her older sister. Staring at the gaping wound on Sarah’s head, her expression was that of amazement instead of worry.
“Sarah, you have another mouth on your head!” Mandy said, pointing at the wound. “Can you talk through it?”
“Mandy, go play with Vicky,” Earl said.
“But I want to see her talk through the mouth on her head,” Mandy said.
“Leave her alone. She hurt herself.”
When he was done sewing up his daughter’s scalp, he gave her a bowl of ice cream. Even though she was practically a woman, she could still be cheered up by ice cream.
“Don’t let Mom throw away my skateboard,” Sarah said.
Earl poured caramel sauce on his daughter’s sundae. It was her favorite. “Do you really want to keep skating after this?”
“Everybody falls down when they first start,” she said.
Earl smiled at her. He couldn’t believe how much she’d grown up. “I’ll tell you what. Once your head heals and your mother calms down, I’ll buy you a new skateboard. As long as you promise me you’ll always wear a helmet.”
He brushed the lock of green hair out of her face.
“Get me a helmet that’s not embarrassing and you’ve got a deal. This never would have happened if Mom didn’t force me to wear her ugly old cyclist helmet instead of buying me a new one.”
She smiled and took a big bite of ice cream. The caramel turned her lips sticky and tan.
When Laurie entered the kitchen and saw her daughter eating the ice cream, she rolled her eyes and said, “You shouldn’t be eating that junk. You’re going to get fat.”
“Are you kidding?” Earl said. “She’s the scrawniest kid in her school. A few extra pounds would be good for her.”
Sarah laughed and took another bite. “I’m not the scrawniest.”
Laurie put the gallon of ice cream back in the freezer and left the room. She always resented the fact that Sarah was a daddy’s girl.
As Earl patched up the lion, he realized Sarah wouldn’t be able to be a daddy’s girl anymore. Even if she forgave him for all he put her through, even if she didn’t blame him for the strange men that broke into her house and kidnapped her at gunpoint, even if she got through the whole ordeal unscathed, she was never going to see her father ever again.