Within seconds, Natalie spotted the source of the roars: a group of mahouts struggled to contain a giant female elephant. The ellie’s ears flapped angrily as she paced and charged. Backward. Forward. Her eyes rolled as the mahouts circled her, each holding a short hooked staff, an ankus. Her great feet shuffled, pulling the thick ropes that held her, and each time she reached the end of the ropes, she roared in full voice, a sound that literally shook the trees around them.
None of the other elephants had been tethered. The sanctuary staff prided themselves on letting their elephants roam free. Why had this one been hidden? She was obviously dangerous, but so much so that the mahouts needed ankuses?
The mahouts shouted commands at the elephant, none of which she obeyed. Instead, she roared her anger and wheeled on them. The ropes groaned and stretched. They wouldn’t hold the big girl much longer.
A line of sweat popped out on Natalie’s upper lip, and she checked for a line of escape, just in case. The PTSD she’d fought for the past year took hold. Her vision darkened, sounds sharpened. She heard the phantom gunshots, saw Danny’s face in her mind’s eye—imagining the awful, blank look on his face. Her hands shook uncontrollably. She shook her head to dispel the image. Started counting.
Several people knelt on the ground to the elephant’s right tending to something she couldn’t see. Natalie’s head swam for a second, but then her veterinary training kicked in, and with one cautious glance toward the elephant, she headed for the group. She held her breath, hoping that the elephant hadn’t killed someone. Her heart sank when the crowd parted for a second, long enough for her to see Dr. Hatcher’s blonde hair, and between his knees on the ground, a yellow lab, its legs askew.
“He’s still alive,” Hatcher said to no one in particular. “But I don’t know if his leg’s broken. If that crazy elephant had been roaming free, this dog would be dead. No doubt.”
Instinctively, Natalie pushed through the group and sank to the ground beside Hatcher. She ran her hands down the dog’s forelimbs. “Broken in several places. Feels like the metacarpal and the radius.” Her fingers moved swiftly but knowingly over the dog’s torso, then along the spine. “I don’t think there are any other broken bones, but . . .”
The dog whimpered softly, his large brown eyes watching Natalie as if certain she knew what she was doing.
“I need some splints. If you don’t have splints, straight pieces of wood will do. And tape. Any kind. A gurney, too. Where’s the clinic? We’re going to need to get him somewhere I can set the leg. You have an x-ray machine here?”
Silence.
Natalie glanced around. Hatcher had stopped what he was doing and stared at her. His neck turned a bright red that slowly crept up his cheeks. Instantly, she realized that while her instinct was to jump into action, she’d inadvertently stepped on Hatcher’s toes. She started to apologize but was interrupted by Andrew, who’d reached the scene right before Natalie. He broke into rapid Thai. Shouting orders, she suspected. Two of the mahouts leapt to their feet and jogged down the road. Hatcher moved away, heading for the elephant.
Within seconds, the mahouts returned with a small gurney for the dog. As they carried him away, Natalie watched Hatcher accept a giant needle from one of the mahouts. Three staff members had looped restraining ropes around the ellie and held her as Hatcher inserted the needle. A sedative, Natalie figured. The elephant’s swollen front right leg was practically double the size of the left. A large open wound oozed a yellowish puss. An infection, for sure, but she had no idea whether the damage had been done a week ago or years prior. The elephant’s giant ears opened wide and flapped, a sure sign she was in the anxiety red zone.
“That wound looks close to being septic. How have you been caring for it?” she asked. She meant the question for Hatcher, but he didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t hear her. Perhaps he didn’t want to answer. Perhaps she shouldn’t have pushed her way into the situation.
Sometimes she wished she were better at reading body language.
But isn’t that why I’m here? Dr. Littlefield had said that to learn about yourself, you need to study how others respond to you. She’d given the task to Natalie as a homework assignment for the next year. “You’ve got to be your own therapist,” she’d said. “Pay attention to yourself, as well as to the others around you.” She’d urged Natalie to keep a daily journal, noting her own actions as well as others’ reactions. “Connect to at least one person a day. The only way you’ll learn to trust again is to open yourself to the possibilities. I know it might sound like a cliché, but you’ve got to lower some of the walls you’ve built. Trust your own gut reactions again.”
“Damn dogs don’t know when to keep their tails out of the way,” Andrew said as he lowered to his knees behind her. “That blasted elephant is going to kill one of them someday. She’s a malignant thing, as Shakespeare would say.”
“Not if you let me put her down,” Hatcher said. “She’s a danger to everyone here, as well as herself.” He knelt on the other side of Natalie. The mahouts had led the now docile elephant into a barn-like structure barely visible beyond the tree-line. Natalie watched as Hatcher examined the dog in the identical manner as she had. He bumped her out of the way with his hip.
“Feels like the metacarpal might have suffered a couple of major breaks,” Natalie offered as she moved to her haunches and stroked the dog’s head.
“We won’t know until we take x-rays.” Hatcher’s manner was dismissive as if he couldn’t be bothered listening to her. He turned his back to her.
“So you do have an x-ray machine.”
He nailed her with a cold, over-the-shoulder stare and turned away once again.
She suppressed a sudden urge to slap him, but that would be entirely unprofessional, not to mention a sure way to get off to a disastrous start. She choked back her anger. There’d never been a time prior to being diagnosed with PTSD that she’d had a temper, but now the smallest thing could set her off. When her secretary sat Natalie down to point out the impatience that had pushed away most of Natalie’s friends and co-workers, she realized she needed to get it under control. Obviously, there was still work to do.
Think it through, she told herself. You’re the new girl on the block.
She needed to give Hatcher his space. And respect. After all, he’d been here for years, and she had scarcely arrived. Though she’d been trying to help, he might find her pushy. Not the right way to make friends, she knew, but he wasn’t innocent either. A bit of manners on his part wouldn’t hurt. She hadn’t been bent on ruining his life so many years ago when she evaluated his theories, as he apparently believed. She’d been doing her job. Surely any educated person would understand that.
They made a small procession to the clinic only a couple of buildings away. Natalie could hear the elephant—had they called her Sophie?—roaring from the barn-like structure. She hoped they were able to control her and simultaneously prayed they weren’t hurting her. No terrified animal deserved to be hurt. Yet, this dog was pretty damn scared, too.
Without speaking, Natalie worked on the dog with Hatcher as a team, stabilizing the right leg that had been broken in six different places, not the two or three Natalie had originally thought. The dog would be lucky to walk again without a brace.
When they finished splinting the dog’s leg, Hatcher pulled off his gloves and tossed them in the trash, then turned back to Natalie. Everyone had left the clinic fifteen minutes before, so they were alone.
“Let’s get something straight.” A slight redness highlighted his cheeks as he pointed his finger at her. “I understand you’ve run your own clinic, but this one is mine, and if I’m not mistaken, your specialty is equine—not pachyderm—surgery, as mine is, so I might be able to teach you a thing or two.”
She started to protest and to explain, but he held up a hand that effectively silenced her.
“I know Andrew thinks you’re some kind of . . . wunderkind, as it were, and you might well be, but if we are to work together, you will follow my surgery’s rules, and the first and most important one for you to remember is that you, my dear, are a volunteer. I am the full-time, paid member in this surgery. Not you. You take your marching orders from me. Things are done my way. Are we clear?”
Natalie had already risen, her hands shaking, a huge knot of self-doubt in her chest. How naive she’d been to believe this place and this experience would be the panacea for much of the pain and sorrow she felt. She kicked herself for having her head in the clouds, a fault Maman had always been quick to point out: Dreaming of how things should be brings nothing but disappointment. Be ready for reality, and it will never hurt.
The reality was that she’d come here in the hopes that she’d be able to successfully move past the worst of the PTSD by working so hard she’d fall into bed exhausted every night. Maybe she’d be able to conclude the most painful part of her grief. The reality was she wasn’t alone in this place, and the others—especially Peter Hatcher—had their own agenda.
“Crystal clear,” Natalie told Hatcher through clenched teeth.
She strode out of the clinic on stilt-like legs and gave serious thought to walking straight out of the sanctuary and thumbing a ride back to Bangkok. But that thought only lasted as long as the walk back to her cabin.
She’d never been a quitter. She wasn’t about to start now.