It was proving harder than I could have realized to feel like an adult with my life together and people 'below' me in ranking when I felt like I was scrambling every minute of the day just to do the bare minimum that being a grown woman required.
I was pretty sure I had permanently ruined my dishwasher that very morning. Don't ask me how, it was just another thing I would need to handle but had no idea how to, so I would spend my lunch break Googling everything I could about dishwasher repair since I still wasn't in a place to just go out and buy one. My super wasn't an option, because he was a complete creep who stared at my boobs and tried to "reassure" me that I was safe because he was the only person in the world with a key to my door.
I was constantly trying to steam my work jacket in the bathroom when I showered in the morning because I could never remember to pick up an iron and board, even though I passed that department at the store all the time on my way to the pet section to stock up on a needless number of toys for Nugget.
My cell bill was overdue, evidenced by the twelve or so calls a day I got from the company. It wasn't that I didn't have the money to pay it, either. I just kept telling myself I would get to it. Then never actually doing it.
On top of all of that, I was sitting in the break room under the window, wedged between the garbage can and the refrigerator sobbing my eyes out like a kindergartener on their first day of school when they realized their mom and dad really weren't going to come in with them.
"I had to put the puppy down," I told her, heels scrubbing my eyes, hoping the pressure could stem the flow of the tears like a towel pressed to a bleeding wound. That was what my heart felt right about then. Like a bleeding wound.
"Yes, well, in this line of work, you are going to need to put a lot of animals down," Nadine reminded me, just barely tolerating my misery.
I understood that.
Of course, I had known that going into this profession.
A part of being a vet was compassionate care. Like taking a very sick animal out of their misery.
Maybe I could have accepted it better if this was a thirteen-year-old, arthritic dog riddled with cancer and in pain every moment of its life.
But this was a puppy. A two-month-old puppy that some monster had dumped on the side of the road in a freaking black garbage bag along with his siblings and without their mother—left to die of starvation, the elements, or to be picked off by predators.
When rescuers had gotten there, two of the others had already died. They had brought the other two to us. The oldest—and by far the biggest, the strongest—had taken well to treatment, was getting good and fat, and was already back at the rescue, waiting for his forever family to find him and take him in and spoil him for the rest of his life.
The other—the skinny runt of the litter that had somehow survived, likely because he'd been wedged under the warmth of his bigger sibling—had been holding on by a thread. I'd pulled double shifts for a week trying to nurse him back to life, making endless calls home to my mother who had worked animal rehabilitation for her whole life.
But nothing worked.
Every day, despite my best efforts, just seemed to bring him closer and closer to the brink while he lay there in misery, letting out sad little whimpers of defeat.
I knew it was time, that there was no future for him, that trying to force him to hang on when he was in pain and deteriorating fast was cruel.
The decision had to be made.
No matter how awful it was.
And fifteen minutes before, in my arms, he'd taken his last gasping breath.
I felt like a part of me died with him.
I felt like someone had pulled out my heart and kneaded it between their hands.
I wasn't sure it could ever feel not-bruised again.
"Nadine, why is no one..." Dr. Shepherd, my superior, my idol, the woman who ran this office with a diplomatic hand and a warm heart, started, moving inward, her low heels clicking on the linoleum floor as she moved in beside Nadine. She was in her forties with a stunning face, curly copper hair that always got compliments from strangers, and striking bright blue eyes. "Oh," she said. The word was a sighing, defeated sound.
They all knew.
I couldn't do this.
I wasn't cut out for this.
All those years of my life slaving away at school were a waste of time and resources. My parents might as well have taken the giant stack of cash they'd put toward my education and burned it since there seemed to be no future for me in this field.