The Night After Christmas Read online

work injecting a tranquilizer into a neck vein and a local anesthetic into the artery above the fetlock.

  While the injections went to work, Ellen unwrapped a sterile packet of gauze, and began swabbing down the gaping wound with a dilute solution of water and alcohol, gently removing the dirt and small pieces of rusty wire. “What did you say he hit?” she asked suspiciously as she pulled free a particularly nasty looking piece of wire.

  “Ahh, cudn’t rightly say,” the stranger replied evasively, "but the boss said it looked like a high-tension power line. Hit it hard we did, ‘cos of all that snow, cudn’t see it coming until we wuz right on top of it, and poor ole 237, 'ere, 'ee was in the lead and hit it right-hard with his leg, as yer can see.”

  Ellen just grunted. She had heard a lot of strange tales told by owners too embarrassed to admit they had dropped their dogs out of open windows and broken all their legs. But a tale of a reindeer jumping over 200 feet high power lines was a bit extreme, even for the festive season. She assumed that the reindeer was probably part of a circus, or a Christmas show put on for the local children, and that the animal had fallen under a fence, probably while being chased by screaming infants or drunken fathers.

  Deftly she picked up a sharp, curved needle and threaded it with strong silk, which these days was all plastic. Starting at the bottom of the wound she inserted the needle into the firm flesh at the side of the leg, then through the flap of torn skin, deftly pulling the two edges together. When she was sure that both met properly she gave a deceptively rapid flick of one wrist so that loose end of the silk twisted around the end of the needle, then she pulled the knot tight, repeating the dexterous move several more times until multiple knots held the stitch firmly in place.

  All the way up one side of the torn leg, and then down the other side of the leg Ellen inserted and tied off a neat row of tight stitches that steadily, firmly and carefully pulled all the tissues back into their proper orientation. Only at the very bottom of the wound, closest to the hoof, did she leave a small opening which, she told the stranger, was to allow the puss to drain out as the damage healed.

  Pausing only to push her soft blond hair out of her eyes, she took a quick look at the stranger whose head was very close to that of the reindeer. He was gently patting the spot between the large brown eyes of the animal and making a kind of clicking sound at the back of this throat that appeared to sooth the large animal and keep the vicious spread of horns safely out of her face.

  Putting away the needle and silk thread, Ellen picked up the gauze once more and cleaned the exterior of the wound, firmly this time as she tested her needlework and made sure all the stitches were solid and holding the skin flaps together without moving or slipping. When satisfied she collected the bloody pieces of gauze and stuffed them into a plastic bag.

  “I’m going to coat the leg with an antiseptic and antibiotic containing salve,” she said to the stranger, who nodded, clearly not understanding a word. “I’ll give you some extra bandages, and over the next couple of days you must change the bandage and put on more salve at least twice a day, do you understand?” Again the stranger nodded in complete lack of understanding.

  “Get him to your local vet right away,” Ellen snorted, and bent down to slowly pad the wound with fresh gauze. Once she was sure the gauze was in place she wrapped a much longer piece of gauze round and around the leg holding the salve, gauze and stitches safe from the dirt and snow. “He’ll be able to walk fine as soon as the sedative wears off,” she added, finally straightening up her sore back and pushing the cramps out of her shoulders.

  “You can put his other leg down now.” But then she saw that the stranger had not been holding the other front leg, and true to his prediction the reindeer had been a model patient during the uncomfortable and frightening procedure it had just undergone. Instead, the reindeer turned his large head in Ellen’s direction and gently poked her side with his soft nose.

  “See, ‘ee likes ‘ee,” said the stranger with a grin. Ellen patted the nose and watched two large tears run out of the corner of two very large, very brown eyes and drop into the dirt on the barn floor. For some reason she could not explain, tears welled up in her own eyes as well, and soon joined those of the reindeer on the floor of the barn. This had never happened to her before, if you don’t count the time back in vet school where she had rescued a very wet and very damaged kitten whose eyes were even larger than the rest of its body. Or that was the way she remembered it.

  To hide her embarrassment she pushed away the reindeer’s head and set about re-packing her bag. “He should be fine now,” she said gruffly, “just make sure you get it seen to as soon as possible, that bandage won’t last more than a few hours.”

  “We’ll be home tonight miss, at least that's what the boss said,” was the reply.

  “Far to go?” Ellen asked.

  “Oh, you know, all the way home,” the stranger said, repeating his grin and pointing a thumb towards the north. “But I doubt if the boss will have ole 237 do much of the pulling tonight. Anyway, we’re empty now, made the last delivery earlier, so there won’t be much to pull.”

  “Well,” said Ellen, "try to keep the dirt off the leg until you can change the bandage.” She was starting to get angry with the stranger for his casual answers to her questions. She did a quick mental calculation and then quoted a dollar figure to the stranger. “I won’t charge you extra for the emergency call, since you came to me, but I have to charge you for the stitches and all the chemicals.”

  At that moment she knew she was not going to get paid. A foolish look came over the stranger’s face; he grinned again and patted both his sides with both his hands indicating that he had no pockets in his jacket and no money.

  “Where’s your boss?” she asked angrily, this was too bad, first the snow, then the power outage, then the cold, then the emergency call, now this. She could have used the extra fee she charged for an emergency-call to pay for a few luxuries. His face clouded and the twinkle in his eyes faded, but before he looked away from her in embarrassment, Ellen could have sworn that his eyes flicked nervously upwards in the direction of the house roof. She refused to turn around and look for herself, cursing under her breath at the silliness of it all.

  “At least give me your name and where I can get in touch with you,” she insisted, but again the stranger just grinned and hooked his thumb in a northerly direction. “That’ll be a bit ‘ard,” he replied. “Won’t be around ‘ere for quite a while now that we’re all done. But don’t worry, we won’t forget ‘ee next year. Look for summat special.”

  “That won’t pay the bills this year,” Ellen snorted angrily. “Come on, out of the barn. You can go home now.” She pushed the rear end of the reindeer out into the snow once more, and dragged the barn door closed against the drifts. “Know your way off my land?” she asked over her shoulder as she struggled to get herself back to her kitchen door.

  “Oh, ar reckins we do,” came a tinkling reply, followed by a cough and a kind of sneeze from the reindeer. “And thank ‘ee kindly for all your trouble.”

  She waved a hand over her head, tucked her face down against the wind, and concentrated on not falling over as she forced one leg and then the other against the heavy snow. When she finally reached her door, she could not help looking back towards the barn. The stranger and his reindeer were nowhere in sight. Her barn stood a short distance from the house, and the driveway down to the stream and the winding road beyond it ran between the house and the barn. It was a full moon, and by now there was enough light to see most of the driveway and almost all the way down to the stream. But the stranger and his pet were nowhere to be seen. They had vanished.

  Thinking they might have taken a wrong turn, Ellen pushed her way back into the snow and looked to see if they had gone up the hill towards the wood instead of down the hill towards the road, but still she saw nothing. Deep in the snow outside the barn were a lot of tracks caused by thei
r prior journey from the house, but nothing leading up or down the hill. There the snow lay pristine and undisturbed. It was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed them.

  Angrily she realized that the pair had gone back inside the barn and were probably sheltering until it got light. She was tempted to ignore them, let them stay in the barn for one night; the reindeer probably needed the rest anyway. But then she remembered that the stranger did not have a coat and that the barn was unheated. He would probably freeze before dawn.

  With more curses than her father knew she knew, she turned around and trudged somewhat more easily this time back to the barn. When she started this short journey, she was determined to get her unwanted visitors out of the barn and on their way, but by the time she arrived at the barn door her natural kindness had replaced that ungracious emotion with one more charitable, and she was at least open to the idea that the stranger and his pet could stay for the night, even at the expense of a couple of extra blankets she kept for the horses.

  It was now very cold indeed, and Ellen was not looking forward to spending a night without electric heat inside her own house, never mind outside in the barn, but what else could she do?