Brief

A few weeks after that, Larissa had her first day with the local vet rescue service. Lectures had stopped, and exams were about to start, so it was good to take a break and find some motivation. The first half of the day was pretty much what she expected: paperwork, training around safety, sexual harassment, dealing with the public, since that was a big part of the job, and ethics. All important stuff, but hard work. Happily, they took pity on her, and sent her out on the road for the afternoon.

Over lunch, she met Ruth, who they had assigned to her as her mentor. Straight away, she realised that she was dealing with another woman like Kat, just awesome, though obviously for different reasons. Ruth was confident, capable, no-nonsense and very friendly to her. She shook herself, at the end of lunch – how lucky was she?

Then they were out on the road. Larissa was very much just observing, which was more than enough for her. The work was a mix – emergency first responder for animals injured e.g. in road accidents, wildlife rescue, and home calls for pets, which paid for the service. The first few calls were really simple, attending to low level emergencies at homes. Interesting, and good because Ruth let her hold the pets while she treated them, and she loved talking to the pet owners, and in one case, a little kid who was crying her eyes out because her puppy was sick. Ruth gave her a smile for how she handled that one, and it was so big she could see it through the mask.

Then, they were called to traffic accident which had seriously injured a pet dog. Larissa was super careful on that call; there were real ambulances and police there for it as well. Very interesting and challenging, but also thrilling and addictive ... yeah, she could see why those people did it. They stabilised the dog, and she sat in the back of the vehicle cuddling it while they took it to a vet hospital to be cared for.

It was the next call that nearly broke her. A homeowner had found an injured kangaroo – it had jumped their fence, but its leg had got caught in the fence, and it had ripped its hip out of the pelvis. It was lying on the ground by the fence in a great deal of pain, and it could only crawl along the ground. It had a tiny little joey, still mostly hairless, poking out of its pouch occasionally. The parents had gone to work and had left behind two younger teenage girls who were watching over the kangaroo.

Ruth took one look at the kangaroo and led Larissa back to their vehicle. “Larissa, this is going to be very tough for you. I’ve got no choice but to put this kangaroo down.” She ran through the logic – too expensive to operate on it, and dubious chance of success anyway, and there were hundreds of thousands of kangaroos wild in the area, and the joey too small to keep alive without its mother. Any money spent on this kangaroo was money not spent on other animals. “And the joey too. And the cheapest way to do it is to shoot them. And I’m going to have to tell those girls, and that’ll destroy them. This is a tough one. We hate this part of the job, but it has to be done. You understand?” Yes, Larissa understood the logic, but the reality ... no, her heart had fallen out of her body. “Yeah, it’s awful. Can you hold it together long enough so we can make it easy on the girls?” Larissa looked at her, not really believing. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this, but she nodded anyway. She’d do what she had to.

In shock, she watched Ruth load up her rifle, and she held some rope and a bottle of spray paint. Grimly, she followed Ruth back to the girls, and listened as Ruth explained as gently as she could what she had to do. The girls burst into tears, inconsolable, and then called their dad, and Larissa listened to Ruth explain again. Then their dad talked to the girls again, obviously telling them to get inside so they didn’t have to watch. But Larissa did have to watch, and she saw Ruth put the gun to the head of the kangaroo and pull the trigger, and then watched as Ruth did the same to the joey, even though it really wasn’t much bigger than the bullet itself. Then Ruth picked up the pieces of the Joey and tucked them back in the kangaroo’s pouch. It was Larissa who dragged the kangaroo to the roadside, and who painted the bright pink cross on it that marked it for pick up by the road crews.

Finally, once they were back in the vehicle, Ruth said, “OK, you can let go now,” and Larissa did, crying huge sobs that wracked her body. What they’d had to do had ripped her guts out. When she calmed, she saw that Ruth was crying too. “Yeah, it never gets easy. We do this to save lives, right? But we can’t always do that, and we get the good with the bad. The good is very good, and the bad is awful.” Larissa nodded, understanding. Could she do that? Did she want to do this? She tried to imagine herself shooting any animal, let alone a little baby, and she simply couldn’t.

She asked Ruth about that, and Ruth said, “The first time this happened for me, I reacted exactly how you just did. Yes, it ripped my heart out. And you know what? If you hadn’t reacted like that, you wouldn’t ever work for us again. It’s a trust, a sacred thing, that we go out here with the authority to make that decision, and the service wants to know that we care, and that we’ll only make it if we have no other choice. The question for you is whether you’re the one that can carry that responsibility. Your lecturer thinks you should be the one, and she told me why. And I think you can and should. But you have to decide for yourself. Just give yourself time to process it, to decide. You’ll get lots of training, and lots of support. You’ll never be alone on this.”

The next two calls were lovely healing balm after that, visiting pets at home with very appreciative families, and old woman and then a young girl, maybe eight or so, who gave Larissa a serious case of hero worship for about half an hour while she held the dog and Ruth cared for it.

At the end of the day, Ruth organised for a debrief for her back at the service with Ruth and a couple of her peers and they shared their own stories and feelings. Yes, she understood now, the work was emotionally demanding in a way she could never have imagined, but also, personally rewarding in a way she hadn’t understood until she did it. This was more than a job, it was calling. But she still spent all evening cuddling with Julian, coming to terms with what happened.

Over the winter, Larissa’s relationship with Julian’s family became ever stronger. Saturday night and Sunday morning were a fixture for them, and they loved their cosy family evenings and morning yoga. The child inside her really did seem to have drowned; she was in a lovely place and very secure. It was just so much easier for her to have good relationships, and she really loved kissing her family and friends.

Asha become a firm part of the family, and Larissa loved her a lot; it only took a couple of weeks for ‘first date’ to become ‘part of the family,’ when they made an announcement to both his and her family that they were going all the way. Asha had to work really hard to bring her family along for the journey, but she succeeded, and Jaiden slept over in her bedroom as often as she slept in his. Asha’s mum Kemala was a wonderful woman and all their family got on really well with her. Larissa ran into Taman, Asha’s brother, and peeled his girlfriend off him – she actually ended up being really good friends with her. Taman, on the other hand, had to go find some other girlfriend, and top of that he got kicked out of his home until he started behaving like a proper man, to Asha’s dad’s way of thinking.

Steph made it to nearly forty weeks, and her daughter Rachel was born in the family lounge, with her family all around her; Larissa helped with the birth, and was very close to Steph, while Jaiden and Asha took lots of photos.

Larissa kept working on her core and started to be known for it amongst her friends. She ended up demonstrating it in a rather dramatic fashion by showing off how she could blow Julian while holding in a backwards sit up one evening when they visited Dave and Kat’s house. That visit had an interesting outcome: Dave and Kat’s ‘daughter’ Zara became really close friends with Larissa. One day, as a treat, Zach, their actual son, let Zara meet with Larissa at uni wearing a collar and leash to indicate her ‘slave’ status. When Zara’s joy at this led to Larissa and her getting carried away kissing in the uni café, they got kicked out, so Larissa towed Zara outside by her leash and kissed her passionately on the university lawn. That led to a photo being posted to the university Facebook page, Larissa holding Zara by the leash and kissing her, with a message ‘caption this!’. That moved ‘owning what she did on the lawn’ to a whole new level for Larissa, though at least Zara loved that the photo had been taken and posted and put it on her wall at home.

Julian and Larissa talked a lot about the threesome they promised Maria; Larissa was very content with Julian and didn’t want to put her emotional resilience at risk, but they had promised, and they kept their promises. So they agreed that Maria would probably be their only threesome ever, though both really enjoyed playing around with their friends with sexy games, making out, and getting tied up by each other a little.

Maria did go alcohol free for the three months, and then for another additional month while Rachel came and Larissa’s life settled after that. After the three months, she introduced Aaden to family, which was very initially challenging for Maria, but by the time they finally got to their threesome, she was good with her wider family and great friends with her sister and went ahead with it. For Larissa, this meant the that the threesome, which she had worried would be rather intense, became a gentle loving affair that she did really enjoy, though they did tie Maria up and make her come just like Larissa had. For Maria, the audience was small: Aaden, Fiona and Alan, and Maria’s sister. That was particularly special for Maria because Aaden was tied up for the threesome, and her sister understood her totally.

Larissa’s friendship group grew and solidified, and she came towards the end of winter at the top of her classes, with strong friendships and tightly bound to family, working at least once a week with Ruth or other guys, and totally enjoying her life and focusing on her goals.

But just when you think you have your life sorted, it turns around and bites you in the bum.

It was a foul day in late winter; a storm had rolled in from the Southern Ocean across Melbourne. Cold, wet, and windy: yuck. Larissa was at uni, but mid-morning, she got a call from the vet rescue service: staff were sick, there were a lot of emergency calls, could she possibly get out on the road? She looked at her schedule: all lectures she could catch up on YouTube, so she said yes. She knew just how bad it was when she got there, and they sent her out on her own for the first time. The supervisor said that Ruth thought she was ready, and they’d try and steer her away from the more complex medical things, and there was plenty of other stuff to do. Exciting, but on the other hand, she already had trouble feeling like she was ready, or even physically big enough, and going out alone under these circumstances magnified that feeling. And she still didn’t feel ready to use the gun yet either.

But she was way too busy for feelings on this day. Larissa typically went out with two spare changes of uniform, as she often ended up changing during the day. Animals bled, urinated on her, or it rained and they were often in the mud. Ruth and she were pretty good at finding a spot behind the van to change if they needed to. But this foul day, all her work was wet work, and her first two uniforms were sodden, smelly muddy messes by early afternoon. Larissa sucked it up and kept going; today was very busy, and there was no time to do anything else.

The call that changed everything started out fairly innocuously: a couple of dogs stranded on an island in a flooded creek. She arrived at the given location during a break in the rain and pulled over, and at the same time, a police van pulled up. She recognised one of the cops – Johnny-Boy, one of the instructors at Taekwondo sometimes. She said hello and ran down the bank from the road with her mobile kit, where a woman was waiting to point out the dogs. She understood immediately why she’d been called – the dogs were stuck on an island, yes, but they’d slipped or something, and they were ... impaled ... on the branches? Definitely wounded, for sure. Larissa quickly looked at the flooded creek – the water was maybe a meter deep maximum between her and the dogs, and the water was flowing briskly, not fast. Obviously, she needed to get to the dogs as quick as possible, and do the minimum first aid possible, and get them back to the shore as quick as she could.

She turned to the woman. “Is the flooding getting worse?”

“Yes, slowly. But this creek, that can change quickly.”

Well, she wasn’t going out there without a back-up plan. She turned to Johnny-Boy who’d joined her. “I have to get over there. Have you got any rope?”

He frowned. “You really want to go over there? It doesn’t look safe.”

“It’s probably OK now if I don’t lose my footing. That’s why I want the rope – tie me up in case. If the flooding gets worse, I’ll abandon them. But I have to try.”

Johnny-Boy nodded and ran back to his van. By the time he got back, Larissa had pulled her boots off, dropped her pants, put her boots back on, and popped her shirt and mask off: she wasn’t getting this uniform wet too! It was only when Johnny-Boy’s eyebrows raised that she remembered she wasn’t in her boring sports underwear, which she usually wore out on the road, for exactly this kind of reason. Instead, her normal plain black minimal underwear. Oh crap. She glanced at the woman and shrugged. They’d seen it now, and anything else would waste time. Johnny-Boy gave her a waist harness attached to a rope, and she quickly put it on and tightened it up. By the time she’d done that, and got him to check it, his partner had the rope anchored on a stump, and he gave her a thumbs up. OK, time to do this.

She carefully stepped out into the stream of water – seemed OK, though it was cold. Carefully she moved forward, step by step, checking that her support crew were OK. She made it through the water to the dogs. The nearest, bigger dog was in the worst state, and now that she was here, she could see that yes, it was impaled, not deeply, but at least one rib badly broken, so definitely a life-threatening injury. Strange – looking quickly she couldn’t see why that would have happened. But it sure had. She had a quick look over it, and she could see that it had a broken front leg as well. She spent a precious minute comforting both dogs, they were very distressed. Their eyes begged for help, and she promised them she’d save them.

Well, nothing for it. She didn’t have cutting gear, or time. The only choice would be to pull the dog off. Ouch. She took the dog in her arms and stood over it for the best leverage she could. A quick yank, and the poor dog was squealing and barking. Her heart went out to it, but she had no choice. It was bleeding, so she grabbed the bandage from her hip, and wound it around the dog quickly. Then she unclipped its leash, which was stuck to something, called out to her support to pull the rope tight, and carefully made her way back to base. She grimaced – the water had definitely got worse in that short time, and this wasn’t a small dog; its weight was noticeable.

Back to base, and she asked the woman who was waiting for her originally to sit, and hold the dog, and not to let him go, while she got the other one. She was getting an audience, she noticed. Sigh. But too late now. She went back to her kit and grabbed a couple more bandages, onto her hip, and turned back to the creek.

“You sure it’s still safe to go out?” Johnny-Boy asked her.

She screwed up her nose. Honestly, the water was rising and it wasn’t clearly safe anymore. It was still OK right now, but for how long? But if she didn’t go, that dog was going to die for sure. For a second, she froze, trying to decide.

“Not really, but that dog will die if I don’t.” She grimaced. “I’ll be as quick as I can, and if it gets any higher, I’ll abandon it.”

He nodded. “You’re tough but be careful.”

This time she didn’t go slow – she pushed across to the other side as quick as her support crew could let the rope out. She looked at the second dog: what was holding it in place? A leash! One that she couldn’t see from the other side of the water. A quick check of the dog and she couldn’t find any injuries; it was just very cold and distressed. She reached down to unclip the leash when she suddenly thought – a leash? Why? The other end of the leash disappeared into the bush behind the dog. She stepped over it and pushed her way through the bush. It scratched her, but she had a bad feeling about this. Sure enough, on the other side of the bush, where she couldn’t be seen from her side of the creek, she found a young girl lying in a ditch, mostly in the water, and unconscious from hypothermia, her face badly scratched and with an obviously broken femur. Oh shit!

Looking at the ditch, it was a muddy trap, and she didn’t want to climb down into it – too risky. But she had no time to waste. She grimaced: she had only one choice. She lay down on the side of the ditch with her legs on the ground and the rest of her out over the ditch, hooked her ankles around a bush, and lowered her head down to the child, maybe a meter down. A girl, maybe, about ten years old. Gently, she slid her arms under the girl. Good thing she did all that work on her core, all those backwards sit ups, because this was going to absolutely hammer it. She grunted a few times, hyperventilating, and then quickly gathered the girl up against her chest, and just forced her torso up. Now what? Her arm strength wasn’t enough to lift the girl around to the edge of the ditch. She had no choice but to rely on her core, and she pulled even further back. Shit that really hurt all over, and the backs of her legs hurt the most, but she had the girl on dry ground now, in front of her knees.

She took a deep breath. Going for the other side wasn’t an option – much more water, she could only go back to base. The rope was around her waist, and the tugging on it was getting more insistent now. As well it might, Johnny-Boy would be freaking out. She picked the girl up as well as she could and staggered up and pushed back through the bush. More scratching for both of them, but at least she was out the other side, the girl still in her arms.

Johnny-Boy had been looking at her in real concern – what the hell was she doing? Because the water really was a problem now. His expression quickly changed – stunned. Yes. Now what?

She shouted at him, but he couldn’t hear clearly enough, she could see – too much noise from the water. Well, she had no choice. She couldn’t stay where she was. And she wasn’t going to leave the dog. We are strong and do the right thing! She lowered herself to the ground and tried to scoop the dog up. Crap. The leash was still caught. Could she reach it? Yes, but not enough to unclip it. She pulled as hard as she could on it, but her arm strength didn’t do it. Could her core do it? She wiggled around, and grunted, hyperventilating again. She gave one big pull with both her arm and core, whatever she could, and the leash pulled clear. Great. She scooped the dog up into her arms as well as she could on top of the girl and staggered up again.

Grimly she looked at the torrent of water between her and safety. She had a real problem now – the water had risen significantly, and the force had increased. At least she had the rope, and Johnny-Boy was in the water now – with the girl in the picture, the rules had changed for him. She mimed at him, should she wait? He grimaced, and shook his head, miming that the water was rising. Well, she had no choice. The girl was too cold for that anyway – she needed to get warm as soon as possible.

One step at a time, she moved into the water. The rope was tight now, and she tried to use it to help stabilise her against the current. No, it didn’t help. The water was up over her waist and getting deeper. For the first time, she was afraid, and cold. She slipped a bit, pushed by the current. What could she do? No choice but to try going forward. If she lost her footing, she was not letting go of the girl. She took another step, and did lose her footing, falling into the water. She took a deep breath as she went down and held on tight to the girl as she was submerged. The rope pulled her over, and pulled hard on her waist, hurting her, and the girl yanked on her arms hard, but the rope did pull her into shallower water, and she got her head above the water briefly. She slid a bit more, but the current was getting less, and she managed to get her knees on the ground, her face just above the water. She still had the girl, but the dog was gone. She lifted the girl’s face out of the water and looked around.

Now, she was down below a concrete embankment, water churning out of it behind her. Johnny-Boy shouted at her, they were hanging onto the rope, ready to pull again. She shouted to stop. If she could get to her feet that would be better. It took two attempts, she was getting cold, tired and sore, but she was on her feet, the girl still safe in her arms. Yes! Now, they could tow her forward with the rope, and all she had to do was stay upright. They pulled her forward gradually, and suddenly she was secure enough to take her own steps. She moved quickly to the edge of the concrete embankment – now all she had to do was lift the girl enough that Johnny-Boy could reach her. She gritted her teeth and lifted, arching her back, and he took the girl, reaching down a very long way indeed, anchoring his feet using the fence at the top. Yes! Good thing he was stronger than her by miles. Stronger even than Julian, so he could pull off freaky feats like that one.

Now all she had to do was get out herself. Johnny-Boy’s partner reached down and grabbed her hand. That was certainly the best choice, if she could hold his hand, but she was wet and cold, and her hand slipped when he lifted her straight up. He leaned down as far as he could this time, and they clasped wrists. This time she put her feet on the concrete wall and used her core strength to walk up the wall. With less weight on their handhold, he was able to pull her up, and she collapsed on the top, breathless. She’d survived! That wasn’t at all obvious when she slipped into the water. She grinned in joy. The hardest part was behind her. She pushed herself up, pushed the harness off, and went to check on the girl. By now, there were quite a few people watching. She ordered them to go downstream, looking for the dog she’d lost hold of. They took one look at her, bleeding, wet and cold, and did what she said.

Johnny-Boy had the girl lying on the ground and was opening his first-aid kit. She knelt down beside him. “Is she breathing?”

“Yeah, but not great.”

“She went under the water.” He nodded. “We should treat her as a drowning victim?” He nodded again.

Larissa decided that it was better she did mouth to mouth than a guy, since it was a young girl. She bent down and gave the girl mouth-to-mouth, four breaths, and then they tipped her over. A little water came out of her mouth, but her breathing didn’t improve.

“Hypothermia,” Johnny-Boy said.

She agreed. “You have a blanket?” He nodded: it was already in his hand. Quickly, but as gently as she could, she stripped the girl’s outer layer of clothing off, being careful with her leg, and they wrapped her in the hypothermia blanket.

“Larissa, you should get dressed.”

Oh, yes. “You’re right,” she said, embarrassed now. She wasn’t wearing much at all. She found her clothes and sat down to take her boots off. Then, she just couldn’t. She looked at her boots, wondering what she was supposed to do. No, it was all too much; it had all caught up with her.

Suddenly, she was wrapped up in a blanket of her own, and Johnny-Boy moved her into his lap, holding her tight. Yeah, she needed this. She wasn’t sure how long he held her, as she warmed up, and started thinking again. The scratches hurt, yes, but she had work to do, she knew. She looked around, and Johnny-Boy’s partner was giving mouth-to-mouth to the girl. She turned back to Johnny-Boy and gave him a quick kiss. “I’m fine now,” she said, “thanks for that, I did need it. The girl needs you now.” He nodded and set her down gently.

By the time she had her boots off, she could hear the sirens of the ambulance coming. She could focus on the dogs now, her actual job. She wriggled into her pants, and threw her shirt and mask on, but doing the laces on her boots up proved a challenge – her fingers were still too cold, too clumsy. A friendly watcher knelt in front of her and did the laces up for her. “Thanks,” she said, that made a real difference.

She checked on the first dog – it had been a dramatic few minutes – and the woman was still holding her. “Thanks,” she said, “I really appreciate you still holding him. Can you do it a little longer?” The woman smiled at her and nodded. She gave the dog a once over; her bandage was holding, and she decided to leave things as they were.

Time to chase the other dog. But no one had seen it or found it. The impressive young man who did her laces up gave a crisp report – they’d looked on both sides of the creek down to the tunnel where the creek went into a bigger river and found nothing. No chance that the poor dog survived if it went into the tunnel. The water was a long way up now; the island was gone, and the dog had no chance. Sadly, she thanked him. Logically, she knew that she’d done what she could, but she still felt cut up about it. The little girl’s dog had died because she couldn’t hold onto it. How could she explain that to her own heart, let alone the girl? But presumably the other dog belonged to the girl too. And there would be internal bleeding at least, and probably organ damage: time to get it to the pet hospital, keep at least that one alive. She’d do that and sit there and write up her report; sigh ... paperwork.

By the time the woman had helped her splint the dog’s leg and get it in the back of the van, the impressive young man had helped her tidy up her gear, and she’d given her heartfelt thanks to Johnny-Boy, she was feeling physically better, though still sore all over. And then, when she sat in the van in the pet hospital carpark to do the paperwork, there was another call. The scratches hurt, but she’d checked on them quickly, and they didn’t need treatment, as long as they didn’t get infected. She put some antiseptic on the scratched areas, ignored the burning feeling, stretched out her aching muscles, punted the paperwork till later, and pushed on with her day.

When she was with Ruth, Larissa did the paperwork while Ruth drove, and she also had a chance to check her phone. But not this day; there was never any chance. Her phone did seem particularly busy, but she’d catch up later. Then, late in the afternoon, it actually rang while she was driving to her next call, nearly there. She didn’t recognise the number, but whatever, she’d find out what it was about. She pressed the answer button on the steering wheel.

“Hello, it’s Larissa.”

“Hello Larissa, this is Mark Evans.” Mark Evans ... the name was vaguely familiar, why? Oh yes, he was CEO of the Vet Rescue Service. Oh. Why would he be ringing her?

“Oh, Hi. Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m wondering if you can drop your current call and make your way to headquarters, please.”

Shit. What had she done? “Umm, what’s this about? Have I screwed something up? I’m sorry if I have, this is my first day out on my own, and I’m doing my best.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. It’s just...”

“Well, can I handle the next call? I’m only a couple of minutes away from it, and no one else is near, the dispatcher just told me.”

“Yes, I guess that would be good. But please, come straight in after that. Don’t do any paperwork. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Whatever. Disturbing, but she put it aside and saved another life. Well, not quite, though the little kid was very happy after she patched his cat up after a vicious fight.

Back at headquarters, things got really weird, fast. They were waiting for her and signalled her to pull up at the front door, and someone else jumped into the van to look after it. Mark introduced himself and rushed her into a room full of other people and sat her down at a meeting table, still in her wet and muddy uniform. He smiled at her.

“Everyone, say hello to Larissa.” There was a chorus of hellos, and a lot of smiles. Well, at least, she wasn’t in trouble. Probably. “OK, firstly, are you OK?”

Larissa looked at him, what kind of question was that? Guardedly, she said, “Umm, yeah, I mean, I think so. Can you tell me what this is about?” Cause maybe I won’t be OK...

He looked surprised. “You don’t know then. Claire, can you show Larissa?”

She turned to the projector screen, and watched, horrified. Someone had filmed the entire incident in the water from up above and on the other side of the creek. She watched it with dread – it started as she pulled up, and she was front and centre all the way through until she got back in the van again. Had all that really only taken ten minutes? The angle they had showed everything, including a bit of the girl’s body she hadn’t seen the first time, and how hard it was for her to retrieve the girl. Weak. All her mistakes, stupid decisions, risky moves, all on display. How Johnny-Boy and his partner had to pull on the rope impossibly hard to save her from a huge churn of water behind where she ended up; her and the girl would’ve died for sure if she’d been any further back. And that poor dog, swept straight out of her arms. Crushing. What was she thinking? She just didn’t belong here.