Call Seasons

This isn’t an overly popular opinion, but I really enjoy being on call. Sure it can get busy, and there’s nothing like working until 6:00am only for your day shift to start at 7:30, but the people I get to meet and the animals I get to help really make it special. You never quite know what’s going to call in and I’ve had everything from ear infections and vaccines (yep, really) to dog C-sections, hit-by-cars, and one memorable bear attack. Large animal call is particularly interesting for me as I don’t do a ton of large animal medicine on a daily basis, and calving season is an (exhausting) highlight of the year. 

“Call Seasons” explores the difference between call shifts in summer and winter, and the incredible beauty I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by, both inside and out of vet med. 

Call during winter means leaving the house in the early dark of the morning, soft crunch-hum of studded tires through fresh snow and both hands on the wheel ready to catch the very first slip of invisible ice, means drive-through lines that wend their way half a street back and keeping the window rolled up tight between order and pickup. I blast heat at toes that never quite seem to thaw and dig myself deep into the three-sizes-too-big men’s winter jacket I bought at an Alberta Costco, an hour and a half over the border that doesn’t seem too far to go for outlet malls and no sales tax.

Call during summer means a northern sun that stays up far longer than I ever expect it to, means that when my phone goes off with the screaming siren ringtone I’ve programmed in to wake me from even the heaviest sleep I’m surprised to find it only just sinking below the horizon. The stethoscope hanging from the rearview mirror sways and catches the last of the light, spangling the truck’s cab with golden light and I’m torn between holding the moment of beauty and hating it for making it hard for me to read the directions on my cracked phone screen. Later, much later, or earlier depending on how you look at it I’ll feel the same thing when the sunrise glares into my eyes and makes the road shimmer as my foot drops to the brakes. I can’t see jack shit and I mutter soft curses but the aspen by the side of the road are so perfect, shining towers of light and leaves, and the clouds glow in the east.

Call during winter means leaving the house in the dark and going home in the dark; straining to catch glimpses of the sun from the broad surgical suite windows just to remind myself that it’s still out there, means that no matter what time I’m pulled from my bed it’s almost guaranteed that I’ll be driving with high-beams on and whispering prayers to the god of slippery backroads that no deer decide to end their lives on my front end.

Call during summer means sunglasses and open windows, driving just fast enough to beat my own dust, slowing down for the bumps and potholes so the scratched CD warbling Radio Gaga at me doesn’t skip again. It seems each week brings rolling thunder and jagged spikes of lightning; praying for the dry tinder of the trees to stay safe once more, glancing up during surgery to see the sky writhe and open up in pouring streams of blessed rain as my vet runs smooth lines of intestine through her fingers.

Call during winter means bolting the sixty feet of icy gravel and melt-freeze-melt-freeze pebbled ice of the parking lot between the large animal barn and the clinic door so I don’t have to spend ten minutes getting bundled up, bare arms and thin scrub top that do nothing against the first warning chill of thirty-below air. There are late-night early-morning mid-day Tim’s runs, double-double or sometimes half French Vanilla for a little extra sweetness, hot hot hot burning my tongue warming my belly, turning into a frozen lump in a cardboard cup if I dare leave it in the car more than a couple of hours.

Call during summer means heat, Iced Capps and Popsicles and lying languid in the evening, draped over the picnic bench behind the clinic waiting for a car to screech into the parking lot, the emergency I know is coming and the long night ahead but right now there’s just the pressing stillness of air and the whine of mosquitoes and the drowning blue of a sky like the sea.

Call during winter means calving and finding way too much comfort in the heat of a uterus cradled in my arms as my vet stitches away industrially, jokes about freezing to suture needles and calving chains that ring a little too true, the long drive in the early morning spent wondering how good this rancher’s set-up is, hoping out loud for maternity pen and good lighting and, above all, heat…then getting home frozen through and falling asleep with the electric blanket on high, waking up sweating and only to freeze again the moment I put bare feet on the linoleum floor.

Call during summer means driving into the sunrise as I leave from work and driving into the sunset coming home, squinting my eyes in both directions swerving to avoid the broken asphalt from the spring melt swerve back to avoid the neighbor’s car-chasing dog, slow down as I pass the cow-and-calf operation by my turnoff. After a long day and knowing full well that I won’t be home more than an hour or so, there’s something calming about pulling over and to watch the calves chase each other in clumsy games of tag while mothers bitch about their rowdy offspring from the shade. A farm truck passes and starts to slow down, wondering why I’m stopped, are you okay do you need me to call someone? Can I help? The compassion and curiosity of a small town, but I wave him along with a thumbs-up and go back to my watching.

Call during winter is cold, and dark, and call during winter is so full of stars I almost can’t imagine the sky is vast enough to hold them all. The twisting smoky patterns of a Milky Way I’ve never seen in cities goes on forever and the air is stillness, and snowfall, and antlers silhouetted against the moon when the elk come down to the forgotten round bales. Call during winter is hoarfrost turning the trees to silver light and at my feet a calf bawls, stumbling to its feet in a halo of steam, a new life we’ve taken hold of and drawn out into the world.

Call during summer is light and heat, sound and fury, canola fields shining gold at noon and at night the neon lights of the Ferris wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl and the roar of the crowd as the wagons round the final turn. The air is spiced with the scent of green and growing things, the dusty smell of dry grass, smoke, hot asphalt after rain. Call during summer is a foal kicking up his heels as he bolts across the tiny lawn in front of the medical stalls, how he bucks and rears and spins and darts back tail up head up white socks flashing and how his mother nickers just once, shakes her head. She has learned patience with each new season of motherhood and now she paces easily a step behind my shoulder, following me to the echoing coolness and dim of the medical barn as her wild child flares his nostrils and wheels about to race the wind.