“I will buy you a new sterile field,” she counters instantly. “I will buy the MRI machine. I will buy the building. Just look at her!”
She thrusts the dog toward me.
“She sighed, Dr. Silva! She sighedheavily.”
“Dogs sigh, Ma’am. It’s a respiratory function.”
“Not like this. This was an existential sigh.” She looks around the ER with disdain. “Is there a private room? The lighting out here is aggressive. It’s making her anxious.”
“It’s makingmeanxious,” I snap, losing my patience. “Ma’am, please remove the animal or I will have to call security.”
“Security?” She laughs. It is a cold, tinkling sound. “I pay their salaries. Try again.”
I am about to call security anyway when I hear a familiar, tired drawl from behind me.
“Mother.”
We both turn.
Preston York is standing near the nurses' station. He is holding a stack of charts. He looks like he wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole.
“Preston!” Catherine York beams. “Thank goodness. Someone with a brain. Duchess is dying.”
“Duchess is not dying,” Preston says, walking over.
He doesn't look at me. He keeps his eyes fixed on his mother, his posture shifting. The slouch he usually adopts to annoy me vanishes, replaced by a rigid, perfect posture. He looks… dutiful.
“She’s likely just constipated because you fed her the Brie again,” Preston says.
“I did no such thing! She is depressed. Look at her eyes, Preston. They lack luster.”
“Mother,” Preston says, stepping smoothly between me and her, effectively shielding me from the blast radius. “Dr. Silva is right. We can’t treat her here.”
“Why not? I brought my chequebook.”
“It’s not about money,” Preston says, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s about… the magnet.”
Catherine frowns. “The magnet?”
Preston nods solemnly. “The MRI machine here? It’s calibrated for human density. 1.5 Tesla. If we put Duchess inthere? The magnetic resonance could scramble her equilibrium.”
Catherine gasps, clutching the bag tighter.
“She’d never walk in a straight line again,” Preston continues, improvising wildly. “She’d be dizzy at the National Dog Show. She’d fall off the podium. Imagine the press, Mother.‘York Dog Stumbles.’It would be a PR nightmare.”
Catherine looks horrified. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely,” Preston lies. He turns to me. “Dr. Silva, back me up. The Tesla calibration is strictly for bipedal hominids, correct?”
I blink. I look at Preston. He is giving me a look of desperate, pleading panic.
“Uh,” I say. “Yes. Strictly bipedal. The… polarity… would be catastrophic for a Yorkshire Terrier.”
Catherine steps back, looking at the MRI sign like it is a death ray.
“Well,” she says, shaking. “Why didn’t you say so immediately? We must get her to a safe environment.”
“Exactly,” Preston says. “But we need to stabilize her first.”
