Prologue, Part 1

December 11, 2005

Clickity-clack. Click, click, clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. My ears are filled by the noisy progress emitting from the neighboring cubicles as the occupants pound their way through a standardized typing test. It is amazingly difficult to concentrate with the amount of chatter their fingers are producing on the keyboards. Sweat beads my forehead as my concentration returns to the computer before me. My stressed-out features are highlighted by the glow of the monitor whose display contains the questions upon which my future is hinged. I stare dumbly at the random queries expressed concisely in Times New Roman before me. How long is the road that has led to this moment? Four years? Has it been four years since I began classes at Oklahoma State’s College of Veterinary Medicine?

The time that seemed to crawl by so slowly at the living of it now appears to me only in brief glimpses from my memory. I vividly recall my first year spending countless waking hours in the anatomy lab, the harsh bite of formaldehyde filling my nose and making my eyes water. I intently dissected latex-injected blood vessels away from their surrounding muscle tissue and fat, my pristine white lab coat long since horribly stained with the brown spatter from the preserved cadavers. Long, grueling nights were spent at the old wooden desk in my room, my back hunched at the shoulders as I poured over my class notes from the day’s physiology lectures. I would fill the gaps in the presented information by reading passage after passage from the veterinary textbooks that had taken up the remainder of the student loans left over from paying that semester’s tuition. How many tests and finals had passed since then as we struggled to learn multiple subjects on multiple species? I recall more recently the mixture of elation and terror that filled me as we underwent our first live-animal surgeries. Elation that we were finally able to use the skills that we had paid so dearly in time and money to acquire, and terror that for the first time an actual life was being entrusted to our inexperienced hands. Most recent of all was the time spent in the Teaching Hospital our fourth year as we began to apply all the knowledge that we had obtained thus far on actual cases.

All of this has brought me to where I am now: sitting in a cramped little cubicle in front of a computer in a dreadful little room at a testing center in Tulsa, OK, as I valiantly struggle to assimilate four years worth of information into one National Veterinary Board Exam. It is absurdly hard. After three years of undergraduate classes at OSU consisting of biology, chemistry, physics, and genetics, followed by four years of veterinary school, I have taken a lot of hard tests. Nothing has prepared me for the feeling of inadequacy that fills me as I stare at the computer screen.

I have learned nothing. I know nothing. And I can think of nothing as seven of the ten people in this little room are pounding on a keyboard as they take a stupid typing test! I mean really? I’ve committed four years of vet school, a total of seven years since high school and I’m in debt to the tune of sixty-thousand dollars in student loans for this moment. It is kind of important to me! If I don’t pass this test, I can’t get a veterinary license. If I can’t get a veterinary license, I can’t practice medicine, which means I can’t get a job. And I don’t have a whole helluva lot of other skill sets to offer. So do you think I could at least get a friggin’ quiet place to bomb this test and fail at my life’s pursuit?

No, evidently not. And so I continue to take the test, answering the questions to the best of my grievously limited knowledge and laughable experience. Finally the last question has been answered and my test is submitted. On shaky legs, I walk into the waiting area of the testing center. Close to six hours has passed since I entered. My eyes ache and fatigue fills my body.

In the waiting room I meet up with Trent and Shalyn. I first met Trent in my first chemistry lab at OSU. The safety video that cautioned us to not set our arm on fire with the Bunsen burner was rewinding in the VCR as we lit up to boil a beaker of water. Real first day of class, orientation type stuff. Trent was a few years older than I and had spent a few semesters at a small private school playing college baseball and had struggled a bit finding out what he wanted to do after a shoulder injury put the skids on the sports career. At the time he had a face full of black beard, wore baggy clothes and had multiple piercings. His alternative look made him a bit scary, to be honest. This first impression was not helped when he reached across the lit burner and promptly set his arm on fire. It was the first and only time I have ever seen the lab safety shower being utilized. Afterwards, I was talking to a friend about studying for a quiz after class when Trent walked up, literally smoldering, to ask if he could study with us. We traded looks and reluctantly agreed. Despite our initial differences, Trent and I ended up hitting it off and have been best friends ever since.

In the time that passed, Trent cleaned up his look and lost the piercings. We applied and were accepted to veterinary school together and had numerous misadventures along the way. We became roommates and were moving into a single-wide in a mobile home park before the first semester of vet school started when we first met Shalyn. She was in our vet school class and was moving into the trailer across the road from ours when Trent made her acquaintance and asked her over for a beer. I happened to be sitting on our couch in my boxer shorts watching TV when she came walking through our door, so maybe I shouldn’t make too much fun of Trent for great first impressions. Trent was quickly smitten and the two were soon an item and married between the second and third years of vet school. As we were neighbors throughout most of vet school, I was often their third wheel. So as I exit the testing center with defeat heavy on my soul, at least I am amongst friends.

“Well, what did you think of that?” I ask them as we gather our coats.

Trent answers with typical poetry. “Up the ass with no KY.”

“At least it’s over with,” Shalyn responds. “Of course now we have to wait a couple of months to find out the results. I think I’ll start studying now instead of waiting until I actually find out that I flunked and have to re-take it.”

“I could use a drink,” I say as we walk out into the parking lot. “Emily won’t be back to pick us up for about an hour. I say we grab a sixer and do our best to kill it before she gets back. It might make me a bit less likely to walk into oncoming traffic.”

We buy a six pack from the gas station and retreat to the alley behind the testing center where we spend the next hour sitting with our backs against the brick wall, drowning our sorrows in cheap, low-point beer. When Emily pulls up I am quite sure we are a sorry sight to behold.

“So, how did it go?” asks Emily as we pile into her car and she pulls back onto the highway. “Did you guys ace it?”

“Actually we are all pretty sure we flunked,” I respond darkly.

“I bet you all did way better than you think,” she responds optimistically. “Do you want to hang out in Tulsa a little before we go home?”

“No, I would just like to go home and try and forget this day ever happened,” says Trent from the backseat.

Emily and I met in undergrad at OSU. Her sorority and my fraternity were paired in a song and dance competition that only freshmen could compete in called Freshman Follies. Any tradition that pitted the Greek houses against each other was taken extremely seriously at OSU and as kitschy as it was, spending weeks in the company of pretty sorority girls wasn’t too bad a proposition to a bunch of freshmen college guys, so we were pretty game for the festivities. To this day my singing is hardly suitable outside of the confines of a shower or solo car ride, but I could play the guitar a bit and had volunteered to help with the musical accompaniment. When one of my pledge brothers got sick and fell out of the competition, I was enlisted to take his place. Emily was recruited by her sorority as she had been in choir in high school and we were dance partners on a few of the songs. She was gorgeous. Petite and blonde, with a sweet personality that belied a fun-loving, feisty edge, she was an infectious elementary education major and way out of my league. We were both involved in relationships with other people at the time, but we did enjoy each other’s company and became friends over the course of the semester. When I returned to OSU as a sophomore the next fall, I was single and when I ran into Emily working at the student union bookstore, I decided to man up and make my play.

“Can I get anything else for you,” she asked flirtatiously as she rang up my books.

“Well, your phone number would be nice,” I responded suavely.

At least that is how I remember the conversation. We went out a couple of times and then she told me that she was getting back together with her old boyfriend. I wasn’t too upset as I had recently gotten out of a long-term relationship and was still full of wild oats that needed sowing before I was ready to commit to anything serious. But I came to regard her as the one that got away and wandered what might have been. So it was with complete surprise when several semesters and several failed romantic interests later I got a phone call from a total stranger who happened to be one of Emily’s sorority sisters wanting to set me up with Emily for a sorority date party. I pretended to check my schedule while secretly being elated to have a second chance. The night of the date party was fun for both of us and we started dating again after that and have been together ever since. Emily has been with me through all of the highs and lows of vet school and has never failed to be supportive all the way. I proposed after the first year and we were married after the second and now live in a small house just south of campus. Emily graduated in 2002 with her elementary education degree. State funding for education, always dismally low in Oklahoma, was at crisis level at the time and teachers were being laid off right and left across the state. Emily had decided to take advantage of the fact that we were going to be in Stillwater for a few more years and was pursuing a master’s degree in special education in the evenings to become more marketable. She did manage to find a teaching job during the day, but it was a forty-five minute drive to Ponca City, where she taught elementary special education. As busy as I was with vet school, she stayed equally busy and we didn’t get to see each other very much except at nights. She had therefore graciously volunteered to drive Trent, Shalyn, and I to Tulsa for the national board exam and had taken the opportunity to do some shopping in the city while we took the test.

It is a quiet ride back to Stillwater as the three vet students ponder what news they will receive when the test results come back. We are not comforted by the knowledge that a very large percentage of last year’s class did not pass the test, even on their second attempt after graduation. We had even seen one of those poor bastards in the test center with us taking it for a third time. How terrible to have come so far only to fail at the very end. Two months will pass before we know whether we will share that fate. Two months where time will seem to stand still and in which I will pray more than I have ever prayed before.