Emergency Vet
by Steve Cushman
He remembered sleet and the dregs of a cherry Slurpee, her hands bloody with the bird, a Robin who’d flown into the truck’s windshield. He remembered thinking birds don’t fly into windshields and yet here they were. Shelly had shouted, stop, fucking stop, Ray, and he stopped because what choice did he have?
He remembered her back in the seat beside him, asking Siri, where is the nearest emergency vet?
And Siri saying, the closest emergency vet is Northeastern Ridge Emergency Veterinary Clinic, which is five miles away. They are open 24 hours a day.
Come on, she kept saying. He remembered thinking she might have been talking to the bird, coaxing it, maybe giving it a pec rub, trying to somehow bring it back. Or was she talking to him?
He remembered he’d been thinking of the right way to end this between them. Three years and while he hated to admit it, he felt nothing for her anymore. Nothing may not have been accurate. He still felt fondly for her, and wished her the best, whatever that might be, but he no longer wanted to spend every moment with her. No longer needed to feel her body against his to feel whole, alive. His breath no longer caught at the sight or scent of her long, dark hair.
He remembered thinking, why are there so many fucking red lights on Battleground Avenue? He remembered thinking, we will never get there or anywhere really unless we run every one of them. But he was not the sort of young man who ran red lights.
Turn right on Westridge, Siri said in her sing-song voice.
He remembered wishing Shelly would say something to him, anything, beside Come on, Come on. He remembered thinking this bird is dead and why are we rushing to have someone tell us what we already know? He remembered the rain and how it kept falling, pelting the window, the roof, like a thousand ting-tings a minute.
When they reached the clinic, it was empty as he knew it would be. Closed for renovations, the sign out front said, and underneath it, in smaller letters: For your pet emergencies, try Friendly Emergency Vet.
He remembered saying, I don’t think we can keep going like this.
She held the dead bird to her chest and said, I know. I know. Me neither.
Steve Cushman is the author of three novels, including Portisville, winner of the 2004 Novello Literary Award. He has published two poetry chapbooks, and his first full-length collection, How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book award. A new collection, The Last Time, was released in 2023. Cushman lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and works in the IT department at Cone Health.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Emergency Vet”? This flash story was inspired by a poem I read recently that repeated the phrase “I remembered.” My intent was to write a story that followed this pattern, but as I started 3rd person POV felt right so switched to “He remembered.” I’m also always interested in having a couple characters in a small space, filled with conflict, so a truck worked for that, and a bird had flown into my bay window a day or two before I drafted the story, so that was on my mind. While I try and keep cell phones and other technologies out of my fiction, the nagging voice of Sari, along with some unpleasant weather, seemed to offer another level of tension between this young couple.
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