it shouldn't happen to a downshifter

‘Thank goodness you came doctor’, I said as I opened the door. Without further ado I led him to the patient. Tilly sat on the bed sobbing and her sister, who had been comforting her, looked up with an expression that suggested she feared we were too late. As we entered her room he conducted a quick intial examination and then climbed into waterproof waders and pulled a full length thick rubber glove onto his strong right arm and his big strong steady authoratative hand. ‘Is that really necessary for Harry here?' I asked the vet. ‘Sorry’ he said, ‘haven't had time to buy new kit, this is from my old job before I downshifted’. ‘Were you a farm vet before you moved to the North?’ I asked. He shook his head. ‘NHS obstetrician’ he explained. ‘It must be a bit of shock working on a Saturday’, I said, glancing out of the window, now slightly concerned at how closely he had parked his jeep to the front door. 'What! Saturday!?' he stammered with a fright. 'Oh, sorry' I said, 'still on french time, they're a bit ahead you know!'. 'Thank goodness for that!' he sighed, noticably flustered. He leant over to examine my hamster more closely. When he began to shake his head I knew the news wasn't good. 'If only you'd called me earlier,' he said, the look on his handsome features preparing me for the worst. 'I couldn't have' I said, 'You were playing golf and had your phone switched off'. 'Well,' he shrugged, 'I did move here for the quality of life you know, work life balance and all that...' I sighed. 'There's nothing you can do?' I pleaded. 'Perhaps you and the girls would like to leave me and Harry alone for a moment', he advised with forboding. 'Come on girls', I beckoned to Milly and Tilly, and led them tearfully out of the door. We waited in silence, except for the children's sobbing. A shot rang out. There were some aspects of country life I would never get used to, I thought, as I looked down at the floor to avoid my daughter's tearful stares and saw all the mud that the vet had walked in from the garden onto my new carpet. The door opened and the vet appeared, accompanied by that dreadfully familar hospital smell, that heady mix of antiseptic floor polish, stale aftershave and spent shotgun cartridges that had such resonances of so many dark moments in my past. It made me think about my mother; her house always smells like that too. 'Any chance of a whisky?' said the vet. A tear welled up in my eye. I hoped he wouldn't notice, I wasn't brought up to show my emotions in public, unless there was a good chance of them appearing on the Tragic Life Stories shelf in WH Smith of course. 'I think I have a small grit in my eye' I said. 'Here..' he smiled, reaching for his forceps, 'let me get that for you...'