Emily Mayfield, part 1

Dr. Emily Mayfield has no time for fools, and she sometimes feels that she gets an abundance of fools interning at her very state-of-the-art veterinary hospital. She saves all of her love for the animals that come through her facility. She has infinite patience with her animal charges. Dr. M. frequents the clinic all hours of the night. This is when she gets to really know the personalities of her charges.

Emily was brought up on a small farm with her three brothers. She was next to the youngest, and was going to be the last when her mama had a change of life baby when Emily was thirteen. She felt as though her younger brother, Jerry, was born for her alone. Emily had always been a tomboy. She saw her older brothers, George and Alex, as worldly, loyal, handsome, protective, and slightly magical. They tended to view Emily as a science project. They didn’t harass her as they might have a younger brother, but they did keep her with them on most of their adventures. From her brothers, Emily learned to walk around on the roof before she was six, to climb trees, to fish, to find bugs, and to take care of animals. She learned caring by taking care of Jerry.

It was a rainy spring morning as she was pushing baby Jerry in his stroller that she encountered her first real animal emergency. A prized mare gave birth to a spindly foal. The birth had been very hard on the mare, and Emily saw the relief on her dad’s face when the foal was finally delivered. The magic of the birth did not capture Emily as much as the appreciation of the worry and pain her dad had been enduring while his beloved mare struggled to produce this comical offspring. Emily shared her dad’s abiding love and respect for animals. And that day she knew her future would involve helping animals like her dad’s mare. She would be a veterinarian. She knew her future at that moment and nothing ever came between her and that decision. Nothing. She had lost one fiancé when she started vet school. She lost another, years later when she was finishing. There would be no third. Not for Emily.

She has her animals. They are what take up all her time. She can’t imagine a husband understanding her having to get up at 3:00 in the morning because someone's pet is starting to have her babies without benefit of medical attention.

(continued)