Quincy Veterinary Clinic

Quincy Veterinary Clinic is a small-town veterinary practice that becomes a crucial place of emergency care during Ben Givens’s journey. After Rex is severely wounded, the clinic’s veterinarian, Ilse Peterson, treats him after hours, with Ben helping in the operation. The clinic’s significance rests on this reversal: Ben has come into the region intending to end his life, but in its rooms he returns to the work of medicine, concentrating on keeping another living body alive.

Setting and Approach

The clinic stands in Quincy, Washington, in a low cinder-block building near a large cold-storage warehouse and the town cemetery. Ben and Stu Robinson arrive just before dusk on a Sunday, when the clinic is dark and closed. A posted after-hours number leads Ben through to Peterson at home. She asks whether the dog’s condition is an emergency; after Ben explains Rex’s severe wounds, the treatment already given, and the distance they have traveled on foot, she tells them to wait outside her office while she comes in.

The approach establishes the clinic as a working rural service rather than a hospital available around the clock. Its doors are shut, but the posted number and Peterson’s willingness to return make urgent care possible. The cemetery gate and the cold-storage warehouse sit in Ben’s view as darkness settles, placing the clinic in a landscape where death, agricultural work, and the immediate needs of the living occupy the same small scene.

Peterson arrives with the sturdy appearance and direct manner of a farm-raised practitioner. Ben notices her capable hands and the glasses she wears, and reads her professional composure as evidence he can trust her with Rex. She does not stop to discuss his blackened eye: her attention remains on the dog until treatment is underway. Inside, the orderly reception area contains veterinary texts, medicines, animal-care notices, an aquarium, and a canary. The practical details extend into the treatment rooms, where Peterson leads Ben past an office and a small operating theater to an examination room equipped with an anesthesia machine, stainless-steel table, adjustable light, diagnostic instruments, and supplies for disposing of medical waste.

Rex’s Emergency Treatment

Peterson examines Rex on the stainless-steel table while Ben assesses the equipment. Their roles quickly become collaborative. She asks Ben to help restrain and prepare the dog; he removes his field jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and washes his hands. It has been nineteen months since he last performed surgery, then on a human heart, but he feels the returning excitement of medical work. The contrast is sharp: moments earlier he had expected to die in the sage country, yet here he is preparing to assist a veterinarian.

Peterson sedates Rex with ketamine and Valium, places an intravenous line, and secures an endotracheal tube before connecting him to oxygen and isoflurane. Ben holds the dog and administers Keflin through the IV while Peterson gives a painkiller and begins her examination. She cuts away Ben’s field stitches and recognizes that, despite having been placed one-handed, they are well made and have kept most of the dirt out. The exchange registers both the rough circumstances of Rex’s initial treatment and the usefulness of Ben’s remaining skill. The clinic’s equipment and Peterson’s expertise enable care that could not be improvised during their trek.

Recovery and Return

After paying for the surgery, Ben visits the clinic again. He tells the receptionist he has come to see Rex, whom she identifies as the Brittany spaniel in the back. In the recovery room, Rex is asleep in his kennel, twitching and shivering in his dreams. Ben reaches through the wire mesh and rests two fingers on the dog’s head, offering a quiet reassurance. The receptionist reports that Rex had been awake when the clinic opened at eight-thirty, had readily taken water and food, and showed signs of recovery; Peterson has also checked his stitches.

Ben cannot take Rex with him at that moment because he has to go to Wenatchee. The clinic therefore serves not only as the site of an operation but as a temporary place of continued care while Ben’s journey carries him elsewhere. The evidence establishes Rex’s early recovery and Ben’s return to check on him, while leaving the later arrangements for the dog unstated.

Narrative Significance

The clinic brings Ben’s former professional identity into contact with a new, less commanding position. He is no longer the physician directing treatment for human patients: he is a traveler with an injured dog, dependent on Peterson’s judgment and facilities. Yet his medical knowledge remains useful. He describes Rex’s wounds, has already attempted treatment, and then assists during surgery. The episode presents competence not as solitary authority but as work shared between practitioners under immediate pressure.

That work also interrupts the purpose Ben had assigned to his journey. The operation does not erase his cancer or settle his fear of dying, but it gives his attention a concrete task: helping Peterson treat Rex. The clinic’s modest rooms, technical apparatus, and after-hours response make intervention tangible at the point where Ben had expected only an uncomplicated end. Its importance lies less in changing his diagnosis than in showing, through care for the wounded dog, that purposeful action remains possible.