How I Became A Vet by Rivka Galchen, 2023
The magic trick:
A narrator trying to present a straight-line story but finding that things keep getting too weird to explain simply
The title suggests a straight-ahead, straight-line narrative. “This is how it happened.”
Not so, though. Even the “vet” in the title requires clarification. But I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising to find a short story title playing coy.
What’s cool is that, even beyond the title, the narrator continues to attempt a straight-line narrative. She really does want this to be the story of how it happened.
Turns out her story is way too weird and metaphysical to be a straight-ahead “how it happened” narrative at all.
And that’s quite a trick on Galchen’s part.
The selection:
We X-rayed and bandaged Ohio and sent him home with his owner, along with pain medication and information about how to be alert to any signs of infection.
After that, I had to deal with a very sick parrot. I did the intake and the workup, and the parrot turned up positive for psittacosis. A strong memory I have from my time as a veterinary intern is of a shoebox being handed to a client, and my knowing that the shoebox contained a deceased parrot. It seemed to me a very strange protocol. But all protocols have a seed of strangeness within them, around which the protocol has grown, perhaps to protect and nourish that strangeness as much as to obscure it.
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