Chapter 3
THREE
COLBY
Outside of the clinic, I’m barely able to catch my breath.
Reality, painful memories, and intense relief flood my system.
My hand hasn’t left my dazed dog, the smooth fur behind her ear providing me the comfort I’m craving right now.
I thought this would be like last time… My lips quiver, and I clamp my mouth closed.
For the rest of the day, I need to pull it together.
Kona cannot see me fall apart. She’ll have this intrinsic need to make me feel better, but right now, she needs to focus on resting.
Kona is all I have, but sometimes I forget I’m all she has, too.
At my lifted Jeep, the relief I felt just a moment ago crashes and burns.
The ramp I use to get Kona into the Jeep, which looked so accommodating before surgery, now looks like the summit at Mount Everest. I chew on the inside of my cheek as I try to coax Kona up the ramp.
“Oh, girl, I know this is scary. We got this. Can you walk a little?” I nudge, offer treats, beg, and nothing.
Okay, okay. I got this. I mean, what the hell do other people do?
I plant my waterproof hiking boots into the snow, steady myself, and grab under her belly to lift.
Jesus. I work out a lot, I chop wood, I shovel constantly, but ninety pounds of dead weight when I’m trying to be as gentle as possible is not working.
Shit.
A few soft snowflakes flutter down, and I blink the moisture from my eyelids. “Come on, girl. You’ve got to do this. I need to get you home so you can rest and feel better. Okay? Can you work with me here?”
No reaction. My pulse thuds against my ears and a sickly helplessness weaves its way through my stomach. What am I supposed to do? Leave her here and run to the hardwood store to see if they have a makeshift lift? How did I not think about this?
Right before I’m about to break out into a heaping pile of panicked tears, yet again, the front doors open and I hear, “Colby!”
Josie’s dashing across the parking lot as she zips up her bright pink jacket and snugs a floppy knit beanie over her head. When she reaches me, she stops and says nothing. Not a single word for several long, super odd moments. “I, um, I just wanted to say I’m really glad that Kona’s doing better.”
I tilt my head. The way Josie ran out here, I thought I left Kona’s pain medication back there or something.
Red infuses her cheeks, maybe from the cold air, maybe from something else, and I give her an apologetic grin.
“I’m so sorry for how I acted.” Shame trickles into my system and settles uncomfortably.
God, I cannot believe I swore at her in the middle of her workplace.
I’m not that person. I’m the type of person who would never send back food at a restaurant even if it’s totally wrong.
The type who only leaves five-star reviews for books or products, the one that holds doors open, the one who lets a person with fewer groceries budge ahead in line at the grocery store.
I am so not the person who yells at someone trying their hardest in the middle of a chaotic shift with freaking pee running down their leg, and yet I did it.
No matter how anxious I was, there is never an excuse to treat someone the way I did.
“It’s okay,” Josie says. “Sometimes I forget that I see this every single day and am sort of desensitized. To me it’s a work shift. But to the animal parents, it’s terrifying.” She rubs the top of Kona’s fur and looks at the Jeep and the ramp. “Do you need some help?”
Everything in me wants to say no. Relying on anyone, in any capacity, sets you up for failure when that person is no longer there. Once you rely on someone for one thing, it creates an avalanche of dependencies, and it’s a crutch I can’t afford.
But Kona. She needs to get home, the sporadic snow flutters are accumulating, and my extremities are so cold that any moment now they’re going to uncomfortably tingle. I hate saying yes, but I sigh, and do it anyway. “That’d be great, thanks.”
We shuffle around each other as Josie explains how to lift the dog with the least amount of pressure on Kona.
She’s at Kona’s chest, and I’m at Kona’s hind legs, and as gently as possible, we heave Kona into the back seat.
She nestles in the blanket with a heavy thud, her plastic cone scraping against the floor.
My heart is ripping at the seams watching my dazed and confused dog, still under the anesthesia fog, look at us with hazy, unfocused eyes.
“Oof, thank you,” I say, shutting the bottom tailgate. “I don’t know what I would’ve done had you not come out here.”
“It’s no problem at all.” Josie looks through the tailgate window at Kona. “Poor thing. I’m sure she’s so confused right now.” She twists her mouth. “Don’t you just wish that we could logically explain everything happening to them?”
“More than just about anything.” Maybe all of this would’ve been easier if I could have reasoned with Kona.
Let her know what was happening, that sedation is scary and will feel funny, and that after this is all done, we will go home and she can curl into one of her dog beds scattered throughout our home.
Josie shoves her hands in her jacket pockets but makes no motion to leave. And even though I’m exhausted and really do want to get home and get Kona settled, I also want to keep talking. Which is an absolute freak occurrence.
Six years ago, I moved to this sleepy Minnesota town for solitude. And thus far have not only achieved but surpassed my goal for minimal communication. And now… I can’t force my feet to move.
“Okay, well, you have all the notes, but call us if you have any questions,” Josie says, dusting off snow from her arms. “You can ask for me, and if I’m in with a patient, I promise I’ll call back as quickly as possible. Even if I have dog urine soaking through my pant legs.”
I cringe. “That looked… gross.”
“Sure was.” She laughs, and my God. What a smile.
The kind that makes me momentarily forget the stress of this entire afternoon.
It’s so bright that if the sun were out, I feel like it would ricochet a smattering of stars like a toothpaste commercial.
There’s a tiny little gap in her front teeth, an imperfection that makes her smile even more perfect, and a fanning of smile lines that crease up her cheek.
“Do you have someone at home to help you get Kona down?” she asks.
Crap. Someone at home? No. I don’t have a someone, anywhere. Not a relative I could call that lives in the state, not a friend, not even a neighbor. My face must have shown the horror of realizing, yet again, that I’m totally unprepared.
This is not like me. Kona’s surgery threw me off.
My house is prepped like I’m waiting for the air-raid sirens to go off and might need to shelter in place for months.
Kona’s vitamins, vaccinations, my work are all on a precise, perfect schedule.
But I didn’t think of how I would transfer the most important being in my life from the Jeep into my home? “Oh, um, no.”
Josie tilts her head. “Maybe like a neighbor or something? Family?”
Outside of obligatory twice-monthly calls to my parents, who live out of state, the person I talk to most is Zoey who owns the bakery.
But not even enough where I’d classify us as friends.
She’s more someone who knows the name of my dog, what my usual order is, and I know that she dates a woman named Quinn who owns a Christmas tree farm.
But even though I talk to her the most, it’s still not nearly enough to ask for help.
However, saying out loud to Josie that I have literally no one is more isolating and embarrassing than I thought it would be.
The solitude that I sought out, that I craved, that I convinced myself I needed for healing, I’ve officially achieved.
Because do I have someone? No. I had Amelia.
And then she was gone. “I, um, actually… I live outside of town, kind of secluded. The nearest house is a few miles from my place.”
“Wow.” Josie checks her watch and shifts her weight in between her feet.
“I’m sure your girl is anxious to get home.
” We both look at a dazed Kona lying on the blanket inside the tailgate.
“I’m going to be off shift in about an hour.
If you want to wait here, or drive around or something, I can totally help you. ”
Wait, what? My head flinches back like she snapped a twig in front of my face. “No… no, you don’t have to do that. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Josie swipes off a few snowflakes from her cheeks.
“Well, I was going to try a drumming class tonight, but I also didn’t expect to get peed on.
And it’s been such a chaotic day that this is exactly what I need to end on a good note.
” She smiles and holds out her phone. “For real. Here. Want to put your contact info in my phone?”
I’m not surprised that her phone case is pink and glittery, and when I hand her mine, I think her hand dips with the weight of the industrial-level case protector. I thank her a million times over and we say a quick goodbye. Josie tears back into the clinic, and I hop in the Jeep.
And then I panic. As the tires push through the slushy grounds, I drive around until Kona’s muffled groans quiet, and snoring fills the Jeep.
Someone’s coming to my house. I keep a tidy-enough house, but what if today I missed something?
What if my underwear is flung on the bathroom floor, or the garbage stinks, or I didn’t make my bed?
Will it have one of those dog smells that non-dog owners will pick up on?
No one has ever been to my place, and I have nothing to gauge what a potential reaction will be.
But not only do I have a someone coming to my place, I have a woman coming to my place. A nice one. A cute one. My pulse quickens.