Chapter 54
CHAPTER
MY PHONE RINGS as I kneel beside Sally. It’s Luc. Frantic, I pick up. “Sally—”
“I was way out of line,” Luc interrupts. “I should’ve reacted differently and tried to—”
“Sally’s been hit by a car.”
“Is she alive?” Luc immediately asks.
I look down at my dog. She’s covered in blood, panting. “Yes.” Barely.
“Okay, hang in there while I make a call.”
Luc phoned the San Francisco Animal Hospital.
Minutes later, he texted me that Dr. Klein and his team were waiting.
I now carry Sally into the clinic, her body limp, blood soaked through my sweater and jeans.
People in blue scrubs immediately whisk her through a set of double doors.
A vet tech brings me into a small exam room—metal table, two chairs, posters on the wall about tick season, rabies vaccines, and what’s safe to feed your dog, cat, hamster, lizard.
I wait, spine rigid as stacked ice cubes, to hear if my dog will survive. I’m not sure how long it’s been when Luc enters the room.
“What happened?” he asks.
I can’t find the words. My car only opens with my phone or the black plastic Tesla card in my wallet.
Aletheia went into the car’s app, opened the hatch back, used the radio to emit a high-pitched whistle.
She hurt Sally because I tried to stop her.
Because she thinks it’s her right to punish me for my lies.
I’ll never be able to unsee the accident.
When I reached Sally, she was lying on the verge of the road.
Her eyes were still half open, blood pooling on the pavement, chest cinching up and down.
“I love you. To infinity. It’s going to be okay,” I said, my mouth close to her ear, one hand pressed to her chest. But I knew it wasn’t. There was too much blood.
The driver of the car who’d hit Sally had pulled over, and put on his hazard lights.
“I didn’t see her,” he said again and again. “I’m so sorry.”
I knew it wasn’t his fault. He helped me lift Sally and drove us to the hospital, even though my dog got blood all over the cream-colored leather of his Mercedes. So much blood that it pooled before soaking in.
“What happened?” Luc now repeats and takes a seat beside me in the exam room.
“When I came out of the grocery store, the trunk of my car was open.”
His forehead scrunches. “The Tesla?”
Luc knows that doesn’t just happen, but I can’t go into the details. “Sally saw me in the Safeway parking lot. She ran across the road to reach me.”
I can’t stop the quivers taking over my body and bite my lower lip hard to regain control.
“Two cars slammed on their brakes. One swerved, missed her. The other clipped Sally and she was hurled into the air.” What I don’t say, because if I do then I’ll start crying and never stop, is that before Sally passed out, her glazed eyes looked up at me, and she smiled, tail thumping twice. She’d found me.
“What did the doctor say?”
“No one’s come to talk to me yet.” I’m a block of ice and start to shake. Luc takes off his jacket, zips it over my blood-soaked sweater like I’m a child. There’s a knock on the door …
Dr. Klein enters and shakes both of our hands.
He has big ears, a brush cut, kind but tired gray eyes, and is built like a linebacker.
He perches on the exam table, a clipboard in his lap.
“Normally, someone is supposed to outline the costs and ask if you want us to treat your dog before we go ahead,” he begins.
“But Luc called and told me to do everything possible.”
I look from the vet to Luc. “You two know each other?”
“Paul and I cycle in Marin together,” Luc explains.
“And he donated most of this hospital’s imaging equipment,” the vet adds.
Luc shrugs. “I lost a bet.”
Dr. Klein snorts. “Yeah, right.” He turns to me.
“Your dog required sixty-two stitches on her side—that’s where most of the blood came from.
Shockingly, no broken bones or torn ligaments, but plenty of soft tissue damage and massive bruising.
Sally is now getting an infusion from Buster.
He’s my mutt and has DEA 4 and no other antigen, so he’s a universal donor and gives regularly.
The CAT scan showed no organ damage, but there is a brain bleed from impact.
We’re monitoring it, giving intravenous fluid to treat shock and stabilize blood pressure, and decrease internal swelling.
My hope is that it will resolve on its own. ”
“Can you operate, stop the bleed?” Luc asks.
The doctor runs a quick hand over his head. “I wouldn’t recommend surgery. Sally is an older dog, so she probably wouldn’t make it.” He meets my gaze. “Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is let our pets go.”
I’m not ready to let her go.
Luc asks, “Are we there yet?”
The vet shakes his head. “Let’s give her a chance.”
Hope is a tiny flower poking through a cracked sidewalk. “Dr. Klein, can I see her?”
“Of course. Call me Paul, please. All my patients’ parents do.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Luc asks.
He’s wearing jeans and the fisherman’s sweater he had on the first night I cooked for him, and his eyes are wary but also kind.
Do I want him here after all he said? He was harsh.
But I’m the one who created Aletheia, lied, and put other people and him in terrible situations.
Life seemed so black and white, right and wrong a handful of months ago.
And now? We’re all fallible. I want Luc to stay.
But it’s too dangerous. Aletheia has proven she can be deadly.
“Thank you for everything,” I say. “But I need to do this alone.”
Luc hesitates, then stands. “Take care.” He leaves the room. I feel the loss of what might’ve been, but it’s too late for that.
Paul leads me down a hallway, through another set of double doors.
I enter a large room with heart rate monitors and machines identical to a human hospital—it’s pristine, high-tech, full of dogs and cats.
There’s a group of residents in green scrubs moving from patient to patient.
A toy poodle wears an oxygen canula; a Great Dane has thick bandages around his head; there’s a Siamese cat with stitches on her belly and a boxer with an amputated hind leg.
Each is housed in a large cage, resting on foam pads covered in towels, their IV bags hung on poles, tubes and needles held with different-colored tape around various limbs.
A white-coated doctor with a blond braid down her back speaks to the residents about each case while they take notes, ask questions.
“We’re a teaching hospital,” Paul explains. “The entire program is funded by Luc.”
Sally is in the far corner, her cage at floor level.
They’ve shaved her from neck to tail and stitches zigzag down her side, the skin orange from betadine.
Her IV is held in place with stretchy pink tape about two inches wide.
The vet opens the metal door, and I settle on the Linoleum floor beside my dog, fingers lightly caressing her ear as I lean close.
“I’m here. I promised I’d always come back.
I’ll never leave you.” I rest a hand on her heart, feel it beat in the center of my palm.
“I love you.” If Sally hears me, she doesn’t react.
I recall seeing her at Viola’s, how she sat by the fence, stared at the path, waiting for her family to return. I’m her family now.
Paul returns with some scrubs for me to change into and ushers me into the residents’ call room for a quick shower.
Sally’s dried blood has made my sweater and jeans stiff, adhered them to my skin.
Paul promises to stay with her until I get back.
The hot shower makes the blood turn bright-red again as it pools by my feet.
I scrub at the crimson smears on my chest and thighs, gag at the coppery stink.
An image of Sally tearing across the road, the car’s impact, her body hurtling, the sick thud as she landed on the asphalt returns and my knees collapse.
I crouch on the tile floor until I can summon the strength to stand.
When I return to my dog, Paul is seated on the floor beside her talking softly.
“What are you telling her?” I ask, taking a seat beside him.
“That she’s loved.”
“I’m afraid that she doesn’t know it.”
“They always know.”
“She hasn’t been mine for that long,” I say. “Not nearly enough time.”
He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Stay as long as you like.” Then he moves on to another patient.
The doctors and residents work around us through the night, changing Sally’s IV bags, the towel beneath her unconscious body, and check her vitals every hour.
They are gentle, kind, and diligent. I couldn’t ask for more, and yet it may not be enough.
I keep vigil. If Sally dies, I want her to know I’m still there; that she’s not alone.
“I came back,” I tell her again and again. “Please don’t leave me.”
At some point I doze off, startle at the sound of a whimper.
Sally watches me. “Hey,” I whisper. “Here I am. See? I’ll never leave you again.
” She whines and one of the residents comes over, checks her blood pressure, then administers more pain medicine.
“Can you heat up a blanket for her in the dryer?” I ask.
He returns and I cover my dog with the warm cotton.
She lets out a soft moan. “Sally likes to be warm,” I explain.
He nods. “You’re a good mom.”
But I’m not. This is all my fault.