Dog Medicine (19 page)

F
EBRUARY
1997

Will called again, this time to tell me that he was coming to Seattle. His new band was doing a West Coast tour. They were a hard-core punk band and they were playing in a club only a few miles from my house. “I'll be there in one week,” he said. I knew that his arrival would bring mixed emotions for both of us. Part of me still wasn't over him. Part of me still loved him because the way things ended left me reeling, without closure. I told him I'd come see his show.

When he called, saying he was in town, my stomach lurched. I wanted to see him, but I was trying hard to remember that he had betrayed me. When he asked me to come to the bar during their 6 p.m. sound check, I reluctantly agreed. But I couldn't imagine going alone. I needed a friend. Melissa was busy, and it would've been more awkward to show up with her than alone.

So I took Bunker with me. I told Will to meet me outside the bar, that I had someone important that I wanted him to meet. I also figured Bunker was a good excuse not to stay long. If Will didn't love my dog, my choice was easy. Would he sink to his knees and pet Bunker? Would he acknowledge him at all?

I walked up the sidewalk with Bunker on a leash and saw Will, his unmistakable silhouette, skinny legs swimming in baggy jeans. He saw me too and started walking. We hugged and the first thing he said was, “You brought your dog?”

“I wanted you two to meet,” I said. “Bunker, this is Will. Will, this is Bunker.”

“Well, he can't come into the venue,” Will said, and right then I knew.

“I know,” I said. “I can't stay. I just wanted to say hi.”

“You all good? You okay?” Will asked. In his words I heard questions I wasn't willing to address.

“Yep,” I said. “I'm doing great. I love Seattle. So much more than New York.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Will said.

“Well, it was good to see you. Have a great show tonight.” And with that, Bunker and I turned around and walked away. This wasn't the last time I would see Will, but it was the first time I knew we weren't right together. It was the first time I knew it was best for me to move on.

F
EBRUARY
1997

Greg asked if we could talk. I knew the conversation about my betrayal was inevitable, but I didn't know Greg well enough yet to know how it would go. I had been dreading it for weeks, imagining him shaming me, calling me a whore. When Melissa and Chris were gone and Greg invited me to join him in the living room for a talk, I lingered in the kitchen, cursing under my breath.

He sat on the futon upon which we'd shared our first kiss. I remembered the sweet words he'd said,
“Man, I've been waiting a long time to do that.”
I sat on the edge of the wicker chair across from him. The chair flipped up and wobbled, detached from its base, forcing me to scoot back, sit deeply in the seat, commit to this conversation.

“I want to talk about what happened,” Greg said, clasping his hands.

“Yeah,” I said. He was silent and I looked down, studied the floor. “I'm an asshole.”

“Well, what you did was something an asshole does, yes,” he smirked a bit, and I could sense that enough time had passed, and he wasn't as hurt as he was confused. He wanted to know if he'd done something wrong, if I didn't like him the way he thought I did. He looked so vulnerable. Who was this man? Who was I in relation to this sweet, gentle man?

In the few months we'd lived together, I'd come to understand that deep down, Greg was good. He was thoughtful, brilliant, and funny. He was a child of intellectuals. He was a man
with kind and gentle eyes, bluer than any Caribbean shallows, and he sat across from me, terribly sad. I had hurt him deeply, he said, and he told me that when he went home for his Christmas break, he sat in his mom's house and moped. “Everyone asked me if I was okay, but I just brushed them off.”

“Did you say anything about me?” I asked.

“No,” he said. Hadn't he wanted to tell his mom that he'd tried dating his housemate? That she seemed lovely before she shredded his heart to bits?

“I just feel like,” I said, uncertain, averting my eyes, “like I need to be single right now.”

“Really?” he said, his voice sharp, riddled with surprise. “But what about all that stuff we talked about, what we were doing, I mean . . .” his voice trailed off. He swept his hand through his hair and sighed deeply.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe I don't. I'm just really confused. Bunker has me so worried, and the first surgery is next week, and I just can't focus.”

He nodded, “Yeah, I'll bet. Poor Bunk,” he said.

We were silent a few moments. I didn't know what I wanted. I had never been faced with this: a man who seemed so good and kind, who was straightforward and not dishonest or jealous. Still, all I wanted was to give every ounce of myself to Bunker. I didn't want a boyfriend. Yet, a very strong candidate for a good, healthy relationship had presented himself. A truck rumbled up the hill and rattled the one-paned living room windows. We both looked toward the street, then Greg said, “I want us to try to be together. I think we'd be great.”

In my long history of serial relationships, no one had ever put it so simply, so directly. But I couldn't hear it. I only thought of Bunker, and of his failing body. Ever since the diagnosis, my nerves had been jangled, my focus terrible. It was no different sitting across from this good man.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, quietly, pleadingly.

“Yes,” I said. “But I just can't.”

He closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.

“I just need to be alone right now. I can't be in a relationship.”

The pain in his eyes made me look away. What was I doing? What the hell was I doing? Resolve settled in me. This was the first time I'd tried choosing myself over a relationship, and the feeling was empowering.

Then he said, quietly, “Well, then I need to move out.” A beat later he said, “I can't be here in this house with you if we aren't going to give it a shot. It would just be torture for me. I'm sorry.”

My family, the new one we had all created, that had cradled and helped me through the beginning of Bunker's health crisis, was falling apart thanks to my thoughtless actions. I fought off tears, and said, “But I don't want you to go.” The intensity of feeling behind those words weren't conveyed in how I said them. I wanted to beg him.
Please, please, please. Don't leave yet.

“Don't,” I blurted without thinking. “Don't move out yet.”

“But I'm going to have to.”

“Please don't,” I said. “Please. Just wait a while. Until after Bunker's surgery.”

“It'll just be too hard to stay,” he said. “I'm sorry.” I pictured him loading his meager belongings into his crappy little car and driving to a sad new studio. No. That just wouldn't do.

“Please?” I asked. “Wait a while before you make a decision.”

He looked at Bunker who was asleep and dreaming on the floor between us. Greg didn't respond. He just stood up and slowly went up the stairs to his room.

F
EBRUARY
1997

The sun shone ominously on the morning of Bunker's surgery. Of course, rain would've felt like a bad sign too. I woke up and slid down to the floor next to Bunk. He yawned, the great crevasse of his toothy mouth and blindingly white teeth a reminder that he was an animal, not a magical, mythical cure-all. He stretched his back legs as if they were perfectly healthy. He lay down next to me, his body fully aligned with mine. Then he rolled on his back. I petted his hip, the left one, which would be the first operated on today. The right hip would be opened up in four weeks.

Today, he was to skip breakfast and arrive at the clinic before eight. At exactly nine o'clock, the hair on his left hip would be shaved off from his spine all the way down to his ankle. The skin would be sliced open in two eight-inch incisions and his pelvic bone would be sawed apart in three places. They would then rotate his bone and secure it with plates and screws so that the hip cradled his femur at the proper angle. He'd just turned eight months old. With this surgery, he had some chance of normal development. Without it: the unspeakable.

The Bunker Kegger had raised five hundred dollars. I'd saved five hundred from my job, and my parents sent me a check for a thousand dollars. My mom included a piece of paper with a repayment plan, $200 a month for five months. The money was in my account, the checkbook next to my purse.

I closed my eyes and inhaled the nape of Bunker's neck, not
wanting to exhale and let this day begin. I held my breath in an effort to stop the seconds from peeling on, from the anesthetic taking him out of this world for even a moment, for me not being with him as he shook with fright as the well-meaning veterinary technician took him away from me. I wondered if it would be okay for me to write a note and attach it to his collar:
This is not just any dark-red golden
.
This is no ordinary family dog.
This is my lifeline to this world, and though you may not understand
or may think I am overstating,
please believe that he is the one reason I am still here. Please care for him like he was your own baby, just eight months old, the love of your life, the reason for your life. Please care for him like your life depends on it. If he is okay and well soon, I will be forever and eternally grateful.

The clock read seven-thirty. I took him out the front door so he could pee in the grass. I sat on the front stoop thinking that this was the last time for a while that my boy would be able to descend the stairs himself. I would have to carry him, all fifty plus pounds of him, up and down the steps for the next several weeks. His tail swirled as he sniffed the weeds in the sidewalk, checking every few minutes to make sure I was still sitting on the stoop, watching him. “Good boy,” I said, smiling. “You're the best boy.”

I noticed that the mailbox was full from yesterday. We were all still getting the hang of this adult life, and sometimes we didn't pick up the mail for days. I stood up and emptied the box; junk mail flapping down to the porch floor, bills and letters entangled in mangled newsprint. I sat down with the mail on my lap and sorted the letters—bills for the house, a letter for Melissa from Ohio, credit card solicitations.

At the bottom of the pile sat a blue envelope hand-addressed to me in the unmistakable slanty jag of Clay's hand. I stared at the card for a moment, then opened it gently. Bunker loped up the
porch stairs and lay down next to me with a thud. The card had a cartoon of a teddy bear in bed with a blue ice bag on its head. Clay wrote, “Julie, Sorry to hear about Bunker. I am sure he will be fine. He is in our prayers. Here's a check for the surgery fund.”

I closed the card slowly, looked at the front cover, then opened it up again. I read his note over and over. It made me so happy that he had done this, but also oddly angry. Then I remembered what all of the therapists had said about how his abuse had hurt me, forever altered me, even changed my brain chemistry. And I decided that very moment to forgive myself for believing Clay.

We were both hurting as kids, and his way of coping with his pain was to turn to anger, to turn it toward me. My way of coping was to turn to sorrow and turn against myself. I saw it so clearly at that moment, holding his get-well card for Bunker. I held the paper and forgave the little girl who just wanted her big brother to love and protect her. I told her that it was okay to want his love, and that I was sorry that she didn't get it.

Then something amazing happened. Once I forgave myself, I felt as if I could forgive my brother. I would never forget, but I could forgive. I could forgive Will for not returning my love when I was in New York. I could forgive my father for his absences, my mother for her emotional unavailability. What if, I thought, I can even forgive myself for sleeping with Jason and for being a bad friend? What if I could forgive myself for being an ungrateful daughter? What if I just decided that all of those mistakes were teachings? Maybe all of those choices I'd made were so that I could learn that what I wanted wasn't drama and sorrow, just love: love in the way Bunker gave love. Unconditional. No expectations. No strings. Just love, because what is more beautiful than that?

I held Clay's one hundred dollar check in my hand, fingering his signature and wondering whether my mom had suggested that he send me money or he had decided to do it himself. Either
way, I decided, this was fine. Everything was okay. I was going to think positively all day. I was going to hold my thoughts in a bright, happy, Bunker place. And with that energy, Bunker would pull through just fine.

I stood up, went inside, got dressed, and clipped the leash on Bunker's collar. He hopped a little, probably thinking that this would be our usual walk to the park. I helped him into the car, then left Queen Anne, drove down through Fremont and into Wallingford. The sun blared, and I didn't celebrate. I appreciated the sun as much as the rain: there was goodness in both.

I squinted and Bunker walked warily through the surgery center's glass doors. After I signed the papers and wrote the check, a vet technician said he could come with her. I gave her his leash. The words
dear god, dear god, dear god
looped in my mind, a panicked appeal that my boy would survive this day. I pressed down thoughts of blood-soaked floors, the saw slipping, an unfortunate twitch with scalpel in hand. I knelt next to Bunker, who was pulling on the leash, trying to get back to me and away from the funny-smelling lady wearing scrubs with rainbow-colored paw prints.

“It'll be okay, buddy,” I whispered. “Be strong. You'll be okay. I'll see you tomorrow. You'll have one night here and I'll be back the second they call me.” Reassuring him calmed me and I put my cheek next to his and whispered, “I love you.”

I tried to wipe away my tears. I decided that I looked like an idiot in front of this receptionist and another man and woman sitting in the waiting room. My mind conjured a room full of people scowling and saying,
No one likes you. That dog's the only one who will ever love you because he's stupid and doesn't know better.
I nodded and turned away, walked outside with my hand on my mouth. I told myself to stop.
Be positive. Think positive.

I started back to the house but panic rose mere blocks from the
clinic.
If he dies, I die. If he dies, I die.
I couldn't stop the thoughts, and I began hyperventilating. “Oh, my god,” I said, again and again. I parked on Magnolia Street, raced up the front stairs, and climbed into bed. I had an hour to get to work, but I couldn't even manage to look at the clock. My thoughts raced and I followed. I tried to take a breath but choked with the thought of Bunker in that cold, scary operating room without me.

I managed to pull myself together enough to get to the office, sit down at the reception desk, organize the inter-office mail, and make a pot of coffee. I was buzzing, and the dark coolness of the office lobby, the predictable routine of this job, helped distract me. The office was on the twentieth floor with black-tinted windows. We joked about how the building's architect must've been from California because no building in Seattle needed help filtering the sun.

By two o'clock, the wait to hear from the vet made me feel as if I had a tin can between my ears. I felt light and full of air; as if I might try to take a breath and
poof
, drift off through the hole in the ozone and out into space. Thoughts going:
Is Bunker still alive at this very second? Is he awake? Is he aware of anything? Is he in pain? Did something go terribly wrong?

“Olson and Smithfield,” I said. “How may I direct your call?” Each call could've been the veterinarian with terrible news, or the vet receptionist calling to tell me my check had bounced.

“Julie?” a voice said. I couldn't place who it was.

“Uh, yes,” I said. “This is Julie. How can I help you?”

“It's your brother,” the voice said. I would never have guessed that the voice on the phone belonged to Clay. “Mom told me today was the big day,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you I am thinking about you and I know Bunker will pull through just fine.” My mouth opened to speak, but nothing came. I couldn't shake the fact that I had a brother, and that I did not know his voice. It rang strangely tinny, as if the vocal chamber was sure of
the words, but the mouth wasn't convinced about how they should emerge. “You there? Hello?” he asked. I was staring at the empty lobby of this law firm. It was noon, usually the time most attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries were heading to lunch, walking from the break room to their desks clutching microwaved plates. But there was no one around. Not a soul.

This law office could've been my father's law office, where he sat so many days working while Clay and I fought in our suburban home. It was as if I had switched alliances, no longer loyal to my family. I was testing out my own loyalty to the law, to my own justice, to my new family. All of this passed through my mind, then I wondered if I was dreaming when I heard myself say, “Thanks . . . Thanks for calling.”

“No problem,” he said. “Good luck. He'll be okay.” It sounded as if he was already moving on to the next task. I don't remember the rest of the call, or exactly how it ended, except that I felt both moved and uncomfortable. Did he hang up and scoff that I was so stupidly attached to a stupid dog? Did he immediately tell my mom that he'd called me—just like she asked? Why did I care? Good heavens, why did I care so goddamned much about what Clay thought of me? And then I remembered again to try to forgive the little girl who wanted her brother to love her. It was okay. He'd called and that was nice.

I found myself mentioning to anyone who stopped by the reception desk that I'd just gotten off the phone with my brother. When people would ask how I was, I'd say, “Good. My brother just called.” Even three hours later, I was still telling people, “I talked to my brother today,” just to see how that sounded.

At the front desk I bent open paper clips into long spears, lining them up like knives on notebook paper, one centimeter apart. The phone rang all afternoon, but no veterinarian. A discomfort in my chest left me patting my sternum with my fist. It felt like a giant man was sitting on my heart. I tried to take a deep breath. Couldn't.

Bunker
, I whispered. I felt him slipping away. I imagined him dead on a metal gurney, the vet standing with Bunker's head in his hands. Failed. Mistaken. I would die. I stood up, walked to the window forty stories high, and realized with face-flushing terror: It was right here. The depression. The awful dread. It was right here all along. Maybe it had never left. Maybe I would never be rid of it. It was just waiting until Bunker left and then it would attack again.

That moment, as I imagined Bunker being gone, I thought,
I don't care if I die.
I walked to the window, thirty-eight floors up, and put my hands on the glass, so grateful it didn't open. I shivered. My parents were right: Seattle
was
cold. “Bunker,” I whispered, tapping an outstretched paper clip on the window, then stepping back and bending it back to its original state. “Please be okay.”

When the veterinarian finally called, I knew it before I picked up the receiver. I knew they had news of my boy. I was standing at the fax machine when the phone rang. I dropped the papers and sprinted to the desk, losing one shoe in the rush.

“Hello?” I said, and in that moment I heard a girl's voice saying
This is blah blah from Seattle Animal Surgical Center
and time pulled down, slowed, nearly stopped, and I didn't breathe. In those few seconds as I waited for their news, I planned to stand in front of their clinic, then step in front of an oncoming truck if they'd killed him. I had my quick death planned, and the turn in my gut was sour and awful and I was back on my New York apartment's floorboards.

“We wanted to let you know,” she said, slowly, agonizingly, “that Bunker is resting now. He's doing fine and the surgery was successful.” All the screeching stopped. It was like someone yelled,
Cut!
The drama was over. I shamed myself, hated that I'd made such a dramatic, stupid, histrionic, and sinister plan. The
pattern was familiar. After the rush of adrenaline, the fallout. The blame.
What a stupid idiot. What a dumb little sister.

“Okay. Thank you,” I said.
You're so dumb. You're an idiot.
My depression yelled at me from the back of my mind, angry that it had been defeated. “Thank you so much. Thank you. You have no idea how relieved I am. How happy I am, I mean.”

“You can come pick him up after 9 a.m. tomorrow,” she said. “He'll be ready to go, and please re-read the discharge instructions so you're prepared to get him into the car and then from the car to your house.”