Dog Medicine (20 page)

“Okay,” I said. “I'm ready for him. Everything's all set up.” And with that, the awful voice in my head popped like a child's balloon.

Bunker needed me. I was
needed
. My beloved dog, my spirit twin, the one who saved me, the one I had just saved. I had a job to do. I was going to nurse my boy back to health. I had memorized those discharge instructions. I had prepared my bedroom and Bunker's crate, as if I were expecting a brand-new baby. I'd lined the floor of his crate with colorful blankets and cushions, opened the top of the crate so he could stick his head out and stretch if he needed to. I put the crate next to the opened window and pushed my bed next to it, so that, just like when he was a puppy in that crate, I could sleep with one hand on his shoulder. I bought him a squeaky lambskin toy and propped it in the corner.

I still had a hard time taking care of myself, but having something else to take care of helped me. I was useful now. I could recognize pain in Bunker's face, and his eyes, his other-worldly, deep, soulful eyes full of all the pain and laughter and hope of all our combined longing, helped me see that I was hurting inside too. It helped me forgive myself, because I knew Bunker wouldn't want me to hurt. When I was happy, he was thrilled. I wanted his
happiness, and through it I found my own. As I watched the clock tick toward the end of my workday and the beginning of my race to pick up Bunker, I thought about how his outer scars were like my inner scars. I would recognize them, tend to them, help them slowly heal, and do my best to care for both of us, with every ounce of my being.

F
EBRUARY
1997

“He's going to want to run,” the nurse said. I sat in an examination room waiting for Bunker to enter. “But he can't. For four weeks he needs to be kept fairly still. The first week, I want him contained in his crate every minute—only carry him outside to do his business. The second week, he can walk, but only inside and no hardwood floors, no stairs. Only carpets. The third week, he can go outside on a leash with you still carrying him up and down stairs. Still no hardwoods. For a whole month.”

She continued speaking when the door clicked open. Bunker. His back left leg hairless and pink. Two enormous incision scars, one seven inches long, the other about five inches, with twenty-six Frankensteinian staples lining the incisions. The shock of it for one split second, and then his eyes. Our eyes. They met and he was still there, we were still there together. Nothing had taken him, his spirit, his healing, and he pulled toward me, whining, whimpering, and I sank down and let him come to me. The nurse held his leash tight. He walked to me, his back legs moving with a barely perceptible limp. “See, he thinks he's fine. He doesn't know the extent of the trauma in there. So it's your job to force him to take it easy, to take care of himself so he can heal properly.”

“Yes, of course. You're okay, buddy,” I said. “You'll be okay.” He lay down on the cool floor, healthy hip down, and he licked my neck, my ears, whimpering, howling a little. My whole body tingled. He wasn't even a year old yet, and this. He'd been through
this
. The incisions were long and curved, and the staples looked so
much like medieval torture, they gave me prickly chills. I closed my eyes and inhaled him, felt him again, his softness, his calm. “Oh, my angel,” I said.

Too much pain too early in life could change this beautiful animal forever. But too much pain followed by a loving caregiver, a loving parent? That can end up just fine. This, I knew. I turned to my puppy, letting myself fall into our love, our relationship, our miracle.

“You'll be running again soon,” I whispered. “We'll be running together.” He rested his muzzle on my neck, a deep, deep sigh from him. He was exhausted, but he was home. We, together, no matter where we landed, we were home.

I drove back to the house from the veterinary hospital with one hand reaching back to hold Bunker's leg. He lay in the back seat, still a little drugged and completely worn out. When we pulled up to the house, I parked, opened the front door then went back to the car to get him. He tried to stand but couldn't. “Shhh, shhh,” I said. “I got you, buddy.” I pushed my arms under his body and carried him out of the car like he was as light as a down pillow. My strength and steadiness were unwavering. I walked up each step, no wobbling, no straining, just my voice in his soft ear. “You're okay,” I whispered, over and over. I brought him into my bedroom and bent over the opened top of the metal crate. “Here we go, bud,” I said. “We're going to hang out here for a while.” His tail wagged slightly at the sound of my voice. I lowered him slowly, carefully, feeling no muscle strain, no stress to my body. Every muscle was dedicated to the healing of his body now, and that left me feeling stronger than ever, devoid of all complaint.

“There you go,” I said, whispering. The tone I had was my mother's. I heard her voice soothing me as a child. I felt her calloused hand on my neck, pulling my hair away from my face. “It's okay to cry,” I said to my dog, and I was my father. I was my wonderful dad on the lake asking me to tell him everything. “It's okay
for you to whimper. It hurts. You have every right to howl about that.”

I sat in the chair next to Bunker's crate, whispering to him as he fell asleep. I felt as if I could sit there at his bedside watching and caring for him for months, years, as long as it took. If he had to be stuck in his crate, isolated from the world, I would sit with him. I would not let him suffer alone.

What surprised me after several minutes of holding vigil crate-side was that I was smiling. I absolutely knew that Bunker would heal and run again. Outside, cars drove by, wind blew the enormous pine in the front yard, birds swooped overhead, and I sat silent in prayerful meditation next to my boy, relieved and hopeful because he was still alive, and we were together again.

The nurse was right. Bunker wanted to run before he could walk. The first day home, he whimpered to leave the crate. I opened the door and he stood up, holding his back leg up off the ground, clearly in pain. I squatted in front of the open crate door and talked to him. “Listen, buddy. You need to go slow. Take it easy. I will carry you outside to pee and sniff, but no walking. Got it?” He looked at me blankly, and I called him out of the crate. He limped out and did not resist when I put one arm under his chest and another under his stomach and lifted him off the ground. I had already opened the front door. I slowly descended the stairs, Bunker patiently waited to be put down.

He peed, hobbled a few steps, and then looked at me as if to say he was ready to go back to bed now. I carried him inside and settled him gently in his crate, gave him his painkillers wrapped in a slice of deli ham. He swallowed without chewing, lay down, and his eyes immediately drooped with fatigue. He would open them periodically as if to make sure I was still there, and to ask, “You okay? You doing okay?”

“I'm good, buddy,” I said, out loud. “And you're going to be great in no time, my brave little warrior.”

M
ARCH
1997

One cloudy afternoon, three weeks after the first surgery, Greg asked me if I could come to the living room. Melissa and Chris were gone when he sat down and said, “I need to know what we're doing.”

“What?” I asked, knowing exactly what he meant but wanting only to continue walking, to take Bunker outside for some fresh air. Bunker was recovering beautifully, could walk up the street now. I added half a block a day to our walk. He was up to seven blocks. He just needed help on stairs and had to follow the path of rugs from the bedroom to the kitchen and back. The next surgery would be in about three weeks, and I felt confident I could nurse him back to full health. I imagined that maybe in a few months we'd be walking at Marymoor together, him frolicking pain-free, me behind him, soaking up his joy.

“Now that the surgery's over, I need to know if I should start looking for another place, move out,” Greg said. It was clear that he had struggled for days to muster the courage to talk to me. I could feel the heavy words clunking on the ground at my feet.

I sat down across from him with reluctance. “I don't know,” I said. I truly didn't.

“I need to know,” he said, and I registered a tiny twinge of anger in his voice.

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm just confused. I'm really confused. I . . .”

He squeezed his eyes closed, then looked at his feet, his elbows
on his knees, his hands wringing around each other. “That tells me something,” he said, his voice distant and flat.

“No, it's not that,” I stuttered. “I just don't think I can be in a relationship right now.”

“I get it,” he said, his jawbone pulsing.

I didn't know what to say. I desperately longed to go outside and sprint up the hill until I was breathless, until my lungs burned for mercy. Then, I thought, in pain, in physical distress, I might see more clearly. “Okay,” I said. I stood up and called Bunker. He came to me quietly, his tail wagging. I hooked on the leash and held open the door, sneaking one last look at Greg a moment before walking out. He still had his elbows on his knees, his head dropped in defeat.

Bunker walked outside with me and stopped on the front porch. I longed to run to the farthest, darkest edges of Seattle. I imagined running to a ferryboat and somehow hoofing it into the Olympic Mountains, where I could collapse in the wettest rainforest I could find. I imagined lying there waiting for the lichen to grow on me, for the enormous slugs to trudge across my chest, into my ears.

“Come on, Bunk,” I said. I picked him up and walked down the stairs. My vision blurred from tears. Bunker took two slow, trudging steps and then began walking, ever the willing partner despite his pain and broken bones.
I am so stupid,
I thought. The thoughts kept coming, an echo chamber of all I'd done wrong. But I could see the thoughts like black clouds, and they went away just as quickly as they came. I forgave myself for them. And I stopped on the sidewalk just a few houses up from ours, sat down next to Bunker, and held his neck against my face. “I'm sorry,” I whispered, stroking his neck. I took a deep breath of him, his alive, earthy scent. “I'm so sorry, my sweetest friend,” I whispered into his neck.

Bunker wagged his tail and took a step, as if the shift in my
behavior was satisfactory, so I stood up and began walking too. Slowly, steadily, we walked away from the house. Bunker looked up at me, opened his mouth into a smile, and we crossed the street together.

One block in, I was making the case for not having another boyfriend, for not needing another heartbreak in my still semi-fragile state. Then I thought about how this romance had been going so differently, that I was pushing this man and his kindness away. I thought of my therapist in Ohio explaining that it made sense that relationships left me insecure and heartbroken, because that was what I brought to them. Feeling terrible, she told me, felt comfortable. “So you seek out that feeling in your romances,” she explained. “I know it seems too simple, but consider it.”

After walking one block, I was trying to wrap my head around what it might be like to embark upon a different kind of relationship. Greg had offered me part of his childhood savings to heal my dog. He'd made me laugh with all of my body. He was brilliant and driven, but also kind. His middle-of-the-night touch felt like a homecoming. But I still didn't feel like I needed him.

After two blocks, I panicked. Maybe this is what healthy love was supposed to feel like. Maybe I wasn't supposed to need him. Maybe I was supposed to love to be with him, but also love to be without him. The concept struck me as totally unromantic, not passionate enough. The fire in all of my love affairs had been their desperation.

After three blocks, I wondered if maybe that's why they burned out.

Four blocks in, I decided to just consider Greg. All the things about him. His blue eyes. His soft hands. His generosity. His humor. His wanting
me
, not the coifed, make-up wearing me, but the me who padded around in pajama pants and a ripped T-shirt on a hungover Sunday morning.

Five blocks in, I stopped. I closed my eyes and I thought of the
last time he climbed into my bed at two in the morning, before Jason. His right hand was the first thing to press on my mattress, the weight of him making me fall toward him, his left hand on my neck, his lips on mine, my pulling the covers over him, wrapping his arms all the way around me like he was a soldier just back from war. Once I felt like I might cry surprising, out-of-nowhere tears of joy at his mere arrival.

Six blocks in, I stopped.

Bunker stopped with me, looking up to watch for my next turn. At each street corner, he stopped and looked up at me. I'd trained him to do that. When we stopped at the corner of Nob Hill and Newton Street, he watched me for an indication of where to go. To the field? Home? Usually he pulled toward the field. But today he didn't. Today he sat calmly, watching my eyes. When I nodded and looked down the road back toward home, he took the first steps, and I followed.

I carried him back up the steps to the house. He licked my wrists as I picked him up, an act of submission and thanks. I placed him gingerly on the front porch and opened the door, hoping to see Greg on the futon still, waiting for me to come back.

The house sounded empty, minus Bunker walking along the carpet trail toward his water bowl. How I adored the sound of him messily lapping up water, half of it landing on his snout, his forehead, and the floor. When he finished, there was silence, and I stood by the closed front door holding the leash, listening. I sprinted up the stairs and saw Greg's door was closed.
Please be there. Please be there. Please be there.

I knocked twice, nothing. Two more times, nothing. I twisted the doorknob and pushed open the door and saw his feet crossed at the foot of his bed. He was lying there, looking at nothing, the sorrow around him nearly visible. I sat down on the edge of his mattress and extended my hand toward him. He stayed perfectly
still, staring at his slanted ceiling. I heard Bunker downstairs, thudding to my bedroom floor, groaning, tired after our walk.

“I just,” I stumbled. “I changed my mind.” Greg tried to not show any emotion, but the tiniest smile crept to his face. I knew he was angry, and he didn't want to smile, and I loved that he couldn't help it.

“You're a little bit of an asshole,” he said. “Again.”

“I know. I know. I am. I'm learning. You have to understand,” I began. “I am not used to a kind man. I'm not used to a nice guy who actually wants to be with me. I don't know. How do I explain this? You're not a jerk. You're a nice person. You're kind and sensitive. That's new to me. But I need someone who will stick through the shit with me,” I said. The words felt like tumbling bricks out of me. “Because I am warning you now, I bring a lot of shit. I carry it inside me for some reason, and you never know when I'm going to open and it's going to be rancid and awful and you're going to wonder why the hell you ever chose me.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Unlikely, though.”

His palpable relief at my return left me squirmy and uncomfortable. Why would he want to be with me so much? I needed to tell him what he was getting himself into, so I started talking. “I was fucked up as a kid. Not like terrible fucked up, but I think I got a really warped self-image. And I have been in some bad relationships, and I'm not a hundred percent well.”

I wanted to say the words
I have depression.
The weight of those words sat under all my chatter, and the more I spoke, the closer they floated to the top. “Once, I tried to jump out of my dad's car when he was driving down the freeway. And once I wanted my mom to think I was going to stab myself with a knife. I lost my shit in Manhattan. I mean, really. And the only reason I survived last summer was because I got Bunker. I'm unhealthily attached to him, because I was diagnosed . . .” I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I didn't know if I was telling Greg these
things so that he would not want to be with me, or so that we could start out with one hundred percent truth between us. “Ugh,” I stopped, coughed, choking a little bit on spit that had flicked itself to the back of my throat just as I tried to eke out the words, “with clinical depression. And I have to take medication so that I won't want to go jump off a bridge for no apparent reason. And I'm trying to get down to the bottom of why I'm like this, why all this happens, and I really am doing so much better, and I'm so happy here in Seattle. I love it here.” I was crying now. “And you're so amazing. You're like a light coming to me just when I need it, just when I can't accept it, but I'm just going to try accepting it anyway. If you'll still have me. You are so kind and sweet and funny. And I think I could actually, totally fall in love with you. You're like . . .” His face twitched, as if he was trying to determine if he should laugh or run. “Oh, my god, I can't believe I just said that. You must think I'm insane. I'm sorry. It's just that I don't feel that nagging crazy love feeling with you. I feel this kind of sweet, calm love feeling with you and I think I need to maybe follow that . . . Oh, god. Don't take that the wrong way. I just feel like maybe this is what a healthy relationship is supposed to feel . . .”

I would've kept talking, but he stopped me the only way he knew how, with his lips on mine. He pulled me over to him more forcefully than he ever had, and we were together again, our bodies aligned on his mattress and box spring on the floor, and I pictured something like a double helix swirling up from us, DNA lined with daisies and sunshine and tall grasses and butterflies. Good god, it was beautiful.

We had our first official date a few days later at a French restaurant inside Pike Place Market. Greg suggested that we just try to start over. “Clean slate,” he said. After I knew I had a second chance with this man, I vowed never to make the same mistake again. I walked up First Avenue and spotted him standing on the
corner of Pike Street clutching a bouquet of tulips. “To new beginnings,” he said, handing them to me.

“To new beginnings,” I said, taking his hand.

That night I wrote in a new journal that I'd had sitting on my nightstand for weeks. “This is my new journal. We'll see how long this lasts. But I want to write this down because I think I have met the man I want to marry. I want to record this so our kids can see this. But it's odd, because it's a very calm feeling, this.”