Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (20 page)

When Michael got to the hospital, he had to wait for “visiting time” in the ER, which was the last ten minutes of every hour.
At the appropriate time, a nurse led him back into the ER and he walked right past my bed.

“I would never have recognized you,” he later told me. “Your face was a bloody pulp. You looked like you’d been knocked out
in a boxing match. And you were moaning, this slow steady groan of unabated pain.”

Up until then, I had remained pretty calm. But when an orderly wheeled me into the X-ray room, with Michael following, I pretty
much lost it, all defenses down. Just at the moment they transferred me from the portable cot to the X-ray table, I began
to cry and couldn’t stop.

I wasn’t just upset about my accident. It was as if all the emotions I’d felt about what had happened to my career and health
were amplified and brought to the surface, bursting out of me in one convulsive, and embarrassing, sob.

My next thought was “Granny.”

Michael called her on the phone, explained the situation, and she raced into a taxi and was at the hospital in fifteen minutes.

“Glenn,” she quipped, pulling aside the curtain and walking into the cubicle. “I leave you alone for an hour and you wind
up in a place like this!” That was Granny.

She calmly proceeded over to my bedside to get a better look, holding on her arm a large cloth canvas shopping bag, the one
she used at the farmers’ market.

“Honestly,” Michael later said. “Granny was more composed than I was. I’d never seen anyone look the way you did, and I was
pretty shaken up.”

But Pearl, outwardly calm, wasn’t so unaffected by what was happening. She was actually quite upset seeing me in this condition,
but she never let it show.

“I brought something to cheer you up,” she said, rifling into her bag.

“Oh, Granny, I’m not up for any cookies right now.”

“I’ve got something much better than that,” she smiled. And there, popping out from under a pink towel was
Katie
! Pearl had smuggled her into the hospital, past the ER nurses, using the same technique I had used when sneaking Katie into
the
Daily News
building years earlier.

“She never moved when I told her to stay quiet,” said Pearl proudly, lifting Katie up onto my hospital cot. “I guess those
obedience lessons paid off.”

Never had I been as happy to see my dog as I was that day. She tried to lick my face, but that was impossible. So Granny held
her steady, and she soon fell asleep next to me, hiding under the sheet. No doctor was the wiser.

Michael stood guard, remaining on the lookout for any ER doctors or nurses (who would certainly seek the immediate ouster
of a canine intruder) while Pearl and I talked quietly. For the rest of my ER stay, Katie stayed under the sheet or hidden
in the bag, evading eviction, as Granny talked into the bag, perhaps mistaken for someone with senile dementia!

Blessings were piling up. The first one was the man who discovered me on the ground. Then there was the rapid response of
the ambulance, the care of the nurses, and now two of my closest friends were sitting by my side.

Next, a young plastic surgeon arrived offering a big smile. “We’re going to fix you up—and you’ll have no scars left behind,”
he assured me, though I wasn’t prepared for what followed. After cleaning up my face and stitching up the cuts, the doctor
explained that he was going to reset my nose
without
anesthesia.

“But why?” I asked, dreading any more pain.

“We can’t give anesthesia when we believe a patient may have sustained a concussion or a neck injury—so you’re going
to have to bite the bullet and trust me. We’ll get through it quickly, I promise.”

As he manipulated my nose with his instruments, I heard a loud crack as he was resetting the bone. I was in agony, in the
most physical pain I’d ever experienced. Adding to the drama was blood spraying all over the wall.

“When the doctor reset your nose, you let out the most intense shriek,” said Michael. “That kind of pain was just unfathomable
to me.”

And then, to my amazement, an hour after my face was bandaged and my nose filled with packing, the plastic surgeon announced,
“You can go home.”

“He can go where?” asked Michael, astonished by this.

“We can’t keep him in the hospital. He’s fine. But if his nose starts bleeding again during the night, call the ER.”

So at 9:00 p.m., six hours after it all began, I was released from the hospital, barely able to walk. But that’s exactly what
I did, supported on each arm by Michael and Pearl. A second before the door closed behind us, Katie jumped out of her shopping
bag and the last thing I remember is the shocked expression of the nurse. Too late now!

The taxi ride home to Battery Park City was a quiet one, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Michael and Pearl were incredible
friends that night. In fact, they were much more than that: They were
family
.

And it wasn’t just that they showed up and stayed with me. Anyone could do that. They really
cared
—and I would never forget it.

That night, with my defenses down, I realized just how much I loved them, and how that feeling was so readily returned to
me. A sense of thankfulness filled me up. Finally, I understood
something that I had read long ago—that
a grateful heart can never be a depressed one.
The two emotions are antithetical.

Holding onto both Pearl and Michael, I made my way slowly down the hall toward my apartment door.

Small acts of kindness continued. Michael helped pull off my bloody T-shirt without disturbing the bandages on my face. Pearl
pulled back the covers and propped up some pillows. Katie jumped up on the bed and nestled next to me.

John, who had been at work and unable to come to the hospital, brought Ryan down the hallway. Both of them were anxious to
see me.

“You look bad—like Monster Man,” exclaimed Ryan, intrigued as only a child could be by my swollen face. He was completely
unfazed by it, happy to lie on the bed next to me, together with Katie.

“Pip,” as John sometimes called me, “you won’t be going out on dates anytime soon!” he laughed.

It was Oscar night, so Michael flipped on the TV, and we all watched Mira Sorvino win Best Supporting Actress for
Mighty Aphrodite
.

Lying in bed, surrounded by everyone, I never felt more at peace. I also knew that I was lucky. The entire day had been a
lesson in gratitude. The depressed person of that morning was gone. Maybe human nature works that way: You don’t really know
how fortunate you are until all that you take for granted is threatened.

That’s why the accident was a gift, leading to an epiphany that literally snapped me out of my ungrateful, depressed state
of mind. It forced me to count my blessings—the people (and the dog) in my life.

On this night, I especially appreciated Katie’s upbeat love for all of us, reflected in her countless runs up and down the
hall, herding us together.

I took in the happy bounce of her gait, her curious nose, her exuberant smile, and her tongue hanging out with pleasure.

Once again, even in the ER, she had helped pull me through a difficult time, consoling, entertaining, and immeasurably enhancing
the quality of all our lives.

That night, just before I went to sleep, Granny brought in some apple juice with a straw and sat next to me without talking.
She looked out the window at the river, stroking Katie’s head in a slow rhythm.

Soon, she went back down the hall, though she made sure that John looked in on me throughout the night.

And then, with the heat turned to high and Katie next to me just as she’d been that morning, I drifted off to sleep, ending
my day in an infinitely better place than I ever could have imagined.

T
he next five years whirled by quickly, a string of dinners, shared holidays, and lots of mileage clocked up and down our hallway.
It was a happy time for all of us as our little family solidified, reaching its zenith in terms of sheer fun and deep connection.

Ryan was growing taller and running faster, now often
beating
the determined Katie in races.

“Yesss!
Victory
!” he’d shout, jumping in the air and high-fiving me as Katie ran around him in circles, breathless in defeat, and ready to
try again.

As Ryan matured, he had developed into a rambunctious, athletic eleven-year-old, adept at Little League baseball and utterly
consumed with soccer. Proudly outfitted in his uniform—black shorts with an orange T-shirt—he’d run down to Pearl’s apartment,
raring to go.

“C’mon Graaaaanny!” he implored, stretching out her name just the way I did it. “There’s a game at noon—and you’ve got to
come.”

Pearl would drop everything, put on a red baseball cap and sunglasses, and hike over to the Battery Park City Ball Field
a mile away to watch her boy play. There she was, cheering enthusiastically from the sidelines along with John, me, and Katie—who
would try to break free from her red leash.

My frustrated dog would have done anything to get into the action, but, instead, she sat at attention, jealously watching
the game. Her wet black nose twitched as she followed the players.

The way she nervously kept looking up at me seemed to say, “
Dad, let me loose! I gotta get out there. The kid needs me
,” which indeed he did.

Afterward, with Ryan still wired up from the game and bursting with energy, he’d slam soccer balls down our 120-foot hallway,
showing off his deft footwork as Granny cheered and Katie chased him around, at last relieved to get into the fray.

On weekends, Ryan had friends over from school. No matter how much the boys hooted, hollered, and roughhoused, Katie wasn’t
fazed in the least by the ruckus. She’d chase those fifth-graders up and down, keeping an ever-watchful eye on Ryan, growling
if one of the boys attempted to wrestle him to the ground.

Despite Ryan’s ability to shake the house down with his soccer kicks and high spirits, he was also an inquisitive, sensitive
boy—chatterbox smart, respectful, and very adult for his years.

Although he wasn’t particularly interested in science or math, he liked geography, history, and English—and was all over computers
and gadgets.

Blessed with excellent hand-eye coordination, his main interest (continuing to this day) was video games.

He spent hours entertaining himself with his Game Boy, the handheld video game by Nintendo, which he was becoming addicted
to. He never left home without the gadget, even when
he went down the hall to visit Pearl. This sometimes offended Pearl’s sense of decorum.

“Put that thing away until you’re done eating!” was Pearl’s frequent refrain after Ryan snuck his Game Boy into dinner under
his T-shirt, darting repeated glances at it as he ate. Other times, he would switch it off—reluctantly. But he knew his reward
would be his favorite chocolate pie, which she only made sometimes as a special treat.

John, of course, was kept apprised of all this, as he frequently conferred with Pearl over that same chocolate pie.

Pearl admired how effectively John managed to balance work with parenting. He was at every teacher-parent conference, helped
coach the soccer team, arranged playdates with other parents, and took Ryan to movies, the zoo, you name it.

While John always respected Ryan’s privacy and never entered his bedroom without knocking first, this was a nicety Katie never
ascribed to. She would barge her way into his bedroom whenever she got the chance, jumping up on him and distracting him from
homework.

I loved listening to Ryan tell me all about school, or watching him read a book in my living room with Katie parked next to
him, her head on his lap. I always had my camera handy and wound up taking hundreds of pictures. Katie would stare into the
camera, poised as always.

One day, I was in my office at my computer, showing Ryan how to type. Katie looked on, sitting next to us on a desk chair,
staring at the keys.