“They fixedme, didn’t they?” I say. “They can fix him too.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? I’m human, and he’s not? What are they going to do, shoot him?”
Mom turns desperately to my father for support. He’s standing at the window, and I launch my ire at him too.
“He deserves a chance at life, just like me!”
“They won’t shoot him,” he replies. “But no one wants to see him suffer. It’ll be handled humanely.”
“What do you mean, suffer? I’m in pain, aren’t I? I’m suffering, but you’re not going to putmedown.”
My mother scoffs in horror.
“Of course not,” Dad replies. He moves closer to the bed.
“Then what’s there to talk about? Tell them to fix Scooter like they fixed me.”
“It’s not up to us,” he replies. “He was Jacob’s dog, and his family is making those decisions.”
“Then call them. Please, Dad! I can’t lose him too!”
I stare at my father intensely. He turns to my mother, and I watch their unspoken communication, a moment of shared deliberation.
Mom gets up from her chair. “I’ll call Jacob’s mother.”
“Whatever it costs,” Dad adds. “Tell her we’ll pay the vet bills.”
In that moment, I love them more than I’ve ever loved them in my life.
My parents’ help should have satisfied me, but an hour later, I can’t get Scooter out of my head. I’m consumed with thoughts of him at the vet hospital, alone in a cage, broken and bleeding, in pain, like me. Notknowing if Jacob or I have survived. Not knowing if we’ll ever come back for him.
All I want to do is rip these tubes out of my veins and get discharged so that I can go find him. I need him, and he needs me—because he loved Jacob, just like I did. Our suffering is the same.
Chapter Four
The Dark Universe
It’s three long days before I’m discharged. Meanwhile, my parents visit Scooter every afternoon at the vet hospital and get updates. Like me, he’d undergone surgery to fix a broken pelvis. He also had a shattered femur and internal bleeding. It’s touch and go for the first two days, but on day three, we learn that he’s sitting up and taking food.
For me, this news is the only glimmer of light in a world that’s gone dark. I still feel as if I’m flat on my back on that beach, barely conscious, believing this is the end. Maybe it’s the pain medication that keeps me numb, floating, and out of touch with reality, just above or below it. Whenever I doze off, I feel Jacob’s hand wrap around mine. He squeezes it like he did on the beach, and he encourages me to hang on. His voice is soothing yet firm. But then I wake up, and I remember that he didn’t make it, and no amount of morphine can touch the agony in my heart.
Flowers arrive. Friends and family call, but it’s my mother who speaks to them because I’m not up to it. I can’t listen to condolences about Jacob, and I certainly don’t want to talk about the accident. I can’t relive it. All I want to do is lie in bed and disappear, reach oblivion in sleep. But even that’s taken away from me with the constant flow of hospital staff, in and out of the room.
Then Becky arrives. The second our eyes meet, we cry, and she rushes to the bed and hugs me. My parents leave us alone, and I’m glad because Becky is the only person I want to talk to about the accident. I tell her everything. I describe Jacob’s last moments, and we sob and hold each other. Neither of us can believe he’s truly gone.
The next day, a physiotherapist talks to me about my recovery, and I’m forced to get out of bed and start walking up and down the hospital corridors. I submit because I don’t care, one way or another, about my recovery, and I can’t be bothered to put up a fuss. I do what they tell me to do so that they won’t keep harping and they’ll leave me alone afterward.
Mostly, I feel anesthetized. When mindfulness happens, I cry, and my mother sits on the bed and holds me. She offers gentle words of comfort.
But sadly, comfort—even from my mother, who knows me best and loves me deeply and unconditionally—is a thousand miles away. Maybe a million. It’s wherever Jacob is.
On the day of my discharge—after we’re sent on our way with a set of crutches and a prescription for medications—we drive straight to the vet hospital to pick up Scooter.
My father pulls into the parking lot. Before he has a chance to shut off the engine, I open the back door and hobble out.
The weather is cold and gray, and the dampness seeps into my bones as I catch the scent of snow on the horizon. I can’t help but think, grudgingly, as I assemble my crutches, about the sunshine and warmth on the summit of Cape Split five days ago.
