Dog Medicine

by Julie Barton

  “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 m
y 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.”

  SECOND HIP

  APRIL 1997

  Almost a month later, the night before Bunker’s second surgery, Greg slept in my room all through the night. Usually he slipped back to his room around one in the morning, but we fell asleep, and I needed his comfort.

  “I think I left my door open last night,” Greg whispered in the hallway. “The jig might be up.” Melissa didn’t say anything, but the way she said good morning told me she knew everything.

  “Cat’s out of the bag,” I said.

  “First things first,” he said, petting Bunker. “You’re top priority today, bud.” I sat fighting the urge to think catastrophically, trying to remember the positive thoughts that had calmed me during the first surgery.

  Greg drove my truck, and I sat in the back with Bunker on the way to the surgeon’s office. Bunker pulled on the leash away from the hospital doors as we approached the building.

  “He’s no dummy,” Greg said.

  “Can you give us a minute?” I asked, needing to be alone with my boy.

  “Sure. I’ll wait inside.” Greg seemed unperturbed by my request. He understood that my connection to Bunker was like that of two soul mates, and he didn’t try to change it. He didn’t feel jealous of my devotion to my dog. On the contrary, he would watch and admire us. He would comment to his friends and family that I was the most incredible dog-whisperer he’d ever seen. He’d say that I could anticipate my dog’s needs in a remarkable way, and he’d never met a better dog than Bunker.

  I sat on the ground in the parking lot with Bunker, put both my hands on his shoulders and tried to explain. The hair on his left hip was about half an inch long, soft and downy like a baby’s. “Remember that awful, confusing thing that happened?” I said, and he sat down in front of me. I wrapped my legs around him. “That’s going to happen again, okay?” I said. “It’s going to be awful one more time, okay? And then I’ll help you, and Greg and Melissa and Chris will help you. And you’ll be better, Bunk. You’ll be so much better. We can go to Marymoor and run. Can you imagine? How wonderful that will be?” He heard the joy in my voice and his tail wagged. A car pulled into the parking lot and a woman noticed me sitting communing with my dog. She smiled at us as she walked past. Oh, how I loved Seattle people.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said. “You can do this.” He stood up. “You ready?” I started walking and he hesitated again, then reluctantly walked into the clinic, his tail tucked tight between his legs, his head down. When the receptionist saw him, she remembered him. “Bunker!” she said. “You’re back! Oh, we love Bunker!” She turned to me and said, “We all just fell in love with this guy last time he was here. What a great, great dog. Hi, buddy!” Bunker still had his tail tucked between his legs, but it wagged ever so slightly and he whimpered a loud, long half-howl, half-cry.

  I put my mouth next to his ear and whispered, “You’ll be okay.”

  The receptionist took his leash and walked him back through the swinging door. “What a great boy you are,” she said. “We’re so happy to see you doing so well. Look, guys! Bunker!” I heard her say.

  Greg looked at me and smiled. I couldn’t smile back yet. I couldn’t really focus on anything. My boy was gone again, and I had to wait one more excruciating day to see if he would be okay. The receptionist came back, beaming and laughing as if she’d just stolen a dose of antidepressants from me. I tried to keep my composure as she explained the procedures to me a second time, reminding me that I would get a phone call around four or five o’clock with news about how the surgery went and that I could pick him up in the morning.

  I thanked her, saying a silent prayer, trying to repeat everything I did after I dropped him off for the first surgery. Positive thoughts. Patience. Good things. Greg took my hand as we walked back to the car and I felt shaky. Ominous. I tried to shake it off, buckled myself into the passenger seat, and Greg started driving.

  The farther we drove, the worse the ominous feeling became. I realized with a panic that Greg hadn’t come with me to drop Bunker off for the first surgery. I had done that alone. I had taken him to the clinic myself, comforted him alone, driven to work alone, and everything had turned out okay. Why had I agreed to let Greg take us to the second surgery? My superstition about this was so intense and real that I burst into terrible sobs, unable to speak, my head in my hands, my breath jagged. I was so heavy with regret that I could hardly breathe. I cried hard. I had never cried like this in front of anyone except my parents and therapists. This was the kind of crying I did in the shower in New York when I feared for my sanity. I couldn’t control it. And I couldn’t look at Greg. I was terribly embarrassed and convinced that something awful would happen because I’d let this man come with me and I shouldn’t have. This was something sacred between Bunker and me. Not Bunker, me, and Greg.

  I didn’t notice until I began to stop sobbing that Greg had pulled the car over to the side of the road. We were on a busy two-lane highway, but he found a spot to safely pull to the side and turn off the engine.

  “He’ll be okay,” Greg said. “Did you see the way those people greeted him? They’re going to take such great care of him.”

  I nodded, my face still in my hands. I couldn’t tell Greg that something had busted open in me—that letting him come with me to drop my beloved off for his second awful, terrible, traumatizing surgery felt too intimate. I wasn’t ready to let anyone in like that. I wasn’t ready to trust that any man could handle this situation and not t
urn and run because his new girlfriend was a crazy dog freak. I imagined all the awful things he could say or do—tell me I was nuts, sit silently waiting for me to stop, then not know what to say and leave me apologetic and awkward and deep-down regretting ever letting him see me in such a vulnerable state.

  I cradled my face as if there were a hideous disfigurement under my hands, and I couldn’t let Greg see. I didn’t want to let any light in. I didn’t want to look up and see his face. I didn’t know what I would find, and I felt such comfort in the darkness with my eyes closed, my face cradled in my palms. This place was too familiar, too real, too inviting. He wasn’t speaking, and I didn’t dare say anything. I just tried to calm my breathing and keep my face covered. My hands grew hot, my face sweaty. Five minutes passed, then more. I wondered what on earth was going on. Was Greg sleeping? Was he staring at me like I was a zoo animal? Was he at a loss for words?

  I finally pulled my hands away from my face and slowly opened my eyes. The cool air on my cheeks and forehead nearly made me shiver. I looked straight ahead—the cars flying past us on our left, the windshield a little bit foggy from my heavy breathing. I turned my head slightly, not sure what I might see.

  What I did see was Greg: calm, clear, loving. He tilted his head a little, searched me with his eyes and said three of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard, “I’m still here.” I knew right then that no matter what, I would never, ever lose this man again.

  MARYMOOR

  MAY 1997

  Bunker made it through his second surgery. He trusted that I would carry him down the stairs for several weeks. He seemed to understand that our walks would stop for a while, but return eventually. He appeared content, as if he knew he’d been saved and would endure the painful recovery so he could soon commence his work on this earth with me and all who loved him. He would sit in his lidless crate, his chin on my bedroom’s opened windowsill, his nose poking out the window. I watched him for hours because he emanated contentedness simply watching a bird alight on a branch on the pine tree. His nose would twitch and he’d sniff furiously when another dog walked by. When the roommates came home, they would come straight to my room, greet Bunker with a howl and a pat, and he would return the howl with his chin high. I marveled at him, because even with his hip shaved naked, dozens of metal staples jutting out at the mark of the two large incisions, he still radiated peacefulness. Even in his confinement, Bunker went from contemplation to tail-wagging glee at the mere scent of a friend. Of course, he was still teaching me, leading by example. He had no opinion about his bum hips, about his tough situation. The second period of confinement to a cage did not appear to upset him. He simply sat, pondering, wagging, being. He’d accept our love and attention, breathe in deeply, catching new scents with nose-twitching curiosity and wonder, then curling up for a long, quiet nap. If that’s not a lesson on how to live, I don’t know what is.