Different Kind of Beauty

by Sylvia McNicoll

  Beauty rushed me, tossing me over. Great.

  I got up and rattled her leash and she wagged harder. She even barked. “Shh! It’s still dark out. They’ll think we’re crazy!” I grabbed the tape player from the bookshelf.

  Without the sun the air felt sharp, with a cold bite to it. “Hey, Beauty, I can see our breath!” I puffed, and she wagged. The streets looked deserted and the quiet felt almost eerie. “Let’s run!” I said to her, and we jogged toward the variety store. Seeing Beauty running alongside me again made me feel great.

  Then suddenly she pulled to one side and barked as though she had to tell me something important—had to yell it, actually.

  “What now? I didn’t hear anything.” Beauty bolted forward, yanking my arm from its socket. “Stop it, Beauty. You can’t be a guide dog if you act like this.” Still she plowed ahead.

  That’s when I saw where she was heading. Some clothes lay stretched near the sidewalk—so dark I would have never spotted them. She dragged me toward them. “That’s funny. Why would anybody leave their clothes by the curb like that?”

  Then I saw the clothes more clearly and gasped. “Oh, god, Beauty—it’s a body!”

  Kyle

  Semiconscious

  Aw, man, I’m freezing. I want to reach for the covers to pull them up over my head, but my arms feel like cement boulders. I can’t even wiggle my fingers. The mattress against my back presses up cold and hard, like rock or—wait a minute—pavement! Where am I? Just as I think that thought, it floats away, and I can’t remember why I feel so worried, only that I do. An electric current inside my gut circles around and around, making me want to run, jump and scream. I want to do something, but I can’t remember what.

  Stand up. That’s it. I will my legs to bend and my feet to support me, but nothing moves. Now I want to get up so bad, I feel my body actually lift and float in the darkness.

  Cold…I shiver. Where are my blankets? Why is my bed so hard? RAWF!

  A dog—no! I have to be dreaming. That’s it, I’m really in my bed. I hear the panting and I’m little again. Five years old, and the same height as the Parkinses’ dog. It’s OK, you can pat Max. That’s what Mrs. Parkins always told me. But I am alone outside, on the front lawn; waiting, waiting for someone—Mom, maybe—and I have a cookie in my hand. The German shepherd runs toward me, long pink tongue hanging to one side. I back away but he jumps on me, his black nails digging into my arms. Max loves children. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, Mrs. Parkins had said.

  I fall back. The cold pavement hits my back, hard. Hawh, hawh— the dog’s panting is loud in my ears. It’s all I can hear now. I can smell Max’s meaty bad breath, but he’s wagging his tail. He snaps up my cookie, nipping my fingers at the same time. Ow! I call, and I jerk my hand away. Then Max changes. I see his jaws drop open now, see his lips lift. His panting turns to a snarl and his teeth into angry knives jabbing into my cheek.

  I want to push him off, but I can’t. I scream and scream for my mother. Instead, Mrs. Parkins rushes out and pulls Max away.

  Were you teasing Max? You bad boy! And then we’re someplace else and it’s so dark. I can’t see anything. I hear panting and yipping, and then I feel it. Max’s hot breath on my leg, Max’s dagger teeth biting my ankle. Isn’t he a cute puppy? Maddie’s voice.

  But this is all wrong. Mom came out, we went to the doctor. I got stitches. It wasn’t so dark. Why is it so dark?

  Another thought filters through to me. It has to be a dream, because I can’t see Max anymore. I’m blind. My teeth chatter. It’s freezing. If it’s a dream, why am I on the ground? And I hear panting, I really do.

  My cheek feels wet. Is it blood?

  There’s a tongue lapping at my cheek. Ugh, I want to push it away but then Max will bite me. I can’t see anything again, but I still feel the heaviness on my chest. Is this still a dream? The heaviness is warm and somehow comforting. In my mind I see it as an intense white light heating the chill out of my bones. It guides and focuses me. The ground, cold and hard against my back, can’t hurt me—not while this anchor of heat weighs down on my chest. I can’t be scared while I have this light. I reach to touch it.

  Fur? No, it can’t be Max. Max hates me. I’m a bad boy. I teased Max.

  I hear a girl’s voice in the distance—the girl from the park. The one who cried for me when Maddie broke off with me. Cry for me again, why don’t you? My head hurts. Stay! she calls. I’ll get help.

  The dream must be over. I don’t feel pain in the skin on my face. But my head still pounds behind my eyes and I float, even with that warm white light anchoring my chest down. Floating, floating…sirens wail in another dream, somewhere else. The weight springs off. Lifting, floating, shouts, floating. Nothing.

  I imagine Max off my chest, teeth gleaming. I hand him my cookie this time. He looks happy. He doesn’t bite me; he licks my face. This time no one stops him. More floating. If only this darkness could end.

  Someone laughed in another room. Like silver bells. It was her—I was sure of it. I sat up quickly and felt a tube brush up against my arm.

  “Careful, Kyle, you’ll pull the IV out of your arm.” Mom’s voice?

  “What IV? Where am I?” I sat up against softness. The smell of sickly-sweet medicine combined with that of deodorized blankets. I couldn’t be in my room.

  I heard the girl’s voice again, from a distance. “Settle, Beauty. He’s OK. We’re going to go visit him.” Then jingling.

  “Mom, who is that? Outside my door. The dog!” Electricity snapped and crackled inside me, circling, making me want to jump up and run.

  “Calm down, Kyle. You’re in the hospital. Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “A dog attacked me. He bit my face and then wouldn’t get off. I hear him outside the door, Mom.”

  “Shh, shh. A girl and her dog found you in the street. You’d collapsed—had a hypo.”

  That voice. Stay! I’ll get help. “The girl from the park?” I thought out loud. Jingle, jingle. Was I imagining that sound now?

  “Well, lucky the girl knew you. She told the ambulance attendant you were diabetic. He thought you might have just been drunk.”

  “I swear a dog attacked me.”

  “You must have been hallucinating. They’re monitoring your blood sugar levels. They had to do an emergency infusion to bring your glucose levels back up.”

  Max’s hot panting on my face…his teeth bared, ready to sink on my cheek… “She let that dog bite me. She thought he was friendly.”

  “Nothing like that happened.” Her voice again. Click, click—the sound of long black dog nails on the linoleum.

  “Oh, hello. Are you the girl who found my son?”

  “I’m Elizabeth Kerr, and this is my dog Beauty.” The voice came closer. “I never let her bite Kyle. I told her to stay while I went for help.”

  “Can’t you see the scar?” I touched my cheek where I knew it would be. “I needed ten stitches.”

  “Kyle, that was from Max. When you were little,” Mom’s hand touched my arm as she talked.“It was freezing out. Beauty kept you warm till the ambulance came.”

  My head pounded and thoughts collided together, confusing me. That anchor of heat and light that had focused me—I had touched it and it had felt furry. “But a dog hurt me,” I said, touching my scar again and feeling all mixed up. What was a dream; what was real?

  “You’re a liar!” the voice snapped out. “Come on, Beauty.” The voice moved away.

  “Wait!” I called as I swung my legs out from under my covers. That light that guided me, a dog? I wanted to know.

  “Kyle, you can’t upset yourself like this.” Mom grabbed my legs and held them. “Lie down and rest.”

  The effort took too much out of me. I couldn’t fight her.

  Someone else came in then, fiddled with my IV, said hello and chatted us up—a nurse? “Did you see that chocolate Lab? What a beautiful dog. Wearing one of those green jackets. Training to be a guide dog, you
know. You should really see about getting a dog like hers. You’d never have to walk alone.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Elizabeth and Beauty

  The Hospital Visit

  My worst nightmare: a body on the ground with only me in the whole world responsible for it. I didn’t want to be the one to check if it was dead or alive. I wanted to be sick, or run, or both. Here’s where Beauty calmed me down, for a change, and helped me out.

  She whined softly as she stepped closer to the guy, and I couldn’t help watching her as she sniffed him over. He looked familiar and yet not. I mean, for me it’s the eyes that really make a person, and obviously, this guy’s were closed. Beauty sniffed closer to his neck and mouth, and then licked across his face.

  “Is he breathing, girl?” I asked as I kneeled down. That’s when I saw the sunglasses. Dark gelled hair, black jeans and a long-sleeved dark T. No one wore dark glasses when it was this dark; it had to be the blind guy from school. Beauty looked at me, shifted from paw to paw and whimpered.

  He wasn’t just a body, he was a person. I could do this now. I touched his neck and felt a pulse. Closer, and I even saw his chest rise. Alive! I wanted to tear around in circles till I figured out what to do.

  “Stay!” I held up my hands like stop signs to Beauty. “Stay here, while I get help.”

  I didn’t look back as I flew to the convenience store. “Call 911!” I yelled at the clerk. “There’s a man hurt on the corner of Mountainside and Nottingham.”

  The clerk made me speak to the emergency operator, and I felt like I had repeated everything a hundred times before I ran back to the corner of the street.

  Beauty lay half on top of Kyle’s chest, haunches resting on the ground. Her eyes looked into mine as if to tell me this boy was all right, she was protecting him as best she could. Oh, my gosh, what would happen if a bus drove by? Nothing. I was sure by the way her head rested between those protective paws. Nothing would get between her and this human. Her tail flapped only once in greeting.

  I started unsnapping my jacket, thinking, Beauty has the right idea. We have to keep Kyle warm. But then the ambulance warbled in the distance. A red light pulsed across Kyle’s face.

  Two attendants slammed down a stretcher. “On three,” one told the other. “One, two and three.” They hoisted him onto the stretcher. “How long has he been like this?” he asked as they lifted him into the back.

  “I don’t know. My dog found him as we were walking.”

  “Any ID?”

  “I didn’t check. But he goes to my school. Kyle Nicholson. And my friend told me he’s diabetic.”

  The guy nodded and talked to the other attendant. Then they banged the doors shut and jumped into the front.

  “Where—where are you taking him?” I asked.

  “Emergency at Joseph Brant. Thank you, miss.”

  “Elizabeth. I can call to see how he is, right?”

  “Yes. Call the hospital.”

  Like the end of a bad dream, the ambulance pulled away, wailing in inhales and exhales.

  I walked home with Beauty, stunned. The sun magically rose, brightening the sky with lighter and lighter shades of gold, then yellow and then white—just as though nothing was wrong. I stepped through the door and heard the shower going. Deb was up already?

  She came down, sipping from a glass of water. “My third glass,” she told me. “I have to drink at least five before the ultrasound. You haven’t forgotten, have you? You’re still coming, aren’t you?”

  I bounced my palm on my forehead. “Ultrasound! Oh, my gosh. I did forget. You’ll never believe this, but…”

  I told her all about finding Kyle. Beauty wolfed down pieces of toast as I described the way she had lain across him to keep him warm.

  “Well, you can drop by on him. The ultrasound clinic is in the basement of Joseph Brant.”

  “You’re right. I can check. Oh, I hope he’s OK.” I looked at Beauty. I didn’t want to find out any bad news. If only Beauty could go in first and check, as she had earlier that morning.

  Deb didn’t mind that I was taking Beauty to the clinic.

  “You should have seen how great she was with Kyle. She will make someone the perfect guide dog, if only she can get over her thing with buses and jackhammers.”

  “She’ll do just fine. Just bring the Elvis tape,” Debra reassured me. “Although I’m not sure how I’m going to do, with all this water sloshing inside me.”

  After everything that had happened, I thought that Debra had to be right about Beauty. So I was shocked when she backed up against me instead of heading up the bus steps.

  “Come on, come on. Don’t have all day,” the bus driver said. “You gonna bring that dog in, at least shut the radio off,” he told us.

  No Elvis. We sat down in a middle seat. Deb didn’t think she could take all the bumps in the back, not after five glasses of water. “Don’t worry,” she told me as Beauty circled her a third time before settling. “We’ll sing lullabies. What’s the driver gonna do? Hushaby, hushaby. Baby, sleep,” Deb crooned.

  I sang along softly. It sounded calm, like a happy memory. I sighed. Beauty settled. “Hey, Deb? Did you ever have to sing this to me when I was a baby?"

  “Uh-huh, always. I used to have to play with you to shut you up so Mom could study.”

  “Wow. Now I’ll get to sing it to your baby.” I started humming the tune again.

  Twenty blocks later, I had to nudge Beauty awake with my foot as the bus rolled up to our stop. Beauty stepped down much quicker than she had climbed on. “We’ll catch up to you at the elevator,” I told Deb. Then Beauty and I ran together to the admissions desk. I asked about Kyle and the receptionist gave me his room number, so at least that meant he wasn’t dead.

  We rushed back to Debra, standing cross-legged at the elevators. Down we went to the clinic, where we had to wait in line at the counter just to check in and fill out forms. When she’d completed them, Debra still had to wait. “Ohhhh, I have to go,” she moaned as she squeezed her eyes together. After fifteen minutes, she turned really pale and rushed to the counter a second time. Then she ran for the bathroom.

  When she came back she looked a bit better, and just as she sat down, her name was called. She started after the technician but called back to me, “Coming?”

  Beauty at my heels, I followed, feeling a little queasy about the whole thing. What did they do for an ultrasound, anyway? Would it hurt? Would I see blood and gory stuff?

  Turned out I saw a white-and-gray blob, floating and pulsing on the screen. The technician first rubbed some gel onto Deb’s slightly rounder tummy, and then rolled a giant-size computer mouse over it, illuminating various parts of the blob.

  “There’s its head,” the technician said. I squinted, but Deb went gaga.

  “Oh, look, Liz, it has a head already!”

  “There’s the umbilical cord, the legs…”

  Somehow the technician turned up the volume on the baby’s heartbeat and I heard this strange, alien whomp-whoosh over everything. Beauty’s ears lifted, and she angled her head as if to listen closer. On inspiration, I turned on my tape machine. Whomp-whoosh and Elvis—what could be better for Beauty?

  I tried to be as excited as Debra about the floating blob. “It looks just like you,” I said, and instead of chucking me on the shoulder and laughing, Debra just beamed.

  Then, after another trip to the bathroom, she joined Beauty and me as we tracked down Kyle’s room, up on the third floor. I didn’t know whether I could just walk in. I was about to rap my knuckles on the open door, but I saw someone was already with him, so I hesitated. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard snatches of what Kyle said to the lady sitting beside him. What? He said Beauty had attacked him. No!

  He even talked about stitches and no one coming to help him. I marched in there to confront him. Liar!

  His mom—the lady beside him—tried to smooth things over. But she couldn’t smooth over the fact that her son was a
jerk. I pulled Beauty back sharply so she wouldn’t get blamed for anything else, and we left.

  “Come on, Debra. A guy like that deserves to be stuck with a white cane the rest of his life.”

  Kyle

  The Support Group

  I fell back asleep, so deathly tired, I didn’t think I could ever bring myself to wake up again. But then I sensed someone’s presence near me. I tried to ignore it, but there was something else I wanted to do, somebody else I wanted to chase after. It was urgent, but I couldn’t catch hold of the thought fully.

  “Ahem.” A polite cough and the sound of a tapping pen against a notebook, or bulletin board, made me sit up.

  “It’s Dr. Peters here.” The diabetes specialist, of course. “I just want to go over what happened to you.” He re-explained what Mom had already told me: how my blood sugar had dropped and I’d nearly gone into a diabetic coma.

  “Sometimes this happens when you sleep in, exercise, miss a meal…”

  Or get hammered. Except I didn’t exactly want to tell him about the drinking, especially not with Mom sitting there, listening.

  “You know, here at the hospital there’s a really good diabetes support group for teens. They meet once a month, and even get together for other social events. Makes everyone feel better to know there are others in the same boat.”

  Others in the same boat. “Is there anyone else there who’s blind?”

  Silence, dead silence.

  “I didn’t think so. Listen, I think you should know that I went to a party last night and got drunk. Otherwise, this wouldn’t have happened at all.”

  Mom gasped.

  “I see,” Dr. Peters said, and then went into a spiel about the perils of alcohol and diabetes; the sharp ups and downs in blood sugar that excessive drinking caused.

  “I won’t drink anymore,” I told him wearily. Who wanted to hear more lectures?

  “You don’t have to swear off parties for life. Just pay attention to your body signals and your Glucometer. Listen, why don’t you try the support group? They’ll give you tips on drinking responsibly and staying in control. Good control is everything with diabetes.”