Arcadia's Gift (Arcadia Trilogy)

by Jesi Lea Ryan

  Dr. Kristy Fineman's face lit up when she saw me walk in the door. Bronwyn and I started volunteering at the shelter the summer after eighth grade. Last year, Dr. Kristy put us on the payroll. It was only ten hours a week at minimum wage, but I loved animals so much that I would’ve continued working for nothing.

  "Cady!" The thin woman in a white doctor's coat rounded the corner of the reception desk to draw me into a big hug. Dr. Kristy and her husband, Mark, were both at the funeral, but I hadn’t seen them since. "It's so good to see you!"

  "Don't squish my breakfast," I said snatching the paper bag out from between us. "Well, I think I can handle dogs better than my classmates today, so thought I'd come in for a few hours."

  Dr. Kristy drew back and checked me over thoughtfully as if I were one of her patients. Faint crow’s feet lined the corners of her eyes; giving the impression her face was a perpetual smile.

  "Well, I know Murphy will be glad to see you."

  Murphy was a goofy Labrador with large floppy feet and one ear that stuck up in the air. Dr. Kristy’s brother owned him, but he traveled a lot for work, so he kennels Murphy here at the shelter frequently.

  "I just want to eat my breakfast, and then I can take a group out for a walk."

  "No problem," Dr. Kristy replied, patting my arm. "I have a few appointments this morning, and then Gina is going to assist me on a couple neuters. Sarah will be here soon to watch the desk."

  I carried my breakfast into the break room where I poured myself a cup of Columbian brew from the pot on the counter and ate. When I finished, I set out on my rounds of checking the cat cages. I filled food and water dishes, scooped the litter boxes and wiped down the interiors. The kitties wound themselves around my ankles rubbing their faces on my pant legs. I scratched each set of ears before depositing them back into their cages.

  When I finished giving the cats some love, I walked out back to the dog kennels. A cacophony of excited barks and whines greeted my arrival. There were two long rows of high-fenced enclosures with metal roofs that rumbled like rocket engines when it rained. The shelter also had indoor kennels for overnights and two large paddocks where dogs could run and play in groups. I walked up and down the row greeting and petting the dogs I recognized and introducing myself to the new arrivals by letting them sniff my fist. Murphy spotted me approaching the enclosure where he lounged with a gray bulldog named Tank and Dr. Kristy’s terrier mutt called Lucy, who came to work with the doc every day. The happy lab leaped to his feet and stood on his hind legs, paws on the fence and tongue dangling happily from his mouth.

  "Hey, Murph! How's my boy?" I said as I unlocked the gate and entered the enclosure. The three dogs swarmed around my legs yipping and doing the puppy two-step for attention. I petted each of them in turn, before fastening their leashes and leading them out to the trails behind the shelter.

  Dr. Kristy and Mark had inherited the three hundred acre farm a few years back from some relative. Uninterested in farming, they leveled the dilapidated farm buildings, constructed the shelter and clinic, and created walking trails which twisted through the woods and over-grown pasture land.

  The three dogs and I strolled along the dirt path, the noise of the forest humming around us. Tank strained at his leash, wanting to chase squirrels, and then pouted when I wouldn't let him loose. As we approached a rocky incline, I scooped up Lucy to carry her. It was then that I discovered something odd.

  Running my hand along Lucy's velvet belly, I felt a buzzing coldness radiating out from her compact body. It made my palm prick and tingle. Something tickled in the back of my mind, something bad.

  I set the dog down. She stared up at me with her pointed nose. She didn't appear different than she did any other day. Quickly wrapping Murphy’s and Tank's leashes around the branches of a low bush, I knelt down next to Lucy. My fingers trailed the markings of her brindled fur. Just under the ribcage on her right side I felt the hum vibrating strongest. Cold floated up from the spot, so that even with my hand six inches above it, my fingers quivered. Some instinct inside me was telling me the dog was in pain, which made no sense at all. Lucy appeared completely normal. When I touched the cold spot on her side there was something distinctly foreign about whatever was inside of her. That thought nagged at the base of my skull, and I grew anxious.

  Cupping Lucy’s muzzle, I stared deep into her golden-brown eyes. They were as clear and bright as any other day, but I was convinced something was gravely wrong. I scooped Lucy up in my arms, yanked the other two leashes free from the bush and rushed the pack back to the clinic.

  My chest was huffing and sweat dampened my body by the time I made it to the yard. I'd run most of the way, only slowing enough to accommodate Tank's short stride.

  My fingers fumbled with the kennel keys, but the lock clicked open easily. I rushed Tank and Murphy inside, not stopping to remove the leashes from their collars. With Lucy still in my arms, I hurried to find Dr. Kristy.

  The doctor had changed into her surgery scrubs and stood in her office going over charts with her assistant, Gina. Their faces shot up in surprise when I bounded into the room holding Lucy out toward them.

  "What is it, Cady?" Dr. Kristy asked, her brow heightened in surprise. "Is something wrong?"

  I nodded and set Lucy down on her desk. "Feel...her..." I huffed, trying to catch my breath. "Here." I took the doctor's cool hand and placed it on the vibrating spot on the dog's chest. "Do you feel it?"

  "Feel what?" she asked. Both doctor and dog stared at me like I was nuts.

  "There’s something there. In her chest," I insisted. "Right here!"

  Dr. Kristy patted Lucy down, checking her bones, palpitating her organs. "I don't feel anything."

  "That's because it's under the rib cage," I explained. "On her lung."

  Dr. Kristy exchanged a glance with Gina, who stepped forward and began feeling around also.

  "I don't feel anything, either," Gina confirmed.

  "Please!" I insisted. "You have to believe me! Something’s in there and it's bad!"

  I started pacing in circles, trying to find a way for them to understand. The truth was I didn't know myself how I knew Lucy had a lung problem —I just did. I was as sure of it as I was my own name.

  "Cady, maybe you should sit down," Dr. Kristy said in a calm, compassionate voice that agitated my fragile nerves.

  "Don't do that!" I pleaded. "Don't patronize me! Don't talk to me like I'm losing it. You know how much I love these animals, right? Do you think I would lie to you? Would I make up something that could be harmful to Lucy?"

  Both the doctor and Gina shook their heads.

  "Just take some x-rays and look. It doesn't hurt to look."

  Dr. Kristy thought about it for a moment before replying, "Okay. I'll take a look. Gina, can you help me check Lucy out?”

  I knew she was only doing it to humor me, to appease the grieving girl, but I didn't care. I knew deep down in my gut that there was something in Lucy that shouldn't be there.

  The doctor picked the jolly terrier up off the desk. "Cady, you can go back to work. I'll come get you as soon as I finish with Lucy."

  I reluctantly returned to the kennel to remove the leashes from Tank and Murphy. In the few minutes that I'd been gone, Tank had managed to drag his through his water bowl, soaking it.

  "It's okay, boys," I whispered, patting them both on their sides. "Lucy's going to be okay. Dr. Kristy's on the case."

  I tried to busy myself filling water dishes and sweeping out kennels, but my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to know what was wrong with Lucy. My head snapped up when the clinic door opened. Gina was waving at me.

  "Come ‘ere," she called before turning back inside. I dropped the broom to the ground and rushed in to find her and the doctor examining black and white scans against a backlight on the wall.

  Dr. Kristy's lips were tight, and a deep line formed between her pencil-thin brows. She cast me an odd glance at my entrance.

  "Cady, come loo
k at this," she said, pointing to the picture with the end of a pen.

  I stepped forward to see the skeletal outline of Lucy’s torso. The white ribs curved gracefully, protecting the precious cargo within. Even with my un-trained eyes, the white blurry mass in the lower-right lung was obvious. Dr. Kristy's head shook from side to side as if she were having an internal debate and losing.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Some kind of tumor," she answered. Her voice was distracted. After a silent moment, she turned and looked at me with puzzlement. "How did you know Lucy had a tumor on her lung? I didn't notice any symptoms."

  My cheeks reddened, and I stared at her blankly. "I don't know. I guess I just...felt it."

  "How did you feel it? The mass is beneath the ribs. It’s not detectible from her exterior."

  My mouth dropped open dumbly. How could I tell her about the buzzing, about the coldness and the vibrations that apparently only I could feel?

  "Gina, can you give us a moment?" the doctor asked, then gestured for me to sit.

  Once we were alone, Dr. Kristy slipped her glasses off and gave me that serious expression that adults give when they are trying to get you to level with them.

  "I'm just trying to get a better understanding, because without your detection, Lucy might be in serious jeopardy. She still might be, but because of you, at least I know to go in and remove the mass. Cady, can you tell me what exactly you felt?"

  Dr. Kristy was the adult I trusted most, even more than my parents sometimes.

  "I'm not trying to be difficult, honest. It's just hard for me to describe."

  "Can you try?"

  I nodded and began to tell her exactly what happened from the time I set off down the trail with the dogs to when I realized something was wrong with Lucy.

  "It was like this cold glow that vibrated off of the spot. The feeling would get stronger, more concentrated, the closer my hand got to the bottom of her right lung. Then, some —instinct, maybe? —told me that there was something in her that shouldn't be there. I just knew."

  The doctor gazed at me thoughtfully, her head bobbing slowly as she took in my words.

  "Has this ever happened before?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "No. Never. It was weird."

  She sighed. "Well, I need to go help Gina prep for surgery. We have to wait until tomorrow for Lucy, since she’s eaten today. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you."

  Dr. Kristy gathered her things and left the office. I sat there chewing my thumb nail down to the quick.

  Chapter 11

  After leaving the shelter, I called my dad to see if Aaron and I could stop by, but there was some sort of crisis on one of his job sites that would keep him working until well into the night. I could tell he felt bad putting me off. We hadn’t spent much time together since the funeral. I suspected he was using work as a distraction from dwelling on his loss. I guess we all cope in our own way. I sent Aaron a text to cancel our plans.

  At home, my brother and his friend, Trent, were hanging out in the kitchen waiting for a frozen pizza to heat up in the toaster oven. Aaron sat on top of the counter tossing an oven mitt from hand to hand. They were laughing, a noise which sounded out of place in the House of Gloom.

  "Hey," Trent grunted at me when I entered through the back door.

  "Hey." I was still keyed up from the Lucy situation and wasn't in the mood to socialize.

  So, Aaron was going on with his life. He had the right idea. We would all miss Lony, but tears couldn’t bring her back. Sleeping fifteen hours a day only put off the inevitable. We all had to move on. Faint gray shadows were still visible beneath my brother's blue eyes and his smile still held a fake, plastic-like quality, but it was a smile nonetheless. He was trying.

  Up in my bedroom, I decided I would try, too. I put the morning's events out of my mind and went to work catching up on my studies. If I was going to go back to school Monday, I needed to work hard to catch up to the rest of my class. Good thing it was still so early in the school year. I hadn’t missed too many important tests or project deadlines.

  I was in the middle of typing a writing assignment when my cell phone rang. I rubbed my eyes, strained from staring at a computer screen in the fading evening light. I flipped on my desk lamp and checked the caller ID. Bronwyn.

  “So my parents wanted me to ask you...” she said, her tone dripping with reluctance, “The topic for Youth Group this week is Placing Your Sorrow on Jesus, like about dealing with grief when you lose a loved one, and they want me to invite you to come. There will be a guest speaker from Grace Christian who’ll be talking about the loss of his daughter from cancer and then a group discussion.”

  “I don’t know, Bron,” I sighed and tried my best to be polite. “You know how I am about the religious stuff. And I’m not sure I want to work on my grief issues in a room with a bunch of kids I don’t know.”

  “Oh, you are already going to a support group meeting up at the hospital? Too bad they meet on the same night.”

  Ah, I get it. One or both of her parents were standing over her making her call me. This kind of thing happened a couple of times a year, usually to invite me to a Youth Group social function or to a church service they thought might be of particular interest to me. Her parents felt it was the duty of all true Christians to “shepherd non-believers into the loving arms of the Lord” or some crap like that. As if for every person you converted you got bonus points on God’s Great Scoreboard. I don’t know, maybe they would win some prize when they got to heaven like a golden harp or a cloud with a view of the Grand Canyon. Being such a good friend, I decided to mess with her.

  “Sure, Bron, I’d love to attend! I’ll wear my leather teddy and carry a riding crop. Think a studded dog collar would be too much?”

  There was a slight pause before she replied, “It’s okay if you break down and cry. That’s what support groups are for. I’m sure no one will fault you for getting snot all over your sleeve.” I heard a murmured hiss in the background telling her to be more sensitive. I laughed.

  “They say emotional trauma can cause teens to act out in inappropriate ways, but I would have given the football team blow jobs anyway. After all, they did beat Davenport last week.”

  Bronwyn made a choking sound like she swallowed a laugh and quickly covered it with a fake cough. “Well, okay, Cady, I’ll talk to you tomorrow then. Bye.”

  I hung up the phone, my grin fading. I missed my best friend. The few times I saw her since the accident, her discomfort had been obvious. Bronwyn was great listener, but not so great at knowing what to say in awkward situations. I guess talking to me qualified as awkward now.

  I opened a new window on my screen, and signed into Facebook. I’d been avoiding social media since the accident because I didn’t really want to read the outpouring of sympathy from my classmates on my Facebook wall. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the thoughts, I just couldn’t deal with it all yet. A couple of days after the accident I posted a short thank you, and hadn’t looked at it since. I wondered what the protocol was for deleting Lony’s page. I could probably do it myself. She had never been very creative with passwords, and I’m sure I’d be able to hack it inside of five minutes, but was that right? Maybe Facebook has some sort of death cancellation policy where my parents could call them to delete the account.

  Once Facebook loaded, I clicked over to Bronwyn’s wall and left a message for her to meet me after she got off school tomorrow. It was time for me to start getting out of the house more.

  That night as I was changing into my pj's for bed, Bryan phoned. Three nights in a row? He asked me about my day, and without planning to, I began telling him the story of Lucy and the mass in her lung.

  "Are you sure you didn't feel a lump or something? Maybe something small enough that the doctor didn't notice?"

  "I'm sure," I insisted. "It wasn't a lump at all. It was a vibration. And cold. You know, way cooler that the other skin around it. I thought I co
uld hear it, too, but now I'm not so sure that part wasn't my imagination."

  "Hmmm..." he pondered. "Maybe the mass inside the dog isn't a tumor at all, but an object. It might be radiating something, or you might have felt a magnetic pull. Were you wearing any metallic jewelry on your hands?"

  "No. I didn't have jewelry on at all. Not even earrings."

  "And the vet is going to let you know what she finds?"

  "Yeah. Dr. Kristy promised to call right after the surgery. I thought about going out there, but I have my appointment in the afternoon."

  "Ah, the therapist... You sure you don't need a ride?"

  "I'm sure," I said with a smile. "Bryan, you don't have to be so nice to me just because my sister died. I mean, I appreciate your help and concern. You're about the only person I can really talk to right now, but I don't want you to go out of your way because you think you have to take care of me."

  "Do you really think I'm just being nice to you because your sister died?"

  The way he said it made me feel badly for even bringing it up. "I guess not. But...well...why are you being so nice to me? There are a lot of other kids in the school that you could be friends with who would be much better company than I am right now."

  "I don't want other company. I want your company."

  My breath caught in my chest and my brain froze for a comeback.

  "I'll have my cell with me all day tomorrow,” he continued. “If you want to get a hold of me during school, just text, alright? I'll talk to you soon. Sweet dreams."

  I held the phone to my chest long after the line disconnected.