Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  Suddenly, my mother screamed, “Snapper! Snapper! Get him, Joy, get him!”

  Joy didn’t move. She stood stiff as a small tree, facing the sky over the vineyards in the distance, as if she had gone deaf.

  I turned to see a flash of Snapper, leashless once again, madly chasing a roadrunner up the dirt shoulder in a reckless pursuit. Joy ignored my mother’s entreaties. Sensing the urgency, I took off in a trot after the little four-legged imp. Suddenly, I heard the shrieking squeal of tires as a black town car careering around the dangerously twisting road, bearing down in the opposite direction, slammed on its brakes, desperately trying to stop. Smoke poured from its fishtailing rear. Sprinting in the direction of the pandemonium, I heard one sharp yelp and saw the small body of Snapper propelled to the side of the road. He lay on his side, barely moving. I was the first to get to him, but I was afraid to touch him. Snapper was shaking uncontrollably, whimpering in agony, his eyes still showing a semblance of life. He clawed at the asphalt and tried to drag himself toward me. Once he righted himself I could see that one of his hind legs was dragging, unable to support him. The driver of the town car, a middle-aged man in a black suit, white shirt and dark tie, trotted over, effusively apologizing, almost on the verge of tears.

  As I petted Snapper’s head, the town car chauffeur said, “I wouldn’t touch him.”

  “We’ve got to get him to a vet. They’re not going to Medevac a dog!”

  I slid my hands under Snapper and lifted him up and cradled him in my arms. His skin was so badly torn on his right hind leg you could see bone. Blood was everywhere, and he looked like he might go agonal.

  Two couples in their thirties, clearly inebriated, to judge by their stumbling exit, disgorged from the hired town car and shambled over. The men’s faces went horrorstruck when they saw Snapper. One of the girls wept. From the Rampvan, my mother’s paroxysmal caterwauling was weirdly like a colicky infant. Jack, evidently unable to bear her uncontrollable anguished cries, stepped out of the driver’s side and lit his first cigarette in two days, his vow to quit shattered by the sudden tragic turn of events. Joy, her expression still hardened with suppressed rage, stared balefully at me. What next? she must have been thinking.

  “Look,” I said to the driver and the two couples. “It’s not your fault.” I started back down the road as they showered me with offers to help, anything, they felt so bad seeing Snapper slipping into unconsciousness in my arms. “I highly recommend a stop at Gary Farrell.”

  They gawked at me strangely. I turned my back on them and walked with heavy heart back to the Rampvan.

  I said to catatonic Joy without looking at her, “Let’s try to be cool. None of us wants my mother totally freaking out on us. You sit back with her. I don’t want her to see her dog, okay? We’ll deal with the money issue, I promise. If we don’t find it, I will give you all of it, the full sum, in the morning. One crisis at a time.” Finally I looked at her. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. Joy, the godsend. She’d assimilated the gravity of the situation and agreed that missing, or stolen, or whatever, money was now the least of our mutual concerns.

  In the car my mother was bawling hysterically. “What happened to Snapper? What happened to Snapper?”

  Joy sat next to her and remarkably made an effort to comfort her, the contretemps over the money momentarily set aside. “It’s going to be okay, Mrs. Raymond, it’s going to be okay.”

  Jack looked over at Snapper in my arms and a thundercloud scudded across his face. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Get going. We’ve got to find the nearest vet.”

  “Where’s that?” Jack said. Quickly sobering up, he pulled back onto the one-lane rural road.

  Bless you, Steve Jobs! I thought. Thank God for the iPhone. I reached once again into my pocket. “I don’t know where,” I said. “I hope close.”

  “Where’s Snapper?” my mother kept crying over and over.

  “I’ve got him up here, Mom. He’s had a mishap. He’s a little shaken up, but he’s going to be okay.”

  As my mother wept hysterically I logged onto my Google app. “Fuck,” I said out loud. “Nearest town of any size is Clearlake.”

  “How far?” Jack asked, clearly unnerved by Snapper’s tormented whimpering.

  “Just a sec.” I opened up our position, then typed in Clearlake, California. “Fuck. Fifty miles. I give you permission to speed.”

  Jack stomped the accelerator. I tapped Clearlake on the screen, punched in Find, then typed in “vet clinics.” Three popped up, indicated by tiny red pushpin icons. I tapped on the closest one and the address and phone came up in a drop-down.

  I touched the icon to dial the number. A receptionist answered. I told her what had happened and how far away we were. She told me to bring him in, they would be expecting us. I heaved a sigh as I hung up.

  “He’s going to be okay, Mom,” I said, trying to reassure her even though the little devil was totally limp in my arms now, breathing rapidly and more and more shallowly, his beady little eyes starting to drift up into his head.

  As we approached Clearlake, employing the iPhone’s own GPS navigational instructions, I directed Jack to the Lakeview Veterinary Hospital. It was late afternoon and the sun had burnished the dreary town in Titian hues of brown and gold.

  Jack braked in front of the hospital, a squat structure in a faux Spanish-style with a red-tile roof and a flesh-toned adobe facade, and killed the engine. “Keep everyone in here,” I murmured to him so my mother wouldn’t hear.

  No luck. “I want to go!” she shrieked in an ear-piercing cry.

  “No,” I said sharply, then wormed out of the Rampvan with Snapper.

  I hustled into the vet clinic and approached the receptionist’s desk with Snapper’s little life ebbing away in my arms–I could feel it. Death breaches all barriers.

  My waxing philosophical was interrupted when I was met by the image of a girl with a pierced lower lip, manning the main reception area. She was used to emergencies hurtling in the front door and rose the moment I came in, registering the dark expression on my face.

  “I’m the one who called a half hour ago. He was hit by a car. He’s in bad shape.”

  The receptionist cupped a hand to the side of her mouth and called out down a hall. “Amy! Amy! It’s the HBC!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hit by car,” she decoded.

  A moment later, a woman in her forties, wearing a blue scrub top, plodded heavily into view. “Oh,” she said when she got her first eyeful of Snapper. “Poor thing.”

  She reached out her arms and I gently handed Snapper over to her. She turned and I followed her down a linoleum-tiled corridor past some small exam rooms into a larger treatment room.

  “Shahar! Shahar!” Amy called out.

  Amy laid Snapper tenderly down on his side on a blanket spread out on a stainless steel examining table. His right hind leg was splayed out, his breathing was still shallow and rapid, his gums graying. His whimpering had by now gone almost inaudible, as if he were sinking into quicksand.

  A moment later, a woman in her thirties with dark, shoulder-length hair and a pretty round face, appeared, her countenance betraying apprehension. Her nametag read: Shahar Ariel, D.V.M. She ignored me, her concern drawn immediately to Snapper’s condition.

  Dr. Ariel spoke rapidly to the technician. “Let’s get oxygen, an IV catheter, and give him some morphine.”

  I was distraught now. Tears might have begun to well in my eyes. “He was hit by a car. It was bad,” I heard myself repeating over and over. The accident must have adrenalized me and processed out all the Pinot; I suddenly felt totally lucid.

  Amy fitted a small conical oxygen mask over Snapper’s snout while Dr. Ariel tried unsuccessfully several times to insert a catheter into the dog’s left front leg. “It’s hard on these small animals,” she muttered, then finally, triumphantly, she exclaimed: “Got it!” She turned to the technician and said, “Let’s get the fluids g
oing, Amy. Quarter shock dose.” She looked up at me and explained, “We’re trying to stabilize him. He’s been hurt pretty badly.”

  “Do your best,” I said, tears streaming down my face now. “It’s my mother’s dog. She’s had a stroke. She’s out in the car in a wheelchair,” I found myself blubbering.

  It took Dr. Ariel a moment to process all I had said. It must have sounded so apocryphal, and she glanced up at me with a puzzled expression. Then she went back to business. As the technician inserted a thermometer into Snapper’s rear, she drew a syringe from a vial, filled it with a clear liquid, and injected it into Snapper’s leg where she’d managed to find a vein for the IV. In seconds he seemed to have quieted, his shiverings quelled by the narcotics. (I’ve got to get some of that shit, I thought ruefully, hoping humor would pull me out of my agitated state.) From a plastic bag with quarter-inch tubing running down to where the catheter had been inserted into his leg a clear electrolyte solution began its gravity flow into Snapper’s bloodstream.

  Dr. Ariel petted the dog’s head a moment and said, “Poor little guy. Are you hurt, huh?” Snapper tilted his head in the direction of her voice. Very gently, she moved him so that he was positioned upright. Amy stepped in and held a mask over his snout to convey the oxygen. Dr. Ariel conducted a very thorough physical examination. Her eyes widened perceptibly when she looked closely at his right hind leg. “That leg’s badly injured.” She sucked in her breath, continued muttering. “Serious de-gloving.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lot of skin missing. Not sure there’s enough for it to grow back. We might have to amputate.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said.

  “The leg’s gone anyway. There’s no feeling. It looks like there’s nerve damage.” She continued to feel around. She removed the thermometer, then pinched his anus with some oversized tweezers. “Good anal tone.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Hopefully the neurologic damage is limited to the leg, not the spinal cord,” she explained. She looked at the thermometer. “96.5. He’s hypothermic, but that’s to be expected.” She came around to the nose and said to Amy, “Take the mask off for a sec, will you?” Amy pulled the mask away, but kept it close. Dr. Ariel bent forward, lifted his lip, then touched his nose and studied her fingers. “No blood in the nostrils. I was afraid of blunt head trauma. He’s a little shocky, gums a bit muddy, but nothing specifically indicating brain damage.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Amy returned the oxygen mask to Snapper’s snout as Dr. Ariel put the earbuds of a stethoscope hanging around her neck into her ears and listened to his heart. “Heart rate’s elevated. Indicative of pain or shock… or blood loss. I hope not for the pup’s sake.” She moved the stethoscope again on Snapper’s rib cage, cocked her head to one side and listened. “His lungs sound a little rough, but not bad, considering….”

  She continued conducting a full examination, pressing on his internal organs to assay the damage inflicted on them by the speeding town car. Then she said to Amy, “Go ahead and lay him back down on his side. And give him another dose of morphine.” She turned to me. “What’s this about your mother and a stroke? I’m sorry…”

  I narrated our situation as quickly as I could manage.

  Dr. Ariel looked down at Snapper. “His right leg’s seriously injured. I don’t know if it’s going to heal. If there’s neurologic damage, or too much tissue damage”–she turned her gaze to me–“it’s going to have to come off.”

  “Will he recover?” I asked.

  “He could. We have to do some more tests, make certain that we’re not dealing with a broken back or”–she shook her head grimly–“serious organ damage, in which case….”

  “It’d be best to euthanize him?”

  “I’m not ready to make that call. My first reaction is that it might just be the leg and some soft tissue injuries. If that’s the case, then he might recover.”

  “How long?

  “If we have to amputate, and he does recover…” She pursed her lips and calculated in her mind. “He’s not going to be going anywhere for a minimum of a week.”

  “We have to be in the Willamette Valley in two days, then from there we’re heading to Wisconsin where I’m dropping my mother off with her sister.”

  Dr. Ariel nodded.

  I looked down at Snapper. The morphine had calmed him, but he didn’t look very well. “Maybe it would be best to put him down.”

  Dr. Ariel didn’t reply right away, so I faced her. She was staring up at me, her dark eyes burning. “Is that what your mother would want?”

  My Adam’s apple rose and fell. Was I just looking for the easy out?

  “Because if you do authorize us to kill him, I’m going to want to discuss this with your mother and give her the option of being with her pet when I do it. And it’s my obligation to inform her that her dog might live.”

  “I understand. I was just, um…” I chopped myself off and fanned open my hands. “We’ve had a couple rough days, and now this.”

  “Why don’t you go have a talk with your mother? We’re going to do some quick X-rays. And blood work.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come back in an hour.” She locked her dark eyes onto mine. “And bring your mother.”

  I glanced down at the badly injured Snapper and swallowed a walnut without the benefit of saliva. “All right,” I muttered. I reached down and petted Snapper’s head and walked away.

  I made my way out of the veterinary hospital with a heavy heart, moving as though I were wading through hip-deep water.

  Outside I found Joy leaning against the van. She was rotating the dial on an iPod, earbuds plugging her ears, and didn’t hear my approach, lost in her own world. A world I could only imagine was far less pacific than the one she had entered a mere four days ago.

  Jack, his head drooping out the passenger-side window, had found a beer somewhere and was discreetly sipping it. “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

  In a lowered voice so my mother couldn’t hear, I said, “He’s pretty fucked up.”

  “Is he going to live?”

  “I don’t know. But the vet doesn’t want to put him to sleep.”

  “What is he, some right-to-lifer? Make the poor critter suffer.”

  “It’s a she. And she thinks that he has a chance. But, rest assured, he won’t be continuing on. And we won’t be staying on.”

  Jack twisted his bull neck and cast a meaningful backward glance at my mother. “What’re we going to tell Phyllis?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just tell her he bit it.”

  Disgust invaded me like a bite of bad food. “I’m not going to lie to her!” I said in a forced whisper. “Besides, she’s going to want to say goodbye. And he’s not unconscious. Jesus, Jack.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jack said irritably. “I’m just saying that dog’s been a problem since oh-one-hundred hours.”

  “You don’t have to remind me.” I inhaled deeply. “I got to talk to my mom.”

  Jack took the cue, opened the door and spilled out. “I’m going to take a walk.” He shambled off. I was positive he was hoping he would find a dark bar he could tuck into.

  I glanced up at the sky. It was deep blue, except for a high-flying jet that was making a serrated white wound, as if ripping the heavens into two. The symbolism did not go unnoticed.

  I opened the side door. My mother’s weeping had subsided. She seemed resigned to the worst. “How’s Snapper?”

  “He’s alive.” I pulled out the ramp, hopped into the back, turned my mother ninety degrees and pushed her out. Joy threw a quick glance, but made no move to assist us, her expression still malevolent.

  I wheeled my mother up the sidewalk until I found a cinderblock ledge where I could sit. We didn’t look at each other. Passing cars muffled our mutual anguish. “Snapper’s right hind leg was crushed. The doctor’s not sure surgery can fix it. If that turns out to be the case, it’d have
to be amputated.”

  “Oh, no,” my mother said. She sniffled, bravely fighting a heavier avalanche of tears.

  “On a sunnier note, there’s no evidence of head trauma, she doesn’t think there’s life-threatening bleeding in the lungs, and she’s pretty sure there’s no spinal cord injury. If there were…”

  My mother finished what I had trouble voicing. “We’d have to put him to sleep.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You probably wanted to put him to sleep.”

  I raised my voice. “It was a consideration, Mom. But the vet talked me out of it. What you have to understand, though, is that we’re not going to be able to stay here while Snapper recuperates–if he does.” I looked at her. She was nodding to herself, bearing the bad news with shocking equanimity. “We have to move on. We can’t afford to stay in–what’s this place? Clearlake?–for a week or longer until he gets better.”

  “I know,” my mother said. “We might as well pronounce him dead,” she added, her bitter anger flashing.

  “Don’t say that, Mom.”

  “If we have to leave poor Snapper here, then I’m never going to see him again.”

  I trained my gaze on the passing cars. More than once it occurred to me that a headlong run into traffic had its benefits. I rose to my feet and wordlessly got behind my mother. “Let’s go say goodbye to Snapper,” I said.

  My mother reached her right hand up to steady her hat on her head. “Does he look bad?”

  “Pretty bad, Mom. Do you still want to see him?”