Lily and the Octopus (7 page)

“She can’t walk. You need to come home now.”

When I burst through the door I find Lily in her bed in the living room with Jeffrey sitting on the floor beside her. Lily looks frustrated and concerned when she sees me, and she doesn’t
get up and her tail doesn’t wag. The new red ball from her Christmas stocking sits motionless on the floor. Her inability to greet me in her usual way all by itself makes my stomach drop.

“What’s going on, you two?” I almost don’t want to know the answer. In eighteen hours we are supposed to be on an airplane again.

“Let me show you,” Jeffrey says.

He gingerly lifts Lily out of her bed, in the heedful way he did the first few months we were dating, before they bonded, before he was confident in the proper way to do it. He places her
squarely on the floor and the back half of her body immediately wilts, her hind legs splaying sloppily to one side. They just give way underneath her.

My heart sinks to depths normally reserved for my stomach, and it becomes difficult to think or breathe.

I kneel on the floor next to them and tuck one hand under Lily’s muscular chest and one hand under her soft belly. I stand her up again, supporting her with both hands. I almost
don’t dare to let go.

“Stand for me, Lily.” I say it like a hypnotist giving a directive to an entranced person under my command. When I let myself remove the hand under her belly, her toenails scrape on
the hardwood floor as her legs once again slip to the side. “C’mon.” This time I’m pleading. “Stand up for me, girl.”

Again, when I let go, the awful slithering of toenails on wood and the total wilting of legs. She almost tips over entirely before I catch her at the last second.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Jeffrey replies.

“
Something
happened,” I insist before adding, “What have you done?”

“What have I
done
?” Jeffrey is shocked.

She was my dog long before we ever met, and while she has become his dog, too, over the course of our relationship, they don’t have the same bond. He does not treat her with the same
attentiveness (or, truthfully, the same permissiveness), and when he’s displeased with her behavior he is always the stepparent absolving himself of responsibility by throwing his hands up
and calling her “your dog.” This can’t really be Jeffrey’s fault, but I wonder just the same.

“Are you accusing me of something?”

I stare at Jeffrey. Am I accusing him of something? Even in this moment I’m forced to wonder if my assertion is about Lily or the text message. I don’t know. But I can feel Lily
tremble in my hands, and I know immediately now is not the time. “No. No, of course not.”

“I hope not.”

“I’m
not
.” I placate him while I place Lily back in her bed, where at least she’s supported by the cushiony sides. “Just watch her while I call the
vet.”

When I get our veterinarian’s voicemail it dawns on me that it is now four o’clock on New Year’s Eve. I immediately dial the first animal hospital I can find a listing for,
even though it’s on the west side of town. When I explain the situation, they insist I bring her in right away. If they can do anything for her, there’s a short window in which it can
happen, and that window is rapidly closing.

I hang up the phone, grab an old blanket, and wrap it around my girl. I lift her carefully, and nod to Jeffrey. “Let’s go.”

In the car we hit a red light that I know to be a long red light and I burst into sobs. My choices now, as I see them, are either having a dog with wheels for hind legs or, possibly, letting her
go. Without warning, without moving or standing or crouching, Lily poops into the blanket on my lap, and my sobbing becomes inconsolable. She’s dying, my baby. Right here in my lap.

The light turns green. I yell at a distracted Jeffrey to “
Go!
” and he steps on the gas and in the chaos I find a doggie litter bag in my jacket pocket because doggie litter
bags are in all of my jacket pockets—I have a fear of being caught without them. I clean up the blanket as best I can and drop the sealed bag near my feet. I know this bothers Jeffrey, but he
doesn’t say anything, and really, what other choice do I have? We both crack our windows for air.

Jeffrey makes decent time across the city, and when I see a sign that says Animal Hospital I make him stop even though the address does not match the street number I’ve scribbled down on
the back of a Target receipt. I must have transposed some numbers in haste.

Inside, the waiting room is small and hot and chaotic and I worry about having a panic attack. The nurse hands us a clipboard with papers to fill out and I push it back at her and say,
“There is no
time
for paperwork.” Jeffrey apologizes for my outburst, which annoys me, and he takes the clipboard and a pen. There is only one free chair and he takes it so he
can write. I lean in an empty doorway and cradle Lily in her tattered swaddling. Soon a doctor materializes for a consultation, and when I explain the situation she tells us that we actually want
the surgical hospital that’s across the street and two blocks down.
Tick tock, tick tock
. Precious moments wasted.

As we turn to leave, a woman who looks like the Log Lady from
Twin Peaks
(although I’m the one holding the log in the form of a paralyzed dachshund) grabs my arm and says,
“Whatever they tell you, don’t kill your dog.” I want to tell her to fuck off, but I’m frozen speechless in my tracks and tears start to well. “She can still have a
happy life if you let her.” Instantly this woman is my everything.

I nod and my eyes overflow with moisture, but Lily does not attempt to kiss my tears and the part of my brain that knows I can’t waste even another second unfreezes me and I’m out
the door.

Jeffrey tears into the parking lot of the surgical center, cutting off several cars at my urging. Inside they are expecting us, the last doctor having called ahead on our behalf. A surgical
technician pries Lily out of my arms and they rush her behind a swinging door. Before I can protest, she is gone. No one offers us paperwork. No one tells us to sit. No one tells me not to kill my
dog. Lacking anything else to do, we stand in the middle of a large, sterile room, surrounded by anxiety and tragedy, with nothing to look at but our feet. There’s free coffee, but it’s
probably awful, and I know that I can’t drink black swill when the rest of the world is sipping golden New Year’s champagne.

After a short but interminable wait we’re ushered into a private examining room. Lily is not there. There are two seats, so we sit. We fidget until a veterinarian enters. She has blond
hair and a kindly face and looks too laid-back to be a surgeon, but has such an authoritative air of command that I wonder if she served in the military. Based on Lily’s neurological signs,
she is most suspicious of a ruptured intervertebral disc and wants to perform a myelogram to determine the site of the herniation.

I don’t know what a myelogram is, and I know I don’t have time to educate myself beyond the context that it is some test to detect pathology of the spinal column.

“And then what?”

“And then, pending the results of the myelogram, Lily’s best chance of walking again is surgery.”

“Surgery.” I’m taking this in as fast as I can.

“The sooner the better.”

Apparently there is no time to think. “So, we’ll know if surgery is the way to go after the myelogram?”

“In all honesty, I would make that decision now. She’ll already be under anesthesia for the myelogram, and if it does indeed reveal a ruptured disc, it’s best to perform the
surgery right then and there.”

“So you need a decision now.”

The doctor looks at her watch. “Yes.”

Decisions. Lately they’re not my strong suit. I think of the ways recently in which I’ve felt paralyzed myself. Should I quit my job to freelance full-time as a writer? Should I talk
to Jeffrey about the doubts I have in our relationship? About the suspicious text message he received? Could Lily and I start over again on our own?

“And how much does spinal surgery cost for a dog that is mostly spine?” The doctor crouches in front of me and offers a half-smile. She doesn’t need to tell me things I already
know: that this is always a risk with the breed. That purebred dogs come with these health issues, as they’ve been genetically mutated for purpose or show.

“All together, everything—anesthesia, myelogram, surgery, recovery—we’re talking about six thousand dollars.”

Now it’s me who is left immobile. Six thousand dollars. I look at Jeffrey. I think of dwindling savings. Of having just paid off all my credit card debt. Of vacations that might not be
taken, retirement accounts that won’t get contributed to, of having to push my dreams of writing full-time back another year.

“It’s your call,” Jeffrey says. “I can’t make this decision. She’s your dog.”
Your dog.

I want to punch him. I want to punch everyone, except maybe the doctor who can save her.

“Why don’t I leave you to talk it over for a moment?” The doctor stands, and before I know it I’ve grabbed the sleeve of her lab coat.

“She has a ball. It’s red. Red ball. She loves it. She’ll play with it for hours—tossing it, chasing it, hiding it, finding it. She’ll play until she’s out of
breath, and even then she’ll take it to her bed and fall asleep on top of it. She is alive when she’s playing with that ball. If she . . .”

I can’t even finish the words. Jeffrey places his hand on my shoulder as I’m reduced to tears again.

“If she can’t . . . play with that ball anymore, then I don’t know what kind of life there is left for her.”

The doctor turns to me. She’s not unmoved, but she’s seen people wrestle with this decision before and there’s nothing so special about me.

I continue through gasps and swallows of oxygen. “I don’t want you to think I’m a horrible person. That I would let money even become a part of this decision. It’s just I
don’t know what her life would be if she can’t play with that ball.”

I plead with my eyes.
Fix her! Save her!
One nod is all that I need, and she studies me before giving it. She has heard me, and she’s trying to communicate something.
“I’ll be outside in the hall.”

It’s not even necessary for her to go. “Will you be the one performing the surgery?”

“Yes.” Another nod. She’s telling me Lily will walk again. She’s telling me she knows this, but legally can’t say it because of ridiculous reasons like malpractice
insurance. So she’s telling me without words, in the way that hostages blink secret messages in videotapes that evade detection by their captors.

I look at Jeffrey, who once again says, “I can’t make this decision.” At least this time he adds, “But I will stand by yours.”

I look back at the doctor. My heartbeat is in my ears. The room is hot and smells like medicine. The fluorescents blink angrily, asking to be replaced. My head is spinning, but with adrenaline,
not with dizzying thoughts. Now is when I have to start making decisions. Now is my time.

I stand tall with my hands by my sides and now I’m the one who speaks with authoritative command.

“Do it.”

W
e leave the animal hospital as soon as I agree to the surgery. They almost insist on it. Since it’s New Year’s Eve, they are running
with a limited staff and don’t want to assign any of their already sparse resources to oversee a hysterical person in the waiting room. If the surgery goes well, they don’t need me
insisting on seeing her or overseeing her recovery. And I would. I would be like Shirley MacLaine in
Terms of Endearment
: “It’s past ten. My daughter is in pain. I don’t
understand why she has to have this pain. All she has to do is hold out until ten, and IT’S PAST TEN! My daughter is in pain, can’t you understand that! GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE
SHOT!” If the surgery does not go well, I guess they don’t want that scene to play out in their waiting room, either.

So we go home. Jeffrey stops to pick up Chinese for dinner and I stay in the car and call Trent. He is already at some New Year’s party and I can’t communicate the enormity of what
is happening and I get frustrated and just hang up. Alone in the car, and without really thinking, I call my mother. While the phone rings, I think about how every conversation with her feels
incomplete. About how we talk around the perimeter of things, but never about the things themselves. What will this call accomplish? Why do I still need my mother? As soon as I hear her voice I
start crying, and I hate myself for it because if she’s not going to give me what I need, then why bother to call her, being needy.

“Well, of course you’re upset, she’s your baby.”

Huh? I’m not surprised that she offers sympathy, I am just surprised at the “of course.” Growing up, we had four dogs. Not all at once, but over the course of eighteen years.
None of them were my mother’s babies; she had two human children and that was quite enough. The “of course” is all I need, and I no longer feel ashamed.
Of course
I’m
upset.
Of course
I’m feeling lost.
Of course
I have emotions. She’s my baby. Even my mother can see that.

When we finish speaking, I call Meredith. It’s hard when talking to my mother not to spill the secret, not to share the added stress of having to attend a wedding, but I keep
Meredith’s confidence intact.

Meredith is wholly supportive. “We’ll change your flights, have you on standby, get you a return flight home right after the ceremony—whatever you need us to do. And, of
course, we’ll cover any costs.” Hearing Meredith’s voice makes it easier. “But if you think you can, please come.”

I pick at some General Tso’s chicken and poke at a steamed dumpling, but I don’t have much of an appetite for anything other than vodka. We are supposed to be at a party thrown by
our neighbors in the unit of our duplex above us; I send Jeffrey upstairs to give our regrets. The dull roar of the party is constant, and at times laughter bubbles over, reminding us that life is
continuing outside of our anxiety, that seconds are ticking off the clock, marking the end of an old year and the start of a new one.