Boy's Life (53 page)

     I think I moaned. I don’t know. The single eye found me, and Rebel started struggling to stand up but Dr. Lezander grasped the body with his strong hands and the movement ceased.

     I saw a needle clamped to Rebel’s side, a tube from a bottle of clear liquid feeding into his body. Rebel whimpered, and instinctively I offered my hand to that ruined muzzle. “Careful!” Dr. Lezander warned. I didn’t think about the fact that an animal in agony might snap at anything that moves, even the hand of a boy who loves it. Rebel’s bloody tongue came out and swiped weakly at my fingers, and I stood there staring numbly at the streak of scarlet that marked me.

     “He’s suffering terribly,” Dr. Lezander said. “You can see that, can’t you?”

     “Yes sir,” I answered, as if in a horrible dream.

     “His ribs are broken, and one of them has punctured his lung. I thought his heart might have given out before now. I expect it will soon.” Dr. Lezander covered Rebel back over. All I could do was stare at the shivering body. “Is he cold?” I asked. “He must be cold.”

     “No, I don’t think so.”
Zo
, he pronounced it. He grasped my shoulder again, and guided me to the door. “Let’s go talk to your father, shall we?”

     Dad was still waiting where we’d left him. “You okay, partner?” he asked me, and I said I was though I was feeling very, very sick. The smell of blood was in my nostrils, thick as sin.

     “Rebel’s a strong dog,” Dr. Lezander said. “He’s survived what should have killed most dogs outright.” He picked up a folder from his desk and slid a sheet of paper out. It was a preprinted form, and at the top of it was Case #3432. “I don’t know how much longer Rebel will live, but I think it’s academic at this point.”

     “There’s no possibility, you mean?” Dad asked.

     “No possibility,” the doctor said. He glanced quickly at me. “I’m sorry.”

     “He’s my
dog
,” I said, and fresh tears streamed down. My nose felt clogged with concrete. “He can get better.” Even as I said that, I knew all the imagination in the world could not make it so.

     “Tom, if you’ll sign this form, I can administer a drug to Rebel that will… um…” He darted another glance at me.

     “Help him rest,” Dad offered.

     “That’s right. Exactly right. If you’ll sign here. Oh, you need a pen, I think.” He opened a drawer, fished around, and brought one up.

     Dad took it. I knew what this was about. I didn’t need to be lulled and coddled as if I were six years old. I knew they were talking about giving Rebel a shot to kill him. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it was humane, but Rebel was my dog and I had fed him when he was hungry and washed him when he was dirty and I knew his smell and the feel of his tongue on my face. I knew him. There would never be another dog like Rebel. A huge knot had jammed in my throat. Dad was bending over the form, about to touch pen to paper. I looked for something to stare at, and I found a black and white photograph in a silver frame on the doctor’s desk. It showed a light-haired, smiling young woman waving, a windmill behind her. It took me a few seconds to register the young apple-cheeked face as being that of Veronica Lezander.

     “Hold on.” Dad lifted the pen. “Rebel belongs to you, Cory. What do you have to say about this?”

     I was silent. Such a decision had never been offered to me before. It was heavy.

     “I love animals as much as anyone,” Dr. Lezander said. “I know what a dog can mean to a boy. What I’m suggesting be done, Cory, is not a bad thing. It’s a natural thing. Rebel is in terrible pain, and will not recover. Everything is born and dies. That is life. Yes?”

     “He might not die,” I murmured.

     “Say he doesn’t die for another hour. Or two, or three. Say he lives all night. Say he manages somehow to live twenty-four more hours. He can’t walk. He can hardly breathe. His heart is beating itself out, he’s in deep shock.” Dr. Lezander frowned, watching my blank slate of a face. “Be a good friend to Rebel, Cory. Don’t let him suffer like this any longer.”

     “I think I need to sign this, Cory,” Dad said. “Don’t you?”

     “Can I… go be with him for a minute? Just alone?”

     “Yes, of course. I wouldn’t touch him, though. He might snap. All right?”

     “Yes sir.” Like a sleepwalker, I returned to the scene of a bad dream. On the stainless steel table, Rebel was still shivering. He whined and whimpered, searching for his master to make the pain go away.

     I began to cry. It was a powerful crying, and would not be held back. I dropped down to my knees on that cold hard floor, and I bowed my head and clasped my hands together.

     I prayed, with my eyes squeezed tightly shut and the tears burning trails down my face. I don’t recall exactly what I said in that prayer, but I knew what I was praying for. I was praying for a hand to come down from heaven or paradise or Beulah land and shut the gates on DEATH. Hold those gates firm against DEATH, though DEATH might bluster and scream and claw to get in at my dog. A hand, a mighty hand, to turn that monster away and heal Rebel, to cast DEATH out like a bag of old bleached bones and run him off like a beggar in the rain. Yes, DEATH was hungry and I could hear him licking his lips there in that room, but the mighty hand could seal shut his mouth, could slap out his teeth, could reduce DEATH to a little drooling thing with smacking gums.

     That’s what I prayed for. I prayed with my heart and my soul and my mind. I prayed through every pore of my flesh, I prayed as if every hair on my head was a radio antenna and the power was crackling through them, the mega-megamillion watts crying out over space and eternity into the distant ear of the all-knowing, all-powerful Someone. Anyone.

     Just answer me.

     Please.

     I don’t know how long I stayed there on the floor, bowed up, sobbing and praying. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe longer. I knew that when I stood up, I had to go out there where Dad and Dr. Lezander waited, and tell them yes or—

     I heard a grunt, followed by an awful sound of air being sucked into ruined, blood-clogged lungs.

     I looked up. I saw Rebel straining to stand on the table. The hair rippled at the back of my neck, my flesh exploding into chill bumps. Rebel got up on two paws, his head thrashing. He whined, a long terrible whine that pierced me like a dagger. He turned, as if to snap at his tail, and the light glinted in his single eye and the death-grin of his teeth.

     “Help!” I shouted. “Dad! Dr. Lezander! Come quick!”

     Rebel’s back arched with such violence I thought surely his tortured spine would snap. I heard a rattle like seeds in a dry gourd. And then Rebel convulsed and fell onto his side on the table, and he did not move again.

     Dr. Lezander rushed in, with my father close behind. “Stand back,” the doctor told me, and he put his hand to Rebel’s chest. Then he got a stethoscope and listened. He lifted the lid of the good eye; it, too, had rolled back to the white.

      “Hold on, partner,” Dad said with both hands on my shoulders. “Just hold on.”

     Dr. Lezander said, “Well,” and he sighed. “We won’t be needing the form after all.”

     “No!” I cried out. “No! Dad, no!”

     “Let’s go home, Cory.”

     “I
prayed
, Dad! I prayed he wouldn’t die! And he’s not gonna die! He
can’t!
”

     “Cory?” Dr. Lezander’s voice was quiet and firm, and I looked up at him through a hot blur of tears. “Rebel is—”

     Something sneezed.

     We all jumped at the sound, as loud as a blast in the tiled room. It was followed by a gasp and rush of air.

     Rebel sat up, blood and foam stringing from his nostrils. His good eye darted around, and he shook his grisly head back and forth as if shaking off a long, hard sleep.

     Dad said, “I thought he was—”

     “He
was
dead!” Dr. Lezander wore an expression of utter shock, white circles ringing his eyes. “
Mein
… my God! That dog was dead!”

     “He’s alive,” I said. I sniffled and grinned. “See? I told you!”

     “Impossible!” Dr. Lezander had almost shouted it. “His heart wasn’t beating! His heart had stopped beating, and he was dead!”

     Rebel tried to stand, but he didn’t have the strength. He burped. I went to him and touched the warm curve of his back. Rebel started hiccuping, and he laid his head down and began to lick the cool steel. “He won’t die,” I said confidently. My crying was done. “I prayed Death away from him.”

     “I don’t… I can’t…” Dr. Lezander said, and that’s all he could say.

     Case #3432 went unsigned.

     Rebel slept and woke up, slept and woke up. Dr. Lezander kept checking his heartbeat and temperature and writing everything down in a notebook. Mrs. Lezander came down and asked Dad and me if we would like some tea and apple cake, and we went upstairs with her. I was secure in the knowledge that Rebel would not die while I was gone. Mrs. Lezander poured Dad a cup of tea, while I got a glass of Tang to go with my cake. As Dad called Mom to tell her it looked like Rebel was going to pull through and we’d be home after a while, I wandered into the den next to the kitchen. In that room, four bird cages hung from ceiling hooks and a hamster ran furiously on a treadmill in his own cage. Two of the bird cages were empty, but the other two held a canary and a parakeet. The canary began to sing in a soft, sweet voice, and Mrs. Lezander walked in with a bag of birdseed.

     “Would you like to feed our patients?” she asked me, and I said yes. “Just a little bit now,” she instructed. “They haven’t been feeling well, but they’ll be better soon.”

     “Who do they belong to?”

     “The parakeet belongs to Mr. Grover Dean. The canary there—isn’t she a pretty lady—belongs to Mrs. Judith Harper.”

     “Mrs.
Harper?
The teacher?”

     “Yes, that’s right.” Mrs. Lezander leaned forward and made tiny smacking noises to the canary. That noise was strange, coming from such a horsey mouth. The bird picked delicately at the seed I’d poured into its feedtray. “Her name is Tinkerbell. Hello there, Tinkerbell, you angel you!”

     Leatherlungs had a canary named Tinkerbell. I couldn’t imagine it.

     “Birds are my favorite,” Mrs. Lezander said. “So trusting, so full of God and goodness. Look over here, at my aviary.”

     Mrs. Lezander showed me her set of twelve hand-painted ceramic birds, which rested atop a piano. “They came with us all the way from Holland,” she told me. “I’ve had them since I was a little girl.”

     “They’re nice.”

     “Oh, much better than nice! When I look at them, I have such pleasant memories: Amsterdam, the canals, the tulips bursting forth in spring by the thousands.” She picked up a ceramic robin and stroked the crimson breast with her forefinger. “They were broken in my suitcase when we had to pack up quickly and get out. Broken all to pieces. But I put them all together again, each and every one. You can hardly see the cracks.” She showed me, but she’d done a good job of repairing them. “I miss Holland,” she said. “So much.”

     “Are you ever goin’ back?”

     “Someday, maybe. Frans and I talk about it. We’ve even gotten the travel brochures. Still… what happened to us… the Nazis and all that terrible…” She frowned and returned the robin to its place between an oriole and a hummingbird. “Well, some broken things are not so easily mended,” she said.

     I heard a dog barking. It was Rebel’s bark, hoarse but strong. The sound was coming up from the basement through an air vent. Then I heard Dr. Lezander call, “Tom! Cory! Will both of you come down here, please?”

     We found Dr. Lezander taking Rebel’s temperature again, by the bottom route. Rebel was still listless and sleepy, but he showed no signs of dying. Dr. Lezander had applied a white ointment to Rebel’s wounded muzzle and had him connected now to two needles and bottles of dripping clear liquid. “I wanted you to see this animal’s temperature,” he said. “I’ve taken it four times in the last hour.” He picked up his notebook and wrote down the thermometer’s reading. “This is unheard of! Absolutely unheard of!”

     “What is it?” Dad asked.

     “Rebel’s body temperature has been dropping. It seems to have stabilized now, but half an hour ago I thought he was going to be dead.” Dr. Lezander showed Dad the readings. “See for yourself.”

     “My God.” Dad’s voice was stunned. “It’s that
low?
”

     “Yes. Tom, no animal can live with a body temperature of sixty-six degrees. It’s just… absolutely impossible!”

     I touched Rebel. My dog was no longer warm. His white hair felt hard and coarse. His head turned, and the single eye found me. His tail began to wag, with obvious effort. And then the tongue slid from between the teeth in that awful, flesh-ripped grin and licked my palm. His tongue was as cold as a tombstone.

     But he was alive.