“I don’t really know. He broke his leg for sure.”
“Well, that was your good deed for the day. Maybe for the year. He’s not much of a neighbor, keeps mostly to himself, but I’ve got nothing against him. Except for the house, which is an eyesore. You’re George Reade’s son, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
She held out her hand. “Althea Richland.”
I shook with her. “Pleased to meet you.”
“What about the mutt? That’s a scary dog, a German Shepherd. He used to walk him early mornings and sometimes after dark. When the kids were inside.” She pointed to the sadly sagging picket fence. “That certainly wouldn’t hold him.”
“It’s a her and I’m taking care of her.”
“That’s very good of you. I hope you won’t get bitten.”
“She’s pretty old now, and not mean.”
“To you, maybe,” Mrs. Richland said. “My father had a saying, ‘An old dog will bite twice as hard.’ A reporter from that rag of a weekly came by and asked me what happened. I think he’s the one who does the call-outs. Police, fire, ambulance, that kind of thing.” She sniffed. “He looked about your age.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, not knowing why I should. “I better get going, Mrs. Richland. I want to visit Mr. Bowditch before school.”
She laughed. “If it’s Arcadia, visiting hours don’t start until nine. They’ll never let you in this early.”
2
They did, though. Explaining that I had school and baseball practice after didn’t quite convince the lady at the front desk, but when I told her I was the one who called the ambulance, she told me I could go up. “Room 322. Elevators are on your right.”
Halfway down the third-floor hall, a nurse asked me if I was here to see Howard Bowditch. I said I was and asked how he was doing.
“He’s had one operation and he’s going to need another. Then he’ll be facing a fairly long period of convalescence, and he’ll need a lot of physical therapy. Melissa Wilcox will probably be the one to take that on. The leg-break was a particularly bad one, and he also pretty much destroyed his hip. It will need a replacement. Otherwise he’ll be spending the rest of his life on a walker or in a wheelchair no matter how much therapy he does.”
“Jeez,” I said. “Does he know?”
“The doctor who set the break will have told him what he needs to know right now. You called the ambulance?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, you may have saved his life. Between the shock and possibly spending a night outdoors…” She shook her head.
“It was the dog. I heard his dog howling.”
“Did the dog call 911?”
I admitted that had been me.
“If you want to see him, you better go on down. I just gave him a shot for pain, and it will probably put him under before long. Broken leg and hip aside, he’s severely underweight. Easy pickings for osteoporosis. You might get fifteen minutes before he’s off to see the wizard.”
3
Mr. Bowditch’s leg was up in a pulley contraption that looked straight out of a 1930s comedy movie… only Mr. Bowditch wasn’t laughing. Neither was I. The lines on his face looked deeper, almost carved. The dark circles under his eyes were darker. His hair appeared lifeless and thin, the red streaks in it looking faded. I guess he had a roommate, but I never saw him because a green drape was drawn across the other half of 322. Mr. Bowditch saw me and tried to straighten up in his bed, which made him grimace and hiss out a breath.
“Hello there. What’s your name again? If you told me, I don’t remember. Which, given the circumstances, might be forgivable.”
I couldn’t remember if I had, either, so I gave it again （or for the first time）， then asked how he was feeling.
“Extremely shitty. Just look at me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.” Then, with an effort to be civil: “Thank you, young Mr. Reade. They tell me you may have saved my life. It doesn’t feel like it’s worth much just now, but as the Buddha supposedly said, ‘It changes.’ Sometimes for the better, although in my experience that’s rare.”
I told him—as I had my father, the EMTs, and Mrs. Richland—that it was really the dog who had saved him; if I hadn’t heard her howling, I would have biked on by.
“How is she?”