Inside, Lorrie and the vet lowered Rufus onto an aluminum table. Dr. Abrams—that was the name on his white jacket—asked Evangeline to hold Rufus’s head while he gently cleared a big clot, peered up his nose, and proceeded to “cauterize the vessels” with a tool that looked like a soldering iron. It was over in a minute, Rufus dry nosed, cleaned up, and lying peacefully on the table, more sleepy than alarmed now.
“I doubt he’s lost as much blood as it seemed,” Dr. Abrams said, “but I’d like to keep him overnight, give him a transfusion and some fluids.”
He spoke to Evangeline, and that surprised her. Adults rarely sought her permission, not even for things that involved her. She wanted to say, Yes, yes, of course, whatever it takes. Instead she flicked an anxious look at Lorrie.
Lorrie turned to the doctor. “Could you give us an estimate of what something like that would cost? I’ll try to call Isaac. He loves Rufus, but he’s an old dog. I’m guessing he doesn’t have many days left on this earth.”
Evangeline narrowed her eyes, wanting to hurt her for saying such a thing. But the adults were ignoring her now, and that was reassuring.
“There’s something else,” the vet said. “He’s got a tumor that’s invaded through the cartilage on both sides. I’m guessing he’s been doing a lot of mouth breathing.”
“It’s gotten really bad,” Evangeline said.
“He has no other airway. If you want him more comfortable, he’ll need surgery to debulk—reduce—the tumor. So he can breathe more easily. That wouldn’t be cheap, but this poor guy is suffering.”
“Is it cancer?” she asked, afraid to know.
“Good chance of it. Isaac brought him in a month ago for a breathing issue. I saw a small lesion. Not that bad, really. But now there’s a helluva mess. Benign masses don’t generally grow that fast.”
“Doctor,” Lorrie said, “could we leave Rufus here for a few hours? I’ll try to get by the school and have a talk with Isaac. Would you be able to take a call from him this morning?”
She was using her I’m-in-control voice, but Evangeline caught a tremor hidden in it. The vet said he’d make every effort to take Isaac’s call, and Lorrie turned to go. Evangeline, still splattered with blood, knelt before Rufus. She didn’t pet or talk to him. She avoided anything he might take as a good-bye, just squinted hard into his eyes: Don’t you even think about it!
She stood and walked out the door, swiping an arm across her face.
60
Judith once again buzzed me during class. I assumed things had taken a turn with Aunt Becky, but she told me a woman was waiting for me in the office.
I stopped short upon entering. Lorrie sat hunched in a corner chair. When she saw me, fear seized her features, but she stood, her jaw set in resolve. We borrowed Peter’s old office, closing the door behind us. I didn’t suggest we sit and neither did she, and so we stood, contained in the room. She kept her gaze averted, but I refused to break the silence. Eventually she met my eyes and said, “I’m sorry. For what I did last fall. For letting you suffer not knowing.”
She kept her gaze steady, wanting me to know it had taken everything in her to come to me and that she would allow me to injure her further if I needed to. She had left herself defenseless, so any cruelty I inflicted would make me a monster. But what did I care? I’d made myself a monster in February, and I saw no reason to change course.
“Is that why you’re here?” I said, stepping toward her, looming over her.
Her eyes teared, but she didn’t flinch. “Thank you for not going to the police. For letting Nells keep her moth—”
“Judith said there was some kind of emergency. Or was that another of your lies?” Even then I marveled at my cruelty, wondered if I’d adopted my son’s meanness as he had in some ways adopted mine.
Lorrie winced but quickly told me about Rufus, about Evangeline and the blood and the race to the vet in Chimacum. I felt ashamed for my treatment of her and angrier still that she’d induced this feeling in me.
“Dr. Abrams wants to keep Rufus overnight,” she said. “He’d like to talk with you about options, asked to have you call him as soon as you can.” She turned to leave.
“Lorrie,” I said.
She stopped but didn’t look at me.
I didn’t know if I wanted to berate her or thank her, but with the saying of her name something tight in me, a thick band that girded my chest, loosened.
When I managed nothing further, she gave that little nod of her head and left.
* * *
—
DR. ABRAMS ADVISED A “TOTAL RESECTION.” He wanted to split Rufus’s face down the middle and open it like a pair of hangar doors.
“Why not access through the nostrils?”
He huffed. “Do you have any idea how convoluted a dog’s sinuses are?”
I wanted to snap, Why such cruelty? Hasn’t Rufus suffered enough? But I knew that in Dr. Abrams’s world medical violence and medical heroism were often the same thing. If Rufus was to be spared, it would be up to me.
It should have been a simple matter. But I waffled. When I saw Rufus, I also saw my son. Only a few days before his death, Daniel had chased the dog. Rufus, his paws skittering on the floor, flicked looks of terrified glee over his shoulder like the puppy he once was. Then the two rolled around, Daniel chanting, “Who’s a good dog? Who’s a good dog?” Given my son’s mysteries and hostilities in the last years, my desire to see that playful, fun boy was intense. At times, I thought I would torture the dog if it would grant me one more glimpse of Daniel.
Now, seeing Rufus struggling to breathe, I realized I’d stopped that vignette too soon. When Daniel was done roughhousing that day, he patted the dog’s head and bounded upstairs. Rufus, left in his old worn body, had whined a little, as if hoping Daniel would return, then stumbled to his feet and limped to his chair.
* * *
—
IN THE END, Dr. Abrams performed a biopsy. A few days later, he called to say it was cancer. “A resection might give him a few extra months,” he said. “Maybe as many as six, you never know. But with the lymph-node involvement and the complications of surgery in this area, there’s not much hope of a cure.”
Other options included experimental chemo and radiation at the veterinary school on the other side of the state, but all had painful side effects and none offered hope of long-term survival. Afterward I sat stiff-backed in my room, quieting my mind, trying to hold myself in the light that appeared at a distance, darted away like a fish when approached. An hour in, my mind lit with images of poor Rufus, monstrous, his head shaved, heavy black staples straining to hold his face together, his eyes watery with pain and accusation.
I told Evangeline of my feelings but let her know I would consider hers as well, that I recognized the bond that had developed between them. She nodded and went to her room, taking Rufus with her. An hour later she emerged, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “Can the doctor help him breathe without hurting him?”
“He can go through his nostrils to open things up. That would help for a while.”
“Could we do that?”