Thirty to seventy percent? What a useless piece of information. “I really was hoping for just a flat yes.”
“We’re going to give him everything we’ve got,” Dr. Addison promised. “He looks like a fighter.”
At that, I felt tears flooding up in my chest. “The thing is…” I said then, trying to push my voice to sound normal through the tightness in my throat. “The thing is … I can’t lose him. Do you know what I mean? I can’t.”
Dr. Addison nodded, and I could sense a new tenderness about him. “The blood transfusion should help a lot,” he said next. “Give him the energy he needs to fight.”
I nodded, my face wet again. “I know everybody thinks their dog is the best dog, but the thing is my dog really is actually, literally, the best.” What was I saying?
“Later today,” Dr. Addison went on, staying focused, “we’ll want to get him eating. Can you tell me his favorite foods?”
I sat up straighter and pawed at my eyes, determined to pull it together. “Yes. He loves tortillas, doughnuts, and rigatoni Bolognese. He’s a big fan of saag paneer. He goes crazy for California rolls. He also loves crepes—but only like the kind you get in Paris. If they’re too pancakey, that’s a no.”
Dr. Addison tilted his head. “I was thinking more like … dog food.”
“He’s not really a dog food guy,” I said.
“Your dog doesn’t eat dog food?”
“I mean, it’ll do in a pinch. But if you’re asking me what he likes…”
“All those carbs can’t be healthy for him.”
I’d heard this before, and I’d defended my little guy before, too.
“He’s a foodie,” I said. “He has a very refined palate.”
Dr. Addison took that in.
And then a little joke I’d made many times popped into my head, and I just said it now without really stopping to wonder if, in our current situation, it was still true: “You know those old guys who smoke a pack a day but live to be a hundred?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s kind of like that, but with croissants.”
* * *
I WANTED TO just stay in the waiting room of the vet clinic all day and all night, forever—but hunger and exhaustion forced me, not long before dinnertime, to leave Peanut in Dr. Addison’s sexy but capable hands and go home.
I also wanted to take that lab coat with me, but I left it—walking home instead in my baby-doll pj’s and bunny slippers, feeling extra naked and alone, and fully expecting to run into some humiliating stranger. A former boss. A premed professor. My dad.
But the person I ran into was Mr. Kim.
I knew him, of course, because he always wore dress shoes, suit pants, a button-down Oxford shirt, and suspenders. He’d been dressing like that Sue’s entire life. No matter what he was doing.
And I was so glad it was him, of all people. He’d seen Sue and me—lots of times—in much crazier getups than bunny slippers.
This evening, he was tinkering with the mechanics of the elevator doors, but when he saw me, he abandoned that project. “Come see me,” he said, gesturing me toward him.
“What about the elevator?” I asked.
But he waved me off. “We’ve got stairs.”
He led me around to a quiet corner, and then he cut right to the chase. “I hear that you’re not just using the rooftop as a studio—you’re living there.”
Mr. Kim smiled a lot. Maybe he wasn’t always smiling—but he was often smiling.
But I couldn’t sense him smiling now.
My heart dropped. Was I getting kicked out?
Was I really—right here, in my pj’s and bunny slippers, with Peanut in the ICU, at the brokest and sickest and most disoriented I’d ever been in my life—getting kicked out of my apartment by the closest thing to a father figure I had?
His voice was pretty serious. “That won’t work,” he said, shaking his head with a vibe like he was truly sorry.
I nodded. Of course. I never should have snuck around behind the Kims’ back to begin with.
“It’s not an apartment,” he said next. “Renting it as a studio is one thing. But it’s not fit to live in. I really”—and here he shook his head—“can’t rent that place as living quarters.”
I nodded harder. “I get it. You’re right. I’m so sorry.”
Oh god, I was so screwed.
But then Mr. Kim let out a chuckle that he couldn’t suppress any longer. “So I guess,” he said, clapping his hand on my shoulder, “you’ll just have to stay there for free.”