Guys & Dogs

by Elaine Fox

  “Why didn’t you just take the blood while you were there?” Megan asked.

  Her father looked dumbfounded. He and Georgia looked at each other, then started laughing.

  “Damn, Doc, guess I should’ve asked Megan in the first place,” Georgia said. “She seems to be the criminal mastermind in the family.”

  “I knew she had some of my genes in her somewhere,” he said.

  “So now you’ve got to break in again to return the puppy.” Megan looked from her father to Georgia and back.

  “Sure,” Georgia said, reaching out to stroke the puppy in Doc’s arms. “But it’s okay. I used to live there, remember? I know that house like the back a my own little hand. We’ll just slip in, return the pup, and in a coupla weeks I’ll have my answer.”

  “What then?” Megan asked.

  “Well, when the test shows Sage is the father, then Clifford’s got some talkin’ to do.” Georgia laughed. “And when he can’t explain away Sage’s paternity, he’s gonna have some testifyin’ to do.”

  “You won’t be able to use these tests in court, you know,” Megan said. “I’ve got to believe stolen evidence is inadmissible.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Georgia said, throwing up her hands in triumph. “He’ll know what the tests showed because he knows he stole the frozen sperm. All I’ve gotta do is threaten Clifford with a suit, tell him he’ll have to subject the litter to DNA testing and next thing you know I’ll have me a litter of gorgeous blue Danes. And Clifford’s name’ll be mud in the show ring.”

  Megan shook her head again but couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her lips. This was absurd, beyond absurd. But it was the perfect ending to this evening.

  “We better hurry,” Doc said, putting the puppy back on the examination table. “Clifford won’t be out all night.”

  Megan watched as her father took out a hypodermic needle and tried to direct its point at the tiny leg in front of him. His hands were shaking so much he had to start over three times, first propping his elbows on the table, then his wrists, then asking Georgia to hold the dog up.

  “I can’t watch this,” she said finally, stepping over to the counter behind them and pulling out a VetGen swab. “You know you don’t even need blood, Dad, don’t you? We can just swab the inside of their cheeks and send it by regular mail. No overnighting it chilled or anything.”

  Her father looked befuddled. “No kidding.”

  “No kidding,” she said. Two minutes later she’d gotten a swab from both the puppy and Sage. Dropping the samples into an envelope, she turned back to the dastardly duo.

  “These kids today,” her father mumbled. “New fangled thingamajigs…” The rest of his lament was lost in a sea of grumbling.

  “By the way, I’ll be sending this in under your name, Dad,” Megan added, “and if it ever comes up, I’m saying I didn’t know a thing about it. Georgia, no matter what the outcome of this is, I hope that Rose’s Animal Hospital will not enter into any of your discussions about the matter.”

  “Oh honey, of course not. And thank you!” Georgia rounded the table to give her a big hug. “I knew you were a pal. And I’m sorry to have gotten you involved at all.”

  “I’m only doing this because I think you’ve got a good case,” she said, hugging Georgia back. The things one had to do these days to make friends.

  Georgia pulled back and gave her a hundred-watt smile. “You know it, honey. You just wait. Those tests’ll come back a positive match for Sage. Then we’ll celebrate.”

  Megan smiled as they gathered their things and took the dogs back out to the Navigator.

  “Be careful,” Megan said. “And Dad, if you get caught, would you mind using an alias?”

  They all laughed and Penelope and Megan watched the thieves drive off.

  “Think they’ll get caught?” Penelope asked.

  Megan shook her head, her eyes on the disappearing taillights and her stomach full of dread. “I don’t know. But if they do, you can bet there’ll be hell to pay.”

  The following morning, Megan lay back on Dr. Lee’s examination table in exhaustion. The paper covering scrunched beneath her, and the small paper pillow cradled her head. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night after the puppy incident, though she did manage to drift off before her father got in. She woke up again at the crack of dawn and went in to the office to fill out the paperwork for the DNA test. She wanted to get that out the door before the rest of the staff came in.

  Pulling the edges of her paper vest together, Megan gazed up at the picture of George Clooney the nurses had taped to the ceiling.

  She never liked visiting the doctor, normally, but today it felt so good to lie down she didn’t even mind that the table was connected to those awful metal stirrups. To Dr. Lee’s credit, however, Megan noted that these had fake-fur coverings that made them look a little less like a medieval torture device.

  She closed her eyes as she waited for the doctor, remembering the ruckus at the concert last night. She wished she’d kept her head about her a little more. She’d just been so thrown by Sutter’s initial reaction, followed by his tenderness, that she hadn’t known which way to jump when the photographer had shown up.

  Thinking about it now, it was obvious she would have been much better off not racing out like that. No doubt her hasty exit prompted more speculation and gossip than staying there and laughing it off would have. The way she’d bolted, people probably suspected that she and Sutter had been caught in flagrante delicto instead of in discussion detesto, as was really the case.

  She still couldn’t believe that when she’d gotten into the car with Penelope she’d actually burst into tears. Burst! Into tears! She hadn’t done that since her divorce, and at least then she’d known what she was upset about. This had just been some kind of emotional overload.

  Okay, that wasn’t strictly true. She knew what she was upset about this time, too, but it wasn’t as if she’d ever actually believed that she and Sutter Foley would end up together. Was it? Good God, she could still barely believe she even knew the man, let alone had had the most incredible sex of her life with him.

  Maybe it had been all that talk about fidelity and monogamy being unnatural. Even though it had been her talk, it must have brought back all her feelings about Ray and his profligacy. Yes, that had to be it. It wasn’t really because she had fallen in love with Sutter.

  Inexplicably, she felt another lump grow in her throat and her mouth contorted downward with the effort not to cry again. An image of his face floated before her closed eyes and she felt her heart wrench.

  This was stupid. She had to get a grip.

  So maybe she was in love with the man, damn it all to hell. He was funny and handsome and sincere and intelligent and successful—for God’s sake, what was there not to love? She’d been an idiot to think she could sleep with him and not want more. Monogamy might be unnatural, but it certainly seemed to be more unnatural for men than it was for women.

  A light knock sounded on the door and a small Asian woman with a bright smile entered the room. Megan sat up.

  “Megan?” the doctor asked. “I’m Dr. Lee.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Megan said, liking her instantly. She had a kind, friendly face that had Megan wanting to confide all of her problems to her. She had an air about her that said she could solve them all.

  Of course just explaining all that had gone on lately would have taken a week.

  They chatted briefly about how Megan had recently moved to town and Megan updated her about what was going on with her since her last checkup.

  “Lately it’s been mostly fatigue, but that comes with the territory of moving and taking over a business, I guess,” Megan said. “Other than that, I’ve felt pretty good. Healthy.”

  “Great.” Dr. Lee flipped through her chart. “Hm. I see you have some adhesions distorting the fallopian tubes.”

  “Yes, from endometriosis. Dr. Hill, in Connecticut, said because of it I only had a one
in a million chance of ever getting pregnant. That even if the sperm made it to the egg, they’d likely encounter a ‘hostile environment’ once they got there.” Megan chuckled at the phrase, as she always did, sometimes to deflect the pain, sometimes to deflect the pity.

  “I see. Okay, let’s get started.” Dr. Lee called in the nurse, snapped on her latex gloves and Megan lay back down on the table, gazing up into George Clooney’s compassionate face. She ought to try to meet him, she thought, closing her eyes against the subtle discomfort of the exam. Heck, if she could get Sutter Foley into bed, maybe George wasn’t as impossible as he seemed either.

  “Joyce, let me see that chart again, would you?” Dr. Lee asked the nurse.

  Joyce took the file folder and held it out to her. Dr. Lee was still palpating Megan’s abdomen.

  “That’s what I thought. Go to that next page,” Dr. Lee said.

  Megan opened her eyes. Was there a problem?

  Dr. Lee was still studying the records. Great, there was a problem. On top of everything else she was going to die of cervical cancer or something equally hideous.

  “It’s been a little while since my last exam, I know,” Megan said nervously, as if to explain away any discovery on Dr. Lee’s part. “I was really busy that last year before I moved and it just slipped my mind, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s all right,” Dr. Lee said, her brow furrowed. “When did you say your last period was, Megan?”

  Megan thought back. “It was…”

  She searched her memory, nervousness making it even more difficult. Ovarian cancer, maybe. That could be in there too. Which would affect her period. Maybe the endometriosis had gotten worse. God, a hysterectomy would be expensive right now. And all she needed was that hormone hell on top of everything else, too.

  “I don’t keep very good track,” Megan confessed. “But I think it was before I moved. Um, God, two months ago? No, three! I’ve been here almost three months. Oh my gosh, could that be right?”

  Dr. Lee stepped back and moved the light away. “It could be right. You can sit up now.”

  Megan looked at her in trepidation, but the woman didn’t look like she was about to impart terminal news. She looked, in fact, cautiously amused.

  “We’re going to need to do a urine test on you,” the doctor said with a smile.

  Bladder cancer? Megan thought.

  “I don’t know if this will come as good news or not, but from your records I see it’ll certainly be a surprise. Megan,” she said, her eyes seeming to twinkle, “there’s a good possibility you’re pregnant.”

  Megan walked out to her car through the sweltering summer heat in a daze. The urinalysis had proved it. She was pregnant. Pregnant! She was going to have a baby, be a mother, raise a child. For some reason she thought of all that stuff she’d thrown away when she thought she’d never have any progeny. When she’d believed it was a million to one shot. What a fool!

  The fluttering of surprise inside her escalated, making her hand shake as she tried to insert the key into the lock. She steadied it with the other one.

  A baby. She couldn’t believe it. She paused and put her hands to her abdomen, wherein a little person was incubating. A baby, someone with her genes, her blood—it was astonishing!

  She looked up to the sky at a flock of passing birds and felt within her rise up the most incredible feeling of happiness. Pure, blossoming euphoria.

  She, Megan Rose, was going to have a baby! She was going to grow large and round and maybe waddle and pee too often and get a crib and a mobile and go to the hospital and give birth and go through the rest of her life with another person—a person she will love more than life itself. A little boy. Or a little girl.

  It was the most wonderful news she’d ever gotten in her life and she felt as if she could hardly contain herself. Yet at the same time she wanted to keep it quiet, cherish the secret, as if letting it out might damage it somehow, make it not true.

  It was a miracle. When she’d protested to Dr. Lee that pregnancy was impossible the woman had simply smiled and said in fact it wasn’t. Improbable, yes. But clearly not impossible. She estimated Megan was about two months along.

  Two months, Megan thought, opening the car door. That meant it had happened the first time she and Sutter—

  She hit the car seat with a hard plop as her knees gave out.

  Sutter, she thought. Holy shit, Sutter was going to be a father. The father of her baby. Her baby, she thought wildly. Then, with a kind of terror:

  Her baby was Sutter Foley’s.

  Unfortunately, she had three afternoon appointments that were absolutely uncancellable. Her clientele had finally begun to build, and if she started canceling appointments for no reason she could divulge, they wouldn’t trust her the next time.

  She wasn’t sure how she did it but she got through the first two without making an utter ass of herself. Lucky for her one was just a simple checkup and rabies inoculation on a cat, and the other a flea problem for a dog—both no-brainers. And she certainly had no brain.

  The last one, though, was the kicker.

  “A sugar glider!” Allison said, when she came to retrieve Megan from her office for the last appointment. “I’ve never seen one before in my life and ohmygod it’s the cutest thing! It’s like a squirrel, only smaller. Where do they come from?”

  “Australia and Indonesia,” Megan said. She’d just been boning up. It had been a long time since she’d had to deal with an exotic that unusual. “They’re marsupials.”

  “Yeah, and so soft!” Allison exclaimed.

  Megan laughed. She had never seen her receptionist this animated about anything, but it only proved her belief that everyone was a pet person, it was just a matter of finding the right pet.

  “I wanted to hold it,” Alison continued, “but she wouldn’t let go of it.”

  “That’s because sugar gliders are like tiny flying squirrels. They have the ability to jump and fly good distances and quite quickly. You don’t want one of those getting away from you.”

  “They even have little hands with fingers!”

  Megan chuckled, thinking about her baby’s little fingers, and went into the exam room.

  A short woman in a wrinkled dress with damp hair along her brow—testifying to the sweltering summer day—cradled a little cloth pouch in her hands.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Rose,” Megan said, reaching out a hand to the woman. “You must be Doris Fleiger.”

  “Oh, I’d better not let go,” Mrs. Fleiger said. “Jiminy here might get away. He loves to fly, he does.”

  “I guess that comes with the territory.” Megan smiled. “Now what is going on with Jiminy?”

  “Well,” the woman said, cautiously opening up the little pouch she wore around her neck like a necklace. “He’s started to smell kinda bad and I know they’re not supposed to have much of a scent. And I’m real good about keeping their cage clean and all.”

  Out of the pouch came a tiny little creature, about the size of a lemon, that instantly captured Megan’s heart. Its large black eyes blinked up at her from under pointed, catlike ears, its face as sweet as any Disney character’s.

  “Oh my goodness,” Megan murmured, reaching out for the little animal.

  Mrs. Fleiger held Jiminy out, but before Megan could cup her hand around him he let out an astonishingly loud scream and flew at her chest.

  He landed with a thump and stuck like velcro to her shirt front.

  Megan couldn’t withhold a yelp of surprise and looked down at the tiny beast. As she met its eyes, it pulled its lips back and revealed a mouthful of needle-like teeth.

  The devil in pint-sized form.

  It screamed again.

  “He’s very tame at home,” Mrs. Fleiger said, a frantic note in her voice as she tried to speak over the chirps and barks the little thing was now emitting. “He just doesn’t like strangers much.”

  Now you tell me, Megan thought, reaching toward the animal on her chest. Despite t
he ominous teeth, she cupped her hand toward its body. If she didn’t get hold of it quickly it would—

  It did. It leapt from her chest to the counter beside her. Mrs. Fleiger raced around the examination table, bumping into Megan who in turn bumped into the counter.

  The devil sprang to the wall with a fiendish grin and held on to the picture frame. Ironically, a picture of dogs wearing angel wings.

  Megan attempted the impossible, diving for an animal without the animal noticing.

  Of course it saw her coming and sailed to the floor, dangerously close to the crack under the door. It would take nothing for the animal to disappear through it.

  Both she and Mrs. Fleiger lunged for the miniature beast. Megan was acutely aware that she couldn’t grab hard or things would really get ugly.

  They both missed.

  Before she knew it the thing was leaping and flying around the room nonstop, a demonic pinball, a cartoon character gone bad, a furry fanged poltergeist.

  Megan and Mrs. Fleiger bumped against each other in pursuit, bouncing off the counter and the walls like Keystone cops chasing a superball.

  Mrs. Fleiger was screaming, “Jiminy! Jiminy!” freaking out both Megan and the diminutive Jiminy, who at the same time was screaming with his own little voice, no doubt summoning the rest of the tribe in Indonesia.

  Footsteps sounded outside the exam room door. “Don’t come in!” Megan yelled.

  Jiminy leapt off the corner cooler and landed in her hair.

  “Oh my God!” she burst out, before she could stop herself. She could feel the wee hands burrowing into her hair. Megan pressed her own hands together in front of her for a quick moment to keep herself from batting the creature from her hair in a panic and flinging it, no doubt to its death, across the room.

  “Jiminy!” Mrs. Fleiger shouted again, going for Megan’s hair with her frantic and considerably larger paws.

  “Are you all right?” Allison called through the door.

  “No!” Megan ordered Mrs. Fleiger, stepping back away from her.

  The door burst open and Allison barreled in. “What’s going on?”