Chester and Gus

by Cammie McGovern

  Even though I’ve spent all day sleeping, I’m tired from all the talking I just did. I’m tired because it’s hard being around Sara’s worry all day. Even when she’s working, she’s thinking about Gus. She’s wondering if she should call the school to check on him. She’s staring at me like she’d just feel better if I could go back to school again.

  Even if you’re pretending to sleep through all this, it’s tiring.

  Great Family Pet

  AFTER TWO WEEKS WITHOUT A SEIZURE, everyone agrees that Gus isn’t in any immediate danger anymore. Sara tells Marc the nurse doesn’t need to stay with him in the classroom any longer, which makes her feel a little bit better, but not much.

  Everything is back to the way it was before, except Gus takes pills now and sleeps more and I don’t go to school with him.

  “Chester is a great family pet,” Marc says, trying to cheer Sara up. “And he’s here every afternoon for Gus to come home to.”

  I don’t know why “great family pet” seems like a sad, disappointing thing to be. I guess when you know how good you feel doing a job, you want more. You just do.

  Maybe I want too much.

  At night when I run outside for my last pee, I don’t even bark anymore to the other dogs nearby. I feel like I don’t have anything to say to them.

  Sara knows how I feel. She feels it too.

  One day at lunch, she looks up from her soup and says, “I know, Chess. I know you don’t want to be home here with me.”

  I look at her carefully. I wasn’t saying anything just now, but I wonder if she’s heard me other times. I do an experiment that afternoon. I sit outside her open office door and say, There are raccoons right now, digging through the garbage.

  There aren’t really, but I know she hates raccoons and the mess they always make. If she can hear me, she’ll jump up and start banging pots and pans.

  I wait. For a second, she turns her head from the computer as if she hears a bird, maybe. Or something else in the distance. And then: nothing.

  No, I decide. She doesn’t hear me.

  A Mystery

  TODAY THERE’S A NEW MYSTERY.

  I know a little bit about mysteries from the TV shows I used to watch with Penny. She liked the ones that featured people who weren’t typical detectives because they were blind, or had something I never understood called OCD. She liked them because usually the person’s weakness made them a good detective. Like the blind guy could smell some clues better than other people. (Most people are such poor smellers, it doesn’t surprise me that a decent one can get his own TV show.) Watching those shows has taught me enough to know right away that I’m looking at a possible crime when Gus gets off the van from school and there’s a big bandage across his nose. There are also two dark circles under his eyes. He looks like he’s wearing a mask or very bad eye makeup.

  Sara screams when she sees it, then puts her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, what happened, Gus?”

  He doesn’t say, of course. He gets around Sara by walking the same way he does at school—up on his toes, pressed close to the wall.

  Sara opens his backpack and pulls out the blue book where there is a note from the nurse that she reads aloud: “Gus had an accident on the playground late in the day today. He was on the far side of the climbing structure where teachers couldn’t see him. When they called, he came out from under the structure with a cut on his nose. He was taken to the nurse and cleaned up, but he couldn’t tell us how he’d gotten the cut. We left a voice-mail message. The nurse thinks that his injury might look worse than it actually is.”

  Sara is mad and I don’t blame her. I’m mad too.

  “He’s autistic!” Sara screams, even though Marc’s not home to hear her, only me. “Of course he can’t tell her what happened!”

  Gus has only been home for a little while but already his face looks worse. The purple circles under his eyes are getting bigger and blacker. Sara puts ice on his nose, which he doesn’t like. He moans and says “nis” and makes it worse by touching his nose and crying when it hurts.

  “I’m taking him to the hospital. I think he might have broken his nose. Don’t you think I should take him to the hospital, Chester?”

  I don’t like hospitals because I don’t know what happens in them but I do agree it looks bad. Gus lies down on his bed and I can see blood crusted inside his nose—I want to lick it but I stop myself.

  When Marc gets home, Sara tells him what Mr. McGregor said when she called the school. “There was a substitute nurse, which is why I got that strange note that didn’t take any of his seizure history into account. Apparently there was another child under the wooden climbing structure. He didn’t know Gus was under there until he heard him crying, he says.”

  It was probably Ed, I say. Ed isn’t nice and whatever story he told is probably a lie.

  Of course she doesn’t hear.

  I go over to Gus, who’s curled up on the sofa. Did Ed do something to you under the climbing structure?

  He rolls over so I can’t look at his face.

  I put my chin on his leg. I don’t really need him to answer. I know it was. Before I left school Ed started playing a new trick on younger kids where he offered to push them on the tire swing and then wouldn’t stop or let them off when they started to scream. Gus probably stood too near the tire swing and got hit. That’s my guess. I wish Gus could tell them this himself. If he can’t, I wish they could understand me so I could tell them.

  Sara thinks it’s something else. “He obviously had a seizure, Marc. We need to get him to the hospital and have him checked.”

  Sara is pulling on her coat, but Marc doesn’t move. “Not everything is a seizure, Sare. You remember they told us that.”

  I take a good sniff around on Gus’s leg. I remember the way he smelled when I found him in the closet—sharp and metallic. He doesn’t smell like a seizure now.

  “He was by himself underneath the play structure. He’s a seizure-prone child and they let him wander away to a dark tunnel where he couldn’t be seen. I don’t understand what they were thinking.”

  “They were letting him play with another kid. That’s what we’ve always wanted.”

  “Not anymore. He could have hurt himself. He did hurt himself. Look at him, Marc.”

  “I have, Sara. I think the nurse is right—it might look worse than it is.”

  “If it looks bad, it is bad. He’s obviously had a seizure on their watch and they don’t want to admit it because it means they’ll have to hire the expensive nurse again. It’s infuriating!”

  “Look, I agree there’s a problem, but we don’t have to assume the worst right away. I’d like to talk to the teachers and wait a little bit to see what Gus can tell us.”

  “See what Gus can tell us? Do you hear yourself? Gus can’t tell us anything! That’s why we have to protect him! Being nice to the school doesn’t help him!”

  “If we storm over to the school this afternoon, what are we going to ask them to do? Keep Gus inside every day at recess? They’ll just tell us it’s time to consider the out-of-district placement and send him so far away we’ll only see him on the weekends.”

  This conversation is so sad I move to Gus’s head and sniff at the back of his ear. It’s not your fault they’re fighting, I whisper. This is what grown-ups do.

  Gus rolls over and looks at me. His face looks even worse than it did a little while ago. For the first time in days, he looks me in the eyes. It’s hard to look back in his. They’re purple and yellow now.

  But still, I can see something in his face. He’s trying to tell me he didn’t have a seizure.

  Ed did this to him.

  I don’t want Gus to be sent away. If he’s sent away, I really won’t be able to do my job. I need to find a way for Gus to tell them what happened.

  How to Tell On Someone

  AS SARA READIES A BAG TO take Gus to the hospital where he doesn’t want to go, I try to distract her with other things.


  “No, Chester, not now,” she says. “Look at this, Marc, Chester thinks it’s time for a walk because I’ve got my jacket on. I’m sorry, Chester—no walks now. We have to go. Cora will stop by later and take you for a walk.”

  Oh, if only I could tell her that Cora never leaves the yard for our “walks.” They’re not really walks, they’re embarrassing trips down our back steps and back up again.

  “Do you need to go pee, Chess? Marc, can you let him outside before we go?”

  Marc opens the door but I don’t move. I need them to stop what they’re doing and think for a minute. Gus didn’t have a seizure. Gus had boys on the playground do something mean to him.

  I didn’t understand why Gus liked to stand near the tunnel where Ed hides. It was dark and loud and scary to me, so I didn’t stay. But Gus is different from me. He’s afraid of many things, but he likes dark, scary places. He likes Fright Fest and Ed, and that spot underneath the climbing structure is like visiting Fright Fest every day. Ed plays mean games there. He jumps out at little kids. That’s his idea of recess fun.

  Gus is crying now. He doesn’t want to go back to the hospital.

  Tell them, I say. Tell them what happened.

  Marc says, “Are you going to call ahead or just take him to the ER and wait?”

  “I’ll call, I guess. Does that mean you’re not coming with us?”

  “I’m not sure it helps to have us both there. Plus, someone should walk Chess. He’s obviously antsy. Why don’t I come in a few hours and give you a break?”

  No! I say, sitting again near the chair. Talk to Gus first!

  “Come on, Gus. I’ve got your bag packed. It’ll be okay. I’ve got your headphones and your music and two sparkly pens. You can’t have them both at once but we’ll play games while we wait. Come on, babe, let’s go.”

  He’s sitting up now. He’s dressed with his shoes on and a jacket over his shoulders. He doesn’t want to go, I know, but it’s more than that. His feet are glued to the ground.

  He can’t go. He can’t move.

  Can you tell them what happened? I say. Did Ed do this to you?

  For the first time since he’s gotten home, I hear him speak. He winces. Yes.

  It’s harder to hear his inside voice now because his outside voice is getting louder. His mouth is saying, “Ba . . . ba . . . ba . . .” because his ears don’t want to hear what he’s saying. His mouth can’t tell his mom and dad what happened, any more than mine can.

  It’s okay, I say. Go with your mom. We’ll figure out a way to tell them what happened.

  He doesn’t stand up right away, but eventually he follows his mom out to the car.

  After they leave, Marc paces around for a long time. I follow him into his bedroom because I’m nervous too and I don’t want to be alone. I watch him change his clothes. I watch him lie down on the bed, read a newspaper for a minute, then stand back up. I watch him walk into the bathroom, pull a string through his teeth, and walk back out. Finally, he takes me for a short walk and then says, “I’m sorry, Chester, I’ve got to go check on them. I’ve got to find out what’s happening.”

  He fills my bowl with food two hours before dinner and sloshes some water next to it. “You’ll be okay, right? Do you want me to leave the radio on?”

  We’re all nervous, remembering the last trip to the hospital. No radio, I say with my eyes. I need time to think and make plans.

  “Yeah,” he says. “You’re right. The radio is dumb.”

  Dark Night

  I HEAR MY DOG FRIENDS IN THE distance, barking at the moon, and the sound makes me feel lonely and sad. I don’t have anything in common with these other dogs. A language maybe, but what does that mean when we see each other on the street and have nothing to say? My heart is with my people.

  When they finally get home, Gus is with them, which is a relief, but they’re all tired, I can tell. They turn on the light by the front door and whisper to each other. “I’ll get his medicine,” Sara says. “You take him up to bed.”

  After all this waiting, that’s all I hear. No one says anything to me.

  The next morning, Gus stays home from school. The bandage over his nose is bigger now and he looks like he’s wearing sunglasses underneath except it’s his skin. Purple-yellow skin-sunglasses.

  After breakfast, Sara calls the school. “Mr. McGregor, please,” she says in an unfriendly voice.

  It makes me nervous.

  I get up from my bed and sit near the phone so maybe I can hear what he says on the other end. Sara sees me and says, “No treats now, Chester, you haven’t even eaten your breakfast yet.”

  I do like my treats, but this isn’t where I sit to get them. How can I make her understand?

  When she starts talking to Mr. McGregor, she moves around so much I have a hard time following her conversation. “The hospital couldn’t determine if he had a seizure or not, but this incident has shaken our faith in the school’s ability to keep Gus safe. Marc and I have talked about this and we both agree that we can’t send Gus back to school . . . For the time being, we’re going to keep him at home . . .” She opens the refrigerator and closes it again. She moves over to the table and sits down. “He wasn’t safe at school, Mr. McGregor. The doctors have already written letters in support of this idea. If you want to stop by our house and look at Gus’s face, I’m sure you’d agree with me as well.”

  Poor Sara, I think. Gus can’t tell her what happened. She has to do something, and this is the only thing she can think of. I hear other snippets. She calls her mother and tells her the whole story. “The hospital’s answer is to increase his medications until he does nothing but sleep all day . . . I don’t know what else to do . . .”

  Her mother must ask about me—because she leans over and pets my ears. “No, Chester’s not allowed at school anymore because he’s not an official service dog. I talked to the principal again about this, and he said the most they could allow would be for Chester to come to school during recess time. He isn’t allowed back in the building. I don’t see much point when he gets swarmed by the little girls on the playground. I don’t think Gus goes near him outside.”

  I move closer to Sara so she knows I’m listening to all this.

  It isn’t true what she’s saying. Girls swarm me for a few minutes on the playground and then they leave me alone. The rest of the time, I spend with Gus. If I went back I could at least watch out for Ed. I could keep Gus away from him. That would be something.

  “No, he was never trained for that . . . Yes, he was the one who found Gus . . . right . . . I’ve read a little about that . . . Maybe I’ll do some research . . . It’s not a bad idea . . .”

  After she hangs up, instead of telling me what she was talking about on the phone, Sara spends the rest of the day taking care of Gus and researching on the computer.

  “Do you want to hear what I learned today?” she tells Marc the minute he walks in the door that night. “Remember we talked about making Chester a seizure dog, but we assumed that if he didn’t pass the standard service dog training there’s no way he could learn something this specialized? Well, guess what?”

  Marc smiles. “He can?”

  “Not yet. But he might be able to. Here’s what I found out. There are seizure response dogs who are trained to recognize when a seizure is happening. They get help, fetch medicine, move their person away from stairs, things like that. Dogs can be trained for that part using trainers who know how to mimic seizures.”

  Marc looks down at me. He hasn’t seen me mail a letter or open a door. He doesn’t think I can do these things.

  “But here’s the most interesting part. About thirty percent of the dogs who work with epileptic people develop the ability to alert them fifteen to twenty minutes before a seizure begins. They can sense it before the person feels anything. Isn’t that amazing? No one has any idea how they do it.”

  Smell, I tell her. We smell it.

  “They think it might be smell but they’ve done
all these tests and their machines don’t detect anything.”

  I remember the afternoon of Gus’s seizure at school—how I finally found him in the closet. It was a scary smell. It made my heart race.

  “It also could be they notice finger twitches or changes in breathing patterns.”

  No, I say. How would I notice that?

  “They say maybe it comes from having a connection to the person. Some dogs tune in to their person, but wouldn’t be able to recognize a seizure in someone unfamiliar.”

  Sure, I think. Seizures smell terrible, but so do lots of people for different reasons.

  “Because it’s so mysterious, there’s no way to train the dog to do it. They can’t practice the skill by finding people on the brink of having a seizure, so the only way for a dog to get qualified is by doing it once. That’s all it takes!”

  “And if a dog proves he can do that?”

  “Then we could tell the school it’s medically necessary for him to be in the classroom with Gus!”

  Sara’s so happy at this prospect it makes me nervous. I go to the TV room, where Gus is watching a TV show by himself, which I’ve never seen him do before. Usually he watches TV only when his parents force him to watch something with them. I didn’t think he knew how to turn it on. I didn’t think he was interested. I sit down next to him and watch for a little while. It’s a show about people who get dirty for a job. I don’t understand it. Are you really watching this or are you having a seizure?

  I’m watching.

  And the point is they get dirty doing this stuff?

  It’s funny.

  We watch for a while. A man gets covered in black soot and smiles at the camera. Behind him, there’s steam coming from a machine. It looks a little like Mama’s machine.

  Does your face still hurt?

  A little.

  Do you want to go back to school tomorrow?