by Eve Yohalem
For $125.
I’d known the visit was going to cost something, but I didn’t think it would cost twelve weeks’ allowance. Before we left my house, I’d emptied my fake-book safe of thirty-five dollars, which was every penny I had.
Jules, on the other hand, had plenty of money. I’d seen her wallet. It was always full of twenties. And not one but two credit cards. Jules, whose father gave her forty dollars for the taco truck at the beach. Jules, who ordered $150 video cameras online that her father’s accountant would never even notice. Jules, whose sneakers were custom-colored and monogrammed.
I’d rather eat my toes for breakfast than ask Jules for money. Or lick the sidewalk. Or solo dance at a school assembly.
But this was for Otis.
Jules was scrolling on her phone in the waiting area a few feet away.
“Jules?”
“Yeah?” she said without looking up.
I swallowed. “Can-I-borrow-ninety-dollars-to-pay-the-bill?”
“Sure.” Jules said “sure” in a distracted kind of way, like loaning me ninety dollars was no big deal. She reached into her back pocket for a credit card, handed it to me, and went back to scrolling.
What was it like with her and her friends at home? I bet when they went out for pizza they didn’t figure out what each person ate when they split the check. Or maybe they didn’t go out for pizza. Maybe they went out for sushi.
After we left Dr. Greene’s, Jules and her dad’s massage therapist dropped Otis and me at home. Before I shut the car door, I said to Jules, “I promise to pay you back.”
She waved her hand like she was shooing a fly. “Don’t worry about it. As long as Otis is okay that’s all that matters.” She leaned out the open door and rubbed Otis’s head. “Right, Otis McGoatis? All that matters is you.”
Jules and I had that in common, at least.
When Mom came home from work, Otis was lying on the rug by the front door, and she noticed his blue paw right away.
“What happened?” She squatted next to him without taking off her sun hat or muddy shoes.
“He stepped on something sharp.” Which was a partial truth.
“Where were you?”
“Um… the parking lot near the marina?” Which was a total lie.
“Poor baby,” Mom said, stroking Otis’s head. Otis stopped tugging at the tape and licked her hand. “Did you do this wrap yourself, Blue?”
I took a deep breath. Here comes the hard part. “Jules and I took Otis to Dr. Greene’s. He said it would be fine in a couple of days.”
Mom stopped petting Otis and looked up at me. “Did you get the bill?”
“Yes.”
I knew the question Mom was going to ask next, and I really really didn’t want to answer it.
“How much was it?”
I could feel my face flushing. “A hundred and twenty-five dollars.”
“Oh, Blue. That’s a lot of money for a cut paw. We could have taken care of Otis ourselves. Why didn’t you call me?”
Because I was hoping there’d be nothing wrong and you’d never have to find out. But I was worried there was something really wrong and Otis needed a doctor. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Mom pushed herself up slowly with her hands on her knees. “Next time call me, okay? We can’t afford for Otis to go to the vet for every little thing. And speaking of what we can afford, how did you pay the bill?”
“How’d she pay what bill?”
Dad opened the screen door. I’d been so busy lying I hadn’t even heard him come up the porch steps.
“Otis cut his paw, and Blue took him to Dr. Greene,” Mom said, re-piling her hair on top of her head. “A hundred and twenty-five dollars.”
Dad whistled. “Where’d you get that kind of money, Blue?”
I closed my eyes and willed myself to become as small as an ant so I could run away through the gap between the screen door and the floor. It didn’t work.
“I had thirty-five dollars, and Jules paid the rest,” I said. “I told her I’ll pay her back.”
Mom let go of her hair and it stuck out all around her. “Jules loaned you ninety dollars? That’s completely inappropriate!”
I cringed. “It wasn’t a big deal to her at all,” I said, even though I knew Mom was right.
“Well, it’s a big deal to us,” she snapped. “I’ll give you the money to pay her back tomorrow. But you’re not getting your thirty-five dollars back.”
After dinner, Otis and I trudged upstairs to be miserable together in private. He parked himself on the bathroom floor and gnawed his wrap. If he didn’t stop soon, I’d have to put the cone of shame around his head.
I sighed a long sigh and got into the shower, peeking around the curtain every couple of minutes at Otis, who was now lying belly-down on the bath mat with his chin resting on his front paws and his eyebrows crinkled, a look of utter pain and sadness that magnified my own.
I finished my shower and dried off. And then it was time for the thing I hated most about dealing with diabetes: moving my infusion set, the device that’s plugged into my body and connects to my insulin pump through a long catheter tube. I’m supposed to move it to a different patch of skin every three days (even though I usually stretch it to four) so I don’t build up scar tissue or get a skin infection. I can handle the cringy part when I peel off the adhesive tape and it tugs on my skin, and the Band-Aid smell of insulin that I taste in the back of my throat when I fill the reservoir. No, the part I can’t stand is injecting the new catheter. You would think that a person who pricks her finger multiple times a day wouldn’t care about one more needle. But there’s something about pressing the inserter button and how fast the needle plunges—like shooting a nail gun or an electric stapler into my body—that freaks me out.
I was reconnecting the tube, half my attention on Otis, when my pump went flying out of my hands and crashed on the tile floor.
“Shih tzu!”
I retrieved the pump and looked it over. It seemed to be okay.
Otis, on the other hand, was now fighting with his wrap like it was a swarm of angry mosquitoes.
I kneeled in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” I said for the thousandth time.
Otis kept gnawing.
“Otis, look at me.”
He stopped. Big dark golden-brown eyes stared into mine.
Otis was seven years old. He wouldn’t be able to be my medical-alert dog forever. Wouldn’t be able to go to school with me forever. Or sleep in my bed with me forever.
I grabbed Otis by the jowls. Inspected his snout for white hairs. Then his chin. Otis didn’t pull away. He understood that I wanted to comb through the fur on his face, and that was enough for him. He didn’t need to understand why.
I checked every single strand and didn’t find a white one.
But one day I would.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
True Fact: Too much sugar in your blood is like acid on paint. It eats away at you. You walk around looking totally healthy, but it adds up, bit by bit, episode by episode, year by year, until one day you’ve got a DIABETIC COMPLICATION, which is a nice way of saying that your heart doesn’t work right or you have nerve damage or you need one of your feet amputated. Most diabetics, if they have the disease long enough, get complications.
“Four hundred and ninety. Still going up. Oh, man—”
“Shhh! Quiet, Hal, you’ll wake her.”
Wake who? Wake me?
“The reservoir’s full and I keep entering the numbers in her pump, Em, but nothing’s happening.”
Dad.
“Did it come out?”
Mom.
“No, the infusion site looks good,” Dad said.
“Here, let me,” Mom said.
My eyes fluttered open.
The clock on my night table said 3:12. Mom sat on the edge of my bed and Dad kneeled on the floor next to her, both in pajamas. I could just make out their serious faces in the di
m light coming from the hall outside my room. Otis stood behind Dad, giving my parents the space they needed to fix me.
“Hey, Belly,” Dad said, picking up my hand and rubbing it between his. “Your sugar got high. We’ve been trying to get it down for a while.”
“Four-ninety,” I croaked, my throat so dry it felt like it was sticking to itself.
“I can’t get the pump to work either, Hal. I think it’s broken. That’s why your sugar’s so high, sweetie,” Mom said. “You haven’t been getting any insulin.”
At least we had a reason. Half the time when my blood sugar goes crazy in the middle of the night we don’t know why.
“Mom’s going to give you a shot. Okay, Belly?” Dad said.
I nodded, too parched and nauseous to speak.
“Otis, where’s Blue’s kit? Oh, good boy,” Mom said.
Otis already had my kit in his mouth. He knew the routine as well as any of us.
“Light on, Otis,” Dad said.
Otis went to the wall next to the door and jumped up on his hind legs to flip the switch with his teeth, a trick he used to love to do over and over again when he first figured it out—especially in the middle of the night—until Dad trained him out of it.
Mom held up a hypodermic needle and a vial of insulin. “What do you think? Three units?”
“With her basal rate? Wait… let me think. Yeah, do three units. Give it to her in her arm. Belly, do you hear me? It’s going to be fine. You’re fine. Mom and I are here.”
And so was Otis, who had climbed back onto my bed and glued himself to my side.
I barely felt the prick of the needle.
“I hate this,” Dad whispered to Mom.
“I know,” Mom whispered back.
“If Otis hadn’t…”
“I can hear you, you know.” I struggled to sit up a little. “Oh no,” I moaned.
“Nauseous?” Mom fluffed a pillow and propped it under my head.
I nodded, which made my brain slosh. “And hot.” Even though Dad had fixed the air conditioner.
Dad yanked the covers down. Then he fanned Otis and me with the sheet.
“Otis alerted us,” he said.
Which meant I was so out of it that I didn’t wake up when Otis tried to alert me, and he had to go get Mom and Dad. I tried not to picture him headbutting me and licking me and pawing me while I lay on the bed like a sack of wet cement.
“Let’s test you again.” Mom poked my finger with a lancet. A few seconds later: “Four hundred and ten.” Ideal for me is under 140.
“Do you think we gave her enough insulin?” Dad asked.
“We could—” Mom started.
“Give it fifteen more minutes,” I whispered.
We’d played this game so many times. Not enough insulin and my blood sugar wouldn’t come down. Too much insulin and it would go down too far. But how much was enough and how much was too much were different every time.
“Okay, Belly, you’re the boss,” Dad said.
Mom got a wet washcloth and pressed it to my forehead while we waited. The cool heaviness felt good on my prickly skin.
“I have to pee,” I said.
I tried to sit up, squinting against the glare of the overhead light.
“Here, let me help you. I’ll take you to the bathroom.” Dad scooped me up from the bed. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d carried me anywhere.
“I think I might throw up.”
“That’s okay,” Dad said. “You can throw up on me; I’m washable.”
All four of us crowded into the bathroom. I was still dying of thirst. Dad put me down and I stuck my head under the faucet and gulped. Mom put my kit on the vanity so I could test again. Otis kept watch in the doorway.
“We’ll give you some privacy,” she said. “But come get us when you’re out of the bathroom.”
“I’m going to call Dr. Basch’s service and have them page her,” Dad said. “We need to know how much long-acting insulin to give you. And you’re going to need more boluses of short-acting tonight. Mom or I will come in every fifteen minutes to test until you’re back in a good range, okay?”
I nodded, too tired to get words out.
Mom and Dad left the bathroom, but Otis stayed. I sat down on the toilet.
490.
Four hundred and ninety.
See, the thing is, no matter what I do, no matter how careful I am, even with the computer in my head, even with Otis, it can all go wrong. I know it. Mom and Dad know it. We don’t need to say it.
My head felt too heavy to stay up on its own. I hung my arms around Otis’s neck and buried my face in his fur, breathed in his dry-leaf doggy scent. “Thanks,” I whispered.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
True Fact: An old toilet can be an important discovery.
The whole next day my skull felt like it was stuffed with wet socks. My body felt like it was wrapped in one of those lead aprons they make you wear when you get an X-ray. Forget the hunt—I could barely stay awake long enough to see Dr. Basch. I hardly had the strength to check the mailbox for a letter from Nora. Who still hadn’t written to me.
Then again, I hadn’t written to her either. I kept trying, but there was so much to say that I didn’t know where to start. How would I tell her about Jules and Fitz and Otis’s paw and last night? The letter would have to be a hundred pages long. Could I send another greeting card? Or maybe a postcard? I pictured the postcards on the rack at the Five & Dime: rainbow beach balls, rolling waves, the windmill at the entrance to the Long Wharf. Greetings from Sag Harbor! Ugh.
Dad took Otis on a beach run before he left for work, while Mom and I went to Dr. Basch’s. She confirmed that my pump had broken, and gave me instructions—which Mom wrote down—about what kinds of shots I should give myself until the new pump arrived.
After Mom left for work, I texted Jules and told her about my high blood sugar and why I wouldn’t be able to hunt today. Then Otis and I skipped the Indiana Jones marathon that was on TV and slept in my bed all morning. In between naps, my brain circled like a dog chasing its tail:
What damage did that 490 do to my body? What will happen when I’m older and Mom and Dad aren’t there to wake me up? Did I break the pump when I moved the infusion set after my shower last night?
I remembered checking the pump after it fell on the floor. What had I missed?
Because I took Otis to the Ruins, he got hurt. Because Otis got hurt, he had to wear a bandage he hated. Because he was miserable and it was all my fault, I got distracted. Because I moved my infusion set while I was distracted, I broke my pump. Because, because, because… all, my, fault.
Jules called around noon while Otis and I were in bed half dozing, half watching a documentary about penguins on my phone.
“What’s the big deal? Your blood sugar’s fine now, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Do I have to remind you that the Fitzminions are out there right now, vacuuming your family’s inheritance off the ocean floor?”
“I know, but my doctor said—”
“I can’t believe I care about this more than you do.”
“Jules—”
“Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a nice day resting,” Jules said.
Why are you being such a jerk?
Which I couldn’t ask out loud because Jules had hung up.
The next morning I was feeling tired but better. Mom woke me before leaving for work and said I could go back out on the water for half a day as long as I followed a few rules.
“You need to test every hour,” she said, sitting on the edge of my bed.
“I know,” I said.
Otis dropped my kit on my pillow. I took the hint.
“Your new pump will be here tonight. But in the meantime, you’re doing shots instead of getting a slow drip. It feels different from what you’re used to.”
“I know, Mom. I’ve done it this way before.” I finished testing and held up the meter.
“Perfect. One-oh-five.”
“Great.” Mom stood up. “Text me your numbers while you’re out.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
She paused. “You know, sweetie, this would be so much easier if you’d use a CGM. Then Dad and I would know your numbers automatically and you wouldn’t have to text us.”
I said nothing.
Mom sighed. “I need to know those numbers. Don’t forget, Blue.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“C’mere.”
I leaned over so Mom could head hug me.
Squeeze, kiss. “I love this head.”
Mom had left for work, and Otis and I were watering the hanging planters on the front porch when Anna’s hair colorist dropped off Jules at our usual meeting time. I hadn’t been sure she was going to come. I definitely was sure I didn’t want her to.
“Here.” Jules held out a tinfoil log. “It’s a whole wheat egg white and spinach wrap.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I already ate.”
“Fine.” She shrugged. “I’ll give it to Otis. How’s his paw?”
“Better. The vet said the bandage can come off tomorrow.”
Long awkward pause during which Jules peeled away the foil and carefully pulled out the egg whites for Otis, who hadn’t been part of our phone fight yesterday and therefore wasn’t holding a grudge.
Jules’s iPad was still playing the usual Windfall soundtrack—boring nothings about wind and lunch and weather—when all of a sudden, Fitz’s voice blared out:
“Listen up, people, I’ve got good news. My curator in Amsterdam says our little find here is a seventeenth-century jockum gage. Judging by the stamp on its bottom, it was made in Germany in 1655.”
Crew Guy: “It’s a what?”
Fitz: “A jockum gage.”
Silence.
Fitz: “A member mug? Piss pot? A small vessel, in this case pewter, used by sailors for urination in lieu of a toilet.”
Sonia (under her breath): “You know he just learned all that stuff yesterday from the curator.”
Fitz: “Remember what I said—tell no one. But, friends, we can rejoice quietly amongst ourselves that Fitz Fitzgibbons is on track to finding one of the greatest missing treasures in history.”