by Ike Hamill
Wes came over, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Your mom has been with Marianne and Seth all day, helping them take care of the details. They’ve asked if you can take care of Barney for awhile, so we’ll pick up his things when we’re over there.”
“Really? They don’t want him around?”
“It’s just too much for now. They’re going to be in and out a lot and they think he’d be better off with you.”
“Okay,” Don said. “Of course.”
“Chelsea can drive you to the vet tomorrow if you don’t want to drive.”
“I can?” Chelsea asked. She looked dubious rather than excited.
“That’s okay,” Don said. “I can do it. What about the police? They never came.”
“They sent over an officer earlier. You were asleep. There’s no investigation, so they didn’t need to ask you any more questions.”
“Okay,” Don said.
CHAPTER NINE
Computer Camp
“DEEP IN THOUGHT?” THE woman asked. She was short—shorter than David, even—and had short black hair. Her black bangs were the longest part of her hair and they ended at her round glasses.
David nodded and stared at the screen, trying to make sense of the words there. He was learning a new programming language and the syntax still confused him. His eyes didn’t know where to land or how to parse the strange combinations of symbols. The short instructor walked away.
“What are you doing?” Paul asked. “You were totally asleep. You’re going to get in trouble.”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” David said.
“Bad dreams?”
“Yeah.”
“Here we go again,” Paul said.
Paul and David were secret friends. If Paul’s mom knew they were hanging out, she would certainly pull her son from the class. The boys had arranged to be in the same computer class through weeks of careful manipulation. This summer would be their last good time to hang out. They were going to different junior high schools in the fall.
“Everyone has bad dreams,” David said. “It’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, right,” Paul said. David’s last bad dream had been a premonition of his own death and had ended in the emergency room.
“Seriously,” David said. “Just a dream this time.”
Paul stabbed one of the keys of his computer. When he didn’t get the result he wanted, he hit it several more times.
“I can’t get this stupid thing to compile. Can you look at it?” Paul asked.
“I can look, but I suck at this language too. I don’t know why we can’t use something easier. We’d be done by now.”
The short woman crept up behind David and Paul as they talked.
“We’re learning it because it’s difficult. Also because it compiles to smaller and more efficient binaries. Sometimes you have to optimize your code, Master Paul. You can’t always just throw more processors at a problem. I believe you’ve misplaced a symbol,” she said.
Paul blushed.
The instructor walked away. David and Paul were the youngest in the class. They had their grade school classes in the morning and only came to the computer lab in the afternoons. That put them at a disadvantage to the other students, who had already graduated from high school, so they were there all day. David looked forward to the following week, when they would be done with sixth grade and could attend the lectures as well.
“I don’t know how we’re supposed to figure this out,” Paul said.
“We’ve got the link for the lecture notes. I bet the answer is in there,” David said. “It’s fun—we’ll get to figure it out like we’re the first people ever to discover this language.”
“We shouldn’t have to,” Paul said. “I can’t wait for baseball camp to start. Did you get out of catcher’s camp yet?”
“I’m still trying,” David said. “My mom put down a deposit. Don’t worry—I’ll figure it out.”
“You better. That’s the deal. If my parents find out that we’re both taking the same summer stuff, they’ll probably try to homeschool me.”
“You barely learn anything in regular school. How’s your stupid mom supposed to teach you anything?” David asked.
“I know, right?”
“Hey—I see it,” David said. “This percent sign is wrong. It should be an ampersand.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Paul asked.
“Just do this,” David said. He changed a symbol in his program. Their programs were identical—they’d been copying each other’s work all afternoon in an attempt to catch up with the rest of the class. They both adjusted their programs and everything compiled and ran as expected.
“You’ve got ten minutes left,” the instructor said. All around the computer lab people were hunched over their machines, trying to make as much progress as possible. They would have all evening to work on their programs, but only ten more minutes to ask the instructor questions and have her look over their shoulders to help them figure out issues.
“I should get going,” David said. “Don’t want your mom to see me here.”
“Wait,” Paul said. “What was your dream? Was it scary monsters tracking people in the middle of the night again? Was someone hunted down and gutted?”
“Actually, in a way, yes,” David said. “But the monster was a woman and she just steals people’s blood.”
“Like a vampire?”
“Yes, almost. She doesn’t exactly drink the blood. It’s more like she just steals it.”
“Did you read that book?” Paul asked. “The one by the ghost hunter lady who was friends with that other guy.”
“You mean the one who worked with Dr. Mike?” David asked. Mike had helped to save David’s life a few years before and his assistant, Katie Brown, had written a book about her work with him.
Paul nodded.
“My mom won’t let me read it,” David said. “She’s afraid it will give me nightmares or something.”
“You’ve already got nightmares,” Paul said. “Read the book. She talks about a thing that steals blood.”
“Okay,” David said. He stuffed his laptop into his backpack. “See you tomorrow.”
David headed for the rear door, where his mom would pick him up. In a few minutes, Paul would meet his own mom at the front. With that process, the boys hoped to continue to take the same class without either mom figuring it out.
CHAPTER TEN
Barney
BARNEY PANTED.
THE VETERINARY technician sprayed alcohol on his leg and adjusted the tourniquet. She was small and squat and had her black hair pulled back so tight it looked like she might have trouble closing her eyes.
Don sat on the bench in the examination room and watched.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she crooned as wiped her thumb across the fur of his front leg. “Let me go get help.”
Don held the blue leash in a tight ball. It had a knot tied in it where it was nearly chewed through. Barney had chewed it when he was just a puppy. There was another, newer leash around, but Don couldn’t find it when he and his father had gone to the Umber’s the night before. The house had been dark, and silent, and creepy. Even Barney didn’t seem to feel at home as they moved around the quiet house, leaving food for the people and taking food for the dog.
The little tech came back with a broad woman. If this hulk couldn’t find the vein, she could just lift Barney over her head and squeeze the blood from him. The big woman crouched behind Barney, moving with surprising grace, and wrapped a giant arm around his neck. Before he could protest, the dog was in a headlock. The woman’s other arm grabbed Barney’s front leg and presented it to the first tech.
“That should do it,” the tech said. She poked a needle under Barney’s skin and fished it around. “Shoot. It keeps rolling.”
While they were working, the veterinarian—a smiling woman with “Dr. Finnerman” embroidered on her pocket—came through the door.
“Hi, Barney,” she said. She knelt and squeezed his paw. “You’re still not feeling good?”
She turned to Don and extended her hand. “I’ve met him. You, I haven’t met. I’m Kay Finnerman.”
“Hi, Don Covington. I live next door to the Umbers.”
“Nice to meet you,” the doctor said. “We’ve been seeing Barney for a couple of weeks now. Are you watching him for the Umbers?”
“Yes,” Don said. “Temporarily. I’ll be watching him.”
“Great. So you’re familiar with what’s been going on with him?”
“A bit, but anything you could tell me would be good. I don’t know what he’s eating or what pills he should be taking. I found some bottles with his name in the kitchen, but I’m not entirely sure.”
“Okay,” Kay said slowly. “He’s on a couple of medications for his stomach. He wasn’t eating, so we were treating his indigestion to make sure he kept his strength up. His kidneys were showing reduced activity, so we’ve got him on a kidney friendly diet. Instead of blasting you with all this information, I’ll get the desk to type up a sheet with instructions you can take home.”
“That would be great,” Don said.
“And today we’re going to look at his blood again for a couple of things,” she said. She moved to the computer mounted on the desk and paged through the file. “We need to check his levels again to see if his kidneys are keeping up. His weight looks good today, actually, so that’s good. We’re also going to check on his concentration of red blood cells. Barney was showing signs of anemia earlier. In general, anemia is a symptom of some other problem—perhaps some internal bleeding, or hookworm, or some other loss of blood. We’ve done several diagnostics already on Barney. You’ve seen his shaved belly there. That’s from an ultrasound. I initially thought that maybe he’d ruptured his spleen—I’ve seen that on Shepherds before—but everything looked fine.”
As she talked, she glanced several times over her shoulder at the two technicians attempting to wrestle blood from Barney. Finally, she lost her patience. “Could you give me a sec?”
Don nodded.
Dr. Finnerman turned and positioned herself between Don and the techs. She crouched and had a quick conversation that Don couldn’t quite hear. She took the syringe from the tech, sprayed the inside of Barney’s hind leg and then handed back a full vial of blood to the young woman with the pulled-back hair.
“Thank you,” the doctor called as the techs exited with the blood.
Barney slinked over and found a spot under the bench behind Don’s legs.
“You hiding?” Dr. Finnerman asked. She smiled at Don. “So we’ll run the tests and see how he’s doing. With no clear sign of what’s wrong, we’re treating his symptoms and trying to support him the best we can.”
“Okay,” Don said.
“I’ll be right back with the results. Five or ten minutes. And I’ll get those instructions typed up for you.”
“Thank you,” Don said.
She left him alone with Barney again.
Don found his way to the floor and Barney came out from under the bench enough to put his head on Don’s thigh. Since waking up that morning, Don had engaged in a constant battle to hold back his tears. He normally didn’t cry—not at movies, not a broken wrist—but today the default state of his eyes was to leak. He didn’t even have to think about Kyle and the tears would come.
The door opened and the doctor slipped back in. Don started to get up from the floor.
“Don’t get up,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Covington, I just heard about Kyle. One of the girls in back went to your high school and she heard.”
“Oh,” Don said. He lowered his head again. The tears came full-speed. They fell from his eyes and rolled down to the tip of his nose. They splashed little dark circles on his jeans. His fingers worked the fur of Barney’s neck. The dog would be bald before Kyle was in the ground, Don thought.
“I don’t know what to say,” Dr. Finnerman said. She put her hand on Don’s shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Don snuffled back snot and squeezed his eyes shut. The headache was back. It pounded at the back of his eyes.
Dr. Finnerman opened a cabinet and set a box of tissues next to Don on the floor. She backed out of the room and shut the door behind herself.
They were watching him through the little window in the exam room’s door—not constantly, but Don could see their eyes flash over as they walked past. They gave him longer than five or ten minutes. He sat on the floor of the examination room for at least twenty before Dr. Finnerman came in with her printouts.
“The good news is he’s getting better,” she said. “The bad news is that we still don’t have a clear idea of what we’re treating. At this point, I’m inclined to say that we’re on the right path. Here’s a list of what we’re doing.”
Of what “we’re” doing, Don thought. He nodded. The “doing” continued, the “we” had changed.
“There’s a schedule of meds and food. I’m not sure how much we were feeding, but I’d say let him have as much as he’ll take. If he starts to put on weight, we’ll tackle that problem then. Assuming that whatever was causing his blood loss has stopped, then I would expect him to continue to bounce back. If possible, I’d see him again for another blood test in two weeks. He’s a bit dehydrated—that’s why we had so much trouble getting the blood sample—so perhaps encourage him to drink more. Maybe ice cubes in his water, if that’s his thing?”
She droned on for several minutes. Don looked at the sheet in his hands, happy for the printed instructions, and wondered how she expected him to remember the rest.
# # # #
Don sat on the floor of his living room with Barney at his side and pictures spread all over the coffee table. The pictures were of family, the camp, the tree house, the lake, and school, and they all featured Kyle. Serious Kyle, laughing Kyle, joking Kyle, angry Kyle, they were all represented, like he was a collection of different people. These people had different hair, different clothes, different ages, but they all shared the same eyes. That was the one constant.
Don tried to pick out the best photos for his section of the memorial board, but he wanted them all. They all meant something different, and he couldn’t bear to leave out any of Kyle’s faces.
Don leaned back against the couch and scratched Barney’s head.
The dog pushed up and turned his head towards the door. Don’s gaze followed. He heard the bell and saw his father go down the hall to answer. After a moment, Wes appeared with a visitor.
“Hey, Donny,” his father said. “Amanda’s here to see Barney.”
The dog was already struggling to his feet and wagging his tail as he lumbered over to the young woman.
“Hey, Barnyard,” she said. She leaned over to pet Barney and Don saw that she’d started crying immediately. Don looked away so he wouldn’t start crying too.
Wes took a hesitant step into the living room and invited Amanda to have a seat. She either ignored or misunderstood his question. Amanda sat on the floor in the entry to the living room and Barney sat halfway in her lap. She buried her face in his neck fur and hugged him desperately. Don stole a look at his father. Wes was studying a corner of the ceiling. His eyes swam in glassy wells of tears.
“Can I get you something to drink, Amanda?” Wes asked. “Some water?”
She didn’t look at him, but nodded. Wes fled to the kitchen.
“He loves you,” Don said, nodding at Barney trying to sit in Amanda’s lap.
“I love him too,” she said eventually. “I used to walk him sometimes when Kyle had to work late. Barney missed you, you know. Kyle used to say that all the time. When you’d come home for vacations, Barney could sense it, all the way from his house.”
“We grew up together,” Don said. “The three of us did.”
Amanda nodded.
Wes returned with a bottle of water. He handed it to Amanda and she drank half the bottle at once
. Wes sat on the edge of the couch and nobody spoke for awhile. Don rearranged the photos on the table, Amanda cried silently into Barney’s fur, and Wes sat looking at the ceiling.
Don stole glances at Barney and Amanda. He was glad she had the dog to hug, but he wanted Barney back. His fingers missed Barney’s soft fur.
The front door opened and closed again and Gwen, Don’s mom, appeared in the doorway.
“Hi, honey,” Wes said as he rose. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Gwen said. Her half-closed eyes suggested otherwise. “Hi Amanda, how are you holding up?”
“I’m… I’ll be okay, Dr. S.,” Amanda said. She glanced briefly at Gwen and then returned her face to Barney’s neck.
“Wes?” Gwen asked. Don’s dad crossed the room and followed his wife upstairs.
Don wasn’t just stealing glances at Barney now, he was staring at Barney and Amanda. He wanted the dog back. He wanted to feel Barney’s old bones pressed against his side and know that he could talk to the dog. He wouldn’t call Barney away from Amanda though. She needed him too.
“You know my mom?” Don asked.
“She treated me,” Amanda said.
“I’m sorry,” Don said.
“Don’t be. She did a good job. It’s all gone now. I mean, I have to go back for annual checks, but there’s a good chance it’s not coming back.”
“That’s good,” Don said. He didn’t get to meet a lot of his mom’s patients. The curse of being a good oncologist was that you mostly treated very sick people. Most of Gwen’s patients had exhausted all the easier options before seeking her help.
“I thought you knew,” she said.
“No.”
“I should go,” Amanda said.
“You don’t have to,” Don said.
“I really should. My parents are going to be at my place in a little while.”
“Do you want to take Barney for a visit? He’s really attached to you.”
“No,” she said. “He belongs here.”
She gave him one more hug and then stood up. Barney walked back to Don and eased himself to the carpet. He flopped back against Don’s side.