Sam peered into the nearest cage, dreading what she anticipated. She wasn’t wrong. “Greeeeeg!”
He ran up the stairs in seconds and charged into the room. He took one look at the dogs. “Christ! What the hell happened?”
Bloodstained diarrhea was splattered across three of the cages.
“We need to start IV fluids now!” Sam ordered. “Get Luke and the others.”
“On it.” Greg ran out of the room.
“Don’t you die on me,” she told the dogs.
Working together in the tiny room, Sam and her team ran IV lines, started the dogs on a powerful antibiotic in case the cause was bacterial, took new blood and fecal samples, and cleaned the dogs and the cages. Greg, Luke, and Beth all helped. Sam had never been more grateful for her staff. They were tireless and worked without complaint in the face of a biological foe they couldn’t see or understand.
When they had finished, Sam sent everyone except Greg out with instructions to check on the dogs in the basement and to process the few additional dogs waiting for intake.
Once they were alone, Greg eyed the row of hanging IV bags. “We’re going to need to let the CDC know about this,” he said. When Sam didn’t respond, he added, “Aren’t we?”
“We don’t even know if this illness is related,” Sam answered. “There is no stage of rabies with these symptoms, and none of the rabies symptoms are present in any of these dogs. Plus, all these dogs were vaccinated, according to the records.”
“But you said the rabid dog they found was also vaccinated.”
“That was one very rare instance where the vaccine didn’t take. You think the vaccines for all these dogs just failed?”
“Hey, I’m not the one living the ‘this is all a coincidence’ fantasy.”
Sam shook her head. “These people trusted us with their animals. If we turn them over to the CDC, what are the chances they’ll ever see them again?”
“But if they’re contagious…?” Greg let the question hang.
“I know,” Sam replied. “But they’re just as contained here as they’d be anywhere else.”
“And I’m assuming you don’t want to send out the new samples for testing because it will alert the city and the CDC.”
“Right, we will need to use our own equipment.”
“We’re talking about the same ‘equipment’? Our high school–level microscope and a box of chem strips?”
“Better than nothing. They’re good enough for basic blood and fecal smears.”
“If you say so. What about telling your new best friend Walden?”
“Same answer.” Sam shook her head. “Then he will just report them.”
She recalled Tom’s words about the proximity continuum. How close were these sick dogs to ground zero? Pretty damn close, she concluded. Their heads would be off and their brains biopsied two hours after she made the call. Then they would seize every dog at the shelter, and then each one in the neighborhood—including her own. The continuum would demand their lives, just as it had those of the pigeons. When it came to animals, those in charge had a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality that resulted in unacceptably high body counts.
Greg examined Sam’s face until she was forced to look away. “Did I miss a conversation somewhere?” he asked. “You know? The one where you tell me what the hell is really going on here?”
“We just need a little time.”
“Who says?”
“My conscience.”
“Time for what, exactly?”
“A better option. The moment I turn these dogs over, that’ll be the precise excuse they need to begin a cull—whether this is related or not. I’m just not ready to do that yet.” Sam didn’t need Greg’s agreement, but she wanted it.
“This is a huge risk you’re taking, hon.”
“I know. All I can tell you is that something isn’t right. The mayor and Walden know it too, but they may not be able to do anything about it. Maybe I can.”
Greg shrugged his acceptance. “I never figured you for the ‘pray for miracles’ type, Sam.”
“I’m trying to learn to trust.”
“You picked a fine time to start. It’s your call and I’m with you, but may I remind you that one of the kids with the virus in ICU is sixteen.”
“I know.”
Beth walked in on them. “You wanted me?”
Sam tossed Beth the keys to her apartment. “I need you to check on Nick. He hasn’t been out and I can’t leave these guys. Take Andy with you. Get him out of here for a bit. I may need your help with him on something when you get back.”
“OK. Can I go through your unmentionables while I’m there?”
Sam couldn’t muster the energy for even a mildly hostile verbal response, but the look she gave Beth was enough to send her quickly on her way.
Twenty minutes later Greg ran into isolation and handed Sam the phone. “It’s Beth,” he said.
“What now?”
“She don’t sound right.”
Sam tore off her rubber gloves and grabbed the phone. “C’mon, Beth,” she barked in the receiver. “I don’t have time for games.”
“Get over here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just get over here.” Beth’s voice broke. “Now, OK? It’s Nick.”
Sam ran.
22
Sam banged open her apartment door and nearly tripped over Beth sitting cross-legged on the floor. Beth cradled Nick’s head in her lap and rocked back and forth. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak.
Sam saw the pool of bloody diarrhea on the floor at the same time that she smelled it, and dropped to her knees next to Beth. “Let me see him,” Sam said. She willed herself into vet mode. She had no choice; otherwise she would melt into an emotional puddle right next to Beth, and Nick needed a vet, not a mourner—at least for now.
Sam felt Nick’s abdomen and he whimpered. Then she checked his gumline—gray and sticky. His whole body radiated heat. “I’m so sorry I left you alone,” Sam whispered. “I can’t believe this all happened so quickly.”
Andy came in from the bedroom carrying a stack of towels.
“Did you touch him at all?” Sam demanded.
“No. Beth wouldn’t let me go near him. She told me to leave, but I wouldn’t.”
“OK,” Sam said. “We need to get him to the shelter.”
Beth turned her ghostly-white face to Sam. “When I walked in, I thought he was dead. When I found Johnny… after he called me… the smell… I can’t…” Beth wiped her nose with her sleeve. “His bowels had opened…” Beth’s voice trailed off.
Sam pointed to Andy. “I need you to get downstairs.”
“No. I can help.”
“You can’t help here. Keep watch downstairs and let me know if you see any Guards or cops. Call me on my cell immediately if you do.” Andy hesitated. “Please,” she said. Andy finally nodded and ran out.
Nick was too weak to walk. Sam called Greg and when he arrived, he helped carry Nick down the stairs in a sheet. After Andy gave them the all clear, they moved Nick into the back of Greg’s waiting car.
Sam sent Andy and Beth on ahead to the shelter on foot while she sat in the back of the car with Nick’s head in her lap. Thank God they wouldn’t need to cross the perimeter, she thought.
At the shelter Greg and Sam quickly carried Nick inside without meeting any Guards. They brought him directly to the isolation room and immediately ran an IV bag into his right leg. Beth hovered and tried to be helpful, but Sam wanted to stand vigil over her dog alone and be something other than a vet. She directed Greg and Beth to other tasks, but Beth wouldn’t leave her side.
Sam checked the other dogs in isolation; they were no worse, which at least was something. Still, Sam knew she couldn’t just continue to push fluids indefinitely. She understood that she needed help, but if she told Tom, then the dogs—including her Nicky—would become some political football between the mayor and the gov
ernor. And then what? The QCK campaign would move forward under its gathering momentum. Yes, she would tell Tom. Just not yet. Not until she found at least one thread to follow, not before…
Beth broke into her thoughts. “Will he be OK?” Sam noticed that Beth was still unsteady and ghoulishly pale.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Back there at my apartment, when you talked about that boy, Johnny… I didn’t know you were the one who found him.”
Beth pushed the tips of her fingers through Nick’s cage and, in a fleeting moment of macropsia, Sam couldn’t tell where the cage ended and where freedom began—if it ever did.
“He called me,” Beth said, her voice filled with shame. “Said he needed to talk. I missed the call. The service didn’t send it. Or they did, and I just didn’t pay attention. I don’t really know anymore. I got the second message, though. He said he would be waiting in my office. And he was. I had these beautiful antique wooden beams in my office. He brought his own rope.” Beth tried to reach Nick’s fur, but couldn’t get close. “And no, I don’t know why or even if there is a why. I’d like to believe there was one and I just didn’t figure it out in time, but I’m no longer sure of that.”
Sam stared into Nick’s cage, afraid to look Beth in the face. “I identified my mom’s body at the morgue. I knew the why—my mom’s BAC was over twice the legal limit when she flipped the car. I think I even know the why behind the why. Knowing the reason doesn’t change anything. At least it didn’t for me.”
“That can’t be true.”
“How’s that?”
“If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t hate him so much. And even a disgraced rube like me can see what that anger has cost you. The truth is, when you cut through all the bullshit, we are all only the product of what someone else did to us or didn’t do to us.” Beth shrugged. “I’m too old for this heart-wrenching shit. I liked me better when I was self-medicating.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
Beth thought for a moment. “No, I don’t, but oh how much easier it was.” She walked out of the room, leaving Sam alone to ponder the cages.
Sam dug out her cell phone, scrolled through the directory, and located the number she needed. She pressed “Talk” and waited for the phone to ring on the other side.
“Hi Jonathon, it’s Samantha again. I need a really big favor. I need you to get a note to my father.”
23
Sam dreaded this meeting, but it had to be done and, unfortunately, she was the one who had to do it.
She called Andy into her office. “I know there was something you wanted to talk to me about,” she said. “But there’s something I need to get out first. You’ve been absolutely terrific… I couldn’t ask for a more dedicated worker.”
Andy nodded. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry, Andy, but you can’t stay here tonight.”
Andy’s head snapped backward as if she’d slapped him. “What?”
“We have sick dogs now. You’re too young. It would be irresponsible to let you stay.”
“The sick dogs have nothing to do with the virus hurting the kids.”
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“You don’t believe the two are related. Otherwise you’d be turning those dogs over, wouldn’t you?”
“That decision is a lot more complicated.”
“And even if the two are related, I’m nineteen, not a kid!”
“We don’t know anything about this virus except that it affects younger people. That means you.”
“But—”
“A sixteen-year-old kid is in intensive care. I’m not taking a chance on a few years’ difference.”
“It’s my choice. I control my own life now.”
“No. Actually, this time you can’t. Your presence here is my responsibility and my decision.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“Andy, right now this shelter is like one big cage, a dangerous one. And I’m trying to keep you safe by taking you out of it.”
Andy shook his head in a way that struck Sam as both knowing and very sad. “I don’t think you know a lot about cages, Dr. Sam.”
He sounded so young and hurt that Sam’s resolve momentarily wavered. Then she remembered the video on the news of the ambulance pulling up to Riverside Hospital and the young girl on the stretcher with the bag valve mask over her face. “I promise, as soon as we get through this, you’ll be back. It’ll probably only be a day or two. Besides, Sid will need someone to cover the store while he’s working on stuff here. It would be a big help.”
Andy charged out of the office without another word.
After a few minutes, Beth knocked and entered. “What’d you say to the kid?” she asked. “He tore out of here like you just told him Santa was dead.”
“I told him he needed to stay away until we figured this virus thing out. He’s too young.”
“Yeah,” Beth said. “I was actually wondering when you’d realize that.”
“I’m slow, but I eventually get there. You think he’ll be OK?”
“I’m like the last person you’d want to offer an opinion on that.”
“Can you just check up on him? Try to be an ear for him?”
Beth was already shaking her head before Sam finished the question. “We discussed this, remember? Dead kid? Suicide? In my office? Swinging like a pendulum?”
“Please? He seems to like you for some bizarre reason.”
“You hear that sound?” Beth asked.
“What sound?”
“The sound of me banging my head against the wall until the brains spill out of my skull.”
“So that’s a yes?”
24
Andy entered the park more hurt and angry than he could remember. His mind raced with questions. How could Dr. Sam do this? Didn’t she understand what they all meant to him? And if she understood, how could she do this knowing how important it was for him to be a part of something bigger than the jagged confines of his history?
Screw them, he decided. If they didn’t want him, he knew another family that welcomed him no questions asked.
Andy left the main path and crossed into the familiar area of the park—his place—so blinded by rage that he didn’t notice the object until he almost tripped on it. Once he saw it, though, he knew precisely what it was—a heavy wire mesh cage three feet long, two feet high, eighteen inches wide, and open on one side, with an irresistible ball of chopped sirloin in the center. Andy had seen smaller versions of these “humane” traps for raccoons and skunks. The trap was pressure-triggered. The animal, in this case clearly a dog, would enter the cage to get the bait and then, when the animal stepped on a metal panel on the floor, a spring-loaded door would snap shut, trapping the creature. The bait, Andy knew, was often laced with a tranquilizer so the trapped animal wouldn’t struggle in the cage.
At least it wasn’t one of those claw traps Andy had seen in PETA ads and the Humane Society magazine at the shelter. The images of foxes and coyotes caught in the grip of those traps, gnawing off their own limbs to get away, was something Andy knew he could never unsee. He’d once read an article claiming that trapped animals engaged in this self-mutilating behavior because the prospect of freedom was so near and the instrumentality to achieve it so much in their own control. Andy wasn’t so sure. He believed from his own personal experience that the answer often was a great deal simpler: sometimes a part of you hurt so much that you would do anything to excise it even if the short-term consequence was more pain. You didn’t destroy your own flesh for freedom, he knew; you did it to be free from the pain—two very different motives.
Although it lacked the outright cruelty of a claw trap, Andy understood the device before him now wasn’t exactly “humane” either. An animal suddenly locked in a box so small it couldn’t turn around? Waiting in terror for the unknown thing that would come for it? Andy knew exactly what that felt like too, and the feeling was anything but caring and compassionate.
But Andy was also smart enough about the world to realize that the assessment of “humaneness” wasn’t that straightforward. There was always the issue of context. Always. And context required asking and answering two questions: what was the purpose and what was the alternative?
He checked the tag affixed to the cage with a heavy wire: “Property of the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation. Anyone tampering with this equipment will be prosecuted. Conviction may result in fine or imprisonment.”
Were they trapping the strays to protect them from the virus or because they thought they were the cause? Or was there a different reason entirely? So many questions and, Andy realized, too much he didn’t know. He believed the one-eared dog was way too smart to get trapped by such a crude device, but he wasn’t so sure about the rest of the pack. Perhaps he had even made things worse by feeding them and making them less fearful of human contact.
With that concern in mind, Andy took a long stick and pressed hard on the floor of the trap, depressing the trigger. The door swung shut, locking the bait inside. The very act of springing the trap made him feel better about what had happened at the shelter.
Andy spent most of the night scouring the park for other traps. He found twenty and triggered them all, rendering them useless.
He was lucky. He got caught only once. The old black man in the long coat surprised him at trap number fifteen. The guy didn’t even try to stop him, just said, “I’m not your problem and I won’t tell, but are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Andy ignored him and moved on to the next trap.
Much later that evening, in the cavern, with the one-eared stray snuggled up next to him, Andy dozed with the self-satisfied expression of someone who believed he had accomplished real change.
He was about to drop off into deep sleep when a sensation of wrongness jerked him awake. He had missed something important. Some connection struggled to break the surface of his consciousness. Although he was exhausted, Andy stayed awake another hour trying to figure out what was gnawing at him. He finally fell into a fitful sleep no closer to his answer.
Just Life Page 19