Comet's Tale

by Steven Wolf

  I had intentionally arrived early in order to reserve a seat at a table that kept Comet out of traffic and allowed me room to move around when I could no longer sit. Despite the euphoria of meeting a man whose work I had enjoyed for decades, I hadn’t been sitting for more than ten minutes when my ribs began to throb. Suddenly a prick of burning flared in a spot about halfway up my spine, a sensation I hadn’t felt since before my surgery. Past episodes had taught me that something serious was about to happen if this brush fire wasn’t extinguished right away. I pulled Comet to her feet and we hurried to the elevator.

  By the time I entered my room ten minutes later, every attempt to suck air into my lungs made a wheezing sound. My jaw was aching and my clothing was soaked. I stripped everything off, throwing my pants and shirt on the floor as I stumbled to the thermostat. I dialed it to the lowest setting and then aimed for the bed. As I hit the mattress, a searing pain stabbed an area below my sternum. Black spots crowded my vision and I reached for the phone, jabbing at the button for the front desk. “I’m sick. I need help,” I croaked.

  Five minutes later a hollow pounding sounded from the door and a man’s voice called, “Mr. Wolf. Mr. Wolf, are you okay? We’re having trouble with the lock. The card reader’s not working. Mr. Wolf?”

  Trouble with the lock? This is a four-star hotel, for crying out loud! My fingernails dug into my palms as I silently raged at my stupidity. How could I have ignored the familiar signs—the aching muscles and stabbing pain that circled my ribs? I slammed my fists into the bed and tried to yell out, but the weak thuds, accompanied by my soft whimper, merely melted into the scuffling sounds and rising voices of the people on the other side of the door. Through parched lips I finally slurred, “Hold on. I’ll get the door open.”

  “What?”

  I could hear plans being made to force the door open from the hallway. The electronic lock had given me some problems the previous day, but it had been repaired. It worked for me, I thought desperately, already slipping into unconsciousness. Comet had leaped onto the bed and was resting her head on my chest, staring at me intently. Her ears pointed upward in question marks of concern.

  “Comet, get the door,” I gasped.

  Thank God the handle was a lever and not a knob. Comet glanced at me and flew off the bed, somehow maintaining her greyhound dignity during her rush to the door. She reached a paw up and pulled down hard on the handle. It clicked open and Comet backed away as two medics dashed into the room, firing urgent questions.

  Whenever the burn in my back got bad enough, arteries in my heart would spasm, restricting the blood flow—a heart attack without a blood clot. I whispered a quick summary of this condition and the medics instantly placed a tab of nitroglycerin under my tongue. Within minutes the arteries began to open, allowing me to finally inhale the oxygen flowing through the tube in my nose. My heart rhythms were already stabilizing by the time I was lifted onto a gurney for transportation to a local hospital. Since I was newborn-naked, the medics wrapped me in blankets. There was a frantic discussion about “What do we do with the dog?” but it became abundantly clear from Comet’s tense stance and unsmiling eyes that she was coming with me.

  “She’s my service dog and we’re here alone. Besides, she’s the one who opened the door for you.” A medic nodded and Comet trotted alongside my gurney as we rolled into the hall. By the time I was wheeled through the hotel lobby (packed with gaping guests) and settled into the ambulance, the rescue squad was already referring to Comet as “sweetie” and assuring her, “Don’t worry, he’ll be okay.” For her brave part in the rescue, Comet was allowed to ride in the front of the ambulance, keeping a close eye on the medics as they hovered over me in the back.

  Comet stayed by my side after we were deposited in the emergency room, where the doctor decided that I had not had a “traditional” heart attack and my vital signs were approaching normal. Still, he wanted more tests. The rest of the staff had other concerns. “What do we do with Comet?” It had only taken five minutes for her name to filter throughout the ER. The question came from one of several techs who had gathered near my room, and it instantly set off a spirited competition about who would be primary custodian.

  An hour later I returned to a small room where Comet lay on a pile of sheets and blankets that had been plumped on the floor for her. By 4:00 a.m. the doctor gave me a thumbs-up. “The nitro was administered just in time. It doesn’t appear that you suffered any heart damage, but I wouldn’t advise traveling without nitro close at hand.” He told the attending nurse that I could be released later in the morning if I didn’t suffer any relapses.

  After the medical staff had deserted my room, I lay in the semidarkness listening to the silence and the occasional squeak of a nurse’s shoes on the linoleum floor. I looked at Comet. She gazed at me steadily from her nest of snowy bedding. In the stillness of the hospital room, I couldn’t avoid the unhappy truth. There was only one reason I was here alone: me. My visit with the girls had begun to convince them that I was no longer in furious denial about my physical limitations. I was sure they wanted their dad back and that I could eventually rebuild those bonds. Now it was time to make amends to the one person who had unstintingly supported me in sickness and in health. I truly would be a failure if I didn’t at least try to honor the “until death do we part” portion of those vows.

  “Comet, we need to go back to Sedona and talk to Freddie.” Comet’s head shot up. I swear she was smiling.

  Freddie had relented and given me her phone number a few weeks earlier, and I had apologized for my obsessive focus on failure, weakness, and all the creaky codes of valor that had skewed my behavior throughout our marriage and later prevented me from appreciating my new lease on life. But my apologies seemed so trivial in light of all that had happened. I had to show Freddie that the stranger who had kidnapped her husband eight years ago was now nothing more than a pile of compost. There was one small ray of hope: before I left for New Mexico, Freddie had asked, “Do you think Comet would like to spend a day with me? I miss her. Maybe you can drop her off.”

  What a man can accomplish with just an address! Freddie had tried to ignore me the first time we met more than nineteen years ago, but I had been determined to get her attention. She had told me she worked in cardiology, so I fell to the floor from a bar stool and faked a heart attack (oh, the irony). A subtler but no less spectacular approach might be needed this time. I called a florist in Sedona and had twelve dozen roses (yes, 144) delivered to her door. Why twelve dozen? That’s all the florist could get her hands on. The next arrangement a few days later, with seventy-five tall tropical blooms, was fewer in quantity but far more impressive in size. I knew that Freddie was too intelligent to fall for something so obvious, but I wanted her to know that my thoughts about her were at least as grand as the flower arrangements. Freddie’s thoughts about me, however, were quite different.

  Although Freddie had phoned to thank me for the flowers, her subsequent calls and emails were not as kind. She refused to meet with me in person. During several long conversations, she explained why. Even in the darkest of times over those past trying years, she said, she had always maintained a glimmer of optimism. The hope that something good would eventually emerge made the trudge a tolerable adventure. When, after my surgery, I reverted to obsessive, ill-advised rehab, Freddie became convinced that the worst part of my personality was now what would permanently define me—and finally kill the most vital part of her. “I can’t live a life without some kind of promise, some chance of laughing and good times,” she said. It all made sense to me. I didn’t tell Freddie, but for my part, I missed the high-spirited bon vivant I had fallen in love with. Freddie’s essence had been smothered to the brink of extinction not by her duties as nurse and breadwinner but by my relentless determination to get to some version of perfect.

  On a day that dawned with a frigid voice message reminding me to take Sandoz to the vet, I called Freddie to share my insights about our relation
ship. “But talking about it over the phone is so impersonal,” I added. “We should get together for dinner.” She wasn’t buying what I was selling.

  “Steve, listen to me. I miss our house and the dogs. I miss our daughters desperately. Kylie and Lindsey won’t even talk to me. I even miss you a little.” Freddie paused. I heard her take a deep breath. “But I don’t know if I could live with you again.”

  Her words cored into my heart like an auger. “Freddie, how can you mean that? You can’t throw seventeen years of marriage and a wonderful family away. You just can’t.” My last statement was forced out in a whisper.

  “Why not? You did.”

  My repeated calls to her throughout that week and the next ended the same way, if she answered at all.

  But did I get discouraged? Come on! After Freddie realized I had faked my heart attack that first night we met, she had told the bouncer to commit severe bodily harm if I approached her table to talk. I had given him three hundred dollars to ignore Freddie’s orders. It was the best money I ever spent. My persistence this time, however, could not be expressed with stunts more befitting a teenager. We were long past the golden retriever stage—Do you love me? Do you, do you, do you? I preferred the greyhound approach, best summed up by the saying, “Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” I wanted Freddie to know that I finally grasped that concept. If I was extremely lucky, it would mean something to her.

  I sent Freddie a bouquet of deep pink roses and lilies and called her again. “There’s a great jazz band playing at the Pub. How about dinner and music?”

  Freddie didn’t hang up. She even chuckled. “You don’t give up, do you? Thanks for the flowers. But I thought I told you I need some space.”

  “You did? My short-term memory is still shaky.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. The doctor said I’m like a trauma victim. Regaining memory skills will take a while longer.”

  “No. I meant no to a date.”

  “No?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  Freddie laughed out, “I give up,” before she disconnected.

  A series of “I’m not dating you” dates followed, all allowing Freddie to finally express her greatest fear about having any future relationship with me. It kept coming back to trust.

  “How do I know that what you’re saying will last? How do I know that the first time you find out that you can’t meet your own expectations, you won’t revert right back to Mr. Lone Cowboy? I can’t go through that again. I know that your spine is better, but it won’t always be about your back.”

  “You don’t know. And my promising that I won’t go ‘Lone Cowboy’ has about as much value as a time-share in Guantánamo. I’m just now figuring out what happened. It’s amazing how my mind fell apart as fast as my body.”

  Freddie gave me a long look and nodded her head slightly. She allowed herself a small smile, which suddenly widened into a grin. “I’ve been waiting for you to start spinning your fantasies about the future. You haven’t. Not once during all of our talks. You even tried to dance with me last week. You remind me of the good old days.” Freddie raised her wineglass. “Santé.”

  That cheer to my health didn’t cure everything, but it did signal a new direction. The dates that followed weren’t always placid, but neither of us ever left the table feeling guilty or cheated. The only time the past was discussed was in the context of trying to make things better. No blame, just a mutual agreement that it wasn’t worth another visit. We also agreed to quit spending so much time worrying about tomorrow. We had seen firsthand how little control we had over it. By the time I prepared a Thanksgiving meal, complete with a champagne-basted turkey and all the trimmings, we were talking about how to get Freddie’s belongings back into the house. “Just don’t get used to me cooking,” I cautioned. “Neither of us wants that.”

  MY RECOVERY WAS long and complicated. The doctors had been right. My nerves had trouble communicating with muscles, I still struggled with depression, and I had to constantly adjust my medications. It truly was a full-time job. I spent any spare time returning favors to many deserving people by giving free legal advice whenever it was needed, and by lending a hand with fund-raising and promotion for the greyhound rescue group in Sedona. The days I was forced to spend in bed became an accepted part of my life—no longer did I rage against it.

  Over the next two years, Freddie and I had our share of challenges. Sandoz, the girlish golden who revered Freddie’s every step, had to be put down. Severe hip dysplasia had made it impossible for her to even go outside to relieve herself. Freddie went into an emotional, teary funk. Comet was so distraught that she would walk to the neighbor’s house where Sandoz had stayed during our travels, waiting at the front door for her sister to come out. Kylie and Lindsey were still angry with Freddie, pretty much precluding family gatherings. Jackie was more certain that happy days had finally arrived because she visited us regularly from Flagstaff, but it wasn’t until Lindsey’s June wedding in 2008 that the four women passed the peace pipe.

  During this time, I developed a deep interest in cliff dwellings and other artifacts from the prehistoric cultures of Northern Arizona. It started when friends convinced me to take Comet for walks in the nearby canyons. I had never thought I’d be able to walk among the red rocks of Sedona, not even for short distances, but now I could. Comet trotted out in front, constantly sniffing the rocks and scrubby bushes. Seeing her stand motionless while staring at a far-off pack of coyotes reassured me that she wasn’t planning on leaving me anytime soon.

  Freddie left the time-share operation and found a new job as a real estate sales representative for a vacation resort. She now had a functioning spouse for social activities with friends, and we both loved going to the local clubs to hear live music. We acted like we had just met through some kind of dating service, constantly relearning things about each other that we never should have forgotten.

  One warm spring day Comet and I were hiking with some friends when my cell phone vibrated. I figured it was a worried Freddie, making sure my buddies were taking good care of me. Instead, it was my daughter Lindsey calling from Omaha to tell me she was pregnant—our first grandchild would arrive in September. Freddie was more than willing to look for work in the health care profession back in Nebraska if that meant our grandchild would get to know us. She had trained so many cardiology nurses, medical students, and interns that she would have no trouble finding a flextime position in a cardiac unit. Freddie no longer wanted to work full-time managing her own unit. We were having too much fun. Social Security Disability benefits added to proceeds from a private disability policy would be enough to fill in the income gap.

  It was a sign of our growing good luck that we had sold our home three months before the nationwide housing meltdown. In Sedona, prices had been especially inflated, and we made an extremely nice profit on the sale. After the bubble burst, we bought a small condo on a nearby golf course, which enabled us to live in two places again if we wanted to. And we weren’t leaving Sedona permanently, only for the summers. That is, if Freddie could drag me away from Nebraska after we learned the baby would be a granddaughter. Freddie had her doubts about that.

  FOUR YEARS AFTER Comet opened that hotel door in Albuquerque, making sure I had another chance at life, I sat gazing out of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the frozen lake that lay below our new Nebraska home. For the first time in years, the entire family was together for the Christmas holidays. My three girls exploded in laughter after a particularly raunchy joke from my mom. Lindsey’s husband and Kylie’s fiancé made sure the wine was flowing, eager to impress me with their fondness for my daughters. Freddie grinned at me from across the kitchen island and raised her glass in a brief, private toast.

  Next to me on the living room floor, a months-long drama was reaching its conclusion. Since our return to Nebraska in May, Lindsey’s little gir
l, Natalie, had been both curious about and fearful of Comet, who must have looked as big as a mastodon to her. Not in the least bit offended, Comet had bided her time, following Natalie at a safe distance all over the house. Now fifteen months old, Nat was almost as tall as Comet’s legs, a stature that seemed to give the toddler confidence. For the past week I had watched as Natalie repeatedly approached Comet’s bed, always turning back just before her hand touched the dog’s head. Comet never moved or lifted her head, waiting as always with closed eyes and perked ears.

  Finally Natalie plunked down onto the dog bed. Comet lifted her head in slow motion until her eyes were level with the little girl’s face. As the seconds passed, Natalie visibly relaxed. She stretched her index finger forward, touching Comet’s nose. The giggle that followed was clearly Natalie’s way of saying, “Comet wants me to be her buddy!”

  Because my recovery had been so rocky, Comet didn’t surrender her service dog duties for some time. She still occasionally gave me a boost out of a chair or bed, especially when I was tired. After she made friends with Natalie, however, she was much more willing to consider retiring. Comet was now a public ambassador for the greyhound breed. Whenever we went out, people would gather to admire her. When I gave permission, she would slowly approach the nearest stranger, head high and doe eyes staring, to give them her special hug. For some reason, Comet comforted people and put them at ease. Within moments, strangers would start telling me about a childhood pet they often dreamed about, a son who was stationed in Afghanistan, or a wife who had passed away and was still missed. Otherwise unruly kids at the grocery store would quietly approach and politely ask to pet the exotic animal, invariably asking their mother, “Can we get one?”