by David Hudnut
Inside the house, the phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” Drew said casually. He tipped back his beer for another swallow then reached for the screen door, his back to the street.
Drew had the screen door open and was halfway into the house.
The events that followed in the next four seconds occurred nearly simultaneously.
A large, dark-brown pit bull trotted up the sidewalk.
Baker didn’t notice the dog, and continued to toss his football skyward.
Drew walked completely through the front doorframe and the screen door hissed closed behind him.
When Jaime saw the dog, dread gripped her. “Come here Baker!” she shouted. She started to move, but it was too late.
Baker threw the foam football up one last time, and it angled forward so that he had to run toward it to catch it. He didn’t see the dog.
The dog lunged as the ball came down, huge jaws wide-open.
Baker’s hands were stretched out in front of him. The ball fell into his hands.
“No!” screamed Jaime as she ran toward her son. “Drew! Help!”
Upon hearing Jaime’s panicked voice, Drew twisted in mid-stride toward the sound and his brain immediately sent adrenalin coursing into his bloodstream. Then, his visual cortex began to process the gravity of the situation unfolding in front of his eyes through the hazy mesh of the screen door. The intricate network of nerves in his spinal column began to compensate for his forward motion into the house and turn him completely around. During this split second moment, his thoughts came in a jumbled scattershot mess of fractional chunks: — dog — danger! — son — run! — DANGER!! — BAKER — run! — RUN NOW!! —
The dog clamped down teeth with a mallet sound, then shredded the football from the boy’s hands.
Baker screeched out a piercing wail and fell to his knees in the grass. His right hand was covered in a slick blood-red glove.
Drew crashed through the screen door, banging it open against the front of the house. He leapt off the porch and dropped his beer bottle on the cement walk where it shattered, spilling foaming beer everywhere. He sprinted across the lawn at the pit bull.
The confused dog dropped the football and turned to face Baker.
Jaime scooped her son up by the armpits.
The dog charged them.
Drew swung his leg as hard as he could and kicked the dog in the chin with his steel-toed work boot. The dog pulled back, barely nicked by the toe of Drew’s boot, and fled down the street.
“Ohmygod! OhmyGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMY—” Jaime screamed repeatedly as she ran into the house with Baker.
Drew chased down the street after the dog as fast as he could. “Get back here you sonuvabitch!” he shouted. “If I catch you, I’ll break your MOTHERFUCKING NECK! Goddammit!!”
The dog ran off and disappeared into the neighborhood.
Jaime came running out of the house a moment later, Baker on her hip, car keys jingling in her hand.
Baker was shrieking in agony.
“Drew! Hospital!”
Drew ran back to the car.
Baker’s right hand was covered by a clean white towel that was quickly soaking red.
A small bloody hand-print painted Jaime’s blouse red over her heart. She fumbled open the back door of the car and strapped a panicking Baker into his car seat. “Drive!” she yelled at Drew and thrust the keys into his hands as he jumped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
The car backed out of the driveway and sped off to the Emergency Room two miles away.
. . .
Hours later, in a gloomy room in the St. Mary’s Medical Center ER, Drew and Jaime sat next to the giant hospital bed where tiny Baker lay, covered in an octopus of adhesive vital sensors and attached to a snaking IV blood drip.
A huge splint wrapped in several layers of sterile padding and a neon green pressure dressing covered Baker’s mangled right hand and forearm. His left hand was sutured and bandaged in a mummified white glove of surgical tape and dressings.
Baker was pale and had lost a lot of blood. He was sedated and asleep, but his face was twisted into a painful frown.
The heart rate monitor beeped softly.
The on-call orthopedic surgeon, a young guy named Dr. Watanabe, pulled aside the curtain, a grave look on his face. “Mr. and Mrs. Bowman?”
“Yes,” they both said hopefully.
Dr. Watanabe took a deep, shaking breath before speaking. When he did, his tone was bleak.
“I just got off the phone from reviewing the results of the x-rays and CT scans with Dr. Walker, our resident hand surgeon. He’s a few hours drive away from the hospital still and can’t make it in until first thing in the morning. He should be in by six a.m. tomorrow.
“Fortunately, your son’s left hand looks pretty good. The sutures I put in earlier should be sufficient, and it will heal up normally.
“As for the right hand—“ Dr. Watanabe paused to swallow thickly, “there are several compound fractures which have caused tearing of the blood vessels and arteries to the hand.
“And he may possibly need a skin graft over the metacarpals on the back of his hand and the tissue on his palm, which we might have to take from the sole of his foot.
“There was also significant trauma to your son’s hand and forearm. The large muscular structures and major nerves in the palm, wrist and forearm were also severely compromised. Some of the tendons have been severed, as have some ligaments connecting the metacarpals together at the knuckles. Your son’s index finger and thumb were both partially severed and will need to be re-attached.
“We can reconstruct the damaged musculature and tendons of the forearm, and of the finger and thumb. With any luck, they all should heal. But there is a possibility that the nerve damage will not, even with extensive reconstructive surgery. This could cause the muscle tissue in the thumb, palm and wrist to eventually deteriorate. Your son may lose full functionality of his hand. We won’t know until physical therapy begins.”
Drew and Jaime both went white.
Jaime started to weep softly.
Drew squeezed her hand, tears welling in his eyes.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said to her weakly. “We’ll get through this,” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her, but his strength had left him. His voice was hoarse and strained when he asked the doctor:
“Will my son ever be able to throw a football again?”
“I don’t know,” the surgeon replied quietly.
Drew stared at him.
After a few seconds, the surgeon broke eye contact and nervously studied the medical chart in his hands, abandoning Drew in that moment to solitary grief.
. . .
Baker was taken out of the ER and admitted to a bed upstairs in the intensive care unit at 10 p.m.
Drew and Jaime spent the night in the cramped room with Baker. They did their best to sleep on the uncomfortable chairs, but it was no use.
They prayed that their son would be all right.
In the morning when the sun came up, Drew had bought crackers and potato chips from the hospital cafeteria vending machines, but neither of them could eat more than a few bites.
Baker was still passed out in the hospital bed. Jaime slouched in the chair next to the bed, her face haggard and indignant. Her eyes were red, sandy, and irritated. She’d cried out all the tears she’d had the day before. Her body couldn’t produce anymore.
Her arms were folded in her lap, seemingly useless, unable to hug her son, who was miles away in the hospital bed, trapped in a fog of sedatives and painkillers. There was nothing further she could do to help him or comfort him in that moment.
Dr. Walker arrived at 6 a.m. to meet with them as promised. He assured them that he would do everything in his power to repair Baker’s hand.
Drew and Jaime both felt better after meeting with Dr. Walker. He had a confident and reassuring presence. They felt hope for the first time.
Wh
at followed was an exhausting day of tests on poor little Baker: more x-rays, more CT scans, and finally an MRI.
Dr. Walker was in and out of Baker’s room throughout the day. At first, he was smiling confidently every time they saw him, but he became increasingly distracted and distant as the day ground on, almost as if he had become afraid to look Drew and Jaime in the eye.
Drew and Jaime didn’t discuss this, even though they both sensed it. They were afraid to talk about it. Besides, Dr. Walker hadn’t yet said anything definitive.
Eventually, Drew and Jaime both ate. Drew got them hot food from the cafeteria for a late lunch. They ate, but ate little.
Finally, around 8:30 p.m., Dr. Walker sat down with them.
“I’ve had a chance to email the image results of the various tests to several prominent hand surgeons and plastic surgeons around the country,” Dr. Walker said. “I wanted to make sure I got some other expert opinions on this delicate situation before I advised you.” He paused.
Drew and Jaime looked at each other, silent alarm rising inside both of them.
“I don’t know how to say this…ah, um—“ Dr. Walker was obviously uncomfortable, “There is the growing possibility that our only course of action is to seriously consider amputation. The damage is significantly worse than Dr. Watanabe had first realized…”
The shock Drew and Jaime had felt the previous night when they’d received the news from the ER surgeon Dr. Watanabe was nothing compared to this. It was nothing because Drew and Jaime both felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Neither of them were able to process what they were hearing. They simply couldn’t believe it.
“Hah!” Drew blurted out. “That can’t be right.”
“You’re joking, right?” Jaime asked the doctor, half smiling, half panicking.
Dr. Walker blanched. He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The damage to Baker’s hand is far more severe than we’d first realized. The initial tests, the x-rays, didn’t reveal the full extent of the damage. Only once we ran the MRI were we able to diagnose the exact degree of the damage.”
“There must be some mistake,” Drew offered.
Jaime turned to Drew. “This guy’s crazy.” She laughed insanely. But then her laughter degraded into sobs. Slowly she reached out to Drew, wrapping her arms over his shoulders. She was bawling.
Drew was quietly weeping, completely unaware that he was doing so. To the doctor he said, “Are you sure? Isn’t there some other option? Do you have to…to…cut off my son’s hand?”
Dr. Walker was shaken, but did his best to hold himself together.
“Look,” he said, “this is a tremendous, drastic step for us to take. You don’t have to make the decision right this minute. I want to have some other doctors take a look at your son, in person. I’m going to have them fly in tomorrow. I will pay for their plane tickets myself. One of them is a close friend of mine who was an Army surgeon overseas before he became a hand specialist. Now he works at the Army Medical Center in D.C. He’ll know better than anybody what to do. You don’t have to make a decision until then.”
Drew was speechless.
“Also,” Dr. Walker continued, speaking to the linoleum floor, “and I hate to have to bring this up now, but we still need to address the question of infection. We may need to administer treatment for rabies if the dog that bit your son cannot be found. Have you been able to locate it?”
Drew looked up at the doctor, his face contorted in brutal agony and rage.
Something fragile inside of Drew, something that had been strained to the breaking point over the last thirty hours, finally collapsed.
“I’ll find it,” he said grimly.
. . .
The twilight sky was bruised dark red and purple as Drew drove home late that evening alone to get some things they needed from the house.
Jaime had warned him not to do anything stupid.
As the car pulled up to a red light, Drew absently considered the chores on his “Honey-Do” list he’d planned to tackle the day before. All of them were untouched and completely forgotten until that moment. Thirty hours ago, he had been revved and ready to tear through them. He’d planned to have his feet up, a beer in hand, and be sitting on the couch with an arm around Jaime by the time the eleven o’clock news came on Friday night.
Now he wasn’t sure when he would get around to doing any chores ever again.
His hopes for a relaxing weekend were utterly demolished as well, and seemed like a selfish, petty indulgence compared to the tortured future his son had to look forward to.
It wasn’t right.
“It was that damn dog down the street,” Drew muttered, aloud.
If only the phone hadn’t rang. Why didn’t I see the dog sooner? Drew thought desperately. If only I hadn’t been drinking that beer. Maybe I would have noticed the dog in time…
At the four-way stop for their street, he signaled and turned the car. “That dog is always jumping that pathetic excuse for a fence in its front yard,” he growled to no one. “This must be the third time this summer I’ve seen that thing roaming loose. Why don’t they keep it chained up?”
All the muscles in his face clenched up and he flushed bright red as he pulled the car into the driveway and parked. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel.
Heavy sobs racked his body for several minutes.
When they subsided, he stabbed the parking brake with his bootheel, slammed his door and opened up the garage.
Drew rooted around in the back of the garage, slamming things loudly.
He emerged from the black shadows with an aluminum baseball bat and stormed out of the garage.
He trudged down the driveway onto the sidewalk, bat in hand like an unsheathed samurai sword, and turned up the street.
Drew, don’t do anything stupid, he heard Jaime saying in his head.
He blocked out her voice.
The lights were on at the ramshackle house up the street. The same dark brown pit bull was in the front yard. It ran up to the low chain-link fence barking loudly at Drew, its tail curled up aggressively. It came up on its hind legs, and hung its forelegs over the top rail.
That fence is so low, a puppy would trip right over it if it wasn’t watching where it was going, Drew thought bitterly.
The huge pit bull was barking ferociously at Drew, wicked teeth flashing in the streetlight’s mellow glow.
He walked up to it, planted his feet firmly, and swung the bat with varsity precision. It cut through the air with blinding speed and crashed right through the dog’s half-open mouth, shattering teeth in an ivory spray, rocking the dog’s head in an unnatural spiral, all accompanied by the cheery counterpoint of the aluminum bat’s friendly plink!
The dog yelped a pathetic cry and fell to its side.
Drew vaulted the fence, bat in hand. Before the dog could recover or even register what had happened, Drew was on top of it, swinging the bat again and again with all his strength. A feeble defensive foreleg snapped like a twig. Ribs cracked. An eye socket was crushed.
The dog whimpered in agony.
The screen door of the house whacked open. “Cocoa!” a dilapidated woman screamed, running out of the house, followed by a little girl.
“What are you doing to my dog!” the woman screamed with horror in her voice, “Stop! Stop it!” She hit Drew on the back and shoulders with her tiny balled fists.
He shoved her away and kept swinging at the dog.
Startled, she crumpled to the ground in a heap.
The little girl was crying hysterically, sobbing through tears, “Don’t hurt Cocoa! Leave my doggie alone! Please!” she begged. “Mah-meeeeee!!!” She tried to run to her dog, but her mother snatched her up.
“Don’t you go near that man,” the woman hissed through her own tears.
Drew brought the bat down a final time, right in the middle of Cocoa’s spine. There was a dull bony crack and the dog started thrashing violently, legs flailing t
he air helplessly.
“What have you done to my dog!!!!!” the woman howled, clutching her daughter protectively. The little girl continued to wail, squirming in her mother’s arms, trying to reach Cocoa.
Drew stepped slowly back from the pit bull, spattered in blood, bat hanging limply by his side. He looked at the little girl and thought of his own son. He was stunned and suddenly nauseous.
The dog twitched pathetically, barely moving.
“What have you done,” the woman cried. “You killed my dog! You’re a lunatic!”
“Your dog bit my son’s hand off,” he barked hoarsely, his voice shaky with tears.
“What…?” the woman mumbled dumbly.
The girl reached out helplessly to Cocoa from her mother’s arms. “Cocoa!!!!” she cried.
. . .
END
David Hudnut has had six dogs, and loved them all. He also believes in responsible pet ownership.
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Read on for the Ultra-terrifying preview of the new full-length novel
NIGHT WALK
by
David Hudnut
. . .
. . .
DEATH COMES IN THREES
Random Acts
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
City of Angels. City of Devils.
In every city big or small, rich or poor, the killers walk alongside the innocent.
Undetected.
They travel the same streets and breathe the same air. Much of the time, they coexist harmoniously.
But when Devils walk alongside Angels, random acts of violence are bound to happen at any moment…
It was a welcoming and balmy summer Friday night in West Hollywood. The misty sky above glowed faintly orange, illuminated by the tapestry of city lights beneath. Crowds of people circulated along the sidewalks, meandering in and out of numerous restaurants and bars along La Cienega Boulevard. Most of the night-lifers were young or attempting to appear young. The muscled arms of the men and lithe legs of the women were on exhibition. Cleavage—some natural, most artificial—was abundantly displayed.