Rescue (Emily and Mason)

by Seiters, Nadene

  “I’m sorry, it must have just been a nightmare,” I try to ease her worry and throw the covers off me. Except instead of wearing the pajamas I went to bed in, I’m wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt I don’t remember putting on. My feet are covered in grass, and when I inspect myself further, there’s dirt under my fingernails. “Laura, I think I sleep walked.”

  “We’re going to have to call your therapist, see what this is about.” I haven’t told her about the fact that I stopped seeing the therapist a few months ago. The woman never bothered to call here, and I never bothered to explain to Laura and Jim that I’m too broken to be fixed.

  “I’ll tell her at my next session,” I uneasily lie, feeling a flush hitting my cheeks. “I think I should shower,” Laura nods and gives me one last look before she leaves the room. I quickly grab my cellphone to see what time it is and curse under my breath when I realize it’s nine thirty in the morning. I’m over two hours late.

  Today is the worst day for me to be late. I grab some clothes and quickly jog down the hall to the bathroom, showering in lukewarm water and barely getting my hair dry before I put it up into a ponytail. I make sure to get all the dirt out from under my nails and try not to think about where I must have been last night.

  When I get downstairs, I quickly submit my work to my online classes and type in some very short response to questions on the discussion boards. I grab my keys off the hook and don’t bother telling Laura goodbye as I run out the door. I slide in behind the wheel of my car, and the blood drains right out of my face.

  There’s dirt on the mat of the car, and grass. I drove in my sleep last night? I didn’t even know someone could do that without getting into an accident. Trying to breathe normally, I start the car and attempt not to squeal the tires as I pull away from the curb. I sincerely hope that no one has gotten to the shelter yet to look at Baby. I want to be there when the first drove of people start wading in through those doors to keep her calm.

  If she bites a visitor, it will have to be reported. Then she will have to be put down.

  My heart is still racing when I pull into the parking space beside Mason’s car with the alien on the hood. I almost scratch his door when I fling my own open and try to scramble out of the car, seeing people coming in already. I realize then that I submitted the work for Monday because it’s Saturday. I’m too late.

  There are a few ‘excuse me’s and ‘pardon me’s that I toss out as I try to get to the dog kennel room. When I finally arrive, I see that Baby’s pen is empty, and the sign is gone. In fact, it looks like the dog bed, and her lone chew toy are missing. The blood drains out of my face for the third time today as I realize that someone must have gotten there and adopted her already. I didn’t even get to say goodbye!

  Mason comes around the corner with a dog on a leash, a younger couple following him. He sees the look on my face and glances at the pen that Baby used to be in. He looks sorry, and I know right then and there that she’s gone. She either bit someone and was euthanized, or someone adopted her. I really hope that someone adopted her. Maybe a nice family that has a large yard she can play in.

  As he’s passing, Mason puts a hand on my shoulder briefly and then walks away, saying something. I can’t hear what he says as he passes, not over the yapping of Chihuahuas as two kids get into the pen to play with them. I see their mother laughing and try to hide my frustration and worry as I go over to plead the Chihuahuas’ case for adoption.

  “They’re really great dogs, and they don’t eat a lot considering they’re so small.” The woman smiles at me and then looks back at her children, a boy and a girl. They’re probably around six or seven and twins, blonde hair and gray eyes. I wonder if that’s what my mother looked like when she was young.

  “Do they all have to be adopted together?” She seems genuinely interested in the dogs, so I throw myself into the art of persuasion.

  “No, but they were all brought in together. I’m sure they would appreciate going home together.” The woman doesn’t look too convinced, so I throw myself into it harder. “They’re siblings,” I tell her, and that seems to soften her a little. After several minutes of pleading from her own two kids, the fuzzy ones all get to go home together.

  I make my way to the front of the building to get them the paperwork and hurry back before the woman can change her mind. These guys need a good home, and I’m sure one with two kids will keep them entertained enough. I help her pick out three small harnesses and leashes. Then I walk them all out to their car and help them load up. It takes a bit of finagling, but the kids each end up holding a dog while one dog sits in the front seat.

  Now that one of the cages is cleared out, we can move one of the other dogs from the back up front, so they get more exposure. I head into the building to do just that and keep an eye out for Mason. He must be in the medical room helping give final shots to the animals that have been adopted. I pick out a pit bull that’s been here for over three weeks. He’s a homely looking dog, but he’s one of the friendliest ones here.

  Mason

  One more microchip to go and I’m done for the day. Visiting hours were over about half an hour ago, but a lot of the cats were adopted today. There’ll be more coming in soon, but it’s nice to see that there’s a flow going on instead of just a bunch of abandoned pets piling up on the doorstep. Gail takes the last kitten out to its new owner and returns with cat hair all over the front of her and a few scratches up her arms. I’m not faring much better.

  “Did you get that gash washed out?” She asks me, taking my arm before I can protest and rolling up the sleeve of the long sleeved shirt I’m wearing.

  “I did, it’s fine, Mom.” I tell her with a grin on my face, and she rolls her eyes at me. We’re developing an easy friendship over these past few weeks; I just wish I could say the same about Emily. Sure, we’re spending each day at lunch together and sometimes we’re companionably cleaning up pens or cages in one of the various rooms around here.

  “Don’t ever call me Mom again, I’m not quite old enough for that,” Gail chides, a little embarrassed smile on her face. I pat her on the shoulder as I leave the room to find Emily. I’m sure she’s been worried about Baby all day. Judging from the look on her face I’m pretty sure she didn’t get my earlier comment about Baby being where she needed.

  I’ve had the poor dog in one of the empty stalls next to the horses all day to keep her away from the crowds gathering. Just as I’m about to give up and go find the dog instead of the person, Emily comes around one of the corners, and her tense shoulders relax when she sees me. I wonder if she knows that her lips curl up on either side in a tiny smile whenever she looks at me. Probably not, I’m pretty sure is a subconscious gesture.

  The smile I give back to her is pretty much subconscious too, a natural reaction to her small smile. I motion at the hair all over my front when she gets nearer and make a show of pulling off my shirt. There’s another one in the empty exam room. After an incident with a kitten with diarrhea having an accident all over my front, I bring extra clothes to work.

  “Clothes are mandatory Mason,” Taylor says when he comes around the corner behind Emily. I ignore him and slip into the exam room with Emily on my tail. It’s not that she’s trying to avoid Taylor, okay, maybe she is.

  “Yes, clothes are mandatory, put your shirt back on and tell me what happened to my dog.” I quirk an eyebrow at Emily’s demanding tone and realize that the tiny smile has disappeared. Her initial response is seeing me has dissipated.

  First I pull on my t-shirt, and when Emily catches sight of the nasty gash on my forearm she crinkles her brows and purses her lips. Without a word, she goes to the medicine cabinet and pulls out some antibiotic cream along with some gauze and bandaging. I don’t say anything as she takes my arm and lays it down on the counter, making me bend over in the process. Her face is close to mine as she swabs on the ointment and wraps up my arm. A strange buzzing starts in my ears and radiates down through my entire body.
Is this what it feels like to be completely loved?

  As soon as she’s finished she takes a step back from me, the crinkle between her brows. Her expression of worry is replaced with an entirely different worry, the worry she feels for Baby. As soon as the thought pops into my mind I remember how to breathe again. I try to clear my throat without giving away just how much her touch shook me.

  “Baby’s in the barn with the horses,” I tell her quietly, trying to look her in the eyes. Emily keeps her gaze off me and nods once, her throat working.

  “Then she wasn’t adopted today,” she says. I can hear relief and sadness in her tone at the same time. I shrug one shoulder and look at the door to make sure that Taylor isn’t looking for me.

  “I filled out the paperwork this morning. It’s about time I moved out of my Dad’s anyway.” There’s a lot in that statement, and Emily takes a few minutes to process it all.

  “You mean, you adopted her? And you have a house?” She seems shocked that I would have another place to live, and I look at the ceiling. I haven’t told any of the women I’ve been with this secret of mine. Hell, my Dad doesn’t ever mention it.

  “I do, it was my mother’s. She left it to me when she passed along with enough to pay the taxes for it for the next five years or so.” Emily looks completely shocked, her eyes wide and her lips parted slightly. I smile at her and close the gap between us, reaching out my finger to tap underneath her chin. Emily closes her mouth with an audible snap and blinks a few times to regain consciousness.

  “Wow, I don’t know what to say,” she says finally, still only about half a foot between us.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I shrug, she really doesn’t. It’s written all over her face. Finally, I don’t have to close the gap between us because Emily takes that final step towards me and wraps her arms around me gingerly as if she’s testing the waters. I put one arm around her, the one that doesn’t have the bandage on it.

  “I won’t get to see her anymore,” Emily says forlornly, and I scrunch my eyebrows together. What does she mean?

  “I’m going to bring her to work with me, and I thought that maybe you could come over and help me clean the place out. I’ll need a woman to help with that. Last time I operated the vacuum I blew the motor so my father won’t let me touch another one.” Emily snorts and it sounds watery. I push her back with my free hand to look at her teary eyed face, her chin wobbling.

  “Of course I’ll come over!” She says, trying to smile through the tears. “I’m just so happy,” she says, trying to scrub them away with the palms of her hands. I don’t understand why women cry when they’re happy, but apparently it’s an unanswerable phenomenon.

  As the tears wash some of the cover up away under her eyes, I see some of the dark circles and a scowl touches my features. My entire body stiffens as I tilt her head up to look at the circles, wondering what would be keeping Emily up at night. She still hasn’t explained to me what she means by ‘Laura and Jim’ and not Mom and Dad. Are they abusive people? Was she really that worried about Baby? I should have found her and told her sooner.

  “You should go home and get some rest. It’s Saturday, why don’t you come over tomorrow afternoon and we’ll have a quick lunch.” Emily looks like she’s going to balk on the offer, but finally nods once as she washes her hand in the sink. I feel relaxed and a ball of anticipation building up in the pit of my abdomen all at the same time.

  “Good, do you want to see Baby now?” The look on her face says it all. I lead the way to the empty stall in the barn and find Baby nestled up on top of a square bale of hay. Her ears perk and her tail thumps once when she sees us, at home in a barn rather than in a pen.

  “I was worried about you! You should have barked!” Emily fake scolds with her finger out. Baby glides off the bale of hay. There’s no other way to describe it. I swear the dog is mostly wolf at heart and not a real dog. She nuzzles Emily’s hand as if in apology and I turn away at that point, allowing the two of them some time to part.

  I hope it’s not a long time before Baby starts seeing a lot of Emily. Tomorrow is just the beginning. I have plans, and it involves taking Emily out on a real date. It won’t involve the camouflage of helping a man who can’t clean. I remind myself there’re three more weeks before she’s legal. Three weeks I have to wait innocently on the sidelines like a gentleman, and then there’ll be more than just me vying for her attention. Taylor Warren will surely be there too.

  Chapter Nine

  Emily

  I’m not sure why I agreed to this. Maybe it’s because he softened me with the knowledge that he adopted Baby, a troubled dog who needs a stable environment. I much rather would have taken her home myself, but Mason would have been my first choice if I had to choose someone. It doesn’t make today any easier knowing that she’s not at the rescue center.

  Mason doesn’t usually work on Sundays, but he comes to volunteer anyway. I have a feeling it’s because I’m there, but maybe I’m just being conceited. I’m never usually the conceited type.

  The cat kennel is rather empty this Sunday. Only eleven unlucky felines are lined up in cages. I take the first one out of his prison, clean up his litter box and let him run around the floor for some exercise with a catnip toy. By the time I’m finished wiping down the interior of the cage like every day, he’s lounging by one of the windows with his tail twitching softly.

  I didn’t name this one, and I haven’t seen him before, so I glance at the nametag on the cage, Henderson. What an odd name for a cat, it must have been the owners who named him. Me and Henderson sit by the window as I brush his soft, long gray hair. I wonder if he’s looking out the window for when his owner will come back. I imagine most of these poor cats constantly believe that someone will be back for them, probably until the day that they are adopted by someone else.

  There were no such illusions for me when I was in that home for children who are orphaned through violent ways. I knew that no one was coming back for me. Not one spark of hope had been in my chest from the moment I had stepped through those doors. My aunt, a woman in her forties, refused to take me. My mother and she never really got along when they were children, and from the way my mother spoke of the woman’s drugs addictions, I was probably better off going to the orphanage anyway.

  The two weeks I spent there was hell. There’s nothing like putting all different sorts of children in one home and expecting them all to get along. Just because there’s something in common amongst them all doesn’t mean they will band together and help each other. I refused to speak for the first week, lost in my own internal mourning. I spent the next week trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life when I turned eighteen. That was when Laura and Jim showed up.

  They were like those beautiful rays of sunshine a person can see poking through the rain clouds on a stormy day.

  I stroke Henderson’s fur and put him back in the cage. I don’t envy his hope because I know the truth. His proverbial parents aren’t coming back for him, and he has kittens to compete with here. It will take him weeks to be adopted if he’s one of the lucky ones. I really hope that his ray of sunshine poking through the storm clouds comes in sometime this week to rescue him from the constant torment of wondering why he was abandoned.

  It’s not the nightmares or the fact that I’m a foster kid that keeps me from dating. Being abandoned by the one person you love most in the world leaves a scar, a very prominent one on the soul. It damages that ability to trust someone wholeheartedly and unconditionally.

  The next cat I have to get out is the one with a broken leg, Butterscotch. He’s healing very nicely and gimps around on the floor as I clean out his cage. He lets me brush him gently before I put him back in, getting orange hair all over me. I’m taking a lint roller to my front when Jesse comes bustling through the door with a wide smile on her face.

  Usually when she sees me anymore, she scowls as if I peed in her Cheerios every morning. I raise both my eyebrows at the
cheery demeanor and then I take her in. She’s not wearing her usual sweatpants and a t-shirt today. She’s wearing a pair of tight jeans with a glittery belt and a fluttery shirt that reveals all the right places and covers the others.

  “Jesse, what are you wearing?” I blurt out, wondering why she would come to work in this place with those types of clothes. To soften what I just said I add a compliment, “I mean, it looks nice and all, I just don’t think the dogs are going to be nice to that shirt,” she grins at me even more. I didn’t know her smile could get any brighter.

  “I’m not going to be working today. Taylor asked me out on a date, and I just swung by to check on his prized cat before we go out.” There are so many things going through my head at once at that statement. I get she’s going out on a date with Taylor, but who is his prized cat? And what does that mean?

  “I’m sorry, cat?” I ask her, feeling a little on the uptake today.

  “Yeah, Butterscotch. He’s filled out the paperwork to take that one home.” I make an ‘o’ with my mouth and wonder when Taylor got so attached to cats. Jesse coos over the orange tabby as I busy myself with moving on to the next cage. “You know, he’s wanted to ask you out on a date for a while, but I guess he just finally came around.” I’m not totally sure what she means by that, but I nod once and get out a six month old kitten that was dropped off for being too feisty with the curtains.

  “I guess so,” I finally say when I realize she’s waiting for a response.

  “I mean, it’s not like Taylor would be really interested in someone like you anyway.” I pause in my brushing at the kitten notices, turning around to rub at the handle of the brush. My cheeks flare a little as I turn around to look at Jesse in the eyes.