seized mine and would not let me look away. “I’ve made Rebel as comfortable as
possible, but… he’s been hurt very badly.”
“You can fix him!” I said. “You’re a doctor!”
“That’s right, but even if I operated on him I couldn’t repair the
damage, Cory. It’s just too much.”
“You can’t… just… let him die!”
“Go see him, son,” Dad urged. “Better go on.” While you can, he was
saying.
Dad waited while Dr. Lezander took me into one of the rooms. Upstairs I
could hear a whistling noise: a teakettle. Mrs. Lezander was above us, boiling
water for tea in the kitchen. The room we walked into had a sickly smell.
There was a shelf full of bottles and a countertop with doctor’s instruments
arranged on a blue cloth. And at the center of the room was a stainless steel
table with a form atop it, covered by a dog-sized cotton blanket. My legs
almost gave way; blotches of brown blood had soaked through the cotton.
I must’ve trembled. Dr. Lezander said, “You don’t have to, if you don’t—”
“I will,” I said.
Dr. Lezander gently lifted part of the blanket. “Easy, easy,” he said, as
if speaking to an injured child. The form shivered, and I heard a whine that
all but tore my heart out. My eyes flooded with hot tears. I remembered that
whine, from when Dad had brought Rebel home as a puppy in a cardboard box and
Rebel had been afraid of the dark. I walked four steps to the side of the
table, and I looked at what Dr. Lezander was showing me.
A truck tire had changed the shape of Rebel’s head. The white hair and
flesh on one side of the skull had been ripped back, exposing the bone and the
teeth in a fixed grin. The pink tongue lolled in a wash of blood. One eye had
turned a dead gray color. The other was wet with terror. Bubbles of blood
broke around Rebel’s nostrils, and he breathed with a painful hitching noise.
A forepaw was crushed to pulp, the broken edges of bones showing in the
twisted leg.
I think I moaned. I don’t know. The single eye found me, and Rebel
started struggling to stand up but Dr. Lezander grasped the body with his
strong hands and the movement ceased.
I saw a needle clamped to Rebel’s side, a tube from a bottle of clear
liquid feeding into his body. Rebel whimpered, and instinctively I offered my
hand to that ruined muzzle. “Careful!” Dr. Lezander warned. I didn’t think
about the fact that an animal in agony might snap at anything that moves, even
the hand of a boy who loves it. Rebel’s bloody tongue came out and swiped
weakly at my fingers, and I stood there staring numbly at the streak of
scarlet that marked me.
“He’s suffering terribly,” Dr. Lezander said. “You can see that, can’t
you?”
“Yes sir,” I answered, as if in a horrible dream.
“His ribs are broken, and one of them has punctured his lung. I thought
his heart might have given out before now. I expect it will soon.” Dr.
Lezander covered Rebel back over. All I could do was stare at the shivering
body. “Is he cold?” I asked. “He must be cold.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Zo, he pronounced it. He grasped my shoulder
again, and guided me to the door. “Let’s go talk to your father, shall we?”
Dad was still waiting where we’d left him. “You okay, partner?” he asked
me, and I said I was though I was feeling very, very sick. The smell of blood
was in my nostrils, thick as sin.
“Rebel’s a strong dog,” Dr. Lezander said. “He’s survived what should
have killed most dogs outright.” He picked up a folder from his desk and slid
a sheet of paper out. It was a preprinted form, and at the top of it was Case
#3432. “I don’t know how much longer Rebel will live, but I think it’s
academic at this point.”
“There’s no possibility, you mean?” Dad asked.
“No possibility,” the doctor said. He glanced quickly at me. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s my dog,” I said, and fresh tears streamed down. My nose felt
clogged with concrete. “He can get better.” Even as I said that, I knew all
the imagination in the world could not make it so.
“Tom, if you’ll sign this form, I can administer a drug to Rebel that
will… um…” He darted another glance at me.
“Help him rest,” Dad offered.
“That’s right. Exactly right. If you’ll sign here. Oh, you need a pen, I
think.” He opened a drawer, fished around, and brought one up.
Dad took it. I knew what this was about. I didn’t need to be lulled and
coddled as if I were six years old. I knew they were talking about giving
Rebel a shot to kill him. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it was
humane, but Rebel was my dog and I had fed him when he was hungry and washed
him when he was dirty and I knew his smell and the feel of his tongue on my
face. I knew him. There would never be another dog like Rebel. A huge knot had
jammed in my throat. Dad was bending over the form, about to touch pen to
paper. I looked for something to stare at, and I found a black and white
photograph in a silver frame on the doctor’s desk. It showed a light-haired,
smiling young woman waving, a windmill behind her. It took me a few seconds to
register the young apple-cheeked face as being that of Veronica Lezander.
“Hold on.” Dad lifted the pen. “Rebel belongs to you, Cory. What do you
have to say about this?”
I was silent. Such a decision had never been offered to me before. It was
heavy.
“I love animals as much as anyone,” Dr. Lezander said. “I know what a dog
can mean to a boy. What I’m suggesting be done, Cory, is not a bad thing. It’s
a natural thing. Rebel is in terrible pain, and will not recover. Everything
is born and dies. That is life. Yes?”
“He might not die,” I murmured.
“Say he doesn’t die for another hour. Or two, or three. Say he lives all
night. Say he manages somehow to live twenty-four more hours. He can’t walk.
He can hardly breathe. His heart is beating itself out, he’s in deep shock.”
Dr. Lezander frowned, watching my blank slate of a face. “Be a good friend to
Rebel, Cory. Don’t let him suffer like this any longer.”
“I think I need to sign this, Cory,” Dad said. “Don’t you?”
“Can I… go be with him for a minute? Just alone?”
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t touch him, though. He might snap. All right?”
“Yes sir.” Like a sleepwalker, I returned to the scene of a bad dream. On
the stainless steel table, Rebel was still shivering. He whined and whimpered,
searching for his master to make the pain go away.
I began to cry. It was a powerful crying, and would not be held back. I
dropped down to my knees on that cold hard floor, and I bowed my head and
clasped my hands together.
I prayed, with my eyes squeezed tightly shut and the tears burning trails
down my face. I don’t recall exactly what I said in that prayer, but I knew
what I was praying for. I was praying for a hand to come down from heaven or
paradise or Beulah land and shut the gates on DEATH. Hold those gates firm
against DEATH, though DEATH might bluster and scream and claw to get in at my
dog. A hand, a mighty hand, to turn that monster away and heal Rebel, to cast
DEATH out like a bag of old bleached bones and run him off like a beggar in
the rain. Yes, DEATH was hungry and I could hear him licking his lips there in
that room, but the mighty hand could seal shut his mouth, could slap out his
teeth, could reduce DEATH to a little drooling thing with smacking gums.
That’s what I prayed for. I prayed with my heart and my soul and my mind.
I prayed through every pore of my flesh, I prayed as if every hair on my head
was a radio antenna and the power was crackling through them, the
mega-megamillion watts crying out over space and eternity into the distant ear
of the all-knowing, all-powerful Someone. Anyone.
Just answer me.
Please.
I don’t know how long I stayed there on the floor, bowed up, sobbing and
praying. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe longer. I knew that when I stood up,
I had to go out there where Dad and Dr. Lezander waited, and tell them yes or—
I heard a grunt, followed by an awful sound of air being sucked into
ruined, blood-clogged lungs.
I looked up. I saw Rebel straining to stand on the table. The hair
rippled at the back of my neck, my flesh exploding into chill bumps. Rebel got
up on two paws, his head thrashing. He whined, a long terrible whine that
pierced me like a dagger. He turned, as if to snap at his tail, and the light
glinted in his single eye and the death-grin of his teeth.
“Help!” I shouted. “Dad! Dr. Lezander! Come quick!”
Rebel’s back arched with such violence I thought surely his tortured
spine would snap. I heard a rattle like seeds in a dry gourd. And then Rebel
convulsed and fell onto his side on the table, and he did not move again.
Dr. Lezander rushed in, with my father close behind. “Stand back,” the
doctor told me, and he put his hand to Rebel’s chest. Then he got a
stethoscope and listened. He lifted the lid of the good eye; it, too, had
rolled back to the white.
“Hold on, partner,” Dad said with both hands on my shoulders. “Just hold
on.”
Dr. Lezander said, “Well,” and he sighed. “We won’t be needing the form
after all.”
“No!” I cried out. “No! Dad, no!”
“Let’s go home, Cory.”
“I prayed, Dad! I prayed he wouldn’t die! And he’s not gonna die! He
can’t!”
“Cory?” Dr. Lezander’s voice was quiet and firm, and I looked up at him
through a hot blur of tears. “Rebel is—”
Something sneezed.
We all jumped at the sound, as loud as a blast in the tiled room. It was
followed by a gasp and rush of air.
Rebel sat up, blood and foam stringing from his nostrils. His good eye
darted around, and he shook his grisly head back and forth as if shaking off a
long, hard sleep.
Dad said, “I thought he was—”
“He was dead!” Dr. Lezander wore an expression of utter shock, white
circles ringing his eyes. “Mein… my God! That dog was dead!”
“He’s alive,” I said. I sniffled and grinned. “See? I told you!”
“Impossible!” Dr. Lezander had almost shouted it. “His heart wasn’t
beating! His heart had stopped beating, and he was dead!”
Rebel tried to stand, but he didn’t have the strength. He burped. I went
to him and touched the warm curve of his back. Rebel started hiccuping, and he
laid his head down and began to lick the cool steel. “He won’t die,” I said
confidently. My crying was done. “I prayed Death away from him.”
“I don’t… I can’t…” Dr. Lezander said, and that’s all he could say.
Case #3432 went unsigned.
Rebel slept and woke up, slept and woke up. Dr. Lezander kept checking
his heartbeat and temperature and writing everything down in a notebook. Mrs.
Lezander came down and asked Dad and me if we would like some tea and apple
cake, and we went upstairs with her. I was secure in the knowledge that Rebel
would not die while I was gone. Mrs. Lezander poured Dad a cup of tea, while I
got a glass of Tang to go with my cake. As Dad called Mom to tell her it
looked like Rebel was going to pull through and we’d be home after a while, I
wandered into the den next to the kitchen. In that room, four bird cages hung
from ceiling hooks and a hamster ran furiously on a treadmill in his own cage.
Two of the bird cages were empty, but the other two held a canary and a
parakeet. The canary began to sing in a soft, sweet voice, and Mrs. Lezander
walked in with a bag of birdseed.
“Would you like to feed our patients?” she asked me, and I said yes.
“Just a little bit now,” she instructed. “They haven’t been feeling well, but
they’ll be better soon.”
“Who do they belong to?”
“The parakeet belongs to Mr. Grover Dean. The canary there—isn’t she a
pretty lady—belongs to Mrs. Judith Harper.”
“Mrs. Harper? The teacher?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Mrs. Lezander leaned forward and made tiny smacking
noises to the canary. That noise was strange, coming from such a horsey mouth.
The bird picked delicately at the seed I’d poured into its feedtray. “Her name
is Tinkerbell. Hello there, Tinkerbell, you angel you!”
Leatherlungs had a canary named Tinkerbell. I couldn’t imagine it.
“Birds are my favorite,” Mrs. Lezander said. “So trusting, so full of God
and goodness. Look over here, at my aviary.”
Mrs. Lezander showed me her set of twelve hand-painted ceramic birds,
which rested atop a piano. “They came with us all the way from Holland,” she
told me. “I’ve had them since I was a little girl.”
“They’re nice.”
“Oh, much better than nice! When I look at them, I have such pleasant
memories: Amsterdam, the canals, the tulips bursting forth in spring by the
thousands.” She picked up a ceramic robin and stroked the crimson breast with
her forefinger. “They were broken in my suitcase when we had to pack up
quickly and get out. Broken all to pieces. But I put them all together again,
each and every one. You can hardly see the cracks.” She showed me, but she’d
done a good job of repairing them. “I miss Holland,” she said. “So much.”
“Are you ever goin’ back?”
“Someday, maybe. Frans and I talk about it. We’ve even gotten the travel
brochures. Still… what happened to us… the Nazis and all that terrible…” She
frowned and returned the robin to its place between an oriole and a
hummingbird. “Well, some broken things are not so easily mended,” she said.
I heard a dog barking. It was Rebel’s bark, hoarse but strong. The sound
was coming up from the basement through an air vent. Then I heard Dr. Lezander
call, “Tom! Cory! Will both of you come down here, please?”
We found Dr. Lezander taking Rebel’s temperature again, by the bottom
route. Rebel was still listless and sleepy, but he showed no signs of dying.
Dr. Lezander had applied a white ointment to Rebel’s wounded muzzle and had
him connected now to two needles and bottles of dripping clear liquid. “I
wanted you to see this animal’s temperature,” he said. “I’ve taken it four
times in the last hour.” He picked up his notebook and wrote down the
thermometer’s reading. “This is unheard of! Absolutely unheard of!”
“What is it?” Dad asked.
