with such tremendous force that he felt as if it would tear loose of him. He was
breathing too fast, hyperventilating.
In the master bathroom, Nora was just stepping out of the shower, naked and
dripping.
Travis’s words ran together in panic: “Get dressed quick we’ve got to get to the
vet now for god’s sake hurry.”
Shocked, she said, “What’s happened?”
“Einstein! Hurry! I think he’s dying.”
He grabbed a blanket off the bed, left Nora to dress, and hurried downstairs to
the bathroom. The retriever’s ragged breathing seemed to have gotten worse in
just the minute that Travis had been away. He folded the blanket twice, to a
fourth of its size, then eased the dog onto it.
Einstein made a pained sound, as if the movement hurt him.
Travis said, “Easy, easy. You’ll be all right.”
At the door, Nora appeared, still buttoning her blouse, which was damp because
she had not taken time to towel off before dressing. Her wet hair hung straight.
In a voice choked with emotion, she said, “Oh, fur face, no, no.” She wanted to
stoop and touch the retriever, but there was no time to delay. Travis said,
“Bring the pickup alongside the house.”
While Nora sprinted to the barn, Travis folded the blanket around Einstein as
best he could, so only the retriever’s head, tail, and hind legs protruded.
Trying unsuccessfully not to elicit another whimper of pain, Travis lifted the
dog in his arms and carried him out of the bathroom, across the kitchen, out of
the house, pulling the door shut behind him but leaving it unlocked, not giving
a damn about security right now.
The air was cold. Yesterday’s calm was gone. Evergreens swayed, shivered, and
there was something ominous in the way their bristling, needled branches pawed
at the air. Other leafless trees raised black, bony arms toward the somber sky.
In the barn, Nora started the pickup. The engine roared. Travis cautiously
descended the porch steps and went out to the driveway,
walking as if he were carrying an armload of fragile antique china. The blustery
wind stood Travis’s hair straight up, flapped the loose ends of the blanket, and
ruffled the fur on Einstein’s exposed head, as if it were a wind with a
malevolent consciousness, as if it wanted to tear the dog away from him.
Nora swung the pickup around, heading out, and stopped where Travis Waited She
would drive.
It was true what they said: sometimes, in certain special moments of crisis, in
times of great emotional tribulation, women are better able to bite the
bullet and do what must be done than men often are. Sitting in the truck’s
passenger seat, cradling the blanket-wrapped dog in his arms, Travis was in no
condition to drive. He was shaking badly, and he realized that he had been
crying from the time he had found Einstein on the bathroom floor. He had seen
difficult military service, and he had never panicked or been paralyzed with
fear while on dangerous Delta Force operations, but this was different, this was
Einstein, this was his child. If he had been required to drive, he’d probably
have run straight into a tree, or off the road into a ditch. There were tears in
Nora’s eyes, too, but she didn’t surrender to them. She bit her lip and drove as
if she had been trained for stunt work in the movies. At the end of the dirt
lane, they turned right, heading north on the twisty Pacific Coast Highway
toward Carmel, where there was sure to be at least one veterinarian.
During the drive, Travis talked to Einstein, trying to soothe and encourage him.
“Everything’s going to be all right, just fine, it’s not as bad as it seems,
you’ll be good as new.”
Einstein whimpered and struggled weakly in Travis’s arms for a moment, and
Travis knew what the dog was thinking. He was afraid that the vet would see the
tattoo in his ear, would know what it meant, and would send him back to
Banodyne.
“Don’t you worry about that, fur face. Nobody’s going to take you away from us.
By God, they aren’t. They’ll have to walk through me first, and they aren’t