Einstein, sat on the floor beside him, and put one hand on his shoulder, just to
let him know that she was there.
Keene was becoming slightly impatient with—and thoroughly baffled by— their
tumultuous emotional response to the bad news. A new note of sternness entered
his voice as he said, “Listen, all we can do is give him top-flight care and
hope for the best. He’ll have to remain here, of course, because distemper
treatment is complex and ought to be administered under veterinary supervision.
I’ll have to keep him on the intravenous fluids, antibiotics .
and there’ll be regular anticonvulsants and sedatives if he begins to have
seizures.”
Under Nora’s hand, Einstein shivered as if he had heard and understood the grim
possibilities.
“All right, okay, yes,” Travis said, “obviously, he’s got to stay here in your
office. We’ll stay with him.”
“There’s no need—” Keene began.
“Right, yes, no need,” Travis said quickly, “but we want to stay, we’ll be okay,
we can sleep here on the floor tonight.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Keene said.
“Yes, it is, oh yes, entirely possible,” Travis said, babbling now in his
eagerness to convince the vet. “Don’t worry about us, Doctor. We’ll manage just
fine. Einstein needs us here, so we’ll stay, the important thing is that we
stay, and of course we’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience.”
“But I’m not running a hotel!”
“We must stay,” Nora said firmly.
Keene said, “Now, really, I’m a reasonable man, but—”
With both hands, Travis seized the vet’s right hand and held it tightly,
startling Keene. “Listen, Dr. Keene, please, let me try to explain. I know this
is an unusual request. I know we must sound like a couple of lunatics to you,
but we’ve got our reasons, and they’re good ones. This is no ordinary dog, Dr.
Keene. He saved my life—”
“And he saved mine, too,” Nora said. “In a separate incident.”
“And he brought us together,” Travis said. “Without Einstein, we would never
have met, never married, and we’d both be dead.”
Astonished, Keene looked from one to the other. “You mean he saved your
lives—literally? And in two separate incidents?”
“Literally,” Nora said.
“And then brought you together?”
“Yes,” Travis said. “Changed our lives in more ways than we can count or ever
explain.”
Held fast in Travis’s hands, the vet looked at Nora, lowered his kind eyes to
the wheezing retriever, shook his head, and said, “I’m a sucker for heroic dog
stories. I’ll want to hear this one, for sure.”
“We’ll tell you all about it,” Nora promised. But, she thought, it’ll be a
carefully edited version.
“When I was five years old,” James Keene said, “I was saved from drowning by a
black Labrador.”
Nora remembered the beautiful black lab in the living room and wondered if it
was actually a descendant of the animal that had saved Keene—or just a reminder
of the great debt he owed to dogs.
“All right,” Keene said, “you can stay.”
“Thank you.” Travis’s voice cracked. “Thank you.”
Freeing his hand from Travis, Keene said, “But it’ll be at least forty-eight
hours before we can be at all confident that Einstein will survive. It’ll be a
long haul.”
“Forty-eight hours is nothing,” Travis said. “Two nights of sleeping on the
floor. We can handle that.”
Keene said, “I have a hunch that, for you two, forty-eight hours is going to be
an eternity, under the circumstances.” He looked at his wristwatch and said,
“Now, my assistant will arrive in about ten minutes, and shortly after that
we’ll open the office for morning hours. I can’t have you underfoot in here
while I’m seeing other patients. And you wouldn’t want to wait in the patient
lounge with a bunch of other anxious owners and sick animals; that would only
depress you. You can wait in the living room, and when the office is closed late
this afternoon, you can return here to be with Einstein.”
“Can we peek in on him during the day?” Travis asked.
Smiling, Keene said, “All right. But just a peek.”
Under Nora’s hand, Einstein finally stopped shivering. Some of the tension went