He stopped at the landing outside his door to catch his breath and let his heart slow down. He didn’t think, Marfan’s Syndrome notwithstanding, that he could really cause his heart to detach from his chest by mere exercise. But the doctors always told him to be careful, and in any case, there was no reason to get Ruth worked up.
When he opened the door, he smiled. Ruth was waiting for him, and she was not smiling.
“I hoped you would be able to get the pills before class,” she said.
“I did.” John produced the pills and handed them over.
Ruth frowned at the bulge in his jacket. “Then what kept you?”
“A stray dog,” John said. He eased his jacket open. “Look, she’s been hurt.”
“Does she have a collar? A name?”
“No collar.” John shrugged. “Billy Redbird called her something… Ani-something. It means ‘dog’.”
“That shirt’s ruined,” Ruth told him.
“I know, but…I couldn’t leave the dog.” In the light of the apartment, John could see that the dog’s coloring was golden-brown. “You wouldn’t want me to.”
Ruth sighed. “I wouldn’t want you to. But don’t give me any hypocritical talk about God’s creatures.”
“There might be a God,” John said. “If there is, this is one of his creatures.”
“I’m going to give Sunitha medication.” Ruth looked at the instructions on the side of the medicine bottle. “You’re going to wash that dog.”
Ruth wandered into the bedroom where the girls slept. She and John slept on a futon in the main room of the apartment, which contained the kitchenette in the corner. John eased the dog into the kitchen sink, blocked the drain, and began to fill it with warm water. The dog whimpered and licked John’s hand.
“Speaking of God’s creatures,” John called, “I see you had the Mormons by.”
“They were the ones who were available,” she called back.
“Maybe these new pills will do the trick.”
“Something has to. Shh! Let me concentrate.”
John washed the puppy twice, once with dishwashing liquid, just a bit, and then he emptied and filled the sink again, to let her soak in the warm water and thoroughly rinse away the soap. She only objected when he touched her skin near her cuts. She had two injuries, one long cut across her belly and a second along one leg. John carefully washed the injuries too, which looked fresh, but not infected.
Then he laid the dog out on the floor, with the printed blanket and the printed raincoat beneath her. “I’m not going to give you a name,” he said, “because tomorrow I have to take you to a shelter. You’re little and cute, so don’t worry, you’ll be adopted. I’m just going to think of you as Dog in the meantime.”
He heard Sunitha whimpering from the bedroom; the sound felt like a knife in his spine. He set the printed beef in a bowl in front of Dog and then lay on the floor beside her. He had the tube of antiseptic cream from the kitchen first aid kit, and he daubed a long line along Dog’s injuries, almost emptying the tube. She had almost entirely stopped bleeding by the time he finished.
Ruth emerged. “Sunitha is unconscious, but maybe you’d like to go in and say goodnight to Ellie.”
John went into the bedroom. The girls slept in a bunkbed and Sunitha, the older child, was ordinarily on top. Since the fevers had started, they’d switched the girls’ places, so John stood beside the top bunk to kiss Ellie goodnight.
“Mom said something about a dog.” Ellie yawned.
“I found a dog on the way home,” John said. “We don’t have room for a dog, but she was hurt, so I brought her home to take care of her. Tomorrow you’ll see her, before I take her to the shelter.”
“We have room,” Ellie told him.
“Shh.” He kissed her. “Good night.”
Sunitha was sleep. She tossed and turned, sweating. John knelt beside her and leaned in to kiss her forehead. She murmured, long, monotonous drone syllables in a sing-song voice, but he couldn’t make out any words he recognized.
Ruth had already unfolded the futon and was lying down. John turned out the lights and lay beside her. He felt sweaty and dirty, but she smelled nice, as she always did.
“Someday, maybe we can get a dog,” she murmured. “When we live somewhere with more space.”
“Ellie would like that,” John said.
“Mmm.”
“Sarovar has a lot of space,” John whispered.
“Mmm.”
John slept, but fitfully. He dreamed of his sick daughter. Sunitha ran through forests and across hilltops, chasing a friend and laughing. When he awoke, he heard whimpering, and eventually he took a pillow and stretched out on the floor beside Dog.
She hadn’t peed yet, at least.
John lay on his side. Dog pressed up against him and laid her muzzle on his bicep. He felt her breath on his cheek. She still whimpered from time to time, but much less.
John drifted in and out of sleep again.
He dreamed of Sunitha swimming in a deep blue pool. A friend swam with her, a friend who had no face, but who pulled her back from the deepest waters.
He awoke to the sound of Sunitha crying. He crept into her room and was joined by Ruth. Sunitha was hot and sweating. John fetched cold packs to slide beneath her and a damp cloth to wipe her forehead, and her cries died away.
“I’ll sit with her,” he whispered.
Ruth padded back to bed. John sat beside Sunitha’s bunk and found Dog pushing herself into his lap. His heart raced, but as he massaged the dog behind her ears and along her spine, his own stress dissipated. He fell gently into sleep.
He dreamed of darkness. He couldn’t see walls around him, but he felt them, and he sensed that they were closing in. He was running, and the ground beneath his feet was rocky and irregular, so he stumbled.
He skinned his face against an unseen rock wall.
In the darkness, he heard rhyming, drone-like chanting in an unknown tongue.
“Sunitha!” he cried. “Sunitha, where are you?”
“Dad!” Her voice was distant. It echoed and receded even as he heard it.
“Sunitha!”
She didn’t respond. In his heart, he knew that she was gone. Worse than that, he knew that she had died alone.
John woke up in a cold sweat. His body stank of sour fear, and cold gray morning light seared his eyeballs.
“John!” Ruth stood over him, shaking him by the arm. “John, wake up!”
John took a shuddering breath and tightened his shoulders before releasing them, trying to drive out the fear. “I’m awake,” he said.
“Mom,” he heard Sunitha say. “Dad.”
John turned, and he and his wife together looked at their oldest daughter. Ellie squirmed in the top bunk and lowered her head over the edge of the mattress to be part of the conversation, too.
Sunitha sat up, leaning against the wall. Her color was back to normal, she wasn’t sweating, her eyes were open. She even smiled.
And Dog lay sprawled out across her lap, head on her hip. Sunitha scratched the dog behind her ears and around her shoulders. A long mohawk of golden fur stood up along the beast’s spine.
“Dad.” Sunitha wore a slightly dazed smile. “She says she knows you.”
“Yes,” John said. “Yeah, I brought her home last night.”
“Her name is Animoosh,” Sunitha said. “She doesn’t like to smoke.”
John fought to keep his jaw from falling open.
Ruth laughed, a slight hysterical note to her voice. “No dog likes to smoke.”
“We’re keeping her, right?” Sunitha asked.
“We’re keeping A-Ni-Mooth,” Ellie said, repeating the name in big, loud chunks.
“We don’t really have the room,” John said. “My plan—”