The blind man agreed.
“Strike your cat and you’ve lost a friend. Hit your dog, which I hope you will never do, but nevertheless if you strike him just once in a lifetime he will stare at you with his tender eyes and say, ‘What’s wrong? What was that all about? Don’t you know that I love you and forgive you?’ And then he will turn first one cheek and then the other and will go on loving you forever. That is what a dog is.”
During all this, the dog in the blood-red bandana sat by the blind man, looking at the patient with the most tender and beautiful stare he had ever seen. Listening, the dog did neither acknowledge the compliments nor ignore them, but sat quietly in the midst of his beauty.
Finally, when the dog felt that the blind man had said his say, the dog wandered off into the corridors of the hospital, and welcoming cries and laughter could be heard.
In the following days rumors spread through the hospital that an amazing number of people were heading home; people who had lived there for weeks, or sometimes months, suddenly packed up and left, to the curiosity and amazement of the doctors and to the whispering wonder of the nurses. Patient after patient departed and the number of really sick people in the hospital diminished, and the number of deaths reported, or rumored, sank down to almost zero.
During the fourth week, lying in bed one night, the patient felt a sharp pain in his right wrist and took some aspirin, but the pain did not go away.
During the night he half-wakened because he felt someone sit on the bed beside him, but he could not be sure of that.
Half drowsy, he sensed a kind of breathing near him and then heard a strange sound that reminded him of a summer night when he was a child.
How beautiful it had been at three in the morning, with the moonlight streaming in through the panes of the window, to hear a beautiful far sound from the kitchen where the icebox stood.
In the drip-pan under the icebox cold water from the blocks of ice was trapped below and at three in the morning there was a soft sound of lapping; the family dog, thirsty, had half-crawled under the icebox and was drinking the cool clear waters from the fallen ice.
To lie quietly in bed, listening to that beautiful far sound, was one of the most touching experiences in his life.
In the middle of remembering or half-dreaming the sound of the lapping of ice water, the patient thought he felt something move on his wrist.
It was much like the brief licking of a tongue moving to catch the ice water on that summer night long ago.
Then he fell asleep.
When he woke in the morning, the pain in his wrist was gone.
In the following days the dog with the blood-red bandana wandered at will through the hospital, this time alone; the blind man was long since gone.
The dog seemed to know where it was going and came often into the patient’s room and gazed upon him very quietly for long periods of time.
They conversed in their minds; the dog seemed to understand everything the patient wished to say, even though he never spoke.
The dog then wandered off through the hospital and in the days to come the sounds of laughter, the shouts, the cries welcoming him, diminished until it seemed that the hospital was growing empty. Not only did the doctors cease visiting on Sundays, or golf Wednesdays, but they seemed not to arrive on Tuesdays or Thursdays and, finally, hardly at all on Fridays.
The echoes in the corridors grew loud and the sounds of breathing from the far rooms ceased.
On a final day the patient, feeling alert and sensing that at any moment he might arise and don his clothes without the advice of doctors and then head home, sat up in bed and called to the high corridors, “Hello! Anyone there?”
A long silence from the quiet hospital rooms. Again he cried, “Anyone there? Hello!” There were only echoes from the halls and all the avenues throughout the entire building stood still.
Very quietly, the patient began to dress in preparation to leave.
Finally, at three in the afternoon, the handsome dog with the blood-red bandana came padding by in the silent corridor and stood by the door.
The patient said, “Come in.”
The dog entered and stood by the bed.
“Sit,” said the patient.
The dog sat and gazed at him with great luminous eyes, a tender expression, a half- smile on his mouth.
Finally the patient said, “What is your name?”
The dog studied him with his great luminous eyes.
His mouth moved just the merest touch and a whisper came forth:
“Jesus,”said the dog.“That is my name. Jesus. What is yours?”