She had the leash looped around her wrist, though. Better to wait till it was loose in her hand. Then I could just snap it and run.
“Come on, Sonoma. Don’t you have to pee? I do,” she said, laughing, and I hoped she would, right then and there. Talk about a distraction. But no, too much of a lady. We slogged on.
A thick pine tree had snapped at the base and half fallen in the river, years ago from the look of it. “How pretty,” Monica said, turning the camera on again. It did look picturesque, the sparse, rain-dark branches stretched out over churning water. She took a few shots. Then, “Oh, look, Sonoma, a spiderweb. See it?”
I saw it, in the crotch of a dead branch at the end of the tree, just before it dipped into the river. It would’ve been invisible if it hadn’t been shiny with drying raindrops. Yes, very pretty. Why don’t you go out there and take a picture of it?
And that’s exactly what she did.
What a moron. Are you crazy? I thought, before I recollected myself. Be that stupid; go farther out there with a camera in one hand, a dog leash in the other, the racing brown river beneath you. Please, after you.
But she was so athletic and surefooted, she never even tottered. And she wasn’t stupid enough to go to the end, only halfway, with me about four feet away, the length of the leash, just one long leap to shore. The expensive camera had a telephoto lens. I heard it whir into action, watched Monica sight her spiderweb picture, one-handed, through the LCD. I started to shake. From anticipation, I thought, but then I realized-I was the one who was scared. The chopping sound of the river, the potent smell of water, and the humid air were the last good memories I had of my human self. What came next was all a nightmare. I hated rivers.
Still one-h anded, Monica snapped off a couple of shots, then tilted the camera ninety degrees for a vertical. Now or never. I dug my toenails into the bark and jerked my head, my whole body, to the side as hard as I could.
She yelped as the leash flew out of her hand, and I spun and leapt to the bank.
A splash, hard to hear over the chop. I looked back. Oh, for the love of-
Monica lay flat out in the water, gripping a branch in one hand, camera high in the other, trying to keep it above the drink. Let it go, you idiot-but I saw myself in another river, leaping cartoonishly after a slippery cell phone, and I knew she wouldn’t.
The current was strong enough that her feet were bobbing at the top behind her. I didn’t know I was barking until I had to stop to hear what she was yelling. “Help! I can’t swim!” She gave an angry wail and dropped the camera-so she could grab for the branch with that hand, too. Crack. The branch broke and the water took her.
It was supposed to be the other way around, but in that moment my life passed before my eyes. I saw it all in fine detail, a Technicolor highlight film, the ups and downs of Laurie Summer’s life. Glimpsed as a whole like that, I could see it came up short in an important department, the very one Sonoma the dog excelled in. The love-and-beloved department. The only one that mattered to her, and really the only one that mattered-I saw it in this extreme instant with perfect clarity-period.
No point jumping in the water here-I’d catch Monica faster if I ran. Mud flew behind my feet as I tore along the bank, dodging rocks, trees, bushes, brush. Monica sailed downriver like a kayak, her dark head bobbing in and out of sight. I caught up when she slammed into a tangle of wood and debris swirling in the middle of the stream. She flailed for a branch, but her grip slipped. I made a running jump from an outcrop of bank and landed in the same roaring surge that took her down again.
Rocks! One sheared my side; another cracked me in the forehead. I recognized the pain more than felt it. The current flipped me over; I swallowed water. Over the tumult, I heard shouting, a man’s voice. Sam’s? Had he heard me barking? Monica saw me for the first time and reached out-to save herself or me, I’ll never know. She missed, but we flailed side by side long enough so that I could snatch up the shoulder of her blouse in my teeth. We smacked violently into something hard and stationary. Another fallen tree, anchored to shore. Grab it, I told her, but she was too dazed; she just hung there between me and the tree, limp.
Yes, it was Sam; I recognized his voice yelling her name. All that was keeping me afloat was the force of the water battering me against Monica. Grab something, I begged her, shaking the glob of wet cotton in my mouth. It was hard to breathe. I shook her again. Her eyes stayed closed, but she reached out for the log and hung on.
Now I could spit out the cloth and get a breath. Sam was forty feet away, sprinting for us along the muddy bank. “Hang on!” he kept shouting. Except I couldn’t-no hands. Monica began to cough and retch, reviving. The one paw I could keep on the tree trunk suddenly felt it vibrate. Sam was trying to walk on it, arms out for balance. He slipped and fell to his knees. But he kept coming at a crawl.
At the last, he stretched out full length, slapped his hand over Monica’s hand, and she was safe.
I couldn’t hold on to anything anymore. I slipped under the log, resurfaced on the other side. The drag of the current felt like heavy, coaxing hands pulling me down. I fought the temptation to let go as long as I could. Good-bye. Good-bye. It wasn’t so much sad as inevitable. The last I saw of Sam, he had one arm around Monica, the other stretched out to me. This is so stupid was my final thought the first time this happened to me. This time it was I love you so much.
Same sky, different trees. Where was I? This upward view looked familiar, painfully so, but when I turned my head to the side, I didn’t recognize anything. Scattered benches, tidy walks, trimmed hedges. Brick building. Institutional neatness.
Wait a minute.
“What did she say?” asked a tense female voice behind me.
A different tense female voice answered. “I think she said-I think she said-‘I love you.’ ”
That voice I recognized. “Hettie?” I asked in a croak.
The nurse loomed over me, gaping, the whites of her eyes eclipsing the irises. “Laurie?”
I nodded. “I do love you, but”-I had to clear my throat-“ I was thinking of Sam. Would you call him? On his cell-he’s not home.”
The other woman must be an aide; her name tag read “ Victoria.” She and Hettie grabbed each other’s hands and started to cry. So of course I did, too.
Hettie pulled herself together first. “Yes, call,” she told Victoria. “Call the husband. And go get Dr. Lazenby. And Dr. Pei. Hurry!”
Not much time for reflection after that. Nursing homes for the incurably comatose don’t experience miracle awakenings very often, I guess. For mine, Hope Springs went quietly wild. Doctors and nurses surrounded me, then aides, staff, social workers, custodians, even other patients-you’d think there would be a protocol for times like this, rare though they might be. But nobody seemed to be in charge, and everybody was so happy. Dr. Lazenby himself wheeled me back into my room, so then the crowd had to disperse. “Keep talking,” he told me, passing a file or something up and down the soles of my feet. “How do you feel? What’s your full name?”
“Laura Claire Marie O’Dunne. Summer. I feel… awake. Where’s Sam? And Benny? Did you call?”
“On their way.” He peered into my right eye with a lighted scope. “Count backward from twenty, please.”
In a lull in the excitement, I had a little cry myself. “It’s natural,” Hettie assured me. “Strong emotion can very often follow a prolonged period of semi- or unconsciousness. It’s relief, confusion, the stress-or nothing at all. You just go ahead and cry.”
Such a nice woman. I did love her. But I wasn’t weeping from relief or stress or confusion; I was weeping for Sonoma.