The floating amoebas that were my surgical team slid me back onto the inflatable bed and I was again tethered to flesh. My trunk felt dense as felled pine. At age 66, I was grateful not to be composting in the forest — at least not yet.
Back in my hospital room, my senses sharpened. Susan, my wife, and our Boston terrier, Lilly, dozed on a nearby couch frayed by others’ prayers for their loved one’s recovery. The hospital courtyard sprawled beyond the picture windows. Fluorescent tubes lit the halls against the deep lapis of night. At the entrance to my room a scuffling of shoes stopped.
A shadow filled the drawn curtain. Lilly bolted up from mommy’s lap and flattened her ears. There was a soft rap upon the door and the attending physician walked in.
Ro! Ro! Ro! Ro! Ro!, Lilly whooped, to which the doctor startled.
“It’s okay, girlie!” I whispered.
“So sorry about that,” Susan said. “She’s protecting her daddy.”
“So she is,” said the doctor. He stopped by after my surgery for a quick summary: small, closed-loop bowel obstruction, likely caused by scar tissue; a remnant of neonatal surgery.
The doctor pulled back my gown damp with the vapors of induced sleep. He scanned the surgery site and sank two fingers into my gut. I winced. Lilly growled. The bed rails quaked.
“Shhh, Lilly. It’s okay,” I said.
Satisfied with his findings, the doctor withdrew his fingers. Lilly stopped growling. The doctor pressed another spot a few millimeters away. Lilly growled again. Again she stopped when his second probe ended.
“Someone’s very invested in your health,” the doctor said. “Good news is: you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
I wish I could say the same about the new hospice client for whom I just started volunteering.
“Bud’s” lights have been dimming for months, a casualty of advancing Parkinson’s disease and accompanying Lewy Body dementia. His daughter-in-law, son and grandson dote on their elder and have borne vigil to his memories vanishing in tandem with his social filters. Bud’s biggest comforts are classic Western movies and the company of his black standard poodle, Shane.
Two days before my small bowel did its strangulation dance, I called upon Bud and his family at their modest home a half hour east of Portland. I was informed in advance that Bud and Shane shared an indelible bond: “like white to rice,” the daughter-in-law said. As bud’s life fades, the bond has intensified.
I’d prepared myself to pose no threat, to stay serene no matter how I was received. Unfortunately, there was no way for the family to prepare Shane for my arrival. When I breached the door, a stampede of thudding paws ground to a halt three feet from me. Shane blasted into his vaulted bullhorn leaving little doubt as to Bud’s protector.
Shane’s barks crashed into me; waves of protective panic I’d do my best to quell with time, exposure and a stream of treats slipped to me on the sly by Bud’s family. As Bud and I chewed the virtues of Hang ‘em High with Clint Eastwood and he lassoed fragments of his Korean War experience, Shane quieted. He sniffed and licked my hand, but remained on alert — his gaze frozen in space midway between he and his master. When I so much as shifted in my seat, out came Shane’s bullhorn’s waves of warning.
Pets trust strangers on their own time, if at all. When guarding the most precious beings in their lives, the stakes are high even if the real threat appears not.
Lilly’s response to my visiting surgeon was brash, but reflective of ties forged by time and togetherness. Such was Shane’s bombastic reception of me — perhaps amplified by some sense that Bud’s snuggle chair would soon sit, empty.
Names in this story have been changed in deference to privacy.