As we walk two blocks and round the corner and climb the hill that gives us a distant view of the Hollywood sign, Lily catches the scent of something on the grass between the sidewalk and the street. I let her sniff. There will be no yanking her by the neck. She can have all the time in the world. And I will forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made. For the times I got so angry. For the times I’ve acted hatefully.
The afternoon air is cool, the haze is soft. The last few petals of the jacaranda trees color the sidewalk. The streets are empty. People are not yet home from work to walk their dogs. We don’t get any strange looks or sideways glances. No one stops to ask why there’s an octopus hitching a ride on my dog. In the distance, soft mountains and rolling hills mark the edge of the Los Angeles basin. There’s the slightest hint of salt in the air—you’d have to really want to smell it, but it’s there.
“Oh, look! The Hollywood sign.” It’s the octopus. Lily has finished sniffing and has turned to look back at me.
I roll my eyes.
“It’s smaller than I imagined.”
“You’re smaller than I imagined.” It’s not much of a comeback and I’m not even sure what I mean by it, but it’s all I have. Smaller as in petty, I guess.
For the briefest of moments, I think maybe the octopus just wants to see some sights. The Hollywood sign. Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Venice Beach. The building where they filmed Die Hard. That maybe he mistook Lily for a small, four-legged tour bus, and he’s riding up top on a double-decker waiting for the next photo op.
But I know this isn’t true.
Still, it’s important for us to get out more, I think, while looking out at the expanse. Not so the octopus can leave, but because maybe the octopus is here to stay.
Wednesday Night
I wake to find the bed shaking and immediately think it’s an earthquake. We haven’t had one, a memorable one, for years, and in the back of my mind I’ve been preparing.
Expecting.
Waiting.
I prop myself up on my elbows and stare into the darkness. Something’s different; something’s not right. There’s not the usual rolling sensation of surfing tectonic waves. My stomach isn’t sinking in the way it does when you reach the top of a roller coaster, in the split seconds before the first drop. There isn’t the usual calmness that overtakes me, the antithesis of how you think you’d react in an earthquake—the ability to think where flashlight batteries are, to count the ounces of bottled drinking water in the house, to remember how a transistor radio works, to wonder if you’re wearing something acceptably dignified for when your body is found.
I place my hand on Lily and the source of this seismic activity becomes clear—she is in the throes of another seizure. I roll onto my side and pull her tightly to my chest. My lips are right behind her ear, behind the octopus, and I whisper angrily, “Let go of her. Let go of her. Let go!” And then to Lily, “I’ve got you. I’m here. Shhh.”
My mind drifts and I think of us in a tented war hospital, somewhere not far from the battlefield. The air is hot and thick, and Lily, the wounded veteran, is shaking in a morphine haze, deep in jarring flashbacks of the horrific events of war. I am the loving nurse trying to calm the soldier, telling her to ignore the blasts of distant shells, ignore the moans of her fellow wounded, ignore the stench of charred flesh and destroyed lives, ignore the cawing of spiteful magpies singing gleefully of impending death, all while calmly wiping her forehead.
Lily continues to convulse with her eyes rolled back and my terror metastasizes into helplessness, paralysis, as I wait for the convulsions to stop. I hold my hand under her chin to keep her from thrashing her neck. It occurs to me that she may bite, involuntarily or out of fear, but I don’t care. Let her bite me. I would welcome the pain. I would rather something awake me from my utter uselessness. My tears start as I begin to feel like the octopus is squeezing my own head, his eight arms suctioned to my skin, compressing like the vise of my panic attacks. I almost remove my hand from under Lily’s jaw to see if the octopus has not in fact jumped from her head to mine. Almost. Because I know he hasn’t. I can see him still, his tentacles gripped firmly around her.
As the shaking slows, I’m aware of a growing warmness underneath me. A wetness that spreads like a drop of food coloring in water. The warmth quickly cools. Lily has wet the bed and her urine seeps across the sheets. I don’t try to remove either of us from the puddle until the seizure fully subsides, and even then, we lie there unwavering as my alarm clock ticks off several more minutes.
I think of all the nights when Lily failed to pee on our bedtime walks. How much stress this would cause me. How difficult it was on those nights to fall asleep, to stay asleep, frustrated that I might have to take her to the yard in the darkness of predawn. So many arguments this caused between us. I always thought I knew better when it came to her needing to pee, but until this night she had never once actually wet the bed. And now that she has, we just lie there in the accident and the minutes on the clock keep changing and the love I have for her keeps growing and we both keep drawing breath.
What was so horrible about it?