“What else?”
Her reaction confirms what I already know, but surgery in many ways would be the most satisfying. The idea of stabbing a scalpel into the octopus and starting to cut is so appealing, I almost want to do it myself. To bring about his demise at the violent end of a knife. But there’s no way for even the most decorated surgeon to do this without also stabbing a knife into Lily. Neither of us can abide by this, if it’s even a worthwhile option at all.
“There’s chemotherapy and radiation.”
“What do those things do?”
“They would try to shrink the octo—him, I suppose.” It’s a funny visual, like a cartoon. The octopus getting smaller and smaller in front of our eyes until he has only a high squeaky voice and croaks something along the lines of “I’m mellllt-t-t-ting,” like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“Do those hurt like surgery?”
I try to imagine putting Lily through either. What they would both do to her already subdued spirit. Her voice would be lost. I can’t imagine ever hearing her exclaim I! JUST! CAME! BACK! FROM! CHEMOTHERAPY! AND! IT! WAS! SO! MUCH! FUN! LET’S! ALL! STICK! PEANUT! BUTTER! TO! THE! ROOFS! OF! OUR! MOUTHS! AND! LICK! FRANTICALLY! UNTIL! IT’S! GONE!
I can’t imagine ever hearing her exclaim anything again.
“Neither is pleasant,” I say.
“Next,” she says dismissively.
“They can put you on steroids to try to reduce the octopus that way—reduce the swelling he’s causing on your brain—and start you on anticonvulsants to lessen the frequency of seizures. But those do a lot of damage to your kidneys.”
Lily has already had several courses of steroids on occasions when swelling returned to her spine. I used to find the idea of her on steroids funny—that I might come home and find a dachshund-shaped hole in the wall and half the cars on the block overturned in a Hulk-like rage. But only funny because I was so scared. I needed to think of the steroids as superhuman, supercanine. There could be no surgery for her again on her spine. The steroids had to be powerful. They had to work.
“Harrumph,” Lily scoffs, summing up her feelings on all the choices.
She’s not going to help me make this decision. She’s a dog and has other concerns, and what about any of this can she really understand? Or maybe she’s made her decision, and what I need to do is listen. Maybe she knows what the vet says, what may seem obvious to anyone who thinks about it. That there is no true cure for canine octopus. Not any that has been discovered yet.
Lily stands on my lap and raises one of her front paws in her best guard-dog stance.
LOOK! THE! DOLPHINS! ARE! BACK! AND! THEY’RE! JUMPING! I! WANT! TO! JUMP! IN! THE! WAVES! LIKE! THAT!
I look up and the pod has returned, and sure enough, they are jumping and twisting and flipping and flopping playfully in the rising tide.
And yet even more enchanting is Lily’s voice. The one I can’t bear to dim or silence. It’s older, and her exclamations are fewer and farther between. Her puppyish enthusiasm is gone. But it is still her voice. It is still her.
“You don’t like to get wet,” I say.
“Oh, yeah,” Lily says. She settles back down in my lap.
“It’s a fun idea, though, Mouse. Splashing in the waves.”
After a pause Lily looks up at me. “Sometimes I think of you as Dad.”
My heart rises in my throat.
That’s the only term of endearment I need.
Ink
1.
It’s late, past the time I usually go searching for Lily to bring her to bed, except tonight I don’t have to search for her because she’s creating such a ruckus in the hallway, barking and growling and carrying on. When I catch up to her, she’s staring into the corner between the bedroom and bathroom doors, in her offensive low crouch, hackles raised, clearly startled and upset.
“Goose? Goose! Mongoose! What is it?”
She doesn’t miss a beat or move to back down or acknowledge my presence in any way. She just barks at the damned corner like it’s an advancing battalion. I’m already leaning down to grab her when she stops me cold in my tracks.
THIS! LLAMA! BEACHBALL! SEVEN! PARLIAMENT! CASSEROLE! ANTARCTICA! PAJAMAS!
What the . . .
We both stare at each other, frozen. It’s like being in a horror film when someone starts speaking in tongues and the whole room falls silent. I’m almost waiting for Lily’s head to rotate like an owl’s and for her to start vomiting pea soup. But I know for a fact she’s not possessed by demons—just one demon, a squishy, eight-tentacled prick. I scoop her up and squeeze her tight to soothe her, but she wriggles left, then right, then nearly out of my grip altogether. It takes a moment pressed against my chest for her to snap out of whatever trance she’s in, and when she does she begins to shake uncontrollably in my arms.
“Guppy, what was that?”
Lily turns from me to the light, then from the light to the dining room, then from the dining room to the bedroom.