A Fighting Chance

“Babe, I just left the vet.” He paused, and I could hear him breathing. His voice was tight. “It’s bad. Otis has lymphoma.” I felt the whole car start to sway. Otis? Lymphoma?

For a moment I sat very still. Suddenly I was acutely aware that I never spent even a minute of the campaign alone. I didn’t have an office where I could shut the door or even a ladies’ room where I could get away for a few minutes. Instead, my young staffer Adam Travis picked me up almost every morning in what we called the Blue Bomber (a bright blue Ford Escape) and drove me around to the day’s events. I would ride along next to him, making calls or reading briefings, until we jumped out and met with people. We refueled at Burger King or Chipotle, but our job was to get out and spend time with people. Some days it was just Adam and me, and other days we’d have two or three people riding with us in the backseat.

Today we had a full backseat. When Bruce hung up, I wanted to weep. I wanted to go home and hold Otis. I wanted Bruce to hold both of us. I wanted to cry out loud and blow my nose and cry some more. Instead, I leaned my head against the cold window and cried as inconspicuously as I could. I didn’t want to scare the young staffers in the car. I was pretty sure that Senate candidates weren’t supposed to cry.

The next two days were a blur. I had a full schedule, and Bruce was teaching, but he got Otis to MSPCA-Angell animal hospital. Otis was in such terrible shape that the vets started emergency treatments to stabilize him. From healthy on Monday morning to nearly dead on Thursday night. The world felt very uncertain.

Otis’s new doctor, Carrie Wood, called us to explain that the lymphoma would eventually be fatal. But she also told us that the disease could be treated and that about 50 percent of all dogs given treatments were alive a year later. Of those dogs, about 50 percent were still alive a year after that, and so on. Otis had a good chance of being with us for another couple of years—and maybe longer.

I was worried about what the treatments would do to Otis. Would he be sick all the time? Would he be in pain?

But Carrie said none of that would happen. The treatments would generally make him feel better, and he wouldn’t have any of the awful side effects that people experience with chemo treatments. We said to go ahead.

When we picked Otis up from the hospital on Friday afternoon, he was shaky but clearly happy to head home. I didn’t think he could climb into the backseat, but once I opened the car door, he was halfway in before I could bend down to help him. He was taking no chances of being left behind.

The treatments worked like magic. Otis seemed to bounce back as quickly as he had fallen ill. He was cheerful and frisky—or at least as frisky as Otis ever got. He was ready for his walks, and he began to gain back some of the weight he’d lost during the Week from Hell.

But the diagnosis changed me. Time with Otis seemed more precious, something not to be taken for granted. Before I left early in the morning or when the three of us settled in late at night, I often tried to snap a picture of Otis, as if I could somehow save these minutes. I spent hours on the phone, and I started sitting on the floor and gently combing Otis and rubbing his belly while I talked to people miles away. Otis seemed changed, too. Instead of snoring softly in another room while I worked on my computer, he moved closer to me. He would more often rouse himself and come over to get his ears rubbed or ask me to lean over and put my forehead against his. We were in this together.

But the campaign never slowed down. Every day the schedulers tried to squeeze in just a few more phone calls, a few more meetings. I went faster and faster.

As the weeks flew by, all time seemed more precious. Out in California, Atticus was learning to walk. Lavinia was moving up to the next level in her gymnastics class. Octavia was in fifth grade, and suddenly she was almost as tall as Amelia. I worried that real life was passing me by.

Alex had an announcement of his own: He was getting married to his girlfriend, Elise. He was a lucky guy. She was kind and gentle, with the sweetest smile I had ever seen. Alex and Elise were planning to buy a home in Los Angeles not too far from Amelia. He assured me that he and Elise would get married after the election. The campaign seemed to have ripple effects everywhere.