But I stayed focused. For Peanut.
I stood up as Dr. Addison got closer, totally unaware that I was rocking the opposite of his GQ cover shoot vibe: I was still in the cotton calico baby-doll pajamas I’d slept in. And I should’ve popped on my sneakers as I headed out the door, but I somehow traveled two blocks to the vet clinic in my fuzzy slippers shaped like bunny rabbits, instead.
But the mortification of that would hit me later. Right now, there were only two things in the world: the little fuzzball dog burrito in my arms and the man who needed to save him.
Dr. Addison slowed as he got close, taking in the sight of us.
“There’s something wrong,” I said, my voice trembly from crying. “He won’t eat. He won’t move.” And now, we both noticed, he was panting.
Dr. Addison nodded like an unflappable hero and said, “Let’s get him inside.”
He led us straight past all the exam rooms, back to the back, where the real veterinary medicine took place. All the boarded dogs in their kennels woke up as we came in and started barking and whining and rattling around.
Dr. Addison didn’t even notice.
When we got to an exam table, he said, “Remind me of his age?”
“Fourteen,” I said—then added, “A very youthful fourteen,” like that might matter.
Dr. Addison reached for Peanut, and I handed him over like a swaddled babe. Then he unwrapped him, saying, “Hey, buddy. Let’s get a look at you.”
Peanut must have really been feeling bad, because even though he didn’t like men in general, he tolerated Dr. Addison—holding still and crouching on the stainless-steel exam table.
Dr. Addison ran his hands all around, feeling for lumps and bumps. Palpating things. Checking his gums, which were, apparently, too white.
“That’s bad?” I asked.
“They should be pinker,” Dr. Addison answered, but he was already on to checking other things.
When the rest of the staff arrived, they gently led me back out to the waiting area, saying they could work faster that way. The faceless tech I’d met the first day said they’d be running blood work and chemistries, checking red and white cells and platelets and kidney and liver function. “We’ll know a lot more in a few hours,” she said. “You can go home. We’ll call you when we get the results.”
“I’ll stay here, if that’s all right.”
The faceless tech nodded. “Sure.” Then she held out a folded lab coat to me. “Dr. Addison said you might say that. And he thought you might be … cold.”
And so I put it on and stayed. I think I was hungry, but I didn’t notice. I hadn’t had any coffee that morning, and I did notice the caffeine headache creeping up the back of my neck. I didn’t have anything to do—hadn’t even brought my phone—so I just squeezed over and over on that little spot between your thumb and forefinger that’s supposed to be a pressure point for relieving tension. Pressing on one hand, then the other … waiting for it to work.
It didn’t really work.
I kept expecting—any minute—for Dr. Addison to come striding out like a TV doctor and tell me that everything was fixed.
Instead, at noon, he came out and told me they wanted to give Peanut a blood transfusion.
That didn’t sound good.
I worked my pressure points even harder.
“The labs came back,” he said, “and we’ve diagnosed him with IMHA, which stands for immune-mediated hemolytic anemia.”
Oh god. More medical terms. I shook my head. “What is that?”
“His immune system is attacking his own red blood cells. His hematocrit was at twelve when it should be closer to fifty. That’s why he’s panting. He can’t get enough oxygen.”
All I could ask was, “Why is this happening?”
It was probably more of a rhetorical, big-picture, why-is-my-whole-life-falling-apart-all-at-once question than a medical one. But Dr. Addison answered it anyway, all earnest: “We don’t know what causes it,” he said. “It’s idiopathic. All of a sudden, the immune system just goes haywire and starts attacking itself.”
“Is it curable?” I asked.
“It’s life-threatening,” he said, “but it can be cured. The survival rate is thirty to seventy percent.”
Thirty to seventy percent? What a useless piece of information. “I really was hoping for just a flat yes.”
“We’re going to give him everything we’ve got,” Dr. Addison promised. “He looks like a fighter.”
At that, I felt tears flooding up in my chest. “The thing is…” I said then, trying to push my voice to sound normal through the tightness in my throat. “The thing is … I can’t lose him. Do you know what I mean? I can’t.”
Dr. Addison nodded, and I could sense a new tenderness about him. “The blood transfusion should help a lot,” he said next. “Give him the energy he needs to fight.”
I nodded, my face wet again. “I know everybody thinks their dog is the best dog, but the thing is my dog really is actually, literally, the best.” What was I saying?
“Later today,” Dr. Addison went on, staying focused, “we’ll want to get him eating. Can you tell me his favorite foods?”
I sat up straighter and pawed at my eyes, determined to pull it together. “Yes. He loves tortillas, doughnuts, and rigatoni Bolognese. He’s a big fan of saag paneer. He goes crazy for California rolls. He also loves crepes—but only like the kind you get in Paris. If they’re too pancakey, that’s a no.”
Dr. Addison tilted his head. “I was thinking more like … dog food.”
“He’s not really a dog food guy,” I said.
“Your dog doesn’t eat dog food?”
“I mean, it’ll do in a pinch. But if you’re asking me what he likes…”
“All those carbs can’t be healthy for him.”
I’d heard this before, and I’d defended my little guy before, too.
“He’s a foodie,” I said. “He has a very refined palate.”
Dr. Addison took that in.
And then a little joke I’d made many times popped into my head, and I just said it now without really stopping to wonder if, in our current situation, it was still true: “You know those old guys who smoke a pack a day but live to be a hundred?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s kind of like that, but with croissants.”
* * *
I WANTED TO just stay in the waiting room of the vet clinic all day and all night, forever—but hunger and exhaustion forced me, not long before dinnertime, to leave Peanut in Dr. Addison’s sexy but capable hands and go home.
I also wanted to take that lab coat with me, but I left it—walking home instead in my baby-doll pj’s and bunny slippers, feeling extra naked and alone, and fully expecting to run into some humiliating stranger. A former boss. A premed professor. My dad.
But the person I ran into was Mr. Kim.
I knew him, of course, because he always wore dress shoes, suit pants, a button-down Oxford shirt, and suspenders. He’d been dressing like that Sue’s entire life. No matter what he was doing.