Rusty was dead. He was quite thoroughly and completely
dead, and his passage to the hereafter appeared to have been marred by a
certain amount of thrashing about and the loss of many unpleasant bodily
fluids. He was the first thing that I noticed upon my arrival to work that
morning.
Ugh.
After a year at the family kennel I had dropped out of
high school in order to concentrate on building the premier pet care
establishment in the tri-state area.
That didn’t take very long, and so I briefly tried college, driving home
on weekends to work in the kennel. Romantic disaster derailed my academic plan by
the middle of spring semester, and from the depths of my heartbreak rose a
vision. Sparkling water, dramatic
gorges, beautiful hippies frolicking on the lakeshore, brilliant intellectuals
waving from the ivory towers of Cornell.
Ithaca! I disappeared from
college, hitched a trailer to my rusty green pickup truck, and went to seek my
fortune.
The job market in Utopia was a little tight, and,
strangely, the demand for double-dropouts-hoping-to-reinvent-themselves was not
great. Nevertheless I managed to land a
job in a veterinary hospital not far from my lakeshore cabin apartment. I worked from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 PM, which
left plenty of time to sit on a discarded sofa outside the cabin with my dog,
Amiga, contemplating the sunset and counting the pennies I had left after
buying groceries and cheap beer.
Certain facets of my job as a veterinary kennelhand and
technician were not very glamorous. Okay, maybe none of them were glamorous,
but I enjoyed my work most of the time. This particular morning, not so much. I
took care of the furry residents who were still in possession of their
heartbeats, keeping busy until the vet could arrive and check out the Rusty
situation. Cats purred, rambunctious terriers barked, and the ancient German
Shepherd hobbled on three legs to the exercise run.
I had finished the basics and was getting ready to give
the first water-therapy session to a spinal surgery patient when the vet stuck
his head into the therapy room. “Ummmm…” he said, seeming to be searching for
the right words.
That was unlike him, so I stopped what I was doing.
“Yes?”
“Ummm…Rusty needs
a bath.”
I gave him a minute to see the error of his ways. He was
young. Perhaps he’d ingested some recreational substance a bit too late last
night. Seconds ticked by, and he wasn’t taking it back. “Alan,” I said, my
voice calm and patient, “Rusty is dead.”
He shuffled more fully into the room and looked down at
his shoes. “Yeah, I know. His owner wants to pick him up so that they can bury
him in the back yard. We can’t send him out like this.”
No, of course not. I knew that. I could not imagine how
to begin such a grisly task, though, so I just stared at him. I could see
Rusty’s tail and left hind leg from there, deathly still, drenched in vomit,
feces, and blood. I thought about the idea that there is a parallel universe
for each person, and somewhere perhaps another version of me was lounging on
the deck of a cruise ship headed for Havana. Was there a way to choose that
reality, like a switch on a railroad track?
I didn’t know how not to imagine how Rusty’s last minutes had felt, and
how it would be to be alone when everything is so horribly wrong.
“I’ll help you get him into the tub,” Alan said, and
slipped on a rubber apron. We wrestled Rusty, blessedly not terribly stiff,
yet, out of his stainless steel cage and onto a metal rack in the tub. Alan
disappeared at that point, and I set about bathing the ex-dog.
I talked to Rusty as I worked, at first, trying to keep
my revulsion under control. “There are advantages to this method, you know,” I
said. “When you were alive, you were pretty much of a handful. Manners were not
your long suit. Now, you’re a dream! Left paw up! There, see? It’s up! No
resistance at all. Left paw down! Good dog. The only thing I can’t get you to
do is roll over. Ready?” I flipped him over on the rack, the unnatural
flaccidness simultaneously nauseating and amusing. “Next, leaping through
flaming hoops! The Amazing Rusty and his world-famous handler will be touring
Europe this spring. Get your tickets early, before the star begins to smell!”
“Umm…how’s it going?” asked Alan, who had reappeared
while I was goofing around with the decedent. “Shall I bring you the dryer?”
The dryer? I not only had to wash the thing, I had to dry
it? Can I interest you in a cut-‘n-curl? A permanent wave? A manicure? I bit my
tongue, lest Alan get any new ideas. “Sure, that would be great.”
Drying him was actually easier than drying the average
living dog. I wondered briefly whether there were canine funeral homes, and
whether I might consider working in one. I’d never get bitten, never be barked
at with the incessant fervor of a West Highland Terrier. It was something to
think about. I directed the nozzle at his right ear, and the hair separated in
a swirly pattern. “This is not so bad,” I admitted to Rusty, who still had no
comment.
When I was finished, the dog was a work of art. No
Springer Spaniel in the Westminster Dog Show had ever looked better. His
expression was somewhat lackluster, and he was, overall, a tiny bit lethargic,
but he looked like a million bucks.
Alan came in with a garbage bag. “Let’s bag him up; they’ll
be here in a few minutes.”
I was indignant. “You had me slaving over a hot bathtub
and a vomit-soaked dead dog, making him beautiful, and now we’re putting him in
a trash bag?”
Alan shook his head and laughed, thinking that I was
kidding. I was not kidding, but so be it. I helped to put my cosmetological
masterpiece into a trash bag. When his owners arrived, tearful but resolute,
Alan carried Rusty out to their car. I did wonder how he felt, the doctor in
charge, telling a family that their beloved pet would never bound to greet them
at the door again. People hope that
vets, like doctors, can work miracles, and it must be hard to be reminded that
skill and knowledge aren’t always enough.
But my job required no miracles, just bleach. I looked
over at the pen in which Rusty’s short life had ended, rolled up my sleeves,
and got back to work.
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