I was nameless.
There I was nonetheless, covered in blood like I’d just been born, a full-grown dog sprawled across the front seat of an animal control truck with a woman at the wheel.
She stroked my head.
She spoke softly to me.
“Hang in there, big ears,” she said.
Everything was coming into focus.
Everything was tilting back and forth.
Cracked glass.
Blue sky.
The crowns of palm trees passing.
A furry gray leg, twisted below the elbow, paw turned unnaturally away.
Well, that looked painful.
Whose leg was that?
And who was this woman at the wheel?
This beautiful woman.
I have since seen more beautiful humans, but then, maybe because she was saving my life, or because I had sustained a traumatic brain injury, she was beautiful, and the sunlight cast a golden halo around her bun.
She was my guardian angel.
In khaki.
With road rage.
She honked.
She stuck her head out the window. “Move, moron! I’ve got an injury here!”
She came back in, face red, gentle again. “Good boy. Just keep breathing. Stay with me.”
Another voice, deep and grainy, joined us from nowhere. “Dispatch to Hoover Animal Control.”
The woman picked up. “Animal control. Go ahead.”
“Hey Mary, there’s a raccoon acting weird over by the elementary. You peel that dead dog off the highway yet?”
“He’s alive. Barely. We’re on our way to the vet.”
“Well hey. Lucky dog.”
“Hardly. Anybody call in plates?”
“Negative.”
“You check the highway cams?”
“Affirmative. Too blurry, per usual. He bounced. I can tell you that. They were doin’ about 80.”
“Seriously?”
“10-4. Like I said. Lucky dog.”
“What kind of a sicko throws a dog out of a moving car?”
“Cargo van, actually. A white one. No logos, before you ask. Right out the back door. Like a stack a newspapers.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Negatory. I do not kid.”
“What kind of a sicko does that?”
“Oh, I dunno, Mary. Same day, different sicko, I guess. Anywho, once you drop off that dog—”
“Yeah yeah, the raccoon. You keep trying to find that driver. For once, just give me a name.”
After a pause came the man’s tired reply: “Roger.”
Which explains why, in my confusion, I wondered: Who is this sicko, Roger, and why did he do this to me?
Then I began to seize.
I awoke thrashing.
Whining. Rolling. Yelping. Clanging.
My right forelimb was wrapped and rigid. I pressed my other three into extension, driving the world upside down.
A young woman in all blue appeared on the ceiling.
“Dr. Francis!” she called, and ran off.
The kennel spun. I rolled with it, gonged my head once, twice, three times, before lodging in a corner. Beyond the cage door a fluorescent void stank of chemicals. I howled, terrified of falling in.
“Hurry! He’s, like, freaking out!”
She returned with a man in a white coat.
And I froze.
I knew, somehow, that I could not escape this man.
Sure enough, the door opened and they dragged me out. The woman held me somewhere between a hug and a headlock. The man was doing something with my paw. Then my leg felt cold. The cold was spreading through my body.
“Relax,” he said. “Relax. Relax.”
And as though his voice held some special power, I did. They floated me back into the cage, their words becoming as meaningless as the latching cage door.
I may have slept for a time after that. Or half of me did, while the other half remained in a flat world of shapes and smells. I knew the technician by her scrubs and floral scent, Dr. Francis by his dragging heels and bleached white coat. In crates and on leashes, cats and dogs came and went. I imagine some spoke to me, but I was too far gone to understand, or reply.
Until the last patient of the day.
He was a matted black terrier with eyes like white marbles. The technician carried him in and placed him on the treatment table, where, with apparent effort, he remained upright on his elbows. He struggled to breathe. Still he sniffed the air, searching, back and forth, until he sniffed in my direction.
Hey, pup, he said, his voice a rasp in my head.
Dr. Francis came in, really dragging his heels this time. He shaved a rectangle from the old terrier’s leg and placed an IV catheter. Of course I did not know what it was called back then. I just knew it looked like my own. Some green thing. I thought we would soon be neighbors.
Instead Dr. Francis opened a safe in the wall. He retrieved a bottle of blue liquid.
Hey, pup, the terrier said again. I can’t see ya but I can smell ya. I know you’re there.
He frightened me. He looked but saw nothing. He stank of age and urine and whatever was rotting inside of him. It was on his breath. Some dead thing. Death itself.
Speak, he said.
I...I’m here, I said.
Good. I need ya to pass on a message for me.
I don’t—
Just listen, pup. You tell those fuzzy freaks in the park that I’m gonna chase ’em on the other side. I’ll catch ’em there. Every last one of ’em. You tell ’em that.
Fuzzy freaks?
You tell those squirrels that Banjo never quits. You hear me? Never.
What’s a squirrel?
Good one, pup. I could use a laugh right about now.
“You’re a very good boy,” Dr. Francis said. “We love you very much.”
Wait, I said. Do you know Roger?
But I was too late.
Banjo rested his head upon his paws.
It was strange. I could sense that he was gone, as if his essence had evaporated, leaving only a tangle of black fur.
I felt sort of empty myself.
Dr. Francis washed his hands. The technician put the body in a trash bag, tagged it, tied it in a knot, and took it out back. She returned, but only for her purse.
“See you tomorrow,” she said, perhaps too cheerfully. She hesitated, as though to say something else, then left.
Dr. Francis remained at the sink long after she was gone. Soaping. Rinsing. Repeating. Repeating. Repeating.
At last he shut off the tap with his elbows and flicked his fingers in the air. He perched on a stool before a stack of files and scribbled notes. As the stack dropped by half, the aches in my body returned. When the stack was gone, I was in pain.
Again, Dr. Francis opened the safe.
Maybe this is it, I thought distantly. The blue solution. The trash bag. The other side. There is no escaping the man in the white coat.
He kneeled to open my cage. He was close to me now, with hundreds of silver hairs poking through his cheeks and chin like fur trying to regrow. His eyes were surrounded by pillows of red.
“Good boy,” he said, holding my paw like two humans shaking hands. “You’re a very, very good boy.”
The cold passed through me from tip to tail.
Then I was lodged in a white tunnel.
“Nice comfy cone,” he said, his voice distorted by plastic. “Do you like music? How about some Bach?”
I do like music.
I do like Bach.
But of course I could not respond.
And so I fell asleep to the sound of water down the drain and piano notes in the air.
Birdie appeared from the shadows in the heart of the night.
She sauntered onto a stage of moonlight where she performed figure-eights, silver tail pluming. With each turn she ventured closer. She watched me carefully, yet discreetly, for a reaction. Getting none, she grew bolder. She brushed along my cage. When that didn’t work, she batted at the latch and jumped away. I gave her nothing. Dissatisfied, she sat. She licked her paw and wiped her head.
Yes. Cats are vain. If they knew how to look in a mirror they would never do anything else.
Nice cone, dummy, Birdie said.
I was groggy. The splint and cone made it awkward to move. I shifted my weight.
Easy, champ, she said. Big day tomorrow.
What happens tomorrow?
Her tail flicked. They’re going to cut off your leg. That’s what happens tomorrow.
The drugs blocked any anxiety. I was more curious than concerned.
Why?
What do you mean, why?
Why would they cut off my leg?
Don’t be stupid.
But how do you know?
Her eyes rested on it, faint blue. Because it has the funny look.
The splint? That’s what Dr. Francis called it, right?
Look, dummy. If you get a thingy or whatever on your leg, and a thingy on your head, and you stay the night, then the next day what you get is your leg cut off. I see it all the time.
She let this information sink in, hoping again for a reaction. Again, I had none to give. Everything was so removed. I looked back for a connection. I remembered Mary and the man on the radio. I remembered how angry she had been. How much she wanted that name.
Roger, I said. Do you know Roger?
The Spaniel?
The sicko.
Hmm. The only Roger I know is a Spaniel. Hates toenail trims? About this high?
She stood on hind legs and extended a paw straight up.
He’s not a dog, I said. He’s a human. I’m pretty sure. His name is Roger. He’s a sicko...he drives a...white...van. He was doing 80. I bounced. Like a newspaper.
Riiight, Birdie said. You know, there’s probably lots of Rogers. Not like Birdie. I’m one of a kind.
She relished this for a moment, then sniffed the air, searching toward me. She stopped. Eyes wide.
What now, I said.
Oh. My. Gosh. Do you still have your doodads?
My what?
Your doodads! OMG you doooooo.
No, I don’t.
Yes, you do! I can smell them! Nasty stinky doodads!
Go away.
You don’t even know what doodads are.
Do too.
Wow. I mean, I’ve seen dumb dogs. And then there’s you.
I’m going back to sleep, I said, closing my eyes.
Oh, you’re no fun. Look down below. The eggs between your legs. Got those?
I tried to look, but my cone hooked on the cage. I twisted the other way, but again the cone blocked me. I felt woozy.
Let me see, Birdie said.
I lifted a hind leg.
Yep, still got your doodads. Say goodbye to those ugly things too.
I couldn’t see them, but if I focused, I could feel them. They felt...sensitive. Some anxiety found its way through.
Why do they cut off doodads? I asked.
Because they love cutting off doodads more than anything else in the whole wide world. Doodads in the bucket. That’s where the doodads go.
But why?
Not this again.
There’s got to be a reason.
Because they’re extra? And dangly? And gross? How many reasons do you need?
I don’t understand.
That’s because you’re a dumb dog. Of many.
I hung my head.
Oh, don’t be like that, she said. It’s boring.
She strolled away, yowling as she prowled the shadows...