Dean Koontz - Watchers

“His fever’s high but not dangerously so. Has he been slobbering excessively?”

“No,” Nora said.

“Fits of head-shaking and chewing on air, sort of as if he had a bad taste in his mouth?”

“No,” Travis and Nora said simultaneously.

“Have you seen him run in circles or fall down without reason? Have you seen him lie on his side and kick violently, as if he were running? Aimless wandering around a room, bumping into walls, jerking and twitching — anything like that?”

“No, no,” Travis said.

And Nora said. “My God, could he get like that?”

“If he goes into second-stage distemper, yes,” Keene said. “Then there’s brain involvement. Epileptic-like seizures. Encephalitis.”

Travis came to his feet in a sudden lurch. He staggered toward Keene, then stopped, swaying. His face was pale. His eyes filled with a terrible fear. “Brain involvement? If he recovered, would there be. brain damage?”

An oily nausea rippled in Nora. She thought of Einstein with brain damage — as intelligent as a man, intelligent enough to remember that he had once been special, and to know that something had been lost, and to know that he was now living in a dullness, a grayness, that his life was somehow less than what it had once been. Sick and dizzy with fear, she had to lean against the examination table.

Keene said, “Most dogs in second-stage distemper don’t survive. But if he made it, there would, of course, be some brain damage. Nothing that would require he be put to sleep. He might have lifelong chorea, for instance, which is involuntary jerking or twitching, rather like palsy, and often limited to the head. But he could be relatively happy with that, lead a pain-free existence, and he could still be a fine pet.”

Travis almost shouted at the vet: “To hell with whether he’d make a fine pet or not. I’m not concerned about physical effects of the brain damage. What about his mind?”

“Well he’d recognize his masters,” the doctor said. “He’d know you and remain affectionate towards you. No problem there. He might sleep a lot. He might have periods of listlessness. But he’d almost certainly remain housebroken. He wouldn’t forget that training—”

Shaking, Travis said, “I don’t give a damn if he pisses all over the house as long as he can still think!”

“Think?” Dr. Keene said, clearly perplexed. “Well. what do you mean exactly? He is a dog, after all.”

The vet had accepted their anxious, grief-racked behavior as within the parameters of normal pet-owner reactions in a case like this. But now, at last, he began to look at them strangely.

Partly to change the subject and dampen the vet’s suspicion, partly because she simply had to know the answer, Nora said, “All right, but is Einstein in second-stage distemper?”

Keene said, “From what I’ve seen so far, he’s still in the first stage. And now that treatment has begun, if we don’t see any of the more violent symptoms during the next twenty-four hours, I think we have a good chance of keeping him in first stage and rolling it back.”

“And there’s no brain involvement in first stage?” Travis asked with an urgency that again caused Keene to furrow his brow.

“No. Not in first stage.”

“And if he stays in first stage,” Nora said, “he won’t die?”

In his softest voice and most comforting manner, James Keene said, “Well, now, the chances are very high that he’d survive just first-stage distemper— and without any aftereffects. I want you to realize that his chances of recovery are quite high. But at the same time, I don’t want to give you false hope. That’d be cruel. Even if the disease proceeds no further than first stage. Einstein could die. The percentages are on the side of life, but death is possible.”

Nora was crying again. She thought she had gotten a grip on herself. She thought she was ready to be strong. But now she was crying. She went to Einstein, sat on the floor beside him, and put one hand on his shoulder, just to let him know that she was there.

Keene was becoming slightly impatient with — and thoroughly baffled by— their tumultuous emotional response to the bad news. A new note of sternness entered his voice as he said, “Listen, all we can do is give him top-flight care and hope for the best. He’ll have to remain here, of course, because distemper treatment is complex and ought to be administered under veterinary supervision. I’ll have to keep him on the intravenous fluids, antibiotics.

and there’ll be regular anticonvulsants and sedatives if he begins to have seizures.”

Under Nora’s hand, Einstein shivered as if he had heard and understood the grim possibilities.

“All right, okay, yes,” Travis said, “obviously, he’s got to stay here in your office. We’ll stay with him.”

“There’s no need—” Keene began.

“Right, yes, no need,” Travis said quickly, “but we want to stay, we’ll be okay, we can sleep here on the floor tonight.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Keene said.

“Yes, it is, oh yes, entirely possible,” Travis said, babbling now in his eagerness to convince the vet. “Don’t worry about us, Doctor. We’ll manage just fine. Einstein needs us here, so we’ll stay, the important thing is that we stay, and of course we’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience.”

“But I’m not running a hotel!”

“We must stay,” Nora said firmly.

Keene said, “Now, really, I’m a reasonable man, but—”

With both hands, Travis seized the vet’s right hand and held it tightly, startling Keene. “Listen, Dr. Keene, please, let me try to explain. I know this is an unusual request. I know we must sound like a couple of lunatics to you, but we’ve got our reasons, and they’re good ones. This is no ordinary dog, Dr. Keene. He saved my life—”

“And he saved mine, too,” Nora said. “In a separate incident.”

“And he brought us together,” Travis said. “Without Einstein, we would never have met, never married, and we’d both be dead.”

Astonished, Keene looked from one to the other. “You mean he saved your lives — literally? And in two separate incidents?”

“Literally,” Nora said.

“And then brought you together?”

“Yes,” Travis said. “Changed our lives in more ways than we can count or ever explain.”

Held fast in Travis’s hands, the vet looked at Nora, lowered his kind eyes to the wheezing retriever, shook his head, and said, “I’m a sucker for heroic dog stories. I’ll want to hear this one, for sure.”

“We’ll tell you all about it,” Nora promised. But, she thought, it’ll be a carefully edited version.

“When I was five years old,” James Keene said, “I was saved from drowning by a black Labrador.”

Nora remembered the beautiful black lab in the living room and wondered if it was actually a descendant of the animal that had saved Keene — or just a reminder of the great debt he owed to dogs.

“All right,” Keene said, “you can stay.”

“Thank you.” Travis’s voice cracked. “Thank you.”

Freeing his hand from Travis, Keene said, “But it’ll be at least forty-eight hours before we can be at all confident that Einstein will survive. It’ll be a long haul.”

“Forty-eight hours is nothing,” Travis said. “Two nights of sleeping on the floor. We can handle that.”

Keene said, “I have a hunch that, for you two, forty-eight hours is going to be an eternity, under the circumstances.” He looked at his wristwatch and said, “Now, my assistant will arrive in about ten minutes, and shortly after that we’ll open the office for morning hours. I can’t have you underfoot in here while I’m seeing other patients. And you wouldn’t want to wait in the patient lounge with a bunch of other anxious owners and sick animals; that would only depress you. You can wait in the living room, and when the office is closed late this afternoon, you can return here to be with Einstein.”