The young woman doctor retreated. She was two shades whiter than she’d been at the beginning of the conversation.
‘I heard most of what you were telling Andrea –’
‘Look, I’m sorry. That’s not my style. I don’t like losing my temper, but –’
‘No, it’s okay. I understand. You’re tired and you’re concerned about –?’
‘Dempsey.’
‘Dempsey. Right.’
‘I was told he’d be X-rayed today and we’d have the results back this afternoon.’
‘Well, the speed of these things all depends on the volume of work, Mr Pickett,’ Cordelia said. She was English, and had the face and manner of a woman who would not be pleasant if she were riled, but was doing her best right now to put on a gentler face. ‘I read a piece about you in the LA Times last year. You were on the cover with Dempsey, as I remember. Clearly you’re very close to your dog. Here’s what I’m going to do.’ She consulted her watch. ‘Dempsey is being seen by the radiographer right now, and I guarantee that we’ll have the results back by … six. It might be earlier but I think six we can guarantee.’
‘So how long before I can take him home?’
‘You want to take him now?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll find him rather dopey. I’m not sure he could walk.’
‘I can carry him.’
Cordelia nodded. She knew an immovable object when she saw one. ‘Well I’ll have one of the nurses come fetch you when he’s ready. Is that his?’
She pointed to the quilt on the bench. Quite unconsciously, Todd had been nursing it while he waited. No wonder people had kept their distance.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want me to have him wrapped up in it?’
‘Thank you.’
Cordelia picked up the quilt. ‘And my apologies, Mr Pickett, for any difficulties you may have had. Our Drs are horribly overworked. And, I’m afraid to say, often people who are wonderful with animals aren’t always terribly good with human beings.’
Ten minutes later a burly Latino appeared with a sleepy-eyed Dempsey, wrapped in his quilt. His ears pricked up just a little at the sight of Todd, enough for Todd to know that his holding the dog, and whispering to him, meant something.
‘We’re going home, old guy,’ Todd murmured to him, as he carried him down the steps into the street and round to the little parking lot behind the building, where Marco was backing out the car. ‘I know you didn’t like it in there. All those people you didn’t know with needles and shit. Well, fuck them.’ He put his nose into the cushion of baby fur behind Dempsey’s ear, which always smelled sweetest. ‘We’re going home.’
For the next few hours Dempsey slept in the quilt, which Todd had put on his big bed. Todd stayed beside him, though the need for sleep caught up with him several times, and he’d slide away into a few minutes of dreamland: fragments of things he’d seen from his bench in the waiting room, mostly. The box containing the dead guinea pig, that absurd poodle, nipping its own backside bloody; all just pieces of the day, coming and going. Then he’d wake and stroke Dempsey for a little while, talk to him, tell him everything was going to be okay.
There was a sudden rally in Dempsey’s energies about four o’clock, which was when he was usually fed, so Todd had Marco prepare a sick-bed version of his usual meal, with chicken instead of the chopped horse-flesh or whatever the hell it was in the cans, and some good gravy. Dempsey ate it all, though he had to be held up to do so, since his legs were unreliable. He then drank a full bowl of water.
‘Good, good,’ Todd said.
Dempsey attempted to wag his tail, but it had no more power in it than his legs had.
Todd carried him outside so he could shit and piss. A slight drizzle was coming down; not cool, but refreshing. He held onto the dog, waiting for the urge to take Dempsey, and he turned his face up to the rain, offering a quiet little prayer.
‘Please don’t take him from me. He’s just a smelly old dog. You don’t need him and I do. Do you hear me? Please … hear me. Don’t take him.’
He looked back at Dempsey to find that the dog was looking back at him, apparently paying attention to every word. His ears were half-pricked, his eyes half-open.
‘Do you think anyone’s listening?’ Todd said.
By way of reply, Dempsey looked away from him, his head bobbing uneasily on his neck. Then he made a nasty sound deep in his belly and his whole body convulsed.
Todd had never seen the term projectile vomit displayed with such force. A stream of chewed chicken, dog mix and water squirted out. As soon as it stopped, the dog began to make little whining sounds. Then ten seconds later, Dempsey repeated the whole spectacle, until every piece of nourishment and every drop of water he’d been given had been comprehensively ejected.
After the second burst of vomiting he didn’t even have the strength to whine. Todd wrapped the quilt around him and carried him back into the house. He had Marco bring some towels and dried him off where the rain had caught him.
‘I don’t suppose you care what’s been going on all day, do you?’ Marco said.
‘Anything important?’
‘Great foreign numbers on Gallows, particularly in France. Huge hit in France, apparently. Maxine wants to know if you’d like to do a piece about Dempsey’s health crisis for one of the woman’s magazines.’
‘No.’
‘That’s what I told her. She said they’d eat it up, but I said –’
‘No! Fuck. Will these people never stop? No!’
‘You got a call from Walter at Dreamworks about some charity thing he’s arranging, I told him you’d be back in circulation tomorrow.’
‘That’s the phone.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
Marco went to the nearest phone, which was in the master bathroom, while Todd went back to finish drying the dog.
‘It’s Andrea Otis. From the hospital. I think it’s the nervous young woman you saw this morning.’
‘Stay with him,’ Todd said to Marco.
He went into the bathroom, which was cold. Picked up the phone.
‘Mr Pickett?’
‘Yes.’
‘First, I want to say I owe you an apology for this morning –’
‘No that’s fine.’
‘I knew who you were and that threw me off –’
‘Dempsey.’
‘– a little. I’m sorry.’
‘Dempsey.’
‘Yes. Well, we’ve got the X-ray results back and … I’m afraid the news isn’t very good.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with him?’
‘He is riddled with cancer.’
Todd took a long moment to digest this unwelcome news. Then he said: ‘That’s impossible.’
‘It’s in his spine. It’s in his colon –’
‘But that