Loe raamatut: «Coldheart Canyon», lehekülg 6

Chapter 4

On the day Todd had booked to see Burrows for a first consultation, he had to cancel at the last minute. ‘You’re not going to believe my excuse,’ he told the receptionist, ‘but I swear it’s the truth.’

‘Go on.’

‘My dog’s sick.’

‘Well that’s not one we hear very often. So, gold star for originality.’

The fact was that Dempsey, his mutt, was not looking too good that morning; he’d got up to go out into the back yard for his morning piss and he’d stumbled, as though one of his legs was numb. Todd went down to see if he was okay. He wasn’t. Though he still put on a happy face for his boss, his expression looked strangely dislocated, as though he was having difficulty focussing on Todd.

‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’

Todd went down on his haunches in front of the dog, and stroked his ears. Dempsey growled appreciatively. But he felt unsteady in Todd’s arms; as though at any moment he might keel over.

Todd called Maxine and told her he’d be at the vet’s for the next few hours.

‘Something wrong with that flatulent old dog of yours?’

‘You’ll be flatulent when you get to his age,’ Todd said. ‘And yeah. There is something wrong. He keeps falling over.’

He’d had Dempsey eleven years. He’d bought the dog as a pup just before he’d started to shoot Gunner. As a consequence the dog’s first real experience of life beyond his mother’s teat was being carried around a movie studio by his owner and adored; all of which he thereafter took as his God-given right. Dempsey had been with Todd on every set since; the two were inseparable. Todd and Dempsey; Dempsey and Todd. Thanks to those early experiences of universal affection he was a confident dog; afraid of nobody, and–unless somebody was afraid of him–predisposed to be friendly.

The vet’s name was Dr Spenser; an ebullient black woman who’d been looking after Dempsey since puppy-hood. She did a few tests and told Todd that yes, there were definitive signs that Dempsey was having cognitive difficulties.

‘How old is he now?’

‘He’ll be twelve next March.’

‘Oh that’s right – we didn’t know his birthday so we said –’

‘– Oscar Night.’

‘What’s wrong, boy?’ Dr Spenser said to Dempsey, ruffling him under the chin. ‘He’s certainly not his usual happy self, is he?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well, I’d like to keep him in here for a few tests.’

‘I brought a stool sample like you asked.’

‘Thanks.’

Todd produced a small Tupperware container of dog poop. ‘Well we’ll have that analysed. You want the container back? Just kidding. Don’t look so grim, Todd –’

‘I don’t like seeing him like this.’

‘It’s probably a virus he’s picked up. We’ll give him a few antibiotics and he’ll be good as new.’

‘But there’s something weird about his eyes. Look. He’s not even focussing on us.’

Dempsey had raised his head, knowing full well he was being talked about, but plainly he was having some difficulty fixing his gaze on whoever was doing the talking.

‘This couldn’t just be old age, could it?’

‘I doubt it. He’s been a very healthy dog so far, and it’s my experience that a mutt like Dempsey is going to last a lot longer than some over-bred hound. You leave him with me. Check in with me at the end of the day.’

Todd did that. The news was there was no news. The stool sample had gone to the lab to be analysed, and meanwhile Dempsey was looking weak, perhaps a little disorientated, but there’d been no noticeable deterioration in his condition.

‘You can either take him home tonight or leave him here. He’ll be perfectly fine here. We don’t actually have anybody monitoring the dogs from eleven p.m. till six in the morning, but the chances of –’

‘I’m going to come and collect him.’

Despite Spenser’s reassurances that there had been no deterioration, Todd disagreed. Usually when he arrived at the vet’s after Dempsey had stayed in for a couple of hours, either for a shot, or his six-month check-up, he was greeted by the dog in crazy mode, yapping his delight at seeing his boss again, and ready to be out of the door before they could stick another damn needle in his backside. But today, when Dempsey came round the corner it seemed to take a moment before the dog even realized it was his master at the door, calling to him. And when he came, though some of his old enthusiasm returned, he was a shadow of his former self. Dr Spenser had already gone off-duty for the night. Todd asked if he could have her home number, but there were some things, it seemed, even being Todd Pickett couldn’t get you.

‘She’s got kids to take care of,’ the male nurse said. ‘She likes to keep this place and her home-life very separate.’

‘But if there’s an emergency?’

‘I’d recommend going to the twenty-four-hour animal hospital on Sepulveda. There’ll be doctors there all night if anything were to happen. But honestly, I think it’s some virus he’s picked up out at the dog park, and it’ll just take a course of antibiotics.’

‘Well can I take some antibiotics then?’ Todd said, getting a little irritated with the casual way Dempsey’s case was being treated.

‘Dr Spenser doesn’t want to give Dempsey anything till she’s got some results from the stool sample, so I’m afraid there’ll be no drugs for Dempsey until tomorrow.’

Dempsey didn’t eat. He just looked at the bowl of food Marco had prepared for him, and turned up his nose at it.

Then he went to lie on the back step and stayed there for the rest of the evening.

In the middle of the night Todd was woken by what sounded like the effects track from The Exorcist, a stomach-wrenching series of mumblings and eruptions. He switched on the bedroom light to find Dempsey at the bottom of his bed, standing in a pool of bright yellow puke. He looked horribly ashamed of having made a mess, and at first wouldn’t come to Todd to be petted, but when he did – and Todd had his arms around the dog – it was clear he was in a bad way. Dempsey’s whole body was cold, and he was trembling violently.

‘Come on, m’man,’ he said. ‘We’re gonna take you to get some proper Dring.’

The noise had woken Marco, who got dressed to drive while Todd held onto Dempsey, who was wrapped in his favourite comforter, a quilt Todd’s grandmother had made for her grandson. The dog lay sprawled over Todd’s knee, all one hundred pounds of him, while Marco drove through the almost empty streets to Sepulveda.

It was five minutes after five in the morning when they arrived at the animal hospital, and there were just two people waiting with their pets to be helped. Even so it took twenty-five minutes before a doctor could be freed up to see Dempsey, during which time it seemed to Todd that Dempsey’s condition worsened. His shaking became more violent than ever, and in the midst of one of his spasms, he convulsively shat brown gruel, mostly on the floor, but on Todd’s leg and shoe too.

‘Well now,’ said the night doctor brightly, ‘what seems to be the trouble?’

Todd gave him an exhaustive run-down on the events of the last day. He then asked Todd to pick Dempsey up and put him on the examination table – choosing this particular instant to remark what a fan of Todd’s he was, as though Todd could have given a damn at that moment.

Then he examined the dog, in a good and thorough manner, but making asides throughout as to which movies of Todd’s he and his wife had particularly enjoyed and which they hadn’t. After about five minutes of this, seeing the expression of despair and anger on Todd’s face, Marco quietly mentioned that Mr Pickett was really only interested right now in the health of his dog. The doctor’s mouth tightened, as though he’d just been badly offended, and his handling of Dempsey (at least to Todd’s eyes) seemed to become a little more brusque.

‘Well, you have a very sick dog,’ he said at the end of the examination, not even looking at Todd but talking to Marco. He was plainly embarrassed by his earlier show of fanboy enthusiasm, and was now over-compensating for it wildly.

Todd went to sit on the examination table to cradle Dempsey, which put him right in the doctor’s line of sight.

‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry if I’m not being quite as appreciative of … your support of my pictures as I would normally be, Doc. It’s nothing personal. I’m sure we could have a great conversation about it under different circumstances. But I’d like Dempsey comfortable first. He’s sick and I want him better.’

Finally the doctor managed a little smile, and when he spoke his voice had also quieted, matching Todd’s. ‘I’m going to put Dempsey on a saline drip, because he’s obviously lost a lot of fluids in the last twelve to twenty-four hours. That should make him feel a whole lot happier. Meanwhile, you said Dr Spenser over at Robertson VCA was doing stool checks?’

‘She said it could be a virus.’

‘Well … maybe. But looking at his eyes, it seems more systemic to me. If he were a younger dog I’d say parvo or heartworm, which is a parasite. But again, we commonly see toxo in pound dogs or strays, and I’m sure he’s had his heartworm medications. Anyway, we’ll see from the stool results tomorrow.’

‘Wait, wait. You’re saying it could be parvo or heart-worm, but you don’t really think it’s either of these?’

‘No.’

‘So what do you think it is?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘I’d say there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance he’s got some kind of tumour. On the brain or on the brain-stem.’

‘And if he has?’

‘Well, it’s like a human being. You can sometimes fix these things –’

At this juncture, as though to demonstrate that things were not in a very fixable state right now, Dempsey started to shudder in Todd’s arms, his claws scrabbling against the metal table as he tried to stay upright.

‘It’s okay, boy! It’s okay!’

The doctor went for a nurse, and came back with an injection.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Just to calm him down a little, so he can get some sleep.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. It’s a mild tranquillizer. If you don’t want me to give it to the dog, Mr Pickett …’

‘Yes. Yes. Give it to him.’

The injection did indeed subdue Dempsey’s little fit. They wheeled him away into another room to be given an intravenous infusion, leaving Todd with the quilt.

‘Damn dog,’ he said, now Dempsey was out of earshot. ‘More trouble than he’s worth.’ Tears very close.

‘Why don’t we get a cup of coffee?’ Marco suggested. ‘And we can talk to the doctor more when we get back?’

There was a little donut shop in the mini-mall at the top of Sepulveda, and it had just opened. They were the first customers of the day. Todd knew the instant he walked in that both the women serving recognized him, so he turned round and walked out again rather than risking getting caught in a conversation: Marco brought out two coffees and two Bear Claws in greaseproof paper, still warm from the oven. Though he hadn’t thought he had an appetite, the pastry was too good not to be eaten; so he ate. Then, coffee in hand, they walked down to the hospital, the eyes of the women in the donut shop glued to Todd until he had disappeared from sight.

They said nothing as they walked. The day was getting underway; the traffic on Sepulveda backing up as it waited to take its turn to get onto the freeway. These were people with two-hour commutes ahead of them before they got to their place of work; people with jobs they hated, houses they hated, and a pay-cheque at the end of the month that wouldn’t even cover the cost of the mortgage, the car payments, the insurance.

‘Right now,’ Todd said, ‘I’d give my eye teeth to be one of them, instead of having to go back in there.’

‘I can go in for you.’

‘No.’

‘Dempsey trusts me,’ Marco said.

‘I know. But he’s my dog.’

Chapter 5

Again, there was no news. Dempsey had been hooked up to a saline drip, and looked as though the tranquillizer had taken its effect. He wasn’t quite asleep, but he was dazy.

‘We’ll do an X-ray today, and see how he looks,’ the doctor said. ‘We should have the results back by the end of the day. So why don’t you two go home, we’ll keep Dempsey here and see what we can do to get him well?’

‘I want to stay.’

‘Well that’s going to be very uncomfortable for you, Mr Pickett. We don’t have a room we can put you in, and frankly you both look as though you didn’t get a full night’s sleep. Dempsey’s mildly sedated, and we’ll probably keep him that way. But it’s going to be six or seven hours before we get any answers for you. We share our X-ray technician with our hospital in Santa Monica, so she won’t even be in to look at Dempsey until eleven at the earliest.’

‘I still want to stay. You’ve got a bench out there. You’re not going to throw me out if I sit on that are you?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Then that’s where I’ll be.’

The doctor looked at his watch. ‘I’ll be out of here in half an hour and the day-doctor, Dr Otis, will be taking over Dempsey’s case. I will of course bring her up to speed with everything we’ve done so far and if she feels there’s something else she wants to try –’

‘She’ll know where to find me.’

‘Right.’

The doctor gave up a wan smile, his second and last of the night. ‘Well, I sincerely hope you have good news with Dempsey, and that by the time I come in again tonight you’ve both gone home happy.’

Todd would not be dissuaded from staying on the bench, even though it was situated a few steps away from the front counter, next to the soda machine, and would leave him in full view of everyone who came through the next few hours. Marco said that he would come back with a Thermos of good coffee and something to eat, and left Todd there.

The parade of the needy began early. About two minutes after Marco had gone a distraught woman came in saying that she’d struck a cat with her car, and the victim was now in her car, alive, but terrified and badly hurt. Two nurses went out with well-used pairs of leather gloves and a syringe of tranquillizer to subdue the victim. They came back with a weeping woman and a corpse. The animal’s panicked self-defences had apparently used up what little energies its broken body had possessed. The woman was inconsolable. She tried to thank the nurses for their help but all she could do was cry. There were six more accidents that rush hour, two of them fatalities. Todd watched all this in a dazed state. Lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with him. Every now and then his eyes would flicker closed for a few seconds, and the scene in front of him would jump, like a piece of film which had had a few seconds’ worth of action removed and then been spliced back together again. People moved abruptly from one place to another. One moment somebody was coming in, the next they were engaged in conversation (often tearful, sometimes accusatory, always intense), with one of the nurses; the next they’d gone, or they were on their way out.

Much to his surprise, nobody gave him more than a cursory glance. Perhaps, they thought, that can’t possibly be Todd Pickett, sitting on a broken-down old bench next to a broken-down old soda machine in a twenty-four-hour animal hospital. Or perhaps it was just that they saw him, recognized him, and didn’t care. They had other things to think about right now, more pressing than the peculiar presence of a weary-looking movie star on a broken-down bench. They had a rat with an abscess, a cat that had had six kittens but had got the seventh stuck, a guinea pig in a shoe box that was dead when the box was opened; a poodle that kept biting itself; a problem with fleas, a problem with mange, two canaries that hated one another, and so on and so forth.

Marco came back with coffee and sandwiches. Todd drank some coffee, which perked him up.

He went to the front desk and asked, not for the first time, to see the day-doctor. This time, he got lucky. Dr Otis, a pale and slight young woman who looked no more than eighteen, and refused to look Todd in the face (though this, he realized was her general practice: she was the same with Marco and with the nurses, eyes constantly averted), appeared and said that there was nothing to report except that Dempsey would be going for X-rays in about half an hour, and they would be available for viewing tomorrow. At this point, Todd lost his temper. It happened rarely, but when it did it was an impressive spectacle. His neck became blotchy-red, and the muscles of his face churned; his eyes went to ice-water.

‘I brought my dog in here at five o’clock this morning. I’ve been waiting here – sitting on that bench – that bench right there, you see it? Do you see that bench?’

‘Yes, I –’

‘That’s where I’ve been since six o’clock. It is now almost eleven o’clock. I’ve asked on several occasions for you to have the common decency to come out and tell me what’s happening to my dog. Always politely. And I’ve been told, over and over again, that you’re very busy.’

‘It’s been a crazy morning, Mr –?’

‘Pickett is my name.’

‘Well, Mr Pickett, I’m afraid I can’t –’

‘Stop right there. Don’t say you can’t get the X-rays until tomorrow because you can. You will. I want my dog looked after and if you won’t do it I’ll take him some place where he can be taken care of and I’ll make sure every damn newspaper in the State of California –’

At this moment an older woman, obviously the hospital manager, stepped into view and took Todd’s hand, shaking it. ‘Mr Pickett. My name’s Cordelia Simpson. It’s all right, Andrea, I’ll take care of Mr Pickett from here.’

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 can’t be.’

‘And it’s now spreading to his brain, which is why we’ve only just discovered it. These motor and perception problems he’s having are all part of the same thing. The tumour’s spreading into his skull, and pushing on his brain.’

‘Oh God.’

‘So … I don’t know what you want to do.’

‘I want this not to be happening.’

‘Well yes. But I’m afraid it is.’

‘How long has he got?’

‘His present condition is really as good as things are going to get for him.’ She spoke as though she was reading the words from an idiot-board, careful to leave exactly the same amount of space between each one. ‘All that is really a tissue is how quickly Dempsey becomes incapacitated.’

Todd looked through the open door at the pitiful shape shuddering beneath the quilt. It was obvious that Dempsey had already reached that point. Todd could be absurdly optimistic at times, but this wasn’t one of them.

‘Is he in pain?’ he asked the doctor.

‘Well, I’d say it’s not so much pain we’re dealing with as anxiety. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him. And he doesn’t know why it’s happening. He’s just suffering, Mr Pickett. And it’s just going to get worse.’

‘So you’re saying I should have him put down?’

‘It’s not my place to tell you what to do with your dog, Mr Pickett.’

‘But if he was your dog.’

‘If he was my dog, and I loved him as you obviously love Dempsey, I wouldn’t want him suffering … Mr Pickett, are you there?’

‘Here,’ Todd said, trying to keep the sound of tears out of his voice.

‘So really it’s up to you.’

Todd looked at Dempsey again, who was making a mournful sound in his sleep.

‘If I bring him back over to the hospital?’

‘Yes?’

‘Would there be somebody there to put him to sleep?’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll be here.’

‘Then that’s what I want to do.’

‘I’m so very sorry, Mr Pickett.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

Dempsey roused himself a little when Todd went back to the bed, but it was barely more than a sniff and a half-hearted wag.

‘Come on, you,’ he said, wrapping Dempsey tightly in the quilt, and lifting him up, ‘the sooner this is done the sooner you’re not an unhappy hound. Will you drive, Marco?’

It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and though the drizzle had ceased, the traffic was still horrendous. It took them fifty-five minutes to get down to the hospital, but this time – perhaps to make up for her unavailability the last time he’d been there – Dr Otis was at the counter waiting for him. She opened the side door, to let him into the non-public area.

‘You want me to come in, boss?’ Marco asked.

‘Nah, it’s okay. We’ll be fine.’

‘He looks really out of it,’ the doctor remarked.

Dempsey had barely opened his eyes at the sound of Todd’s voice. ‘You know, I realize this may seem like a strange thing to say, but in a way we’re lucky that this caught him so fast. With some dogs it takes weeks and months …’

‘In here?’ Todd said.

‘Yes.’

The doctor had opened a door into a room not more than eight by eight, painted in what was intended to be a soothing green. On one wall was a Monet reproduction and on another a piece of poetry that Todd couldn’t read through his assembling tears.

‘I’ll just give you two some time,’ Dr Otis said. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Todd sat down with Dempsey in his arms. ‘Damn,’ he said softly. ‘This isn’t fair.’

Dempsey had opened his eyes fully for the first time in several hours, probably because he’d heard the sound of Todd crying, which had always made him very attentive, even if the crying was fake. Todd could be rehearsing a sad scene from a picture, memorizing lines, and as soon as the first note of sadness crept into his voice Dempsey would be there, his paws on Todd’s knees, ready to give comfort. But this time the animal didn’t have the strength to help make the boss feel better. All he could do was stare up at Todd with a slight look of puzzlement on his face.

‘Oh God, I hope I’m doing the right thing. I wish you could just tell me that this is what you want.’ Todd kissed the dog, tears falling in Dempsey’s fur. ‘I know if I was you I wouldn’t want to be shitting everywhere and not able to stand up. That’s no life, huh?’ He buried his face in the smell of the animal. For eleven years – whether Todd had had female company or not – Dempsey had slept on his bed; and more often than not been the one to wake him up, pressing his cold nose against Todd’s face, rubbing his neck on Todd’s chest.

‘I love you, dog,’ he said. ‘And I want you to be there when I get to heaven, okay? I want you to be keeping a place for me. Will you do that? Will you keep a place for me?’

There was a discreet knock on the door, and Todd’s stomach turned. ‘Time’s up, buddy,’ he said, kissing Dempsey’s burning hot snout. Even now, he thought, I could say no, I don’t want you to do this. He could take Dempsey home for one more night in the big bed. But that was just selfishness. The dog had had enough, that was plain. He could barely raise his head. It was time to go.

‘Come in,’ he said.

The doctor came in, meeting Todd’s gaze for the first time. ‘I know how hard this is,’ she said. ‘I have dogs myself, all mutts like Dempsey.’

‘Dempsey, did you hear that?’ Todd said, the tears refusing to abate. ‘She called you a mutt.’