Love Is the Best Medicine (12 page)

“Helen?”

Eileen looked up to see an older woman in a long white coat standing over her. The woman wore no makeup and Eileen supposed pigment had never flirted with the long gray hair secured by a nest of bobby pins to form a tight precise bun. Thick glasses made her eyes look even smaller, giving her a chaste, mousy look—like an austere parochial school educator. But when Eileen said, “This is Helen,” the woman glowed, as if this meeting were a fortuitous pleasure and privilege.

“Hello,” she said, “I’m Dr. Molotov, one of the cardiologists on staff. If we may, I’ll have a listen to Helen’s chest, then we’ll take a closer look at her heart with ultrasound. Would you please follow me?”

Eileen and Helen trotted along behind her, moving deeper into the heart of the hospital, guided toward a room with an entranceway labeled “Echocardiography.” Here Dr. Molotov began her examination, starting with Helen’s history.

“I wish there was more I could tell you,” said Eileen. “Helen was a stray. She’s been with us a couple of months now. I had her
vaccinated and tested for heartworm. She was heartworm negative. Hopefully you have a fax from my vet for the rest of her blood work.”

Dr. Molotov smiled and nodded, turning over a number of stapled sheets of paper in her hand. She ran a finger all the way down the page.

“You’re doing a wonderful thing for this dog,” she said. Despite the compassion visible behind the thick lenses, this candid remark took Eileen by surprise. She managed a self-conscious, whispered “thank you” as Helen was picked up and placed on a table for examination.

Quite where this reject cocker spaniel acquired her dog-show manners Eileen did not know, but for the gentle hands of Dr. Molotov, Helen stood square and still, appreciative of the tactile affection, even if her old spaniel ears filtered out all the compliments.

“Okay then, let’s see if Helen will let us take a look at her heart.”

With the assistance of a female technician in plum-colored scrubs, two neat symmetrical patches of fur were shaved, one on each side of Helen’s chest, and she was laid down on a transparent plastic table with a small square window cut into its center. The overhead lights were dimmed so as to optimize image contrast on the screen. The ultrasound machine was a bulky, high-tech, hospital-white unit, touting buttons and dials and sliders and mouse pads beneath a large screen bearing Helen’s details in its top lefthand corner. The main body of the image was shaped like a generous slice of cake. Dr. Molotov selected a probe, applied a liberal coating of blue gel to its head, snaked it under and through the hole in the table, and made direct contact with the bald skin of Helen’s chest. Instantly, within the sweeping radar triangle on the screen, beating muscle, chambers, and valves came into remarkably sharp focus.

Methodically, images were produced and measurements made.
Eileen watched as probes came and went, twisting this way and that, slicing the beating heart into transverse and longitudinal sections, the flow of colors adding splashes of blue and red paint dancing to the whoosh and slosh of venous and arterial blood. Eileen felt lost, her eyes moving between the digital chaos on the monitor and the calm smile of the dog she loved on the table.

“Please God,” she thought. “Give this poor dog a chance at a real life.”

“Very good,” said Dr. Molotov.

For a second Eileen thought it was over, that “very good” meant Helen must have a clean bill of health for her heart.

“Let’s see if she will be just as helpful for the other side.”

Eileen kept the groan to herself while Helen, more than happy to oblige, flipped over and was wriggled into position above the aperture by the technician. Same beat, same dance moves on this opposite side, the side Dr. J. had hesitated over months before. The eternity dragged on, the desire to know if everything was okay building to an unbearable crescendo. And then, as if she were delivering a throwaway line she might have slipped into the conversation at any time, Dr. Molotov said, “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with her heart. Her measurements check out fine for an older spaniel. Her valves appear to be in perfect working order.”

Eileen inhaled deeply, overcome by the mixture of relief and pride welling up inside.

“So that just leaves us with a couple of chest X-rays,” said Dr. Molotov, wiping the
Ghostbusters
slime off Helen’s chest. “We should be able to do them right away, and based on how good Helen was for the ultrasound, I doubt she’ll need any sedation. Let me take you over to the radiology waiting area.”

Eileen and Helen were led down a corridor to a small waiting room occupied by an elderly gentleman with a golden retriever lying at his feet.

Man and dog existed in an invisible shroud of nicotine. He, the man, was long limbed, angled forward, elbows on thighs, his body speaking the language of someone unable to relax. His gaunt features relinquished a brief forced smile as Eileen and Helen took a seat.

The dog shared this lean, skeletal appearance—another example of master looking like dog, or maybe it was the other way round. This was a particularly blond golden, the bony features of his skull prominent, unnaturally unmasked by wasted muscle. He lay with his chin resting on the cool floor, his eyes looking tired and unfocused.

For a while the four of them maintained their silence, like strangers on an elevator watching the numbers over the sliding metal doors count down.

A technician in Oxford blue scrubs appeared.

“I’m here for Helen, for her chest X-rays,” he said.

“Do you need me to come with her?” asked Eileen, handing over her leash.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” he said. “The X-ray machines are just around the corner. If she lies still we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Eileen watched them go and then turned back to the old man and his dog, suddenly aware that Helen had been taken out of sequence.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I feel like I’m jumping the line.”

The old man waved away the apology with a large, weathered hand. It smacked of a lifetime’s manual labor but Eileen focused on the indelible dirty yellow V between his cigarette fingers.

“No biggie,” he said, tar and gravel clinging to every word. “Sam’s supposed to be seeing the cancer doctor before he gets his X-rays. We’ve got nowhere to go.”

Eileen leaned forward and down to run a hand along Sam’s head, neck, and back, feeling every bone along the poor dog’s spine, the damning reality of an emaciated dog. It was remarkable how much
a dog’s fur could hide. Perhaps, thought Eileen, it was more telling that Sam made no response to a stranger’s touch. No look back. No swish of the tail. The old dog continued to stare straight ahead.

“I get the feeling this is going to be his last set of X-rays,” said the man, the words sounding detached, as if he were trying them on for size, seeing if they fit, if he could say them to a stranger and keep the pain and fear inside him from spilling out. He dropped his head slightly, focusing on a spot on the floor next to where Sam lay, and seemed to take stock of how he had done, how it had felt. He seemed unsure of his performance, a tough old man trying to save face in public, to deny how much he was being hurt by his best friend’s unrelenting demise.

Suddenly, for Eileen, this fragility on both sides of their relationship filled the room, as if she could share his unimaginable burden of losing his dog. She stared at him, reading the battle playing out in the wrinkles around his eyes, unable to find the right words. Any words. Eileen had had pets her whole life but she had never been in a situation where an animal had endured a relentless illness and lost.

“Eileen.”

It was Dr. Molotov, standing before her, large manila folder in hand, Helen at her feet on the end of the leash, appearing pleased all this overrated medical attention was over.

“We’re all done so why don’t you come with me.”

Eileen took Helen’s leash from Dr. Molotov and followed her, the silent farewell from the old man as she left no more than a subtle nod, dry lips pursed, a message that said, “Don’t look so worried,
your
dog’s going to be just fine.”

Directly off the radiology waiting area was a private room with viewing boxes where owners could be shown their pet’s X-rays. The room was dark until Dr. Molotov turned on a viewing box, removed an X-ray from the folder, and hung it in place, the fluorescence
transmitted through the shades of black and white creating an eerie glow. She stepped toward the door and closed it behind them, the action too deliberate to go unnoticed by Eileen. Eileen turned to face her, hoping to speak first, the preemptive strike, but the shadows couldn’t mask the sadness written on the doctor’s face and that moment of speechless shock was all it took for Dr. Molotov to get there first and say, “I’m so terribly sorry.”

T
HE
rest of what followed was a blur.

There were the words of the messenger, Dr. Molotov, a woman unable to conceal her surprise and disappointment as she delicately marinated every phrase in genuine kindness and empathy.

There were the X-rays themselves, the cold hard facts regarding this dog’s past and future. They were bold and blatant, leaping from the film, inducing a dumb nod of understanding even to the untrained eye.

What Eileen walked away with was a new, foreign, and paralyzing vocabulary, ugly phrases absorbed like blows in a beating, frightening medical terms that rained down on her until she could take no more. Pulling herself together, placing one foot in front of the other, she walked out of the room with Helen in tow. Perhaps what struck her the most as she passed through the radiology waiting area was the absence of the old man and his fragile retriever, as if neither of them had ever been there in the first place.

Back home, with Ben, she went over these verbal wounds one by one, the ones that stuck, the ones she had to say out loud:
massive tumor … potentially inoperable … probably malignant … terminal cancer …

All the while the tears kept coming and the little black dog at her feet wondered what all the fuss was about.

Ben held Eileen in his arms, pained by his inability to protect
her from this grief. The shock came in waves, the brief lulls while tissues caught the tears an opportunity for carefully chosen words.

“So the tumor is in Helen’s lungs?”

He felt the nod in his chest.

“But she has no problem breathing. She runs. She plays. And I’ve never heard her cough.”

Eileen pulled back, wiping her nostrils.

“I know,” she said. “But something wasn’t right when Dr. J. checked her over the very first time. She said she had a problem hearing her heartbeat.”

And then Ben lost her, could see and feel her slipping away, those few seconds of composure melting into an expression of dread, words distorted by her heaving sobs.

“I sh-should have had … her ch-chest X-rayed … sooner. This is all m-my fault …”

These would be the first of many second guesses, Ben knew, but he beat them into submission, sent them into exile, and tried to give pragmatism a chance.

“Who knows how long it’s been there?” he said. “What if Helen’s had this thing for months, even years? Surely that makes it less likely to be malignant and more likely to be benign?”

The shuddering inside his arms continued, as if she had not heard him. Ben bided his time.

“Here’s what you do,” he said during the next respite. “You go and meet with an oncologist. Find out what they have to say. Let’s not jump to any conclusions before we have all the facts.”

Eileen chose to hear this, her nod and audible swallow suggesting that his message had gotten through. She pulled back and glanced down to lock eyes with the dog at her feet. Innocence stared back, she was certain of that, and though Eileen hunted for more, she could be confident that one emotion was missing—fear. In all her years shared with animals, she had never sensed a dog or a cat was
afraid to die. What do they know that we do not? Why are we the only ones burdened by the fear of death? In those big brown shiny eyes Eileen saw it, so obvious and uncomplicated. For all her fussing and struggling to interpret the minutiae of Helen’s expression, it was all there, written in the unspoken language of contentment and security, one dog’s blatant declaration of trust.

T
HE
uninitiated may be forgiven for thinking the “soaping” of hospitalized animals alludes to a daily ritual of sudsy patient cleanliness. In fact SOAP is a convenient acronym for a brief yet thorough early-morning evaluation of clinical well-being, followed by a summation and a statement regarding the day’s purpose.

“S”
stands for
subjective
and calls for me to make a spontaneous, gut-feeling appraisal of how my patient reacts to my presence.

“Hi, sweetheart, how are you this morning?”

I opened the cage door, squatted down, and squeezed into Cleo’s overnight accommodation.

“Did you sleep well? You look like you did. I hope your neighbors kept the noise down.”

Cleo rushed forward to greet me, jubilantly waltzing on three legs (and two left feet) before crawling into my lap and poking her face into mine.