Part 2
Walter reached across with his left hand and caught a fold of fur behind Toby’s neck. His mouth worked twice before a word came out. “Toby. My boy.”
The puppy wriggled closer. Claire steadied him as Walter drew him onto his lap, where he turned twice against the blanket and immediately began licking the man’s chin. Ruth took a step into the kitchen, stopped, and covered her mouth with her sleeve.
Claire stayed kneeling beside the chair. Walter’s right hand had not moved, but his left was traveling over Toby’s back in small, repeated strokes. When the puppy put a paw on his chest, he made a sound that might have been a laugh if his breath had held.
“I thought he’d settle,” Ruth said. “I thought somebody younger, with room—”
Claire looked up. Ruth was addressing her, but she was watching her husband.
“I didn’t come to ask you to take him back,” Claire said. “I can look after him. I just don’t think he understands where you went.”
Ruth nodded without answering. On the kitchen counter, beside an empty bread bag, stood a new prescription bottle. Claire recognized the pharmacy label, then made herself look away.
Walter kept Toby on his lap while Ruth put the kettle on. He stroked him with his left hand and occasionally spoke his name, as though checking whether the puppy would still answer. Each time, Toby lifted his face.
“He had the stroke last summer,” Ruth told Claire in the kitchen. “The hospital part, then rehab. He was gone nearly a month.”
“Was he getting therapy after he came home?”
“For a while.” Ruth took two cups from a shelf, then put back the larger one and reached for a chipped mug. “The home visits ended. Getting him down those stairs takes help I have to pay for. The rides, the appointments, everything we thought we could cover.”
She ran hot water into the chipped mug. Claire waited while she rinsed it longer than it needed.
“We used what we had saved. We manage the pills most months. That week we couldn’t.”
Claire glanced toward the living room. Toby had fallen asleep across Walter’s knees, and Walter was watching the puppy’s rib cage rise beneath the fur.
“How was he after Toby left?”
Ruth dried the mug. “He’d stopped asking for much before that. Then he stopped asking where the dog was.”
Claire had intended a short visit. She stayed until the light began to drain from the window, and when she finally brought the carrier over, Walter’s hand closed in Toby’s fur.
“I could bring him again next weekend,” she said.
He loosened his fingers. “He likes his blanket tucked under him. Otherwise he digs it all up.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Ruth walked them to the door and pressed a foil-covered dish of leftover chicken into Claire’s hand. Claire started to refuse, then saw Ruth waiting for the refusal. She accepted it and promised to return the dish.
At home, Toby ate more of his supper than he had all week. He still carried the gray scrap into his bed, but he slept there instead of on the doormat. Claire called the veterinarian with the update and put the next visit to the Bells on her calendar.
The trips became part of the weekend. Some visits were shorter because Claire was on call; some lasted through lunch and the washing up. She learned where to park without blocking the delivery entrance and which stair tread tipped under her heel. Toby learned the carrier first, then the sound of Claire taking her car keys off the hook.
Walter began watching for them. He complained that she let the puppy get away with things, then slipped him a piece of chicken when he thought she was looking elsewhere. Ruth began making tea before Claire took her coat off, and there was always a third cup on the counter.
Claire also began to notice the thinness of Walter’s affected arm, the stiffness of his fingers, and how little he changed position without Ruth’s help. A folder of discharge exercises sat beneath a stack of old magazines. With Walter’s permission, she looked through it and talked with him about asking his care team to reassess what he could safely do at home.
“I’ve done those,” he said, before she had opened the folder all the way.
“Some of them may need changing.”
“They don’t work.”
He turned toward the window. Toby followed his gaze for a moment, then rested his chin on the blanket.
Later, Ruth told Claire how hard Walter had tried at first. He had become angry when his hand would not respond, then angry when she offered to help. Eventually the folder had gone under the magazines, and she had stopped bringing it out because an ordinary afternoon without an argument had begun to seem like something worth protecting.
“I know he needs help,” Ruth said. “I’m here when you go home, Claire. I can’t spend every hour fighting him.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Claire closed the folder. “Let me start with what he’ll agree to.”
For several weeks, that was very little. There were questions he would answer and others he would meet with a flat stare. Claire kept bringing Toby and left space between her suggestions, though patience at that pace was harder than she liked to admit.
Near the end of winter, she brought a red rubber ball. Toby discovered it could bounce off a cabinet and return from an entirely unexpected direction. Walter watched him skid after it, smiling with the left side of his mouth.
The puppy dropped the ball on Walter’s right knee. It rolled off the blanket, and Toby retrieved it, tried again, then worked his way around the chair. Bracing his front paws against the broad right armrest, he set the ball down beside Walter’s curled fingers.
“Wrong side, buddy,” Walter told him.
Toby sat back and barked. When nothing happened, he put his nose against the hand and nudged.
Walter’s left fingers tightened in the blanket. His gaze fixed on the red ball, and the muscles at his jaw stood out. Claire set down the journal she had been pretending to read.
His right index finger moved.
It was slight enough that she might have missed it while reaching for her cup. A second finger followed, then stopped; Toby licked the hand again, impatient for the game to begin.
“Ruth,” Claire said, quietly this time. “Come here.”
Walter was breathing hard. Claire moved beside him without touching his arm, and Ruth came to stand behind the chair.
“Walter, did you mean to do that?” Claire asked.
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇