Part 2
The first thing Lucy saw was Ranger’s foot.
It rested near the edge of the table, the nails dark against a folded green towel. She knew that foot. It had landed in her lap during movies and pinned down the edge of her blanket when she tried to pull it free.
She went toward it before she was ready to look at the rest of him.
A clear mask covered his muzzle. One foreleg had a shaved place with tape wrapped around a line. His coat lay flattened where somebody had cleaned off the mud, and the blanket over his body rose so little she had to watch to be certain it was moving.
Rachel stopped beside the door.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Please.”
Lucy touched the hair above Ranger’s nails.
“Your feet are cold.”
His ear tipped toward her.
She leaned closer. “It’s Lucy. I came as fast as Dad could drive.”
An eyelid moved. A small sound caught beneath the mask, hardly louder than breath through a nose.
Dr. Voss moved the stool closer with his shoe. “You can stand here. Keep clear of the line on his leg.”
Lucy climbed up and laid her palm beside Ranger’s paw. There was a strip of dried mud caught in the thick fur near his elbow. She wanted to clean it away, but she was afraid to pull anything.
“Did you hear him?” she asked.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “I think he recognized you.”
Owen had taken a place just outside the room. Behind him, the captain directed the other officers away from the open doorway so the staff could pass.
“He needs to know I’m here,” Lucy said.
“He does,” Owen told her.
She stroked Ranger’s paw with her thumb.
“Mom found your ball in the watering can,” she said. “She says it couldn’t have got there by itself.”
The mask clouded, cleared, then clouded again.
“And Dad says if you’re going to dig in the garden, you ought to put everything back afterward. But I told him you don’t have thumbs.”
Owen made a sound behind his hand. Lucy kept her eyes on Ranger.
“I didn’t finish the rectangle page. I got area wrong again. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like it either.”
The doctor adjusted a strap on the mask. “Keep going.”
Lucy told Ranger about breakfast and about the quilt with silver moons her grandmother had made. It was still folded on her bedroom chair because he liked to nose it onto the floor and lie on it. She told him the neighbor’s cat, the one belonging to Mr. Albright, had been walking along the fence as though he owned every yard on the block.
“You can stare at him later,” she said. “You don’t have to get up now.”
Under her hand, a toe seemed to draw inward.
She was looking at it when the sound from the monitor changed.
Voss reached across the table. The technician stopped entering numbers and came around to his side. Neither of them said anything at first.
Lucy looked from one face to the other.
“What are you doing?”
“His heart is slowing,” the doctor said.
Owen entered far enough to see the screen. “Again?”
Voss nodded to the technician, who handed him medication. He gave it through the existing line, checked the mask, and listened to Ranger’s chest.
Rachel moved nearer the stool. Lucy could feel her mother’s hand hovering behind her without quite touching.
“Ranger, listen,” Lucy said. “I’m still talking.”
The monitor quickened briefly. Owen took one step toward the table, then stopped when the technician needed to pass in front of him.
They changed a cuff. They checked a clamp. Voss pressed two fingers against Ranger’s leg and watched the screen, then asked for another reading.
Lucy stayed so still that her calves began to ache on the stool.
The first bedside examination and scan had not shown a cause the doctor could correct immediately. More tests were underway, but Ranger was becoming less able to tolerate even being repositioned. Each time the staff gained a little ground, the numbers slipped again.
At last Voss straightened.
“Owen. Captain. I need to speak with you away from the table.”
Rachel helped Lucy down. A technician remained beside Ranger while the adults gathered just inside the adjoining room. Daniel stood where he could see his daughter in the hall.
Through the partly open door, Lucy heard the doctor’s voice.
“Not responding…”
Then Owen, too quietly for her to make out the words.
Voss again. “He’s in pain despite what we’re giving him.”
Lucy put her back against the wall beside a rack of pet-care brochures. A corner of one had been bent into a soft white triangle. She rubbed it flat with her finger.
Patrick lowered himself beside her, careful not to block the passage. His trousers were drying stiff at the knees.
“I keep going over it,” he said. “Trying to figure out what I missed.”
Lucy looked at him.
“He didn’t slow down. Didn’t hesitate. I should have known something was wrong.”
“He won’t tell you,” she said.
Patrick pressed his lips together.
“When he cut his foot, he still wanted the ball,” she told him. “Owen had to hide it.”
“Yeah.” Patrick stared at his muddy cuff. “That sounds right.”
From behind the door came the words “suffering” and “no improvement.” Lucy pushed the brochure back into its slot.
She could see another door now, a crooked one with a rusted latch, standing at the side of a maintenance shed in the park.
That afternoon in October had been warm enough for her parents to leave their jackets in the car. Her cousin was waiting for a turn on the swings. Lucy had seen a monarch float past the drinking fountain, and she’d followed it because it kept settling just far enough ahead that she thought the next step would let her see the pattern on its wings.
She went beyond the paved path. Beyond a bench where somebody had left a paper cup. Beyond the point where her father’s voice could reach her without having to shout.
The butterfly rose into the branches.
Lucy turned back, embarrassed before she was frightened. She knew her mother would say she had been told not to wander. She tried one narrow track, then another, and came upon the shed instead of the playground.
“Mom?”
A man stepped around the far corner.
He wore a dark sweatshirt with the hood down and a cap pulled close to his eyebrows. He looked toward the path before smiling at her.
“Your family looking for you?”
Lucy backed up. “I know where they are.”
“Come on. I’ll take you.”
She tried to pass on his other side.
He caught her wrist.
For an instant she stared at his hand, surprised by how much it hurt. Then she screamed. His palm covered her mouth, and he pulled her away from the shed toward thicker trees.
Lucy bit him.
He jerked his hand back and dragged her harder. She kicked his shin, reached for a branch, lost it, and scraped both knees against low brush. Her shoes slid through leaves that hid the uneven ground.
A dog barked somewhere close.
The man stopped pulling.
Another bark came, louder, and Ranger broke through a stand of saplings. The man dropped Lucy’s wrist. She landed on one knee, then both hands.
The shepherd planted himself between them.
Lucy could see his back and the tight set of his shoulders. Every time the man moved, Ranger moved with him, keeping his body across the space where Lucy lay.
Owen came through the brush seconds later, his weapon out, his commands carrying cleanly through the trees.
Lucy crawled until she reached a trunk. She tucked her injured wrist against her stomach and watched the man go facedown in the leaves.
Owen secured him. Another officer reached the clearing.
Only then did Ranger turn.
He approached slowly, nothing in his face resembling the animal who had held the man in place. He lowered his head until his nose touched Lucy’s shin.
She grabbed the thick fur at his neck.
Owen told her she was safe, but she couldn’t release the dog long enough to answer. Ranger stood while she shook against him, shifting his feet once to keep his balance beneath her arms.
The hospital door swung wide.
Lucy lifted her head from the brochure rack.
Her father came to her first. Rachel followed, wiping her cheeks with both hands. Owen remained near the door, staring down at the lead he still carried.
“Tell me,” Lucy said.
Daniel bent until she could see his face. “The medicine isn’t making him better. Dr. Voss believes he’s dying.”
“Then they need different medicine.”
“They’ve tried several things.”
“Then find another thing.”
Rachel reached for her. Lucy stepped back.
“He kept coming for me. He didn’t quit.”
Owen looked up as though she had struck the wall beside his head.
Dr. Voss came into the hallway and sat on the edge of an empty chair, leaving Lucy room to stay with her father.
“We can’t get him stable,” he said. “His pain is getting worse. I’ve recommended that we end his suffering.”
Lucy stared at the red mark above his glasses.
“You mean make him die.”
“Yes.”
“Even if he can still hear?”
The doctor’s hands rested open on his knees. “Yes.”
Lucy’s breathing turned rough. Rachel touched her hair, and this time Lucy didn’t move away.
“Who says you can?” she asked.
“The department is responsible for Ranger,” Voss said. “Your captain and his handler have to authorize his care.”
Lucy turned toward Owen.
“Say no.”
He knelt beside her father. For a second he seemed unable to find words.
“I would take every bit of it from him if I could,” he said.
“Then don’t let them.”
“I can’t make him keep hurting for me.”
“He’s still here.”
Owen looked through the open door. The technician adjusted the blanket over Ranger’s flank.
“I know.”
Lucy rubbed her face with both sleeves. She could hear her own breath dragging against the cloth.
Owen’s voice came from above her. “If there’s truly no way to bring him back, don’t let him suffer.”
Rourke stood beside him and nodded to the doctor.
Lucy lowered her hands.
“I want to say goodbye before you do it.”
Voss rose from the chair.
“All right. Come with me…”
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