Born to Bark Page 8

  I asked for help from a close friend and colleague in the psychology department, Lawrence Ward, who was sworn to secrecy for the moment. I only told him that my marriage was breaking up, which he understood. I did not tell him about the ultimate reasons having to do with my failing body and a ticking life clock. Lawrence and I have done a lot of research together over the years and coauthored six books. We also share a love of science fiction novels, music, and films. Lawrence was also originally from Pennsylvania, which gave us a feeling of kinship so that when I was struggling to put together my new living space, without any hesitation he volunteered to help me move my few new belongings into my apartment.

  On Saturday morning I told Mossy that I was leaving. I momentarily thought of explaining my medical condition to her as some partial explanation of my decision, but it had been so long since we had shared confidences that I had to stop to consider how to tell her. Before I resolved the matter in my head, she simply walked away.

  Telling the kids was much more difficult. Even though Rebecca was only 9 and Benn 7 years of age, they seemed to know that something significant was happening, and the two of them huddled together on the sofa with Feldspar sitting between them. Rebecca had a handful of his fur clutched in her hand and seemed to draw strength from having her dog nearby. Benn simply leaned his head against the dog and listened. I don’t think that they understood that this was going to be a longer separation than for a scientific meeting or research trip or that I wouldn’t be living in the house any longer. I gave them a kiss and Felfy a pat and told them I would be back in a couple of days.

  When I returned two days later to pick up some of my personal belongings, my side of the bedroom closet was bare. I asked Mossy where my clothes were and she answered, “They are your clothes—how would I know?” My collection of relatively rare books in the psychological and biological sciences, which I had put together over more than ten years of hunting in used book stores, personal library, and estate sales, was also gone, as were a number of other small personal items.

  I left and returned to my apartment to look in my closet. I had three shirts, two pairs of pants, two sport jackets, a sweater, and a couple of scarves. It looked like I would have to get some new garments.

  When I went to get some funds to replace my missing clothing, however, I found that our joint savings and checking accounts had not only been emptied but closed. All of my credit cards had been jointly held with my wife, and she had run them up to their maximum in just a few days so I had virtually no money to live on until my next paycheck. It was then that I went to a lawyer to have her draw up a formal separation agreement.

  Living quietly in my new apartment actually turned out to be a comfort to me. I missed the kids and the dog, but I got to see Benn and Rebecca twice a week. We would make dinner together in my little place while I tried to teach them how to cook. They would work on their stamp collections, play games, or just talk a little. Although my health was failing, I actually felt more at ease by myself and closer to my children.

  Just after our interim divorce had been granted, I left the city to do a short speaking tour that had been arranged before I knew about my medical problem. While I was away, Mossy secretly tried to sell the house. Her attempt was unsuccessful because the house was one of the few things that was in my name and not held jointly. The divorce agreement had stipulated that she could live in that house as long as she wanted to, and if she decided to move out, it would be sold and the proceeds divided equally between us.

  A short time later, in defiance of her promise to the judge during our divorce hearing, she took the kids and moved back to Philadelphia. There she had the support not only of her family but also of mine. My parents never questioned me about the divorce and never blamed anyone for the dissolution of our marriage. They were saddened by it, but they always provided love and assistance to Mossy and the kids whenever they could and virtually never spoke to me about our breakup.

  I had now lost contact with my children. Whenever I would call to try to speak to them, I was always told that they were not at home. Letters or birthday cards I sent never seemed to make it into Benn and Rebecca’s hands. I suppose that I could have sent them to my parents to deliver personally, but I did not want to involve them in a way that might poison their relationship with Mossy or affect their ability or inclination to help my kids.

  With my children gone, all that I had left of real importance to me was my work. I wanted to finish as much of it as could before my time ran out. I saw Clare less often, and other than spending time with my friends Peter and Lawrence, I did not do all that much socializing. I was slowly closing in on myself—isolated, sick, and lonelier than ever.

  My doctor was monitoring me more closely but was offering little in the way of long-term hope.

  “Things are going pretty much the way that we expected,” he would say. “Don’t give up yet. I’ve arranged for you to see a specialist in a few weeks, and I’ve sent your records off to some other experts in the field to see if they have any ideas.”

  “Are there any changes in the timeline?” I asked.

  “I can’t really say,” he replied.

  I had always assumed that Mossy had taken Feldspar with her when she left Vancouver with the kids. Approximately 10 weeks after she had gone, I received a bill in the mail. It was from a local veterinarian whom I did not know. The cover letter read something like:

  “As per your instructions, the Cairn terrier, Feldspar, was kept in our kennel for two months. You had specified that you were going to attempt to have him adopted within that time frame, but if he was not picked up by the designated date, he was to be euthanized. Enclosed you will find a bill for his boarding, euthanization, and body disposal.”

  I was stunned. Felfy had been on death row for two months and I hadn’t known it. I still don’t know if not telling me about Feldspar’s whereabouts was an oversight, since the dog was never important to Mossy, or whether it was an act of cold, deliberate vengeance to kill my dog—I mean, the kids’ dog—and send me the bill.

  I sat there at the table in my little apartment looking at the veterinarian’s demand for payment. I was in a state of shock. After a bit I was surprised to see that my right hand was gently stroking the piece of paper, much the way that I habitually stroked the head of Feldspar on those rare occasions when we were alone together.

  I felt swamped with emotions. I should have bonded more closely with Felfy. I should have given him a voice. I should have checked up on where he was. I should saved him from his cruel fate. I should have … I should have …

  I looked back down at the table. There were wet spots on the veterinarian’s invoice. I was crying. For the first time since the doctor had given me the bad news, for the first time since I separated from my wife, for the first time since my children were taken from me, I was crying. Feldspar, the dog that I would not permit to become mine, was gone. Felfy was dead and I was dying, too.

  CHAPTER 6

  CONVERSATIONS WITH WOLF

  Sometimes, miracles happen and restore your faith in God, science, kismet, or dumb luck. Eight months into my death sentence, I was still trying to carry on as if nothing had changed except my living arrangements when I got a phone message from my doctor asking me to come to his office as soon as possible. I had a flash of panic. Had one of the seemingly millions of tests that I had been taking shown up worse than expected? Was the clock now ticking faster? Was my time shorter than I thought?

  A few hours later, I was sitting in front of him. He had a legal-sized envelope in his hands and the postage on it indicated that he had received this in the mail from someplace in Canada. He pulled a few sheets of paper out of it, glanced at them, and then made full eye contact with me (a good sign?).

  “Stan, I’ve been in touch with a few people about possible courses of treatment for you. I haven’t had anything promising come out of those inquiries, but something else has turned up. A medical researcher in Toronto is doing research
on the effectiveness of a fairly radical method of treatment for certain rare but serious problems. He is looking for people suffering from those conditions who might become participants in his research study. Specifically he is looking for individuals with broad, systemic infections that are unresponsive to normal treatment, or that can not be treated for some reason. Because the course of treatment itself has not been tried before, and it involves massive, but controlled, doses of pharmaceuticals that can be toxic, he is looking for cases that are very serious.” He paused, and looked down, then said quietly, “Actually, he is looking for terminal cases.”

  The doctor looked up at me then and made eye contact again. “Listen, I don’t have anything better to offer and this is at least a chance. You don’t have to go to Toronto. His team has sent me their treatment materials and testing protocols, and you can stay here in Vancouver. I will monitor your progress and send them reports. It looks like there might be side effects from this treatment regimen. It might even accelerate your decline. On the other hand, it is the only thing that I can see that might make a dent in your problem. I took the liberty of sending him copies of your medical records, and he has already told me that you are an acceptable candidate to be in the study if you agree.”

  Science makes progress and often comes to the rescue in times of need. I thought of Max Theiler, who discovered the cause of the deadly disease, yellow fever, which is transmitted by mosquitoes and was a major killer in tropical areas and around port cities. In the 1920s, Theiler was working nonstop on his research because he, like me, was also working under a death sentence. In his case it was diabetes, which at that time was untreatable and usually ultimately fatal. However, Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin as a treatment, just in the nick of time. Theiler became one of the early recipients of this new cure while it was still considered experimental and potentially dangerous. He took this experimental drug as part of an unproven treatment regimen, and ultimately lived to receive the Nobel Prize for his work on yellow fever some thirty years later. Perhaps, as in Theiler’s case, I too might get lucky.

  My enrollment in the research project first required that I sign a long, involved consent form, typical of those used in most medical research. I had to indicate that I understood that the procedures used might not cure me, that I might be placed into a “control group” that received placebos rather than active drugs, that there might be side effects, that if I died (even if the cause of death could be traced back to the nature of the treatment), the researchers could not be sued because I had agreed to this process. I had to agree that I understood and consented to the fact that the specifics of the treatment, drugs, and procedures would not be indicated to me in advance. Lovely—I was signing away the rights to my body and they weren’t even going to tell me what they were doing.

  My treatment took me to the clinic on a regular basis for administration of the drugs and testing. I was given a checklist to indicate any side effects, of which I had a ton, including nausea, headaches, diarrhea, ringing in my ears, and occasional dizziness, but they usually became tolerable enough for me to continue living “normally” a few hours, or at most a day, after each treatment. I had to tough my way through the discomfort without knowing if it would be worth the effort, since I had also been warned that it might be several months before they knew if the treatment was working. Actually, the side effects were comforting because they confirmed that I was getting the actual treatment, not the placebo that the “control group” was getting.

  At least 4 months after I’d started the experimental procedure, on one of my office visits, my doctor entered carrying an envelope that looked suspiciously like the one that had contained the consent form, but when he pulled out a small sheaf of papers, he smiled. That was the first smile that I had seen from him since before my initial diagnosis.

  “Good news. Very good news! Your tests look wonderful. The team in Toronto wants you to continue the treatment for another six weeks, just to be sure, but it is beginning to look as if the infection has stopped spreading completely, and its severity has been brought down to a level where your own immune system can mop up what remains. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side they want those extra few weeks of treatment.”

  Then he smiled again. “Well, you took a gamble and you won a life!”

  He gave me a pat on my shoulder as I walked out of his office. I felt like this should be a musical moment, and I should run through the clinic singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” while a camera circled around me and a troupe of dancers appeared from all sides twirling in their sparkling costumes and holding their arms high while they sang along with me. I restrained myself from any sort of display until I was sitting in my car alone, where I clenched both of my fists, looked up, and threw my hands forward and shouted loudly enough for God to hear, “Yes! Thank you, Boss!”

  Suddenly I had plans to make, and a life—a real life, hopefully, even a long life—to map out. I wanted to tell someone, anyone, about how happy I was, that I had beaten the odds and had been given a second chance. But I couldn’t, because I had not told anybody about my illness. I didn’t even have a dog in my life to share my joy. I glanced at my wristwatch. I had a class to teach in an hour, so I couldn’t revel in the moment in any case.

  As I drove toward campus, my mind was whirling. I had started no new projects and had avoided even close friends for nearly a year. I really did not know how I was going to restart a life that I had been carefully closing down ever since my death sentence had been announced. Should I try to do something to reestablish my family, perhaps fight for custody or at least more access to my kids? Should I consider some of the tentative job offers that I had been receiving and perhaps move to Philadelphia or to another university and start my life over again in a new place? Should I …

  The endless possibilities that were open to me and the decisions that I needed to make were still racing around in my mind when I parked my car and started to walk toward the psychology building to gather up the material that I needed for my lecture. As I neared my office, I heard a voice call out, “Stan!”

  I turned and saw the familiar face of Lou, a member of the education faculty who had been on several committees with me, and whose husband, Arnold, I knew from a boxing club that I occasionally used to work out in to try to maintain some semblance of physical fitness before my illness. We had all been together at a couple of social events, and I liked Lou’s friendly, open manner, and the blue of her eyes reminded me of the color of my daughter Rebecca’s eyes.

  “Stan, if you’ve got a minute, I need some information. I know that you had a dog and I wonder if you know of any good boarding kennels where a dog can get some extra care. My husband and I have to go home—back east—to take care of a family matter. It’s all very short notice since we have to leave the day after tomorrow, and we’ll be gone around six to maybe eight days. The problem is that our dog, Wolf—a golden retriever—has a medical problem and needs a shot every morning and evening. Most kennels don’t do that for you, and if we leave him at the vet’s it will not only be expensive, but he will basically be confined to a kennel crate for the whole time, since my vet doesn’t normally do boarding. We thought of getting a house sitter, but none of them is willing to give Wolf his injections.”

  I stopped dead. What was happening here? I thought of a quote from the nineteenth-century French poet, philosopher, and revolutionary politician Alphonse de Lamartine, who said, “When man is in trouble, God sends him a dog.”

  “I’ll do better than give you the name of a kennel,” I replied. “If you want, I’ll house sit for you. I know how to give dogs injections, and, to be honest, I’m feeling more than a little bit dog deprived since I am now living by myself in an apartment building with a ‘no pets’ policy. My services come really cheap. Leave a bit of food in the fridge and a couple of bottles of bourbon and we can call it even.”

  Lou was delighted, so we arranged that I would drop by late in the afternoon
the next day to meet Wolf and to make final arrangements.

  The house was only minutes from the university on a short, twisting street with the odd name of Newton Wynd in an elegant neighborhood with big, expensive homes. I parked my car in a port at the rear of the house, and as I got out of it my friend opened her back door and waved. Rushing past her was a mountain of blond fur—Wolf—that bounded over to me as I opened the gate to the backyard. Big for his breed, he weighed about 95 pounds and his head was much broader than most golden retrievers’, giving him an appearance more bearlike than wolflike. Like all goldens, however, there was nothing wolflike in his behavior. If dog breeds each had a motto, then motto for golden retrievers would be “You’ve got a face. I’ve got a tongue. I know we can work something out.”

  I ran my hands through his sand-colored fur and felt my muscles relax. Wolf turned and led me back to his mistress and into the house. Lou showed me around her home, which was bright, well-furnished, and stylish. She showed me the box in which she kept Wolf’s medication in the refrigerator—insulin for his diabetes. She indicated where the syringes were kept, then showed me the guest room where I would be sleeping. As she was giving me a tour of the house, Arnold arrived.

  “Stay and have a drink,” he said. He turned to his wife, “Do we have enough food to set another place for dinner?”

  Lou said she could throw another steak on the grill, which sounded quite inviting to me. I sat down and we sipped some scotch and worked out the rest of the details, such as how to contact them while they were away, who their veterinarian was, where the key to their liquor cabinet was, and where the freezer was located (which was filled with steaks and other expensive cuts of beef).