I was on the toilet when the vet called back. I was on the toilet when the vet called back, and I didn’t want the vet to know I was on the toilet, so I stayed on the toilet and I talked to the vet and I took four hundred words of notes in my phone, so many notes I forgot I was on the toilet and so stayed on the toilet when I called my wife right after the vet hung up, stayed on the toilet as I talked her through the four hundred words of notes on my phone, stayed on the toilet as I added one hundred words of her questions for when the vet called again, one whole healthy blog post of words, written on my phone, written on the toilet, my leg and my ass falling asleep in the bathroom where half the lights have burnt out and there’s a big hole in the wall surrounding the faucet for the bath and somehow that hasn’t been the issue with the place.
It was 2:32 when the vet called again, and thank goodness I’d gotten to the apartment early to grab the keys, because the appointment was at 2:30 and of course the vet called again during the one five-minute stretch where I was scheduled to have something else going on. It was 2:32 when the vet called again, and I was standing in an empty sterile apartment with empty sterile floors and empty sterile walls and empty sterile cupboards, leaning on the island next to a just-started-to-fill-out “inventory form,” that thing they have you fill out to absolve yourself from scuffs on the windows and scuffs in the drawers and the loose screw in the cabinet next to the sink, as though they’d charge you for any of that anyway, as though you won’t do worse in the sixteen months or twenty-eight months or however long you’ll live in the place, as though this empty, purgatorial place could ever be a home, though you know somehow it will be, and soon, and you’ll be back among the living though the living seem so far away right now. It was 2:32 when the vet called again, and I was leaning on the black counter of a vacant apartment, lights off or lights all on I know not which it didn’t matter which, gray inside gray outside vacant swimming pool courtyard gray underneath a vacant gray-floored balcony, scattered gray rain driplets flecking themselves on the gray water in the only motion beside my own, my own shifting weight and smattered paces as the vet answered my questions and I understood most but I didn’t understand what had happened, or at least why, and she sounded so hopeful it would stop but it hasn’t stopped for a month now, more than that, really, and good God how do people handle sick kids I can hardly handle a sick dog.
The sun made a brave attempt, after I called my wife, after I filled out the inventory form, after I dropped it off in the office downstairs and told the assistant manager the fan in the second bedroom wouldn’t turn off and the drawers under the counter by the door wouldn’t close all the way. The sun made a brave attempt, warming the air between banks of deep, black clouds, somehow darker in the brief calm presence of their opponent. But the clouds kept flecking rain, and by the time I got to the vet they’d recouped their losses and by the time I got to the vet all, again, was gray, and I went through the motions of liberating a hospital-captive puppy, the hugging and the petting and the cooing and the tousling and the smiling through a mask and the frantically looping the leash over three fingers because there were three questions to ask and I couldn’t afford to forget to ask them and the asking of those questions, one by one through the three, and the writing of those answers on my mind, and the scheduling of the follow-up appointment and the walking to the car with this little being, this little being I’ve spent more time with than any other being these last eleven months, more than even my wife, this little being, as familiar to me as myself and for some reason right there as unfamiliar to me as myself, and I went through the motions of that, too, and I went through the motions of driving home, and of releasing the dog into the yard, and of bringing the dog back inside the house and walking around to the driveway to get all the pills out of the car while the dog lost her mind at the screen door, poor thing thinking I was leaving again like I’d left Saturday like we’d both left Saturday, my wife and I, left her in that crate in the room of crated dogs where the chihuahua was barking and the Berner lay on the floor, techs and a vet around stabilizing it, treating it, God I hope saving it because a car’d gotten it on some road somewhere in this sunny-that-day city but-the-sun-was-going-down. And I went through the motions of telling her it was ok, that I was still there, and the motions of petting her when I’d gotten back inside and set the pills on the table, and the whole cycle of motions again when I went to grab my backpack, because I’d brought my backpack when I left, because I hadn’t known when I left whether I’d be picking the dog up or leaving the dog another night and I didn’t know when I’d know, so I’d thought maybe I’d work in that little conference room in the new building, where the walls aren’t gray and the floor isn’t gray and the world isn’t gray, even if everything behind my eyes made it look gray, a gray that keeps lurking today, a day later, a gray I can’t shake right now, a gray that makes me feel like I’m somewhere else, except I’m not somewhere else.
I’m nowhere else.
I’m just not here.
