WHAT WERE MY coping strategies?
A full list on that was yet to be googled, but for now, I decided on the ride home from Dr. Nicole’s bungalow, coping strategy number one would be art.
I mean, objectively, I had a giant deadline. So I needed to be doing art, anyway. And the truest thing I knew about myself was this: I was always happy when I was making things.
I grabbed my favorite, most bright and delightful box of watercolors … but then, instead of just doing something fun, I started working. On faces. Instead of just picking something, anything, colorful and pleasant to paint— a fruit basket, say, or some flowers—I bore down on myself like some kind of ruler-toting schoolmarm. Hell-bent on forcing my fusiform face gyrus into submission, I spent an entire Saturday painting face after face after face like a madwoman chasing her own puzzle-piece-shaped shadow.
How did it go?
I’m guessing not well.
But of course once they were done, I couldn’t see them.
Fine. Didn’t matter. Maybe if I did enough of them, things would start to shift.
Or not.
Either way, it was something to do.
So what if the grim determination of my attitude sucked the joy out of it
all?
I had less than three weeks to fix my FFG.
By the end of the night, when my fingers were stained turquoise and
plum and tangerine, and my eyes felt like sandpaper, I had a stack of
scribbled, unintelligible faces a foot high and a whole table of others laid out to dry.
My plan was to get up the next day and do it again. But then, the next morning, Peanut got sick.
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THANK GOD THIS face-blindness thing applied only to humans.
Peanut’s big, brown, perfectly round, saturated-with-affection puppy eyes had been like a balm for my weary soul. After I’d brought him home from being boarded, it was the two of us against the world. I looked at that little mug of his a hundred times a day—positively savoring his jaunty yellow mustache and that perky button nose and those ears that never could seem to both flop forward at the same time.
“You’re not faceless, Peanut,” I’d tell him, pressing my nose into his fur. If there were a dog hall of fame, Peanut would be on all their merchandise. He was cute as hell without being full of himself. He was endlessly cheery. He was a good eater without being a glutton. He was just as happy to go on a walk as he was to spend the entire day napping. He loved a good squeaky toy, but he lost interest at exactly the same rate I did. He loved me madly—leaping in circles whenever I came back home from anywhere—but without taking it too far. Without, say, suffering from separation anxiety and eating my shoes. His self-esteem was solid. His
fashion sense was legendary. His sense of humor was totally deadpan.
I preferred him to most people even in normal times, is what I’m saying.
But of course, even more so now, when “most people” were the last thing on earth I wanted to see.
And so when I woke up way too early on Sunday morning and set out his favorite breakfast dish—torn pieces of croissant from his favorite French bakery—but he sat still and stared at me … my heart dropped in my chest.
I just knew, you know? I sensed in an instant something was wrong.
I tried coaxing him over, holding up a piece and taking a nibble myself, hoping he’d come take it. (He didn’t.) I tried picking him up and setting him in front of the dish, like that might inspire him to dive in. (It didn’t.) I tried
giving the dish ten seconds in the microwave, like that might make it seem fresh-baked and more appealing. (Kind of the opposite.)
But nothing.
All Peanut wanted to do was hold himself still like a statue.
I squeaked his squeaky squirrel, but he just stared at me, like, Really? I tossed it across the room and ran after it like we were racing, but he just blinked at me, like, Please. And when I finally picked up his leash and jangled it at him and watched him fully not respond, that’s when I called the vet.
The new vet—because it was closest. They weren’t even open yet, but I told the answering service it was an emergency.
They said they’d page one of the vets to meet me at the clinic.
And here’s how worried about Peanut I was: I didn’t even think to request Dr. Addison.
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IT WAS A small clinic, not some big 24-hour place. But they did have weekend hours.
They were open only from eight to noon on Sundays, but I wrapped Peanut up in his favorite velour blanket, cradled him in my arms, power walked the entire two blocks over because I still wasn’t allowed to run for skull-related reasons, and was sitting on the bench by the clinic doors at 7:45.
My heart was wheezing. I don’t even think it was pumping blood at that point—just straight adrenaline and a dark feeling of dread that Peanut was dying.
Which was unacceptable. Even though he was fourteen years old.
This was no joke. I’d done a pretty impressive set of mathematical calculations involving the life spans of all the different dog breeds he was a mix of, and by every analysis, I was guaranteed at least two more years.
Some dogs in his general category made it to eighteen, even.
That’s all I could think as I sat on the bench with tears positively shellacking my face. I was not letting this dog die. I was not losing the only person who loved me. Not today. Any treatment. Anything. I’d call Lucinda
if I had to. I’d beg my dad. No bill was too high. No humiliation was too great.
A few minutes later, Dr. Oliver Addison himself showed up, and I heard his leather dress shoes tapping the pavement of the parking lot before I saw the man himself.
When I looked up, I swear he was walking in slo-mo like a superhero. That’s how I remember it: backlit with a lens flare, the good doctor already wearing his white lab coat, which was unbuttoned and flapping behind him, cape-like, in the wind. This was no casual-Sunday ensemble: the man was bringing his professional A game, wearing a tie, suit slacks, and that epic, slicked-back Clark Kent hair.
And let’s not forget his gait: that confident, badass, I’m-going-to-save- your-pooch stride.
How had I never noticed gaits before?
They were practically a love language all to themselves.
In another situation, I would have melted at the sight—dripped through the bench slats and puddled on the sidewalk.
But I stayed focused. For Peanut.
I stood up as Dr. Addison got closer, totally unaware that I was rocking the opposite of his GQ cover shoot vibe: I was still in the cotton calico baby-doll pajamas I’d slept in. And I should’ve popped on my sneakers as I headed out the door, but I somehow traveled two blocks to the vet clinic in my fuzzy slippers shaped like bunny rabbits, instead.
But the mortification of that would hit me later. Right now, there were only two things in the world: the little fuzzball dog burrito in my arms and the man who needed to save him.
Dr. Addison slowed as he got close, taking in the sight of us.
“There’s something wrong,” I said, my voice trembly from crying. “He won’t eat. He won’t move.” And now, we both noticed, he was panting.
Dr. Addison nodded like an unflappable hero and said, “Let’s get him inside.”
He led us straight past all the exam rooms, back to the back, where the real veterinary medicine took place. All the boarded dogs in their kennels woke up as we came in and started barking and whining and rattling around.
Dr. Addison didn’t even notice.
When we got to an exam table, he said, “Remind me of his age?”
“Fourteen,” I said—then added, “A very youthful fourteen,” like that might matter.
Dr. Addison reached for Peanut, and I handed him over like a swaddled babe. Then he unwrapped him, saying, “Hey, buddy. Let’s get a look at you.”
Peanut must have really been feeling bad, because even though he didn’t like men in general, he tolerated Dr. Addison—holding still and crouching on the stainless-steel exam table.
Dr. Addison ran his hands all around, feeling for lumps and bumps.
Palpating things. Checking his gums, which were, apparently, too white. “That’s bad?” I asked.
“They should be pinker,” Dr. Addison answered, but he was already on to checking other things.
When the rest of the staff arrived, they gently led me back out to the waiting area, saying they could work faster that way. The faceless tech I’d met the first day said they’d be running blood work and chemistries, checking red and white cells and platelets and kidney and liver function. “We’ll know a lot more in a few hours,” she said. “You can go home. We’ll call you when we get the results.”
“I’ll stay here, if that’s all right.”
The faceless tech nodded. “Sure.” Then she held out a folded lab coat to me. “Dr. Addison said you might say that. And he thought you might be … cold.”
And so I put it on and stayed. I think I was hungry, but I didn’t notice. I hadn’t had any coffee that morning, and I did notice the caffeine headache creeping up the back of my neck. I didn’t have anything to do—hadn’t even brought my phone—so I just squeezed over and over on that little spot between your thumb and forefinger that’s supposed to be a pressure point for relieving tension. Pressing on one hand, then the other … waiting for it to work.
It didn’t really work.
I kept expecting—any minute—for Dr. Addison to come striding out like a TV doctor and tell me that everything was fixed.
Instead, at noon, he came out and told me they wanted to give Peanut a blood transfusion.
That didn’t sound good.
I worked my pressure points even harder.
“The labs came back,” he said, “and we’ve diagnosed him with IMHA, which stands for immune-mediated hemolytic anemia.”
Oh god. More medical terms. I shook my head. “What is that?”
“His immune system is attacking his own red blood cells. His hematocrit was at twelve when it should be closer to fifty. That’s why he’s panting. He can’t get enough oxygen.”
All I could ask was, “Why is this happening?”
It was probably more of a rhetorical, big-picture, why-is-my-whole-life- falling-apart-all-at-once question than a medical one. But Dr. Addison answered it anyway, all earnest: “We don’t know what causes it,” he said. “It’s idiopathic. All of a sudden, the immune system just goes haywire and starts attacking itself.”
“Is it curable?” I asked.
“It’s life-threatening,” he said, “but it can be cured. The survival rate is thirty to seventy percent.”
Thirty to seventy percent? What a useless piece of information. “I really was hoping for just a flat yes.”
“We’re going to give him everything we’ve got,” Dr. Addison promised. “He looks like a fighter.”
At that, I felt tears flooding up in my chest. “The thing is…” I said then, trying to push my voice to sound normal through the tightness in my throat. “The thing is … I can’t lose him. Do you know what I mean? I can’t.”
Dr. Addison nodded, and I could sense a new tenderness about him. “The blood transfusion should help a lot,” he said next. “Give him the energy he needs to fight.”
I nodded, my face wet again. “I know everybody thinks their dog is the best dog, but the thing is my dog really is actually, literally, the best.” What was I saying?
“Later today,” Dr. Addison went on, staying focused, “we’ll want to get him eating. Can you tell me his favorite foods?”
I sat up straighter and pawed at my eyes, determined to pull it together. “Yes. He loves tortillas, doughnuts, and rigatoni Bolognese. He’s a big fan of saag paneer. He goes crazy for California rolls. He also loves crepes— but only like the kind you get in Paris. If they’re too pancakey, that’s a no.”
Dr. Addison tilted his head. “I was thinking more like … dog food.” “He’s not really a dog food guy,” I said.
“Your dog doesn’t eat dog food?”
“I mean, it’ll do in a pinch. But if you’re asking me what he likes…” “All those carbs can’t be healthy for him.”
I’d heard this before, and I’d defended my little guy before, too. “He’s a foodie,” I said. “He has a very refined palate.”
Dr. Addison took that in.
And then a little joke I’d made many times popped into my head, and I just said it now without really stopping to wonder if, in our current situation, it was still true: “You know those old guys who smoke a pack a day but live to be a hundred?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s kind of like that, but with croissants.”
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I WANTED TO just stay in the waiting room of the vet clinic all day and all night, forever—but hunger and exhaustion forced me, not long before dinnertime, to leave Peanut in Dr. Addison’s sexy but capable hands and go home.
I also wanted to take that lab coat with me, but I left it—walking home instead in my baby-doll pj’s and bunny slippers, feeling extra naked and alone, and fully expecting to run into some humiliating stranger. A former boss. A premed professor. My dad.
But the person I ran into was Mr. Kim.
I knew him, of course, because he always wore dress shoes, suit pants, a button-down Oxford shirt, and suspenders. He’d been dressing like that Sue’s entire life. No matter what he was doing.
And I was so glad it was him, of all people. He’d seen Sue and me— lots of times—in much crazier getups than bunny slippers.
This evening, he was tinkering with the mechanics of the elevator doors, but when he saw me, he abandoned that project. “Come see me,” he said, gesturing me toward him.
“What about the elevator?” I asked.
But he waved me off. “We’ve got stairs.”
He led me around to a quiet corner, and then he cut right to the chase. “I hear that you’re not just using the rooftop as a studio—you’re living there.”
Mr. Kim smiled a lot. Maybe he wasn’t always smiling—but he was often smiling.
But I couldn’t sense him smiling now.
My heart dropped. Was I getting kicked out?
Was I really—right here, in my pj’s and bunny slippers, with Peanut in the ICU, at the brokest and sickest and most disoriented I’d ever been in my life—getting kicked out of my apartment by the closest thing to a father figure I had?
His voice was pretty serious. “That won’t work,” he said, shaking his head with a vibe like he was truly sorry.
I nodded. Of course. I never should have snuck around behind the Kims’ back to begin with.
“It’s not an apartment,” he said next. “Renting it as a studio is one thing. But it’s not fit to live in. I really”—and here he shook his head
—“can’t rent that place as living quarters.”
I nodded harder. “I get it. You’re right. I’m so sorry.” Oh god, I was so screwed.
But then Mr. Kim let out a chuckle that he couldn’t suppress any longer. “So I guess,” he said, clapping his hand on my shoulder, “you’ll just have to stay there for free.”
