Read Online Dog Medicine by Julie Barton - Free Book Online Page A

her dirty paws leaving dusty prints on my pillowcases.
    â€œShhhh,” I said. “Shhhhh, it’s okay.” She looked at me, not with anxiety or fear, but with blankness. It seemed as if she’d gone into a shallow, shifty-eyed, fearful state. After all, I’d taken her into my nearly windowless bedroom and wouldn’t let her leave. Who knew what she’d been through prior to meeting me? I turned on some quiet music, trying to get her to calm down and forget about the bunny she knew was just one floor above. I lay down and invited her to come onto the bed with me. She frantically sniffed everything, as if searching for more traces of edible animals.
    â€œCome here, girl,” I said, in my sweetest voice. “Come on the bed. Hop up.” I patted the sheets and she obliged. I told her to sit, to lie down, and she half did. Rigid, she lay on the bed with me for about four seconds, and in those few heartbreaking beats, I realized that what I wanted, more than this dog, more than anything, was the weight of someone next to me in my bed. I wanted to be held. I wanted Will.
    She never lay down. Instead she popped up and darted toward the door again, barking. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I couldn’t keep this dog. I imagined that the whole world hated me for what I’d just done. I put the dog’s leash back on, opened the door, and tried to keep my balance as she clawed her way toward the rabbit’s cage, her hackles up, her lips flapping and spewing drool. “No!” I yelled, pulling with all my might. “Jesus Christ.” I dragged her out of the apartment and back up Second Avenue.
    The shelter was preparing to close when I opened the door and walked back in with the dog. My front-desk confidante looked at me, surprised. “Forget something?” she asked.
    I couldn’t look at her. “I can’t keep her. I’m so sorry.” The dog was panting, her bloodshot eyes darting around the lobby.
    My front-desk friend looked at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. “What? Why not?”
    â€œI forgot about my roommate’s rabbit,” I said, another complete lie. “He practically ate it in one bite.”
    â€œThe dog is a
she
,” she said, snatching the leash from me.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
    She sighed. “Let me call Rita to take her back to her cage
.
Now I’ve got to process your refund.” She looked at her watch.
    â€œI don’t want a refund,” I said, still not making eye contact. “Just keep it. I’m so sorry.” I ran out the door, back down Second Avenue, distraught. I shuddered at the thought of what I’d just done, tried to force an enormous, terrified, overly stimulated animal to lie down in bed with me. I panicked, thinking that perhaps living in the city this past year, I’d lost my connection to animals and the natural world. If that happened, nothing could help me. No animal, no person, nothing. The sadness swallowed me as I walked back into my apartment and went to bed alone. I lay there promising myself that I would never, ever tell a soul what I’d just done.
    The sorrow on that lonely walk back to my apartment was like the strike of lightning that cracked the dam. I didn’t know this then, but depression can be like a slow leak. Once the dam’s hit, water starts to seep through and as the days and weeks go by, the crack grows bigger.
    I tried to search for the moon when I lived in Manhattan as a way to orient myself, to stem the tide of sorrow. But I could rarely find it. Sometimes I would see a sliver of a crescent through thecrack of two buildings. I couldn’t yet admit that I missed the wide-open spaces of Ohio, that I longed for a quiet night interrupted only by cricket song. In New York, I was mostly inside, underground even. Soon, I forgot to look up at all. And no matter how much you try, when the