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“Guys, he’s breathing! He’s still alive! Someone, quick! Call our vet!”
It was up to me. With not a moment to lose, I pulled out my phone. I knew better than to call our vet as it was a Sunday and after hours. So I immediately called the animal hospital where we’d once taken Bear when he’d stepped on a piece of glass. My heart racing, I had to listen to some insipid music that seemed to last an eternity until I got someone on the phone. I explained the situation, my words coming out at a hundred miles a minute. Then listened.
“Mom, Dad! We have to get him over to the West LA Animal Hospital ASAP!”
“How are we going to get him downstairs?” asked my mother, Will still clinging to her. He looked up briefly at my father.
“Dad, you need to carry him downstairs!”
Bear weighed one hundred fifty pounds. Even in as good shape as he was, my father couldn’t possibly lift him. Plus, he had back problems, having slipped a disc in a game of tennis.
“Dad, pick him up!” Will cried out again.
To my wide-eyed amazement, my father knelt down and scooped our one-hundred-fifty-pound beast into his arms. Where there’s a Will, there’s a way.
“C’mon, guys. Let’s go!”
Remembering what the hospital had told me, I hastily gathered up all the gum wrappers and the opened Trident packages. They needed to know how many milligrams of xylitol Bear had ingested.
Ten heart-gripping minutes later, we were in my Jeep. My dad at the wheel, my mom in the passenger seat beside him. Will, still in tears, next to me, the two of us behind our parents, with poor unconscious Bear draped across our laps.
C’mon, Bear, hang in there! I prayed as we raced to the animal hospital across town, not stopping for red lights. I’d never been so scared in my life.
Three long, grueling hours later, we were back home; it was close to midnight. Bear’s prognosis wasn’t good. The team of doctors who’d treated him estimated he’d ingested about twenty-five sticks of gum—close to five thousand milligrams of deadly xylitol; based on his weight, seventy-five hundred milligrams would have surely killed him. In a coma, he had hypoglycemia and possible liver damage. They did more blood work and put him on IV fluids. His life was up in the air. The next twenty-four hours were critical. We’d have to wait and see.
Tanya still wasn’t home. She was probably still out with Lance. Lucky for her because the truth is if she were home, I’d probably have taken a knife to her heart or poured Clorox down her throat. Maybe found my father’s gun and shown her I could use it too.
Poor Will. He hadn’t stopped crying. He’d cried the entire time on the drive to the hospital, while we were there, and on our way back home. I’d never seen him like this. Quickly donning my pajamas, I jogged down the hallway and knocked on his door. I could hear his sobs through the thick wooden slab.
“Will, it’s me,” I said and knocked again. No answer. Ignoring his “Keep Out” sign, I turned the doorknob and let myself in.
His night-light was on, and my brother, clad in his Star Wars pajamas, was huddled in the loft bed, his knees to his chest, bawling his eyes out. Without asking, I climbed up and joined him, wrapping my arm around his heaving, slight shoulders. Sometimes, it was hard to believe that one day my little brother wouldn’t be so little. That I’d be looking up at him.
As sad as I felt too, I felt something worse. Guilt. Horrible, horrible guilt. It was all my fault Bear might die. I stole Tanya’s laptop, so she tried to steal our dog’s life, knowing how precious he was to us. Revenge. A heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching mixture of guilt, sorrow, and remorse coursed through me, bringing a flood of tears to my eyes. Unable to hold them back, they poured down my face.
“I—I’m so sorry, Willster,” I choked out. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“W-what do you mean?” he spluttered.
“It’s all my fault.”
He turned to look at me, his face a blubbering mess. His watering eyes red and puffy. His freckled cheeks wet with tears. His button nose running like a faucet.
“W-what do you mean, Pudge?”
I began to sob. “If I hadn’t stolen Tanya’s laptop, none of this would have happened.” I’d lied to her and sworn on our dog’s life I was telling the truth. “Bear would be here. Sleeping on the floor right below us.”
He took hold of my free hand. “Pudge, it’s not your fault. Stop guilt-tripping. We were partners in crime.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Go away!” He quirked a little smile.
“Oh, Will!” I gave him a hug and he hugged me back. I squeezed him harder. And felt his heart pound against mine. We’d been through so much together. Through thick and thin. Will had always been there for me and me for him. We had each other’s backs. We had each other.
We finally broke away.
His tears subsided and so did mine.
