Lex stared at the drop of spit that had shot out of Dr. Green’s mouth. It was a perfect circle of saliva, a perfect globular mound on the blue countertop. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.
“Lex, her chances aren’t good. She’s had three very severe seizures in a row. This means she probably has a brain tumor that’s been present for a while.” Dr. Green kept talking. Lex speculated more about the spit. She wanted to touch it, but not rub it out, maybe just flatten its bulge a bit. All of a sudden, the spit was overcome by a clumsy white mass. Lex looked up to see Dr. Green sitting on the counter in his lab coat. He held his arm out to her, poised for a handshake. He was looking into her eyes and waiting.
“Thank you, doctor,” Lex said. He stood up and walked out of the room. Her gaze shifted magnetically back to the spit. It wasn’t there anymore. Only its stain remained. It wasn’t even a circle anymore. It was a blob with a long arrow pointing in her direction.
She got up and walked to the swinging door with the large window that looked into the operating room. Tiger was lying on the table, a piece of large petrified wood. Her arms and legs were completely outstretched and sticking straight into the air. She looked jagged and stiff. Her eyes were rolled back into her head; all you could see was the whites. A young man walked up to her and gave her a shot. It must be more valium, thought Lex. She thought she remembered Dr. Green saying something about valium.
She slumped down in a chair in the waiting room. Her dad had left to take her brother to work but would be back shortly, she guessed. Maybe Tiger will be dead by then, Lex thought. She looked at the clock: 5:23. The first seizure had been twenty minutes ago.
Lex had been sitting in the den making a list of winter activities she wanted to do when it happened. Number seven: ice skating. Number thirteen: taking Tiger to the dog park in Eastview. She heard something strange and looked over the side of the couch at Tiger, who was fidgeting on her plaid dog pad, the one Lex had bought last Christmas. Tiger was trying to get up. She couldn’t. She dragged herself to the middle of the room with her front legs, while Lex frantically asked her what was wrong. Foam began frothing in her mouth. Her eyes rolled back. Her body was convulsing. Lex ran to her and grabbed her; she tried to hold her tight, but Tiger was too strong. Tiger hit her head on the vacuum cleaner, then the wall. A gush of piss and shit came out of her body and splattered onto the wall and smeared onto Lex’s bathrobe. Then everything was calm. Tiger stopped moving. She lay there, frozen. Lex ran to the kitchen and grabbed the phone.
“Dad,” Lex sobbed. “Tiger. Something with Tiger. Come now.” She yelled the last few words while the dog lay in the kitchen, as stiff as a piece of driftwood.
Dr. Green injected the dog with valium to control the two subsequent seizures. He spoke to Lex and her dad and alerted them of the worst—the likeliest—scenario. After they left the emergency animal hospital, with prescriptions for Phenobarbital and a bevy of other medicines, they stopped at the drugstore so Lex’s dad could fill the prescriptions. Tiger lay stiff in the back of the Jeep, with the door open. Lex was next to her stroking her stomach. Tiger’s big brown eyes had rolled back down, but they were empty. Lex could not stop crying.
She saw the male nurse and the female receptionist from the animal hospital walk into the Chinese restaurant next to the drugstore. They were laughing and touching each other lightly. A lump formed in Lex’s chest. She wanted to scream at them. She wanted to tell them to go back to work.
