Special Delivery

Fifty-five degrees will be fatal, Mom,” Jeremy pleaded. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the phone and eyed the two-foot snow drifts outside. “I know you’re on duty at the hospital for another eight hours, but I can have Zelda and Artemis ready to go in ten minutes. You could pick us up on your lunch break. Please.” His voice quavered.

A clipped “no” drowned his mother’s apology. Jeremy heard a “code blue” emergency announcement in the background before she ended the call.

The teen peered through the ice-crusted window, pulled his ski jacket tighter, and huffed into the chilled silence. One hand stroked the Great Dane lying at his feet. The dog raised soulful eyes and pressed his muzzle against the boy’s left leg. “Ow! Goliath, paws off my sprained ankle.” Goliath whined and lowered his head, leaving a trail of slobber down the 13-year-old’s jeans.

“Yuck.” The boy hauled himself up, dabbed the drool with a tissue, and hurled the soggy mass into the waste basket. He limped over to his 30-gallon seahorse tank with Goliath thudding behind. Jeremy read the thermometer and cringed. The water was another degree closer to the room temperature of 55 F. He dropped a hand into the aquarium and wiggled his fingers. Zelda and Artemis, his spotted seahorses, unhitched their tails from a red coral. They swam over and brushed his wrist. Artemis, who was expecting, lurched behind his mate.

“That baby bump’s really slowing you down, fella.” Jeremy’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry about the power outage. If you were in the maternity ward at Mom’s hospital, you could deliver in comfort.”

Artemis dipped his snout.

“Glad you agree, but how do we get there?”

Zelda hooked her tail around Artemis and tugged him toward the kelp bed.

“I can’t call a tow truck.”

Zelda pointed her snout toward the Great Dane.

Jeremy gasped. “You’re a genius, Zelda!”

He hobbled to the kitchen and dumped two quart jars of his mother’s home-canned green beans into the dog food dish. Goliath sniffed, raised an eyebrow, and tackled the stringy meal with gusto. When the dog tongued a wayward bean stuck to his nose, Jeremy laughed for the first time that day. “Now I won’t have to eat them. Thanks!”

He lugged the clean jars to the aquarium and submerged them. “Time for a change of scenery, my friends.” Balancing on his right leg, Jeremy swept an eight-inch fish net toward Artemis. “Come on, little guy.” The pregnant male ignored the net and sank into the glass jar resting on the aquarium floor. Before Jeremy could secure the lid, Zelda joined her mate. “I guess you want to travel together.” The seahorses intertwined their tails. “Right.”

Fifteen minutes later the teen had hauled his inflatable kayak to the sidewalk and hitched Goliath to the bow. The jar, swaddled in towels, was tucked in the storage compartment. Bellowing an off-key version of “Jingle Bells,” Jeremy clambered aboard his seahorse open sleigh. 

 

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Lab Life

“Is she going to lose a leg?” Rory’s voice quavered. Eyes squeezed shut, he cradled the Border Collie’s head. The dog yelped but did not pull away from Dr. Silvana Moretti’s probing fingers.

Silvana swabbed blood from the animal’s right front paw and grunted. “Nope.”

“So how deep is the wound?” Perspiration glistened on Rory’s ashen face.

“She has two broken toe nails and surface abrasion of the foot pad. A bandage and some tender loving care will take care of it.” Silvana glanced up as she reached for the disinfectant. “Whoa. You look a lot worse than the patient. Go sit down.”

Her business manager and life partner opened his eyes, swayed, and transferred his beefy hands to the examination table. “I can’t abide red. Numbers in the red, fire trucks, bloodstains, they’re all bad news,” he muttered.

“Take a few deep breaths. Can you make it to the chair behind you?”

When Rory nodded, beads of sweat trickled down his nose. A canine tongue swooped across his face. “Yuck. Stop it, beast. I appreciate your efforts, but I don’t need a bath,” he sputtered.

Silvana grinned. “Your voice is stronger, and you’ve lost that bleached skin tone. Never underestimate the power of dog drool. I think she loves you.”

Rory fingered his pony tail and tucked a loose strand of blond hair behind his ear. “She probably thinks I’m an oversize mutt with a bad haircut. What do you think happened to her?”

“I’ve seen injuries like this in dogs with astraphobia. If a thunderstorm pops up while they’re in a cage or crate, they’ll rip their paws against the metal in a frenzy to escape. Without knowing her history, I can’t say, but it’s likely that she was terrified of something.” Silvana pursed her lips. “I’m more concerned about the scarring on her back. This dog has had multiple surgeries in unusual places.”

The animal whimpered, and Rory caressed her ears. “You couldn’t have chosen a better clinic, girl. Dr. Moretti is the best veterinarian in Owana Hills,” he crooned. “I’m going to call you Lucky until we find out who you are.”

Silvana snorted and rolled her eyes. “Flattery won’t get you out of doing the dishes tonight.”

“The good doctor is mistaken. It’s my night to cook, and take-out pizza is on the menu.” His eyes dropped to his paunch. “I’ll even exercise restraint and forego the pepperoni on my side of the pie.”

Silvana scrutinized her work. “The bleeding’s stopped, and she doesn’t seem to mind the bandage.” The table vibrated to the rhythm of a thumping tail. “Right. I’m going to set you on the floor. What do you think of your new footwear?”

The dog yipped twice, cocked her head, and sat down.

“Lucky’s thanking you. She has excellent manners.”

Silvana frowned as she wiped the table. “What time do you think she was dropped off?”

“Just after we closed. Her leash was tied to the front door when I went to lock up.”

“She’ll have to come home with us since the clinic isn’t equipped for overnight boarding. Maybe we can arrange for a foster home tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll bring the van around to the front so she won’t soil her bandage. The parking lot’s a muddy mess.”

“Meet us in the office. I’ll phone in the pizza order.” She blew Rory a kiss. “We’ll both skip the pepperoni so you won’t feel deprived.”

Lucky was parked in Silvana’s lap when Rory stalked in five minutes later. Blue eyes blazing, he clutched a typewritten letter in shaking fingers. “This note was on our windshield. It says the Border Collie is Subject Number 13 at a research institute.” His voice cracked. “And she was going to be enrolled in a spinal regeneration study. There’s no signature, but the writer’s a lab technician who couldn’t bear to see the dog suffer.”

Silvana recoiled, white-faced. “Lucky was stolen.”

“She’ll be safe with us.”

“We can’t keep her in hiding. And a vet clinic’s the first place they’ll look.”

“I had a part-time job in a hair salon during my senior year of high school. When I’m finished with Lucky, she’ll look like a cross between a Poodle and a Yellow Labrador Retriever.”

Silvana held his gaze. “We’d be complicit in a theft,” she choked.

“You never read this note.” He strode to the corner, bent down, and flipped a switch. The shredder roared as its jaws devoured the letter.

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a fiber artist, writer, and poet who taught in North Carolina community colleges for more than a decade before returning to her home state of Virginia. Her work has appeared in more than 80 journals and anthologies in 11 countries. She is the author of three original poetry collections: Waltzing with Water and With No Bridle for the Breeze (Shanti Arts Publishing) and The Language of Bones (Kelsay Books). You can find Elizabeth at www.elizabethspencerspragins.wordpress.com and on Facebook: Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, Writer.