Coldheart Canyon. Clive Barker

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      ‘I’d recommend going to the twenty-four-hour animal hospital on Sepulveda. There’ll be doctors there all night if anything were to happen. But honestly, I think it’s some virus he’s picked up out at the dog park, and it’ll just take a course of antibiotics.’

      ‘Well can I take some antibiotics then?’ Todd said, getting a little irritated with the casual way Dempsey’s case was being treated.

      ‘Dr Spenser doesn’t want to give Dempsey anything till she’s got some results from the stool sample, so I’m afraid there’ll be no drugs for Dempsey until tomorrow.’

      Dempsey didn’t eat. He just looked at the bowl of food Marco had prepared for him, and turned up his nose at it.

      Then he went to lie on the back step and stayed there for the rest of the evening.

      In the middle of the night Todd was woken by what sounded like the effects track from The Exorcist, a stomach-wrenching series of mumblings and eruptions. He switched on the bedroom light to find Dempsey at the bottom of his bed, standing in a pool of bright yellow puke. He looked horribly ashamed of having made a mess, and at first wouldn’t come to Todd to be petted, but when he did – and Todd had his arms around the dog – it was clear he was in a bad way. Dempsey’s whole body was cold, and he was trembling violently.

      ‘Come on, m’man,’ he said. ‘We’re gonna take you to get some proper Dring.’

      The noise had woken Marco, who got dressed to drive while Todd held onto Dempsey, who was wrapped in his favourite comforter, a quilt Todd’s grandmother had made for her grandson. The dog lay sprawled over Todd’s knee, all one hundred pounds of him, while Marco drove through the almost empty streets to Sepulveda.

      It was five minutes after five in the morning when they arrived at the animal hospital, and there were just two people waiting with their pets to be helped. Even so it took twenty-five minutes before a doctor could be freed up to see Dempsey, during which time it seemed to Todd that Dempsey’s condition worsened. His shaking became more violent than ever, and in the midst of one of his spasms, he convulsively shat brown gruel, mostly on the floor, but on Todd’s leg and shoe too.

      ‘Well now,’ said the night doctor brightly, ‘what seems to be the trouble?’

      Todd gave him an exhaustive run-down on the events of the last day. He then asked Todd to pick Dempsey up and put him on the examination table – choosing this particular instant to remark what a fan of Todd’s he was, as though Todd could have given a damn at that moment.

      Then he examined the dog, in a good and thorough manner, but making asides throughout as to which movies of Todd’s he and his wife had particularly enjoyed and which they hadn’t. After about five minutes of this, seeing the expression of despair and anger on Todd’s face, Marco quietly mentioned that Mr Pickett was really only interested right now in the health of his dog. The doctor’s mouth tightened, as though he’d just been badly offended, and his handling of Dempsey (at least to Todd’s eyes) seemed to become a little more brusque.

      ‘Well, you have a very sick dog,’ he said at the end of the examination, not even looking at Todd but talking to Marco. He was plainly embarrassed by his earlier show of fanboy enthusiasm, and was now over-compensating for it wildly.

      Todd went to sit on the examination table to cradle Dempsey, which put him right in the doctor’s line of sight.

      ‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry if I’m not being quite as appreciative of … your support of my pictures as I would normally be, Doc. It’s nothing personal. I’m sure we could have a great conversation about it under different circumstances. But I’d like Dempsey comfortable first. He’s sick and I want him better.’

      Finally the doctor managed a little smile, and when he spoke his voice had also quieted, matching Todd’s. ‘I’m going to put Dempsey on a saline drip, because he’s obviously lost a lot of fluids in the last twelve to twenty-four hours. That should make him feel a whole lot happier. Meanwhile, you said Dr Spenser over at Robertson VCA was doing stool checks?’

      ‘She said it could be a virus.’

      ‘Well … maybe. But looking at his eyes, it seems more systemic to me. If he were a younger dog I’d say parvo or heartworm, which is a parasite. But again, we commonly see toxo in pound dogs or strays, and I’m sure he’s had his heartworm medications. Anyway, we’ll see from the stool results tomorrow.’

      ‘Wait, wait. You’re saying it could be parvo or heart-worm, but you don’t really think it’s either of these?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So what do you think it is?’

      The doctor shook his head. ‘I’d say there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance he’s got some kind of tumour. On the brain or on the brain-stem.’

      ‘And if he has?’

      ‘Well, it’s like a human being. You can sometimes fix these things –’

      At this juncture, as though to demonstrate that things were not in a very fixable state right now, Dempsey started to shudder in Todd’s arms, his claws scrabbling against the metal table as he tried to stay upright.

      ‘It’s okay, boy! It’s okay!’

      The doctor went for a nurse, and came back with an injection.

      ‘What’s that for?’

      ‘Just to calm him down a little, so he can get some sleep.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Yes, I’m sure. It’s a mild tranquillizer. If you don’t want me to give it to the dog, Mr Pickett …’

      ‘Yes. Yes. Give it to him.’

      The injection did indeed subdue Dempsey’s little fit. They wheeled him away into another room to be given an intravenous infusion, leaving Todd with the quilt.

      ‘Damn dog,’ he said, now Dempsey was out of earshot. ‘More trouble than he’s worth.’ Tears very close.

      ‘Why don’t we get a cup of coffee?’ Marco suggested. ‘And we can talk to the doctor more when we get back?’

      There was a little donut shop in the mini-mall at the top of Sepulveda, and it had just opened. They were the first customers of the day. Todd knew the instant he walked in that both the women serving recognized him, so he turned round and walked out again rather than risking getting caught in a conversation: Marco brought out two coffees and two Bear Claws in greaseproof paper, still warm from the oven. Though he hadn’t thought he had an appetite, the pastry was too good not to be eaten; so he ate. Then, coffee in hand, they walked down to the hospital, the eyes of the women in the donut shop glued to Todd until he had disappeared from sight.

      They said nothing as they walked. The day was getting underway; the traffic on Sepulveda backing up as it waited to take its turn to get onto the freeway. These were people with two-hour commutes ahead of them before they got to their place of work; people with jobs they hated, houses they hated, and a pay-cheque at the end of the month that wouldn’t even cover the cost of the mortgage, the car payments, the insurance.

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