A Big Little Life

still in the facility because we heard the receptionist speaking with him on the intercom. Gerda told the vet assistant that we wanted to see the doctor, but the doctor declined to come out and speak with us.
    Although she is petite and soft-spoken, Gerda can put a steely menace in that gentle voice without raising it.The vet assistant backed off a step when Gerda said, “He won’t come out? This dog has been grossly oversedated. Where is he? We’ll go to him.”
    By the alternately defensive and aggressive—and entirely inappropriate—reponses of some on the facility staff, we suspected that scenes like this had occurred before. After originally telling us they would not release Trix until she was completely recovered from anesthesia, they now insisted there was nothing to worry about if we took her home even though she couldn’t stand up and didn’t know who we were.
    No doubt the doctor had skedaddled out a back exit, and we would get no satisfaction even if we kicked open every door in the place to track him down. Trixie was our first priority. I carried her to our SUV, and we took her home.
    Expecting that she might vomit or void in some other way, we bedded down, all three of us, on the kitchen floor, where we were close to whatever we might need: cold water, ice, all the cleaning materials in the nearby laundry room, an outside door. Trix seemed as unable to sleep as she was unable to walk. Lying on makeshift bedding with our girl between us, we stroked her and spoke softly to her, worried that she had suffered permanent brain damage by reason of reckless over-sedation, and we worked up the kind of quiet rage that usually leads to shotguns and Molotov cocktails.
    Near midnight, Trixie was finally able to rise far enough to lap some water from a bowl. She started dozing on andoff, but she showed no sign that she recognized us until four o’clock in the morning, eleven hours after we brought her home. She was not fully herself until around five o’clock the next afternoon, twenty-four hours after we brought her home from Dr. Death’s Hospital of Horrors.
    Adding a rotten cherry to this toxic sundae, Dr. Death’s office called to inform us that the MRI had not produced sufficiently clear images to make a diagnosis. I wanted to know what combination of illegal drugs the doctor himself used on the average day, but his staff was reluctant to disclose this information.
     
    I TOOK TRIXIE next to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Wayne Berry, who came into the examination room, at once got down on the floor with Short Stuff, called her “Cookie,” and won her adoration in about one minute flat. He had taught veterinary surgery at South Africa’s largest university, but he had immigrated to the United States with his family some years earlier. He was ex-military, with the rational self-confidence, air of competence, and efficient manner of a man who knew the value of discipline and who had a sense of honor about how he lived his life and performed his surgery.
    Wayne wanted another MRI. He assured me that it would provide a definitive diagnosis because he would be present during the procedure and would insist on redoing any slice of the image that wasn’t clear. I needed to return with Trixie by five thirty Wednesday morning.
    I explained the condition in which Trix had been delivered to us by Dr. Death. Wayne guaranteed that when he met with me at eleven thirty to deliver the diagnosis, she would be recovered 100 percent from the anesthetic.
    Wednesday morning, when I took Trixie down in the elevator to the lowest floor of the house without stopping at the kitchen, on the main level, to dish up her breakfast kibble, she hesitated at the door to the garage, waiting for me to realize my mistake. When I said, “Let’s go,” which was not just a suggestion but a command from her CCI training, she favored me with the Ross look. I explained that because of the anesthesia, she could not have any food in her stomach during the test, lest she regurgitate and aspirate vomit into her lungs or choke to death. If I say so myself, I have a talent for illuminating complex concepts for the edification of dogs, employing pantomime and sound effects to define and supplement the words they might not know. My aspirating-vomit illustration would have made Dustin Hoffman weep with envy. Trixie still gave me the Ross look and seemed to be on the verge of a bucket-bottom move.
    I resorted to what always works when all else fails in these