Hell's Gate

off to get the keys and left him the job of getting Intrepid into the car. He looked the dog over. There was not much blood coming out of his throat, but there was a good deal seeping from his shoulder and one haunch that the robot had worried. Salsbury slid a hand under the mutt's hind end, trying to avoid touching the quivering, open wound. He nestled the other hand under the dog's shoulder where the wound was simply too large to avoid. His hand got sticky with blood. The dog whined when Salsbury squeezed the shoulder together but made no move to avoid his master. Victor stood with him, somewhat unsteady, and carried him to the car. Lynda was waiting and opened the door for him. He climbed inside and held the mutt on his lap all the way into town. Intrepid made no move, and his eyes were heavy. The greatest reaction Salsbury got from him was in the form of a thank you: the dog licked his hand.
        Dr. Debert had a modern clinic on the east end of town. They took Intrepid into the waiting room, his blood dribbling on the white tile. The nurse at the reception desk came to her feet, sucking in her breath. “I'll get the doctor right away. He can drop what he's doing.”
        So he stood with the dog in his arms as if Intrepid were a child. He could feel his own heart thumping heavily, almost as heavily as Intrepid's. His eyes were unaccountably blurry, and he couldn't seem to clear them. He decided he must be crying a little. Just a little; for a god-damned dog.
        When Debert came out, he stopped, shocked at the extent of his patient's wounds, then came briskly forward. “What was it?”
        “Another dog,” Salsbury lied a bit “It attacked me, and Intrepid defended me.”
        “In here,” Debert said, leading the way back into his office.
        They followed through a book-lined study into a white room with white fixtures and a blue-covered operating table with special clamps and straps for animals. There was already a poodle on the table. It looked at them with a thin, pointed face that was more nasty than cute, barked in a high, brittle voice.
        “I'm afraid we'll have to take Poochy into the waiting room, Mrs. Wallace,” Debert said to a matronly woman in an expensive, blue-knit suit with a line of yellow alligators stitched across her left breast.
        “But Poochy has glass in his foot!” she said, wrinkling her doughy face in consternation.
        “This dog may be dying,” Debert said, straining to remain polite.
        “But Poochy was here first,” the woman said, turning to Salsbury.
        He did not know what sort of expression was on his face, but it must not have been too charming, for she turned paler than she had been, the rouge on her cheeks like red clouds floating over the milkiness of her face. Quickly, she took Poochy in her arms and hustled back to the waiting room.
        After Debert strapped Intrepid down and put him to sleep with sodium pentathol, Salsbury and Lynda went back to the waiting room. They were there for an hour. The doughy woman made a show of her displeasure. She talked to Poochy in that stupid tone parents use when chucking their fat babies under the chin. When it barked, she went into long, wailing monologues about her poor suffering canine. At the end of an hour, Debert came out, a few spots of blood on his blue smock.
        “How is he?” Victor asked, feeling somehow absurd being so concerned about a dog, yet, remembering what the dog had done for him; where he would have been without Intrepid. He would have been, simply, dead on the lawn, leaking blood all over the grass.
        “I put twenty-six stitches in his shoulder,” Debert said. “The wound on his hip was a little more ragged. I couldn't really use stitches there. I stopped the bleeding; powdered it heavily; drew it together with a tape and cloth compression bandage. He lost a good bit of blood and needed a transfusion. Shot of penicillin to protect against infection. He'll sleep for another hour or so under the drugs, then drift into a natural sleep that should last until late this evening. He's going to live, though it will take a few weeks for him to heal properly. He might always have a slight limp in the right foreleg, due to the separated shoulder muscles. That'll be his only mark, though. I'd like to keep him for a week. Then you can bring him back once a week for a month until we're sure everything has knitted properly.”
        They thanked him. Vic