The Beginning of After

into a parking space and glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I was sitting in the backseat with Masher in my arms.
    “Do you want me to call David’s grandmother? I’m sure she can get in touch with him.”
    “No!” I said.
    “Laurel, he should know.”
    “It’s my fault he got sick. I’ll deal with it.”
    “You’ll have to tell him eventually.”
    “Not if I can help it. . . .” My voice was on the verge of anger. I could only see Nana’s eyes and eyebrows framed in the little rectangle of the mirror, but from her silence I knew she got it.
    “Do you want me to come in?” she asked, sighing a little. Giving in.
    “Only if you want to.”
    “I brought a book,” she said, pointing to a paperback lying on the front seat next to her, which I took to mean that Nana would be reading in the comfort of the car and not a smelly animal hospital waiting room.
    “Okay. I’ll come out and keep you posted.”
    I hooked Masher onto his leash and lifted him out of the car, then guided him slowly into the building. The second we walked in, a tiny dog wearing a red sweater started barking at us. Masher could have nibbled that thing like a snack, but he cowered from it, and that told me just how serious this was.
    We made it to the front desk by walking the perimeter of the room, away from the yapping mini-whatever.
    Just five minutes later, we were in an exam room with Masher lying on the table, staring at the wall. I followed his gaze to a poster of two fluffy kittens wearing sunglasses and berets, with the caption “A Couple of Cool Cats!”
    “Yeah,” I said to him. “That’s just wrong.”
    There was a quick knock on the door before the doctor came in.
    “Hi, I’m Dr. Benavente,” he said in a voice that sounded much younger than he looked. He had salt-and-pepper hair and big glasses, and looked more like a mad scientist in his white coat than a vet, but also like someone you could trust.
    “I’m Laurel, and this is Masher.”
    He smiled sadly at Masher. “Hi, buddy,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought, he glanced at me and added, “Nice to meet you. So what’s going on with this guy? They tell me he’s coughing up blood?”
    “Yes. And he seems pretty out of it.”
    “It just started this morning?”
    “Yes.” I thought so. Truth was, he could have been doing this for a day or two and I wouldn’t have noticed.
    I watched as Dr. Benavente examined Masher’s eyes, ears, and mouth, and felt around his belly. His face was like a stone, and I couldn’t read it.
    “Has he had diarrhea? Anything with blood in it?” the doctor asked.
    “I—I don’t know.” How could I tell him nobody had been walking Masher lately? Then I remembered something from the day before: Nana yelling at him downstairs, saying things like “disgusting” and “shouldn’t be doing this” loud enough for me to hear.
    Dr. Benavente looked at me a little differently now, like I’d just slid into a new category for him. Someone who did not take good care of her pet.
    “We’ll run some tests, but my gut feeling is that this guy has ingested rat poison. It’s unfortunately very common; to dogs, rat poison looks just like kibble. But it’s also potentially lethal to them. I think we may have caught this early enough, but he’s going to need some emergency treatment.”
    I put my hand over my mouth and then struggled to say something intelligent. “So why is there blood?”
    “Some rat poisons kill by interfering with an animal’s blood clotting, so Masher’s bleeding internally. I think he ingested it at least twenty-four hours ago, so it’s too late to induce vomiting, but we can give him vitamin K injections that will help his blood clot and stop the hemorrhaging. I’d like to keep him here for a couple of days for treatment and observation. Does that sound okay?”
    He’d had me at “bleeding internally.” The tears were streaming down my face now, and I couldn’t even look at Masher; I had to focus on the ridiculous beret kittens to keep some control.
    “Please do whatever you have to do,” I said.
    “Go out front and give this to Eve,” he said, handing me a yellow paper with illegible scrawl on it. “We’ll get started, and I’ll give you an update as soon as I have one.”
    I just nodded, and while Dr. Benavente picked up Masher, I locked eyes with the dog once and said, “I’m so sorry . . .” before running out.
    At the front desk, a girl a few years older than me,