Watchers

downstairs and, starting in the living room, opened the interior shutters to let in the morning light. The sky looked as low and gray as it had been yesterday, and he would not be surprised if rain fell before twilight.
    In the kitchen, he noticed that the pantry door was open, the light on. He looked in to see if Einstein was there, but the only sign of the dog was the message that he had spelled out sometime during the night.
    FIDDLE BROKE. NO DOCTOR. PLEASE. DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO LAB. AFRAID. AFRAID.
    Oh shit. Oh Jesus.
    Travis stepped out of the pantry and shouted, “Einstein!”
    No bark. No sound of padding feet.
    The shutters still covered the kitchen windows, and most of the room was not illuminated by the glow from the pantry. Travis snapped on the lights.
    Einstein was not there.
    He ran into the den. The dog was not there, either.
    Heart pounding almost painfully, Travis climbed the stairs two at a time, looked in the third bedroom that would one day be a nursery and then in the room that Nora used as a studio, but Einstein was not in either place, and he was not in the master bedroom, not even under the bed where Travis was desperate enough to check, and for a moment he could not figure out where in the hell the dog had gone, and he stood listening to Nora singing in the shower—she was oblivious of what was happening—and he started into the bathroom to tell her that something was wrong, horribly wrong, which was when he thought of the downstairs bath, so he ran out of the bedroom and along the hall and descended the stairs so fast he almost lost his balance, almost fell, and in the first-floor bath, between the kitchen and the den, he found what he most feared to find.
    The bathroom stank. The dog, ever considerate, had vomited in the toilet but had not possessed the strength—or perhaps the clarity of mind—to flush. Einstein was lying on the bathroom floor, on his side. Travis knelt next to him. Einstein was still but not dead, not dead, because he was breathing; he inhaled and exhaled with a rasping noise. He tried to lift his head when Travis spoke to him, but he did not have the strength to move.
    His eyes. Jesus, his eyes.
    Ever so gently, Travis lifted the retriever’s head and saw that those wonderfully expressive brown eyes were slightly milky. A watery yellow discharge oozed from the eyes; it had crusted in the golden fur. A similar sticky discharge bubbled in Einstein’s nostrils.
    Putting a hand on the retriever’s neck, Travis felt a laboring and irregular heartbeat.
    “No,” Travis said. “Oh, no, no. It’s not going to be like this, boy. I’m not going to let it happen like this.”
    He lowered the retriever’s head to the floor, got up, turned toward the
    door—and Einstein whimpered almost inaudibly, as if to say that he did not want to be left alone.
    “I’ll be right back, right back,” Travis promised. “Just hold on, boy. I’ll be right back.”
    He ran to the stairs and climbed faster than before. Now, his heart was beating with such tremendous force that he felt as if it would tear loose of him. He was breathing too fast, hyperventilating.
    In the master bathroom, Nora was just stepping out of the shower, naked and dripping.
    Travis’s words ran together in panic: “Get dressed quick we’ve got to get to the vet now for god’s sake hurry.”
    Shocked, she said, “What’s happened?”
    “Einstein! Hurry! I think he’s dying.”
    He grabbed a blanket off the bed, left Nora to dress, and hurried downstairs to the bathroom. The retriever’s ragged breathing seemed to have gotten worse in just the minute that Travis had been away. He folded the blanket twice, to a fourth of its size, then eased the dog onto it.
    Einstein made a pained sound, as if the movement hurt him.
    Travis said, “Easy, easy. You’ll be all right.”
    At the door, Nora appeared, still buttoning her blouse, which was damp because she had not taken time to towel off before dressing. Her wet hair hung straight.
    In a voice choked with emotion, she said, “Oh, fur face, no, no.” She wanted to stoop and touch the retriever, but there was no time to delay. Travis said, “Bring the pickup alongside the house.”
    While Nora sprinted to the barn, Travis folded the blanket around Einstein as best he could, so only the retriever’s head, tail, and hind legs protruded. Trying unsuccessfully not to elicit another whimper of pain, Travis lifted the dog in his arms and carried him out of