Watchers

house as long as he can still think!”
    “Think?” Dr. Keene said, clearly perplexed. “Well . . . what do you mean exactly? He is a dog, after all.”
    The vet had accepted their anxious, grief-racked behavior as within the parameters of normal pet-owner reactions in a case like this. But now, at last, he began to look at them strangely.
    Partly to change the subject and dampen the vet’s suspicion, partly because she simply had to know the answer, Nora said, “All right, but is Einstein in second-stage distemper?”
    Keene said, “From what I’ve seen so far, he’s still in the first stage. And now that treatment has begun, if we don’t see any of the more violent symptoms during the next twenty-four hours, I think we have a good chance of keeping him in first stage and rolling it back.”
    “And there’s no brain involvement in first stage?” Travis asked with an urgency that again caused Keene to furrow his brow.
    “No. Not in first stage.”
    “And if he stays in first stage,” Nora said, “he won’t die?”
    In his softest voice and most comforting manner, James Keene said, “Well, now, the chances are very high that he’d survive just first-stage distemper— and without any aftereffects. I want you to realize that his chances of recovery are quite high. But at the same time, I don’t want to give you false hope. That’d be cruel. Even if the disease proceeds no further than first stage . . . Einstein could die. The percentages are on the side of life, but death is possible.”
    Nora was crying again. She thought she had gotten a grip on herself. She thought she was ready to be strong. But now she was crying. She went to
    Einstein, sat on the floor beside him, and put one hand on his shoulder, just to let him know that she was there.
    Keene was becoming slightly impatient with—and thoroughly baffled by— their tumultuous emotional response to the bad news. A new note of sternness entered his voice as he said, “Listen, all we can do is give him top-flight care and hope for the best. He’ll have to remain here, of course, because distemper treatment is complex and ought to be administered under veterinary supervision. I’ll have to keep him on the intravenous fluids, antibiotics .
    and there’ll be regular anticonvulsants and sedatives if he begins to have seizures.”
    Under Nora’s hand, Einstein shivered as if he had heard and understood the grim possibilities.
    “All right, okay, yes,” Travis said, “obviously, he’s got to stay here in your office. We’ll stay with him.”
    “There’s no need—” Keene began.
    “Right, yes, no need,” Travis said quickly, “but we want to stay, we’ll be okay, we can sleep here on the floor tonight.”
    “Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Keene said.
    “Yes, it is, oh yes, entirely possible,” Travis said, babbling now in his eagerness to convince the vet. “Don’t worry about us, Doctor. We’ll manage just fine. Einstein needs us here, so we’ll stay, the important thing is that we stay, and of course we’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience.”
    “But I’m not running a hotel!”
    “We must stay,” Nora said firmly.
    Keene said, “Now, really, I’m a reasonable man, but—”
    With both hands, Travis seized the vet’s right hand and held it tightly, startling Keene. “Listen, Dr. Keene, please, let me try to explain. I know this is an unusual request. I know we must sound like a couple of lunatics to you, but we’ve got our reasons, and they’re good ones. This is no ordinary dog, Dr. Keene. He saved my life—”
    “And he saved mine, too,” Nora said. “In a separate incident.”
    “And he brought us together,” Travis said. “Without Einstein, we would never have met, never married, and we’d both be dead.”
    Astonished, Keene looked from one to the other. “You mean he saved your lives—literally? And in two separate incidents?”
    “Literally,” Nora said.
    “And then brought you together?”
    “Yes,” Travis said. “Changed our lives in more ways than we can count or ever explain.”
    Held fast in Travis’s hands, the vet looked at Nora, lowered his kind eyes to the wheezing retriever, shook his head, and said, “I’m a sucker for heroic dog stories. I’ll want to hear this one, for sure.”
    “We’ll tell you all about it,” Nora promised. But, she thought, it’ll be a carefully edited version.
    “When I was five years old,” James Keene said, “I was saved from