Watchers

foreshortened alligator jaws. He was trying to protect Einstein and Nora, pushing them in front of him, encouraging them to run, run, run. But somehow the monster got around Travis and tore Einstein to pieces, then savaged Nora—it was the Cornell Curse, which could not be avoided by a simple change of name to Samuel Hyatt—and at last Travis stopped running and fell to his knees and lowered his head because, having failed Nora and the dog, he wanted to die, and he heard the thing approaching—click-click-click
    and he was afraid but he also welcomed the death that it promised—
    Nora woke him shortly before five in the morning. “Einstein,” she said urgently. “He’s having convulsions.”
     
     
    When Nora led Travis into the white-walled surgery, Jim Keene was crouched over Einstein, ministering to him. They could do nothing but stay out of the vet’s way, give him room to work.
    She and Travis held each other.
    After a few minutes, the vet stood up. He looked worried, and he did not make his usual effort to smile or try to lift their hopes. “I’ve given him additional anticonvulsants. I think . . . he’ll be all right now.”
    “Has he gone into the second stage?” Travis asked. “Maybe not,” Keene said.
    “Could he be having convulsions and still be in first stage?” “It’s possible,” Keene said.
    “But not likely.”
    “Not likely,” Keene said. “But . . . not impossible.” Second-stage distemper, Nora thought miserably.
    She held Travis tighter than ever.
    Second stage. Brain involvement. Encephalitis. Chorea. Brain damage. Brain damage.
     
     
    Travis would not return to bed. He remained in the surgery with Nora and Einstein the rest of that night.
    They turned on another light, brightening the room somewhat but not enough to bother Einstein, and they watched him closely for signs that the distemper had progressed to the second stage: the jerking and twitching and chewing movements of which Jim Keene had spoken.
    Travis was unable to extract any hope from the fact that no such symptoms were exhibited. Even if Einstein was in the first stage of the disease and remained there, he appeared to be dying.
     
     
    The next day, Friday, December 3, Jim Keene’s assistant was still too sick to come to work, so Nora and Travis helped out again.
    By lunchtime, Einstein’s fever had not fallen. His eyes and nose continued to ooze a clear though yellowish fluid. His breathing was slightly less labored, but in her despair Nora wondered if the dog’s respiration only sounded easier because he was not making as great an effort to breathe and was, in fact, beginning to give up.
    She could not eat even a bite of lunch. She washed and ironed both Travis’s
    clothes and her own, while they sat around in two of Jim Keene’s spare bathrobes, which were too big for them.
    That afternoon, the office was busy again. Nora and Travis were kept in constant motion, and Nora was glad to be overworked.
    At four-forty, a time that she would never forget for as long as she lived, just after they finished helping Jim deal with a difficult Irish setter, Einstein yipped twice from his bed in the corner. Nora and Travis turned, both gasping, both expecting the worst, for this was the first sound other than whimpers that Einstein had made since his arrival at the surgery. But the retriever had lifted his head—the first time he’d had the strength to lift it— and was blinking at them; he looked around curiously, as if to ask where on earth he was.
    Jim knelt beside the dog and, while Travis and Nora crouched expectantly behind him, he thoroughly examined Einstein. “Look at his eyes. They’re slightly milky but not at all like they were, and they’ve stopped actively leaking.” With a damp cloth, he cleaned the crusted fur beneath Einstein’s eyes and wiped off his nose; the nostrils no longer bubbled with fresh excretions. With a rectal thermometer he took Einstein’s temperature and, reading it, said, “Falling. Down two full degrees.”
    “Thank God,” Travis said.
    And Nora discovered that her eyes were filling with tears again.
    Jim said, “He’s not out of the woods yet. His heartbeat is more regular, less accelerated, though still not good. Nora, get one of those dishes over there and fill it with some water.”
    Nora returned from the sink a moment later and put the dish down on the floor, at the vet’s side.

Jim pushed it close to Einstein. “What do you think, fella?”
    Einstein