“You should talk to that fella.” Meghan’s mother glanced toward a young man sitting opposite them in the physical therapist’s waiting area. He wasn’t any more remarkable than any of those who did their obligatory hours with weights and stretching and balance work. Scruffy, vacant-eyed; a cane across his lap and the prosthetic legs showing beneath his cargo shorts. The only distinguishing thing about him was the presence of a dog.
Meghan stubbornly refused to follow her mother’s glance, instead scowling at the suggestion she go make small talk with another client in this place just because they had one common trait, military service. Okay, two things in common, serious and obvious wounds.
“Ask about the dog,” Evelyn whispered.
Meghan pursed her lips in annoyance, but her mother wasn’t taking the hint.
“Okay. I’ll ask him. Sir, we were noticing your dog. Is he a service dog?”
“Mom, for God’s sake, it’s got a vest on; of course it’s a service dog.”
The young man’s face went from glum to bright. “Yes. She. She’s a trained service dog. My lifesaver, to tell you the truth.”
Evelyn got up from her seat beside Meghan and went to sit with the young man. “What does she do for you?”
As he talked, he stroked the dog’s head. The dog, a golden retriever, had her eyes riveted to the man’s face. Her soft muzzle was open, showing a row of perfect white teeth and a pink tongue.
Meghan feigned a deep interest in a Women’s Health magazine showing fit young bodies, which only reminded her of what she’d lost. But, out of the corner of her eye, she watched, half-listening as her mother interrogated the wounded warrior. “Where did you get her?” Evelyn sat on the right side of the young man and spoke close to his ear, as if she assumed that he, like Meghan, was hard of hearing.
“My buddy heard of this program and called me. Best thing I ever did.”
Meghan dropped the magazine and it flopped to the tile floor with a slap. The dog broke from her study of the young man to look at Meghan, the half-open mouth now closed, ears on alert for threat. “Oh, Mom, sorry…” She breezily gestured toward the dropped magazine.
Evelyn ignored Meghan and continued her conversation with the veteran.
Then one of the physical therapists came to the door. “Mr. Silensky.”
The young man got himself to his feet, the dog beside him. “Her name’s Ivy. Thank you for not trying to pet her. She’s working.”
“I knew better than to do that. Good luck.” Evelyn gave the veteran one of her most winning smiles, reminding Meghan of the way she’d smile at the gang of boys who used to come to their house after school, Mark’s friends. Offer up a welcoming smile and a plate of brownies.
Evelyn returned to her seat beside Meghan, picked up the fallen magazine, and put it back on the pile of reading materials. “Next time, you should talk to him.”
“Why? I’m not interested in getting a pet.”
“You know as well as I do, they aren’t pets. They’re service animals.”
“What I see is one more creature for you to take care of. Remember why we didn’t have pets when I was a kid? Too much work, you said.”
“We moved too much, Meghan, and besides, I’m just suggesting that you might be interested.”
“Again, to what end?”
The effort to change position made it a nightly exercise in how long she could tolerate being in the position she was in before she extended the effort to roll to her other side. In those long hours, she rehearsed the names and ranks and smiles of those she’d been close to in-country. She didn’t want to forget them. She didn’t want them to forget her. The air-conditioning in her room was set too high. Her arms were freezing; the thin Florida-weight blanket did nothing to warm her. I’m a creature of heat, she thought, of hot, dry living, with the taste of fine windblown grit flavoring everything. She licked her lips. She should call out, demand that the air-conditioning be shut off, but she knew that the heat that would then envelop her would be of a thick, viscous, humid variety and as unlike Iraqi heat as mud is from sand. She pushed the button that would elevate her. She had finally convinced her mother that she didn’t need bed rails, reasoning that as she couldn’t turn over, how was she going to fall out of bed? Sitting, she could reach the trapeze that dangled over her bed.
That embarrassing moment in the waiting room with her mother making nice with that dog-assisted vet had gotten Meghan thinking about the military working dogs that she had known. Real service dogs. Bomb sniffers. Security guards. Keeping watch with their handlers. Carrying their own burden of gear and never complaining. Never counting the days until the end of deployment, just doing their best. One dog in particular came to mind, an explosive-detection dog. Not one of the aloof Belgian Malinois, but a spaniel. He looked more suited to a snuggle on a couch than poking his nose in and around vehicles stopped at checkpoints, sussing out with his remarkable nose the hint of explosive material. All for a chance to play with his tug-of-war toy. Sidney, his name was. And his handler turned a blind eye when one of the newer soldiers, sitting po-faced in the convoy, pale and swallowing hard against fear, reached out to the soft-coated dog, running a trembling hand along the dog’s spine, stroking his ears with nicotine-stained fingers. Okay, maybe once or twice she’d given in to the temptation to touch the dog, to feel the strange comfort of his pink tongue touching her hand.
Meghan looked down at her hand, the soft fabric of the lightweight blanket clutched between her fingers.
Although she professed to hate it, Meghan, by necessity, spent a lot of time watching television. Her day had become a routine of morning news shows, afternoon movie picks, and evening sitcoms. Her mother had finally given up trying to convince her that she wasn’t purposeless. Right now, Meghan felt that her purpose in life was to blot out thinking with mindless television. The opiate of the masses, hadn’t someone said that? How apt. Once she got comfortable, she could focus on whatever nonsense was in front of her instead of the nagging pain, raise the volume to drown out the incessant desire to relieve that pain with an oxycodone pill.
Tonight, she’d accidentally tuned in to a documentary about therapy dogs, and as the remote had slipped out of her hand to the floor, she was helpless to flip the channel. With both of her parents out of the house for an hour, there was no yelling for help. She really had no interest in watching this “heartwarming” documentary that would make her angry. Angry because of the exploitative nature of pity. In her opinion, the documentarian would milk the pity scene, the struggles, the self-consciousness of the tragically handicapped, either from birth or some terrible accident of fate; and then, the glorious moment—and who was to say it wasn’t scripted?—of success when the dog would bring the veteran some out-of-reach object, like a phone or a freakin’ remote. Oh, no, let’s hear it for the dog. Life will be wonderful now.
And yet, there was something poignant about the autistic kid and the dog who made it possible for him to manage in school.
One section of the program, maybe a quarter of the broadcast, talked about dogs being trained to work with wounded warriors. She thought that she recognized the inside of Walter Reed. Then again, maybe all VA hospitals looked alike. They interviewed a guy with raging PTSD and another like the guy she’d seen at therapy, a double amputee.
She hadn’t seen him lately. The last time she’d seen him leave the building, the dog was at his side and he was laughing at something. The big window of the waiting room looked out over the parking lot, and Meghan couldn’t help but notice that he was being picked up by a young woman in a top-down Mini Cooper. She didn’t jump out of the car to help him. She kissed him. The dog leaped into the backseat.
The PTSD sufferer looked into the camera and acknowledged that he might not still be alive if it weren’t for his dog.
The documentary broke for a PBS fund-raising segment.
“Meghan, do you want a drink?” asked Evelyn, back from her single hour of respite.
“Mom, come in and watch this.”
The fund-raising segment over, the documentary had moved on to who trained these dogs. Various organizations were mentioned, but only one was featured. On-screen, an African-American woman dressed in plain blue jeans and a T-shirt talked about how her dog, a Labrador, was almost ready to take on his mission, to be the constant companion of a returning veteran suffering from multiple injuries. “I’ve worked with him for almost a year and I can tell you that this dog knows his job.” What was remarkable about the woman was that she was identified as an inmate of a correctional facility in New York. The look on the prisoner’s face was joyful, and a little sad. The expression on the soldier’s face was clearly one of hope.
And there it was, the money shot, a former U.S. Navy SEAL with tears in his eyes.
“I could find out where Ken Silensky got his dog.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“If I do it, and I’m not saying I will, I would want to go through the prison program.”
Evelyn smiled, putting her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Whenever you’re ready. We can make room for a dog.”
“No. Don’t you see? The whole point of getting a service dog is so that I can leave.”
Meghan felt the loosening of her mother’s hands on her shoulders. “Okay.”
There was no local program where they lived in Florida. There was a program in New York, and another in Connecticut.
“Mom, why don’t you call your cousin Carol. Doesn’t she live in Fairfield?”
“We haven’t had any contact with the New England cousins in years.”
The glue holding the relatives together all those years ago had been Evelyn’s grandmother, Henrietta Baxter, matriarch over all. Once Gramma had passed, and as Meghan’s dad had gone from posting to posting, her mother let the connection to her living cousins thin out. They’d all last seen one another when Mark died. A Christmas card now and then. Evelyn was clearly squeamish about imposing on a long-lost relative, but Meghan was not. Once you’ve been blown up by an IED, there’s little to be squeamish about. “Never mind, I’ll call her. Hand me my iPad. Nothing more fun than looking up long-lost relatives online. I’ll see if I can track her down on Facebook.”
By the end of the day, Meghan and her first cousin once removed, Carol Baxter-Flint, had friended each other. By the end of the month, Meghan’s parents had put her on a plane headed for Bradley International Airport, where Carol and Don Flint would meet her plane.