The Dog Year

“Reminiscent of the best of Gail Parent and Alison Lurie,
The Dog Year
is the story of a woman who had everything, lost everything, and now wants to shoplift the rest, including the hope of life after the death of her heart, lost when her husband and child died in a dreadful accident. Ann Garvin's writing sneaks up on you: It is hilarious, until it's poignant, until it's heartbreaking. She leaves no heartstring untugged, no funny bone untapped, and every word she sets down is honest.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Deep End of the Ocean

“With sharp wit and penetrating insight, Ann Garvin offers a tender look at love, loss, friendship, and that curious human epidemic, denial. As touching as it is funny,
The Dog Year
will take up residence in readers' (and dog-lovers') hearts. This is a completely winning novel.”

—Sally Koslow, author of
The Widow Waltz
and
The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

“I know of few authors who are funnier or more sympathetic than Ann Garvin, and I know of few heroines more in need of comic relief and sympathy than Dr. Lucy Peterman. This novel will make your stomach hurt with laughter and your heart ache with sadness.
The Dog Year
is a kind, gentle, honest look at a woman whose life has come apart and a survivor who puts it all back together.”

—Wiley Cash,
New York Times
bestselling author of
A Land More Kind Than Home
and
This Dark Road to Mercy

“Ann Garvin has written another hilarious, insightful, and heartbreaking book. Lucy Peterman is one of Garvin's signature characters: deeply flawed, nakedly honest, and a whip-smart sarcastic modern woman who finds herself adrift in a world that seems intent on leaving her behind. But Lucy does not give up easily.
The Dog Year
is a deeply intimate story of tragedy and recovery that readers and book clubs will treasure.”

—Matt Bondurant, author of
The Night Swimmer
and
The Wettest County in the World

“Ann Garvin's funny, heartfelt tale of one woman's loss, and the grief and staggering around that follows, is proof that if there's one thing better than a good book and a dog, it's a good book with a dog. Pure delight.”

—Karen Karbo, award-winning author of
The Stuff of Life
and the Kick Ass Women series

“Compelling . . . A perfect fit for suburban reading groups.”

—
Booklist

“
On Maggie's Watch
shows how we thrive, how we go on, in a life that's neither perfect nor fair. [Garvin] writes with humor and compassion so well; just when I'd feel [I was] about to cry, the scene would twist and I'd laugh out loud. She has such a deep understanding for her flawed and trying-to-get-better characters; she obviously loves them, and so do we.”

—Luanne Rice,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Little Night

“Fresh, ironic, and psychologically intense. If you're interested in the best in women's fiction—this suspenseful, quirky, humorous story of a well-meaning woman's reverberating effect on her neighbor's life is certainly that and more.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Deep End of the Ocean

“Equal parts compelling, entertaining, and poignant—a story that tackles a serious topic and leaves readers questioning the way they judge others.”

—Holly Kennedy, author of
The Penny Tree
and
The Tin Box

“What a great book! In turns poignant and funny,
On Maggie's Watch
is a delightful and compelling read with unexpected plot twists and many laugh-out-loud moments.”

—Patricia Wood, author of
Lottery

THE DOG YEAR

ON MAGGIE'S WATCH

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2014 by Ann Garvin.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63463-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garvin, Ann Wertz.

The dog year / Ann Wertz Garvin.—First Edition, Berkley trade paperback edition.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-425-26925-1 (pbk.)

1. Women surgeons—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Drug addiction—Fiction. 4. Dogs—Diseases—Treatment—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3607.A78289D64 2014

813'.6—dc23

2013044169

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / June 2014

Cover photo by Cusp/SuperStock.

Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To my family, in all the ways that family can be defined.

I'm a reader of acknowledgments. I like to peek into authors' lives. I like discovering that even the writers who make it look easy needed a hand. I love a good “thank-you,” even if it's not about me.

The people who help an author to publication deserve more than a thank-you card with a sprig of lavender printed on the front. They deserve a visit from Oprah, a new car, an organ donation.

Since nobody really wants my liver, pretty though it is, these acknowledgments will have to suffice. Berkley, my publisher, and Jackie Cantor, my editor, get the kind of tearful thank-you that would embarrass all of us if done in person. To be able to publish with this company and this talented editor is truly this girl's childhood dream come true. Jill Marr at The Sandra Dijkstra Agency is the most positive, energetic, and lovely woman I've never met in person; I thank her every day for taking me on and believing in my writing.

People who know me know that my head is full of characters but not the rules of grammar. For help I needed Wanda Dye, Amy Reichert, and Tamara Scerpella, three friends who punctuated without judgment or a single eye roll.

Thank you to my wildly successful writing group (you know who you are), and to anyone who listened to me go on obsessively about whether my main character would do something or not: Linda Wick, Terri Osgood, Carolyn Bach, Elyse Tebon, and so many others. I should probably thank anyone I made eye contact with over the last three years.

My children are responsible for turning me from a self-absorbed woman to an empathetic human being. Julie and Meghan, I love you and thank you for understanding. My parents, and my brothers, Raymond and Jonathan, deserve every other nod: They modeled love for me every day so that I could write it down on these pages. To Millie and Peanut, my dogs: How did I live before your devotion?

And finally, to Brian Osgood: I wrote you into these pages and you appeared. Thank goodness. What are the odds?

I
n the hospital parking ramp, Lucy snuck a glance at a new mother placing her infant into an elaborate car seat. Her husband stood hovering at her shoulder, his hand gently touching her hip. The woman lingered, gazing at the tiny, beet-faced infant, love fairly oozing from her pores. Lucy waited until the new family drove away, watching the taillights recede all the way out of sight. That particular tableau of the American Dream could have been hers, should have been hers. It
would
have been hers, she knew, if she'd only stayed conscious and had the right supplies when needed.

Today she just had to get through the workday. “Get a grip, Peterman,” she said to herself. She shoved open her car door and moved to get out. Instead she dropped her head to the steering wheel. She tried to pull the tough-girl mask over her sorrow and get on with her life. Instead she cried like adults learn to cry: silently and alone.

Grabbing the rearview mirror after her allotted ten-minute cry, she checked for tattletale mascara under her eyes, wiped her nose with the fast-food napkins she stashed in the glove compartment for this very reason, and got out of her car.

*   *   *

On the fifth floor of Med One Hospital and Clinics in downtown Elmwood, Lucy brushed a piece of lint from her shoulder and tried to anchor a springy curl behind her ear. With almost religious reverence, she placed her palms on the smooth counter and breathed in the disinfected, white, no-question-can't-be-answered aroma. For Lucy, there were no gray areas here. Sorrow, maybe; loss, certainly. But always in black and white. The doctor is IN. She widened her eyes and said, “God, I love Mondays.”

Melissa, a brown-haired, plump, hyper-organized nurse who had worked with Lucy since the beginning of her tenure here, pulled her head back.

“I've warned you to keep that kind of thing to yourself around here, Dr. Peterman. Nobody likes Mondays. People like Fridays, Saturdays, but never Mondays.”

“I love 'em. I get to see you, talk to people in pain, drug them, and cut out their problems. It's the next best thing to working in a candy store.”

Melissa frowned and said, “You don't fool me, Dr. Peterman.” She squinted at her. “You look pale. Are you sleeping?”

Lucy didn't answer her. “Where's my other lab coat? I hate the pockets in this one.”

“I think you should talk to Menken.” Stanley Menken was a fellow surgeon, a friend, and the clinic director. He was not, however, the kind of guy who understood weakness. Stanley and she were the same in that respect, and Lucy was not about to request a leave of absence. This was a man's world. Have a baby, take six weeks, and get back to work. Lose your family, go to the funeral, get back on track by heading to the office. Or in her case, the hospital.

Melissa continued. “Take one day a week off. You came back too early.”

“Oh,” Lucy went on, “I brought some good coffee and put it in the break room. I cannot drink that crap the med students bring in.”

Melissa stared at her and put her hand on Lucy's closed fist. “Dr. Peterman.”

“If I'm working, I can pretend that nothing happened. This is what I do. I work.”

Melissa withdrew her hand and watched Lucy slip her lab coat, like armor, onto her shoulders, effectively changing the subject. She nodded in the direction of the patient rooms. “Your student got a head start this morning.”

Lucy glanced over and saw Blake, her medical student, standing at the foot of a bed with his hands in his pockets and the door wide open. The woman before him clutched the neck of her gown, her legs exposed, her bare white knees pressed together.

As Lucy approached, she heard the student say, “It looks like you only have a thin layer of skin and subcutaneous tissue available to work with. That's unfortunate.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “This predisposes to the formation of a capsular contracture.” With a tone of voice that made it sound like he was translating for a child, he went on to explain, “This can produce an unnaturally round breast.” Then as if to lighten the moment he said, “Better than baggy boobs though, right?” Then he winked at his patient.

Lucy moved into the room fueled by three things: memories of her own failings in the sensitivity department, powerlessness in the face of bad news, and furious anger. She yanked the privacy curtain closed, and as the ball bearings hissed into place, closing out the world, Lucy lost her righteous indignation at the situation and replaced it with empathy for the woman on the bed. She was able only to muster a scowl at the med student. To the woman in the backless, undignified gown, she said, “Hello, Mrs. Hallorman. How are you today?”

Mrs. Hallorman was a slim brunette with pore-free skin and eyes like large chocolate discs. She dropped her head into her hands, and as her shoulders shook, silent tears soaked her palms. Lucy put her hand on the woman's shoulder and handed her a tissue, but neither shushed her nor muttered that “things” would be fine. In Lucy's recent, and very bitter, experience, “things” were not always fine. Only eight months ago, she had lost her husband and her unborn baby in a single afternoon.

Lucy allowed a moment of silence for the woman's loss and another for her own. She pursed her lips and breathed through the memory of her husband's face on their wedding day and then, horribly, right after the car accident that killed him. Lucy caught her student's eyes over the distraught woman's head. He looked away and glanced at his watch.

After forty-five minutes of reassurance and education in that small, curtained cubicle, Lucy and the student stepped into the hall. “You are not to get started without supervision. Do you understand me?”

“I'm a fourth-year student,” he said. “I've done surgery. I came from orthopedics.”

He and Lucy looked at each other. She saw in his expression an unconcealed overestimation of his experience and an underestimation of hers. When he scratched his forehead, the shine of a manicured fingernail glittered in the fluorescent light. She motioned for him to follow her as she pushed her way into a small vacant office near the main desk. The door
shush
ed shut.

“Here's a news flash, pal: Reconstructing a woman's breast after surgery for cancer takes a little sensitivity. We're not doing celebrity makeovers here. It's not about swimsuit fittings or new breasts as high school graduation gifts. These women have cancer. Cancer in a very intimate place. A place that helped them to feel beautiful for the proms, sexy on their honeymoons, and more than a little ready for infants. A woman would rather die of heart disease than get breast cancer, because getting breast cancer is like being stabbed in the heart. The very least we can do is use language they comprehend.”

“I understand,” he said as he glanced over Lucy's shoulder into the mirror on the opposite wall and fixed a lock of his hair.

She eyed his lavender shirt and fancy shoes. “Tomorrow,” she said, “you can quit with the fashion show. Women in this clinic just want good medicine, not medicine doled out by someone so concerned with his appearance that he can't even walk into a cancer unit without using an entire tube of hair gel.”

He stood at attention as if realizing, like most men, that he'd miscategorized the tall, red-haired woman standing before him.

Lucy wasn't finished. “If you're going on this ride-along with me, listen up. When we meet with the patient, I'll make the introductions; you put away your smug-ass smile and listen. Afterward, I'll ask you what you heard.”

She straightened the collar of her lab coat. The med student tried to look interested.

“Here are a few things to remember. If I let you speak, never label a woman's breasts as
anything
, let alone pendulous, baggy, sloppy, saggy, or slouchy. These are terms for old furniture, not biologic tissue.”

The medical student stared and shook his head as if saying,
Of course not, never again
.

Lucy waved him off. “Medical students think terminology has no emotional meaning. I don't care who you are, nobody wants a baggy anything, let alone baggy boobs.” The student began to look alert.

Lucy exhaled. “Listen, patients will use slang. Boobs, knockers, hooters, cans, whatever. Usually not tits though. Tits are crude and smack of strippers.” He swallowed and looked around the room. There was a poster on manual breast examination on his right. He glanced away.

Lucy squinted at him. “Orthopedics, huh? I've told Stanley to rotate you people through proctology first. After you do sphincter work, a few knockers are nothing.” Lucy moved to the door and touched the handle.

He frowned and said, “Excuse me, but don't we do a psychology consult for some of that stuff?”

“Oh my God, seriously?” Lucy dropped her hand and turned, blocking the med student's way. “That woman in there knows that she no longer needs to accommodate her breasts when hugging friends, carrying groceries, or feeding a child. Her scars and the sympathetic look in her husband's eyes will only cement those facts. Some of us know what it's like to lose their entire world in an afternoon. In this rotation, I decide your future. Do you need a lesson in loss?”

For probably the first time in his life, the medical student standing there was without experience or answers. Lucy took a deep breath and softened her voice. “Here's the thing, Blake. Breast reconstruction is all about remembering three things. Number one, nobody wants a belly that sticks out farther than their breasts. Two, women don't entirely equate breasts with sex but they know men do. And three, given the choice between having a man or having breasts, in most cases the man might not make out so well in that competition. Women reconstruct for
themselves
.”

She stared at the medical student until he dropped his eyes. “Wow,” he said.

Lucy closed her eyes and said, “Yeah,
Dr. Phil.
Wow. Now go do your write-up.”

Back at the nurse's station, Melissa pulled her head up from her notes.

“Did you set him straight?”

Lucy shook her head. “For one glorious minute maybe, but not for life.”

“He'll get better. Most of them do after this rotation.”

“I guess. It's exhausting work, training a person to be human.”

“Maybe he should try being a human for Halloween. It'd be a stretch. Nobody would be able to guess his costume.”

Melissa offered Lucy a piece of candy from a plastic jack-o'-lantern sitting on the desk and said, “You're coming, right?”

Lucy looked away. “Yes. Well, maybe. But I have another party I have to make an appearance at.”

“Dr. Peterman. You're lying and you know it.”

Lucy pursed her lips and tried a feeble, “I'm not. My brother . . .”

“Your brother called and said all was clear for you to go. Look, I know it's hard, with Richard gone.”

Lucy raised her head at the mention of her husband's name. Her Richard. He'd been the kind of guy that women overlooked—not because he was unattractive, but because he was just a brown-haired guy with a kind face. When Lucy described him to people, she'd say, “He's one part Matt Damon and three parts that plain guy you don't mind sitting next to on an airplane because you know he'll help you with your luggage and otherwise leave you alone.” The Matt Damon part was on the inside but was the only part Lucy could see. Richard was everything to her. He was the social one. He carried her through parties, dinners, and balls like a Ford pickup hauls a pop-up camper on Memorial Day. He made sure she had no lipstick on her teeth, whispered reminders of spouse's names in her ear, and carried on a breezy running commentary at any party they attended together. It was the small talk that wore her down. She just couldn't do it. Didn't have it in her. Like any good surgeon, she either went right to the center of a person or deflected him with humor. There was no in between. That's just who she was. “I can get to work,” she said to Melissa. “That's what I can do. I don't want to go to a Halloween party. I don't want to smile like I'm happy, make conversation about the weather, or meet new people.”

Melissa put her hand on Lucy's shoulder but Lucy pulled away gently.

“Look,” she said, “it's not your job to take care of me. And my brother's job is to just shut up.”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “It most certainly is my job to take care of you. We don't have to be friends. God forbid,” she added dramatically. “But this place pays me to watch over you.”

“Only during office hours.”

Melissa stared unblinking across the nurse's station.

“All right already. I'll try to come to the party.”

Triumphant, Melissa saluted Lucy and said, “It'll be fun. You'll see. Now carry on, Doctor. Your minions need a tune-up. I'll see you tonight.”

*   *   *

The amber light of the fall day morphed to the purple black of late evening as Lucy shrugged on her wool coat. She glanced in the mirror on the back of her office door and touched her hair, trying to smooth the frizz that had escaped her careful blowout. Even with piles of product, her naturally curly hair regained its shrubbery appearance the second a drop of moisture met even one follicle. Opening her carefully folded, empty lunch bag, she filled it with the contents of her lab coat pockets: a handful of packaged needles, several gauze pads, three rolls of tape, two suture kits, and a small 250-cc IV bag.

In the hall, Lucy moved through the less-traveled avenues to the front entrance, avoiding the cafeteria, where workers had hung a banner—T
HE
N
IGHT OF THE
S
EVEN
D
EADLY
S
INS—
printed in bleeding-red paint. Black and orange balloons and streamers decorated its edges.

Spotting a colleague
click-clack
ing down the hall toward her, Lucy veered into the restroom. As the door closed, the handle caught the lab coat she'd gathered in her arms and yanked it and her lunch bag to the floor.