The Last of the Lumbermen (28 page)

“What's that dog doing in here?” the ambulance
driver snaps at me.

“That dog just saved my fucking life, you
asshole, and she's hurt.” My tone tells him he'll have to throw me out if he wants to toss my dog. “She's going to the hospital with the rest of us.”

The second attendant, who I r
ecognize as one of the linesmen who works the Junior B
games and has done some of ours, helps me out.
“Let him take the dog,” he tells his companion. “It
won't hurt anybody. But” — he turns his attention to
me — “there's nobody there who'll treat her. She's your problem.”

The first
attendant is bending over my father. “Shock?” I ask
him.

“Looks like it,” the linesman answers for him. “He's lucky
you could administer decent first aid, or he would
have lost a lot more blood than he did.”

I don't set him straight
about who did the first aid because I've got other fish
to fry. The cell phone is still tucked in
the pocket of my wool shirt. I pull it out,
open it, and tap in Gord's pager number. I
listen to the message and answer it with the number
of the cell phone. For once, my photographic memory
for telephone numbers isn't just cluttering up my brain.

We haven't gotten much beyond the bridge
when the cell phone jangles with Gord's return call. “What's up, chum?” he asks.

I explain what's happened,
and, without my having to ask, he picks up on what
I want. “You want me to play veterinarian, right?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay. I'll be there a few minutes after
you arrive. Keep Bozo in the ambulance for the time
being, will you? I'll want to check you and your father out first.”

I relate
a few more details about the bear, including
my worry that it might have been rabid, and then hang up as the ambulance is pulling into the hospital's emergency entrance.

THIRTY

W
HEN THE ATTENDANTS OPEN
the ambulance doors about al
l I've got left is a headful of telephone numbers
and Gord's instruction to leave Bozo in the
ambulance. I don't have to explain why I want
her left there — the linesman has caught the
drift of my brief conversation with Gord, and p
robably realized who I was talking to. I sit
still, holding Bozo in my lap, while a couple of
young guys in white coats pull my father out and
wheel him inside. When they come back with another
gurney for me, I crawl onto it without a word and close my eyes.

Esther and
James barge in through the front entrance,
trailing several protesting nurses, just as I'm being wheeled
into the cubicle next to my father's. The emergency
intern and a nurse are already working
on him, cutting away the jacket and shirt from his upper body so they can see what the damage is.

Esther
unbuttons my wool shirt after retrieving the cell phone, and
soon has me stripped to the waist. My injuries ar
en't any worse than I thought, except for a bruise
that's blossoming across my right biceps and back wher
e the bear crashed into me just before my father planted the spade in its spine.

“That's going
to feel nice by tomorrow,” she says without flinching. “I'm going to get something to clean you up with.”

She disappears and is replaced by Gord's looming bulk.
“You just don't seem to be able to
stay out of trouble lately,” he says. “Dunno what's going on with you.” He isn't smiling.

“The dog,”
I answer plaintively. “Esther can take care of
me for the time being.”

“Sternum okay?”

I can't quite repress a grimace.
“Sure. Speak of it in the plural, and you'll get the idea.”

He nods,
eyeballs the cuts, then probes my chest firmly enough to
invoke a groan. When he's satisfied that my estimate
of the damage is accurate, he turns on his heels
and disappears the way he came.

The intern leans back fr
om working on my father. “If you don't stop
this crap we're going to have to assign a
permanent bed to you,” he says.

“He's promised to go straight after this
one,” Esther interjects, as she returns with a
stainless steel washbasin and a box of gauze pads. “I
hope I'm not going to compromise your insur-
ance with this.”

“Be my guest. We're understaffed tonight. And
anyway, insurance is overrated.”

I tune out while Esther goes to
work. She seems to understand that most of the blood on
me isn't mine. It occurs to me that we'r
e lucky, both my father and I. If just
one of those last two shots we took at the
bear had missed their mark, it could be chewing on our guts right now.

Not
a very nice thought, I tell myself as I watch
Gord thunder in through the steel doors with
Bozo. He's carrying her, and she almost looks like a
poodle in his big arms. He sets her down
on the gurney I was brought in on, and
tells her to stay. She whimpers a greeting
to me and I see her tail wag briefly,
as if she's thinking of jumping back into my lap, but she stays where she's told to.

“Good dog,” I tell her.

“Seriously injured dog,” Gord corrects me as
he manipulates Bozo's hindquarters with his fingers. “She got
herself clubbed pretty good out there. You'd better
tell me
exactly
what happened.”

I give him and Esther
the long version. By the time I'm halfway through, everyone else is listening, too.

“
You're goddamned lucky,” Gord says. “All four of you.”

Esther turns her attention to James,
who's been nodding assent to my version of the story while I was recounting it.

“What happened before Andy
and your dad arrived?” she asks him.

“I dunno,” he says.
“I was coming into town, like I was supposed to, for the practice, and I ran into that bea
r.”

“You hit it with the Ski-Doo?”

“Yeah, sort of. Not head on or
anything. But it knocked the Ski-Doo off the trail and stalled it.”

“And you got up that tree. Smart thinking.”

“Didn't feel
very smart while I was waiting for someone to come,” he
answers. “But that's what Dad told me to do a
long time ago if something like this ever happened, so that's what I did.”

Ron Bathgate speaks for the first time. “Good
boy, son,” he says. “You did the
right thing. Just be thankful that Andy here r
ealized you weren't at the practice and acted as
quickly as he did.”

James gives me a quick glance. “Oh
yeah,” he says. “My
brother
.”

I can't quite read his expression.

Go
rd, meanwhile, has disappeared again. When he returns, he's carrying a tray of fully loaded syringes.

“What's that for?” I ask him, sullenly. “Something to
calm us down?”

“Damned near everything but.” He lifts a syringe
from the tray and inspects it. “Let's see what
I've got here: rabies, tetanus, a couple million
units of ampicillin. Hmm … I think I'll do the dog first while you two bare your behinds for me.”

I start to giggle despite the
situation, but Gord glares at me: no jokes about that, even her
e.

A nurse pulls the curtain between the two beds shut,
and moves into my father's cubicle to help him
prepare. Esther gets a hospital sheet from somewhe
re and tosses it in my lap. “Do you need help?”

“Don't think so.” I answe
r.

I have to call her in a moment later
. Baring my backside is a production I can't quite handle.

THE NEXT HOURS
AREN'T
exactly the picture of clarity. I know what
you're thinking — I've spent so much time that
way lately someone ought to install fog lights on me.
But this fog isn't my doing, and it's accountable, it turns
out, to the bear. I don't get the worst of it, either
.

A few minutes after Gord gives the three
of us our shots, and just as Wendel shows up
with Claire, Ron Bathgate's throat swells up
and he goes into convulsions. If he were anywher
e but in a hospital emergency ward he'd
be dead, and even now it's close. Gord and
the intern recognize that he's having an immune system reaction,
and inject him with adrenaline and antihistamine. Just as
they get him breathing again and on a respirato
r, Bozo has pretty much the same reaction. Befo
re I can get a bead on any of it, so do I.

W
e get the same treatment as Ron does, but
without the oxygen. I don't need it, and it's ha
rd fitting an oxygen facemask over a dog's drooling
snout. But my temperature shoots up, and it stays there until the antibiotics kick in.

I wake up hours later staring at my dog, who's
been left on the gurney next to my bed. She's
strapped down now, snoring loudly with her swollen tongue lolling on the metal surface of the gurney like a dead salamander.

My body temperature has gone back to something like
normal, but it's left me lightheaded and feeling more
than slightly giddy. I'd have preferred to
have woken up to Esther's face, but Bozo's will do.
She's alive and breathing, and that's enough. Esther
's there, too, talking to Gord.

“How's Bozo,” I croak.

“She's got a crack in her
hip,” Gord answers, without getting up. “It'll heal on its
own, but you'll have to make her take things pr
etty easy for a month or so. Given your condition,
that won't be hard. How do you feel?”

“Strange,” I answer. “How long was I out?”

Esther gets to
her feet. “Long enough. You had a reaction to
something.”

“So I gather. Man, do I feel odd. Like I've been reborn.”

Gord laughs. “You got mauled by a bear, not the Lord.”

“No, not reborn
that
way,” I answer. “Just cleared out, sort of.”

“You're joining Scientology? I knew
I shouldn't have given you that sedative.”

“Stop making me laugh, you
idiot. It hurts. And I'm feeling clear headed, not empty headed.”

Esther is standing over me with the light above her.

“Will
you marry me?” I say to her. I'm feeling
utterly
clear headed, suddenly, about that.

It's her turn to laugh. “Make an
honest woman out of me, you mean.”

“You're alr
eady an honest woman. This is serious. Where is everybody?”

“Claire's here somewhere, asleep I think. Wendel
took James to our place. He'll sleep there overnight
because Claire wanted to stay near your father.
And Jack was hobbling around here for
a while, but he went home.”

“Listen,” I say to her. “I'm serious about this.
I want you to marry me. I want my car
ds on the table, my eggs in your basket, whatever. I'm here for good, you know? This is my home.”

Gord hoots in the background.

“No, I mean,
you're
my home.”

“Sensible,” she says, after a
moment of thought. “Yes. Of course, I'll marry
you. But you have to be standing on your own two
feet. I'm getting sick of these deathbed scenes of yours. I don't want them to become a habit.”