Fight for Life (7 page)

Shelby and Inky are fast asleep in their pen. The collies’ tummies are rounder, and it seems like they all have normal temperatures. But poor little Dinky is back on an I.V. drip. I read his chart. He still isn’t eating or drinking.

I can hear Mitzy barking in her kennel. I wonder if Brenna took her for a walk. She has lots of energy and needs exercise.

One of the collies wakes up and licks my hand. “You want me to stay with you?” I ask him. He gives me a big yawn and blinks his eyes. I think he’s the pup who had diarrhea all over Sunita. “You need a name, little guy. What should it be? Oops? No, that’s no good. Lucky? No way.”

The pup makes a little noise and a big smell.

“Whew! That stinks! I know what to call you—Beans. You know, ‘Beans, beans, the musical fruit . . . ’” David will get it, even if Gran doesn’t.

Beans nibbles on my thumb. I am falling in love. Who could harm such a cute, innocent thing? It makes me so angry that this guy is out there making money off these helpless pups. I’ve got to track him down, with or without Gran’s help.

Gran and Zoe walk in. Uh-oh. I’m caught. Gran raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t yell at me. We are both on our best behavior in front of our guest.

“It’s adorable!” squeals Zoe in a high-pitched voice guaranteed to make dogs howl. She runs over to Beans, picks him up without supporting his bottom, and lays him over her shoulder. Before Gran or I can say anything, Beans has another accident all over her very fashionable lime green shirt.

“Ewwww! Gross!” Zoe shrieks.

I can’t help myself. I burst out laughing.

Zoe dumps Beans in the pen and runs out of the room with Gran right behind her.

I check the puppy to make sure he isn’t hurt. He has this puzzled look in his eyes, as if he’s wondering what he did to deserve that kind of treatment.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him. “She should know better. Pick up a puppy, a sick puppy, and you never know what’s going to happen.”

A few minutes later, Gran comes in as I’m cleaning up the mess.

“Are you sure we’re related to her?” I ask.

“Get upstairs and finish your homework,” Gran snaps. “It wasn’t nice of you to stand there and laugh at her. She has a lot to get used to.”

“But the look on her face was funny.”

“I’m very disappointed in you. Go to your room.”

I don’t get it. Usually Gran has no patience with people who turn up their noses at a little puppy poop. But now she has no patience with me.

I slam the door that divides the kitchen from the clinic and storm back up the steps.

Sherlock wakes up from a nap when I slam the door to my room and flop on my bed. He jumps onto the bed and waddles toward me.

“Go away,” I grumble, pushing him to the other side of the bed.

He climbs onto my pillow and licks my face.

“Stop it! You have bad breath!”

Sherlock understands me. He always knows how to get me out of a bad mood.

He sits up and turns his baggy eyes toward my desk where my books are piled up.

“You’re right,” I say. “Start the extra-credit report.”

I drag myself into my chair and open my notebook. Let’s see, I have to explain how laws are made in my report. Ms. Griffith told me to connect it to a topic that interests me. So I try to find a way to sneak in information about basketball, but it’s hopeless. As far as I can tell, the Pennsylvania state legislature hasn’t passed any laws about hoops.

I look at the clock. Gran is still down in the clinic. She’s been down there over an hour. Something must be wrong.

“I’m not supposed to go down there,” I tell Sherlock. He lifts his head off my pillow. “But I don’t think that applies if there’s an emergency. Let’s go and see if Gran needs help.”

G
ran has Mitzy, the airhead Airedale, stretched out on the table in the operating room. She whimpers as Gran gently prods her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I’m not sure yet. She was acting antsy, couldn’t settle down or stop barking.” Gran listens to Mitzy’s stomach with her stethoscope and feels her abdomen with her hands. “She’s got some air in her stomach, and probably lots of food. How much did you tell Brenna to feed her?”

“Exactly what we always feed her. I even wrote it down. You don’t think the puppies brought in an infection and Mitzy got it, do you?”

“Is it dangerous?”

Gran and I turn around. Zoe is standing by the door. She has changed into a black sweatshirt.

“Mitzy here has a bellyache,” Gran says.

“It might be bloat,” I say.

“Could be, but she’s not in that much pain,” says Gran. “Bloat is when a dog gets too much food and air in its stomach. Sometimes the stomach twists, and it can be very dangerous,” she explains to Zoe. “That’s why I want to keep an eye on her. Maggie, help me get her down. We’ll put her in the recovery room. I’ll take an X-ray if it gets any worse.”

Zoe follows us to the recovery room. She kneels by the puppy pen as we struggle with Mitzy. Now, of course, Mitzy wants to sit. She doesn’t want to go into the cage.

“Let me try something,” I say. “Mitzy, lie down.”

“Don’t be silly, Maggie. We don’t want her to lie down,” Gran says. “We want her in the cage.”

“It worked yesterday. She gets things mixed up. Mitzy, come on, honey, lie down!”

Mitzy gives me a mournful look, then steps into the cage. Gran fusses over her, getting her settled in comfortably. I sneak a look at Zoe. She’s leaning over the puppy pen. She’s not picking up any of the puppies, but she’s petting them gently.

I stay with Mitzy for a minute, stroking her nose. “Don’t worry, Dr. Gran will help. You’ll feel better in the morning, just hang in there.” Mitzy thumps her tail once.

Suddenly Zoe gasps and makes a funny noise in her throat. I ignore her. Gran shouldn’t let her in the clinic if she’s going to keep freaking out about little things. I rub behind Mitzy’s ears. “Instead of teaching you how to sit, maybe we’ll just go for a short walk tomorrow. Does that sound good?”

Zoe gasps again. Gran looks up from the notes she’s writing. “Zoe?”

I turn around. Zoe bites her lip. I scramble over to the puppy pen. Zoe points to Dinky.

“It—it’s not breathing,” she says. Dinky is very, very still.

Gran is next to us in a flash. She quickly checks Dinky for signs of breathing and a heartbeat.

“Anything?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“He’s gone, Maggie.”

Shooting baskets in the driveway always helps me feel better, even when it’s late at night. Especially when it’s late at night.

Bounce. Bounce. Thunk.
The ball clangs off the rim and rolls into the shadows. Darn. Now I won’t find it until the morning.

“You didn’t bend your knees enough,” Gran says as she steps out of the darkness holding the ball. “Watch.” She dribbles once, bends her knees deeply, and shoots. The ball bounces off the top of the backboard and lands at my feet. No basket.

“You pushed it,” I say. “Use your wrist and follow through.” I pass the ball to her. “Try again.”

She dribbles twice and arcs the ball perfectly into the net.

“Not bad,” I joke. “For a grandmother.”

“Let’s see you do it.”

I grab the ball and back up until I’m at the three-point line. I shoot. Air ball. It doesn’t even get near the net.

“I’m going in,” I say. “I can’t do anything right.”

“Stay,” Gran says. “I think we need to talk.”

“About what?” I pick up the ball.

“It’s been a rough couple of days.”

I shoot from right under the basket. The ball goes in. “It’s been a horrible couple of days.”

“I’m sorry Dinky died. He was the sickest of all the pups.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You’re angry at me because I’m letting the other kids volunteer.”

I don’t answer. Instead I make a layup.

“You’re angry at me because you’re grounded.”

I dribble behind my back and make a jump shot.

“I bet you’re angry about Zoe, too.”

I shoot too hard and the ball bounces over to Gran. She holds it. “Talk to me, Maggie.”

“It feels like I don’t live here anymore,” I say with a sigh. “There are all these—these people everywhere, and you’re mad about school, and my teacher thinks I’m not trying when I really am. It’s been so busy, we haven’t been able to talk, and I’m really, really upset about the puppies. Can’t we just forget that test? I’ll do better on the next one, I promise. Tell the kids you don’t need them, give Zoe a ticket to L.A., and help me find the puppy mill.” I try to steal the ball from her, but she holds on tight.

We stand for a second, both of us clutching the ball. Then Gran lets go.

“You’re right,” she says. “It’s been such a zoo around here I haven’t had a chance to think about what all this means to you. Tell you what. We’ll keep the kids around until the puppies are healthy and your extra-credit report is done.”

“But—” I begin. Gran raises a finger.

“But nothing. You have to do the report. The faster you do it, the faster you’re back in the clinic. Maybe one of the kids could help you. They’re all pretty nice.”

“Ummm.”

“OK, Maggie. Once the report is in and the puppies recover, the other kids go home. Happy?”

“What about Zoe?”

Gran’s jaw tightens. “Rose and I talked this evening. We decided it would be best for her to stay until school gets out.”

“But that’s nearly three months! I thought it would be, like, three weeks.”

“So did Zoe. But she’s putting a good face on it.” Gran smiles. “She says maybe she’ll train one of our animals to be a movie star.”

“Yeah, right.”

“She seems determined. Reminds me of you in that way.”

I dribble back out to the three-point line. “OK. I do the report and the clinic goes back to normal. I’ll be nice to Zoe, and she’ll go away, in a while. What about the puppy mill?”

“I’ll call the sheriff and give him the information we have, but I doubt it will be high on his list.”

“We’ll find the creep. I know it,” I say, then turn toward the basket. “She shoots!” I release the ball and it swishes through the net. Perfect. “She scores!”

T
he next morning I wake up feeling better. By the time I get dressed, I have a plan. I know how I’m going to find the puppy mill. The trick is to get Gran to the farmer’s market.

When I go downstairs, Zoe is already in the kitchen looking in the pantry.

“Don’t you guys eat around here?” she asks. “You don’t even have any flour. If you had flour, we could make pancakes. Ethel taught me how. Of course, you don’t have any maple syrup, but we could have put jam on them . . .” She stands lost in thought, looking at a box of Cheerios. I take the box and pour myself a bowl.

“Gran isn’t much of a cook. I can’t remember her ever making pancakes. We eat a lot of take-out.” That doesn’t sound good. “We’ll probably go to the store today.”

Zoe puts a piece of bread in the toaster and opens the spice cabinet.
Be nice
, I tell myself.
Make conversation
.

“Who is Ethel?” I ask.

She taps her fingernail on the counter. “Our housekeeper.”

“Your cleaning lady taught you how to cook?”

“She wasn’t a cleaning lady, she was a housekeeper. She ran the house—cooked for us, made sure mom got up in time to get to the studio, helped me with my homework. Ethel was the best.”

“Is she in L.A. with your mother?”

“No. Ethel moved back to New Hampshire to take care of her sick brother.” Zoe takes a plastic jar of cinnamon out of the cupboard and looks at the date on the bottom. “This is almost as old as I am! Ugh!” She tosses it into the garbage with a shiver. “Do you ever order in breakfast?”

“Did somebody say breakfast?” Gran asks, coming into the kitchen from the clinic.

“Not unless you call toast ‘breakfast,’” Zoe says as she wrinkles her nose. “Something’s burning.”

I leap across the kitchen and pop up the toast.

“Sorry,” I say. “I forgot to tell you about the toaster. You have to watch it every second or it turns your toast into charcoal.” I lift the charred bread out with my fingertips. “Like this.”

“I’ll make you a piece,” Gran says. “Just let me wash my hands first.” She rolls up her sleeves and turns on the faucet, then squirts liquid soap on her hands and scrubs so hard that lather drips into the sink.

“How are Mitzy and the puppies?” I ask Gran.

“Everybody came through the night safely. Mitzy’s stomachache is gone, but I want her to have very small meals today.” Gran rinses the soap off her hands and dries them on a hand towel decorated with bloodhounds.

“I autopsied Dinky,” she says in a quieter voice. “I examined his body to figure out why he died. He was dehydrated and sick with a respiratory infection, but that didn’t kill him. Dinky had a congenital heart defect. His heart wasn’t formed properly, and it wasn’t pumping his blood the right way. Combined with malnourishment and dehydration, he didn’t have much of a chance.” She tosses the towel at me. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”