Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself (11 page)

Then the bell rings. Jerry pulls her off me. I look up to see them all heading into the building.

I stay down as long as I can, letting them get as far away as possible before picking myself up, still sobbing, my face wet. I need to get to homeroom. I lower my head, embarrassed, and walk toward the school, only to raise my eyes and see the girl coming at me again. I turn away and again cover my head with my arms. I’m not sure how long the second attack lasts, but it’s the same basic moves, slapping, hair pulling, probably kicking, I don’t know.

Finally, she’s finished. I stay where I am until they’re gone. The fear I’m experiencing is greater and more intense than anything I’ve ever known, almost beyond description.

Angry, I decided the fatigue I felt was mental, or if it wasn’t, the solution was. I don’t know if adrenaline is something anybody can consciously summon, but I’d learned that determination is something anybody can draw upon. I wasn’t going to fail, so I started up again, grunting and shouting at myself with each step I took, not cursing because I was frustrated or tired, but to cheer myself on.

Maybe a minute and a half later, I’d put the last of the sheer vertical behind me. I had another hundred feet up an angled wall, but I could use my feet. The problem now was that I was dragging the crate up the wall, but even walking with an exaggerated bow-legged duck-walk, I still kicked it a few times.

The cushioning worked, and the straps held, and then I was back at my ATV, where I unclipped the crate from my harness and collapsed next to my ATV. I chugged a bottle of water and then moved the crate out of the shadow of the ATV and into the sun, thinking the dog probably hasn’t seen sunlight in who knew how long—maybe the warmth or the bright light burning red through his closed eyelids might have some sort of regenerative effect on him. It did on me. I felt a sense of accomplishment, but more than that, I felt a sense of triumph. We were 350 feet above the pothole and, for the dog, 350 feet above certain death. I was tired, but I felt an energy I’d never experienced before. I felt a qualified joy, knowing I’d gotten the dog this far, but mindful that although we were out of the hole, we weren’t out of the woods.

It took me fifteen minutes to haul up my rope and pack away all my gear, and another fifteen to drive the ATV with one hand and steady the crate with the other to get back to my truck, where I found I had enough reception on my cell phone to send a text. I sent it to Michelle, saying simply, “We’re out.”

And I knew, because Michelle is someone I can count on and trust, that she would call the animal hospital and tell them to be ready for us.

The wind had picked up, and in a half dozen places, shallow sand dunes had blown across the road, but I kept the truck in four-wheel drive because nothing was going to stop us now. Driving back to Page, exhilaration gave way to fatigue, and fatigue reminded me of depression, and I started to think again of that day in seventh grade.

The day Leona attacked me was a Monday. That Wednesday is the last day before Christmas break. All morning after the attack, I’m too distraught to pay attention in any of my classes. Other schoolmates laugh at me and mock me, word quickly spreading as to what happened in the parking lot before school.

“He got his ass kicked by a girl.”

“Hey Zak—I heard you got bitch-slapped.”

When Jerry says, between morning classes, “Leona beat the piss out of you,” I try to dismiss it and say she hadn’t hurt me.

“Are you trying to dis my girlfriend?” he says. He tells me that, at lunch, he’s going to really beat the shit out of me, to show me what it feels like. At lunch, I know I have to get away from school as fast as I can. Just as he said he would, Jerry tries to chase me down as soon as I step foot out the door. I run, crying, and make it to my front door. I don’t go back to class that afternoon.

The next morning, I lie in bed, and I can’t think of how to go forward. My life was barely manageable before, but now the fragile system of coping I’d had in place has crumbled. It’s like I can’t think of how to get out of bed.

I tell my mom I’m sick, which in a way is almost true—my gut is so twisted, my heart so broken, my psyche so damaged that I want to throw up and can hardly move. My pain is obvious, and I am a terrible liar, but my mother is nevertheless too oblivious to notice anything is wrong. It’s not that I expect her to be a mind reader, but it seems absolutely clear that she doesn’t care, or can’t be bothered, and I know that even if I spell it out for her, nothing will be gained. If she walks me to school again, it will only get worse. She tells me if I’m sick I should stay home, though she has to go to work, so I’m alone all day, which is fine with me.

For the first half of that Christmas break, I stay in my house, since the girl who attacked me lives down the street, and I can see her and her friends occasionally gathering outside her house. The first half of the vacation, my anxiety levels decrease. The second half of the vacation, I feel my dread increasing daily as the vacation draws to an end, a knot in my stomach getting tighter and tighter.

When school starts again, I synchronize my watch with the school bells and time it so that if I wait thirty seconds after the first bell, I can run as fast as I can from home and make it to school about forty-five seconds before the second bell, thus avoiding running into anybody outside of school. My first day back, in gym class, Ben sees me and his face lights up with excitement as he says, “You are screwed—we’ve been waiting for you.”

I adopt new strategies. During lunch, I avoid people by hiding in the music room and practicing my cello. The music teacher admires my dedication. I take a different route each day to get between classes to avoid certain kids. Some days, if my last class and my next class are both on the first floor, I’ll go all the way up to the third floor and then walk around and down again to avoid running into Ben, Jerry, Leona, Wade, or any number of people. I’ll go to the music room after school and practice the cello as an excuse to hide until everybody who can hurt me has gone home. I am, consequently, getting pretty good on the cello.

My home is my sanctuary, but only as a place to hide—not as a place to solve my problems. I wake up from tension and stress every morning at about 5:00, and then lie in bed for two and a half hours, thinking about what can happen, what can go wrong, how to stay safe. Fridays after school, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief, and Saturdays are okay, but Sundays, the terror starts to build again. I’ll go to church alone on Sunday morning—my mother isn’t interested—and sometimes I pray for God to help me, but by Sunday afternoon, I know I’m on my own again. Sunday evenings, I have a routine where I’ll watch three different outdoorsman TV shows, first
Babe Winkleman’s Good Fishing
, and then a fishing show hosted by a guy named Bill Dance, and a show called
The In-Fisherman
, which is over at nine, and then I go to bed. Fishing is a passion of mine, and watching fishing shows is a way to take my mind off my fears.

I make it through, one day at a time, but the weight never leaves me. No optimism returns. These bleak midwinter months, Lake Michigan and the sky both turn gray and stay that way for weeks at a time. The snow turns to a murky slush, everything gets grimy and dead looking, and I start to think I have no hope, no realistic way to end this daily cycle of debilitating fear and anxiety except to kill myself.

It doesn’t seem like a desperate idea, just a logical, practical one. We don’t have any guns in the house, but it isn’t hard to think of high places I could jump from, or medications I could overdose on. What stops me is only a sense that I don’t have the permission I need to make a decision like that. I lack the autonomy I would require to commit suicide. I don’t worry about what my mom would think if I kill myself, because I don’t care, but I am somewhat concerned about what my dad will think, because I fear him, and I know that Gary, our neighbor/landlord, who’s a great guy and almost a surrogate father, will be hurt if I do anything to myself.

And as always, my mother, who should be there for me, simply is not. When she’s not at work, she lies on the couch, eating Oreos and drinking Pepsi Free, disengaged from the world around her, and from me. Weekends, she spends an hour a day scrubbing every speck of dirt from the top of the stove or cleaning the sink. Does she somehow believe this is helping? There is a metaphor about the foolishness of “rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic
,” But that’s what she’s doing. She is not just rearranging them. She is naming them, alphabetizing them, sterilizing them. Everything she does is irrelevant, and nothing offers any hope of changing the path I’m on, the path I travel, absolutely alone. The ship of me has hit the iceberg (or maybe the iceberg hit me), and it’s going down, but unlike the
Titanic
, nobody is hearing my distress signals.

Driving to the animal hospital, it’s clear to me why I feel safe when I’m alone in nature, exploring places far away from human traffic, and why I took it so hard, so personally, when I found the dog in the canyon: Someone had violated my personal sanctuary. More to the point, I have always empathized with victims and underdogs. In this case, quite literally. There should be a patron saint for underdogs and orphans and Charlie Brown Christmas trees. St. Jude is the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes, but only the first half of that applies, and what kind of a saint is he, anyway, if he gives up?

As I got closer to Page and had cell coverage, I called Michelle. The animal hospital would be ready for him.

“I got your text. Are you alright?” she asked.

“I’m good. Everything went pretty much as planned,” I told her, glad to hear her voice and glad to share my day with her. “He hasn’t really moved from when I put him in the crate, so I hope things are going to be alright. Did you contact the vet and tell them we’re coming?”

“I did. They’re expecting you guys shortly.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate your help with this. I’m hoping this wasn’t all for nothing.”

“Call me once you know something.”

“I will.”

Michelle understood the frame of mind I was in and that I didn’t want to stay on the phone and chat.

I walked into the vet’s with the crate under my arm. I hadn’t had a chance to shower or clean up, and I’m sure my appearance left something to be desired, but I wasn’t concerned with first impressions.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist said, an older woman dressed in scrubs.

“I’m Zak Anderegg,” I said. She showed no sign that she recognized my name. “I believe my wife called and told you I’d be coming.”

“When would she have called?” She must have correctly interpreted the look of annoyance on my face. I wasn’t expecting a team of doctors to rush out to meet me in the parking lot with a stretcher . . . or maybe I was. I was definitely not in the mood to deal with people who weren’t up to speed or ready to act.

“Have a seat and I’ll go check,” the woman said.

I was wrong to question her competence. A woman came out of the back and told me her name was Krista and that she was the one who took the call. She looked at me, and then at the crate, and she knew what my story was. She was in her thirties and pretty, with light brown hair, and she was, like the receptionist, wearing light blue hospital scrubs.

“Let’s get him out of there,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her. The examination room was small and windowless, with a stainless steel table that folded out from the wall, a small sink, a chair, a stool, and a cabinet containing medical supplies. I set the crate on the table.

“Would you take the webbing off, please?” she asked me. I found tremendous relief in the idea of transferring the burden to someone else, and there was something about the way she moved and spoke that inspired confidence. Rather than waste time with knots, I used my pocket knife to slice through the cords and straps. She opened the door to the crate and looked in, and then she called for another technician to help her. They used screwdrivers to remove the top half of the crate.

“Where in the world did you find him?” she asked.

“In a deep canyon, about forty-five minutes from here. I have no idea how he got there or how long he was stuck.”

She looked at me, surprised. Abandoned puppies and kittens found on the side of the road were not uncommon. Finding a puppy deep in a slot canyon was more than a little unusual.

In the veterinarian’s office, with bright fluorescent lights overhead, I got my first good look at the dog, and my heart sank. His lips and gums had receded from his teeth, due, Krista told me, to dehydration. His teeth had turned a frightening dark brown. Rather than the distended belly you sometimes see when humans are starving, I saw the absence of any belly or gut, just a sucked in cavity, as if all his internal organs had withered away. For the first time, I realized he smelled terrible, a putrid stench I don’t know how to describe. I asked Krista what it meant.

“He’s probably septicemic,” she said. “And hypoalbuminic. The kidneys and the liver shut down without water. He can’t flush his toxins so they come out the skin, basically.”

She gestured for the other technician to help her lift the dog out of the crate and onto the examination table. I took a step back, glad to know the dog was in good hands, but slightly anxious that there wasn’t anything more I could do. I was slightly encouraged when Krista inserted an electronic thermometer into the dog’s rectum and the dog lifted his head feebly, as if to say, “Hey—what’s going on back there?” It was more motion than I’d seen in him so far.

The other technician had shaved a spot on the dog’s left front leg, but she seemed to be having trouble finding a vein.

“What’s his temperature?” I asked.

“Ninety-two,” Krista said.

“What’s normal?”

“About a hundred and two,” she said, not looking up at me as she put drops in the dog’s eyes. The second technician brought in an I.V. drip and then Krista inserted the needle, using surgical tape to hold it in place. They added medications to the drip. One bottle contained a drug called Baytril (enrofloxacin) and the other contained Ampicillin, which, I later learned, are both used to treat bacterial infections.