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In his softest voice andh that he’d survive just first-stage distemper- and without any aftereffects I want you to realize that his chances of recovery are quite high But at the saive you false hope That’d be cruel Even if the disease proceeds no further than first stageEinstein could die The percentages are on the side of life, but death is possible"

Nora was crying again She thought she had gotten a grip on herself She thought she was ready to be strong But now she was crying She went to

Einstein, sat on the floor beside him, and put one hand on his shoulder, just to let hihtly ihly baffled by- their tumultuous emotional response to the bad news A new note of sternness entered his voice as he said, "Listen, all we can do is give hiht care and hope for the best He’ll have to remain here, of course, because disteht to be administered under veterinary supervision I’ll have to keep him on the intravenous fluids, antibiotics and there’ll be regular anticonvulsants and sedatives if he begins to have seizures"

Under Nora’s hand, Einstein shivered as if he had heard and understood the griht, okay, yes," Travis said, "obviously, he’s got to stay here in your office We’ll stay with hiht, yes, no need," Travis said quickly, "but ant to stay, we’ll be okay, we can sleep here on the floor tonight"

"Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible," Keene said

"Yes, it is, oh yes, entirely possible," Travis said, babbling now in his eagerness to convince the vet "Don’t worry about us, Doctor We’ll e just fine Einstein needs us here, so we’ll stay, the i is that we stay, and of course we’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience"

"But I’ a hotel!"

"We must stay," Nora said firmly

Keene said, "Now, really, I’m a reasonable ht hand and held it tightly, startling Keene "Listen, Dr Keene, please, let me try to explain I know this is an unusual request I knoe ot our reasons, and they’re good ones This is no ordinary dog, Dr Keene He saved my life-"

"And he saved mine, too," Nora said "In a separate incident"

"And he brought us together," Travis said "Without Einstein, ould never have met, never married, and we’d both be dead"

Astonished, Keene looked from one to the other "You mean he saved your lives-literally? And in two separate incidents?"

"Literally," Nora said

"And then brought you together?"

"Yes," Travis said "Changed our lives in more ways than we can count or ever explain"

Held fast in Travis’s hands, the vet looked at Nora, lowered his kind eyes to the wheezing retriever, shook his head, and said, "I’ stories I’ll want to hear this one, for sure"

"We’ll tell you all about it," Nora proht, it’ll be a carefully edited version

"When I was five years old," Ja by a black Labrador"

Nora re room and wondered if it was actually a descendant of the anireat debt he owed to dogs

"All right," Keene said, "you can stay"

"Thank you" Travis’s voice cracked "Thank you"

Freeing his hand froht hours before we can be at all confident that Einstein will survive It’ll be a long haul"

"Forty-eight hours is nothing," Travis said "Two nights of sleeping on the floor We can handle that"

Keene said, "I have a hunch that, for you two, forty-eight hours is going to be an eternity, under the circumstances" He looked at his atch and said, "Now, my assistant will arrive in about ten minutes, and shortly after that we’ll open the office forhours I can’t have you underfoot in here while I’ other patients And you wouldn’t want to wait in the patient lounge with a bunch of other anxious owners and sick ani room, and when the office is closed late this afternoon, you can return here to be with Einstein"

"Can we peek in on hi, Keene said, "All right But just a peek"

Under Nora’s hand, Einstein finally stopped shivering Some of the tension went out of him, and he relaxed, as if he had heard they would be allowed to re passed at an agonizingly slow pace Dr Keene’s living rooazines, but neither Nora nor Travis could get interested in TV or reading

Every half hour or so, they slipped down the hall, one at a time, and peeked in at Einstein He never seemed worse, but he never seemed any better, either

Keene came in once and said, "By the way, feel free to use the bathrooerator Make coffee if you want" He smiled down at the black lab at his side "And this fella is Pooka He’ll love you to death if you give his Nora had ever seen Without encouragement, he would roll over, play dead, sit up on his haunches, and then co, to be rewarded with sonored the dog’s pleas for affection, as if petting Pooka would in some way be a betrayal of Einstein and would insure Einstein’s death of disteave it the attention it desired She told herself that treating Pooka ould please the gods and that the gods would then look favorably upon Einstein Her desperation produced in her a superstition just as fierce as-if different froripped her husband

Travis paced He sat on the edge of a chair, head bowed, his face in his hands For long periods, he stood at one of the s, staring out, not seeing the street that lay out there but some dark vision of his own He blamed himself for what had happened, and the truth of the situation (which Nora recalled for hiuilt

Facing a , hugging himself as if he were cold, Travis said quietly, "Do you think Keene saw the tattoo?"

"I don’t know Maybe not"

"Do you think there’s really been a description of Einstein circulated to vets? Will Keene knohat the tattoo means?"

"Maybe not," she said "Maybe we’re too paranoid about this"

But after hearing froovern to the"too paranoid"

From noon until two, Dr Keene closed the office for lunch He invited Nora and Travis to eat with hi kitchen He was a bachelor who kne to take care of himself, and he had a freezer stocked with frozen entrées that he had prepared and packaged himself He defrosted individually wrapped slabs of hona and, with their help, ood, but neither Nora nor Travis was able to eat much of it