The Old Collie in the Vet Clinic Lot

She closed her eyes when he said it, and her lips moved, and I think she was saying thank you to somebody besides Dr. Pruett.

“I’ll go in and pay,” I said. “You stay here.”

“I want to come in.”

“I know you do. Stay here anyway, Mom. I want you to see her come out the door.”

She looked at me, and I could see her decide to let me have it. She nodded. I got out and walked across the gravel and went in.

Ottoline had the bill ready on the counter. Four hundred dollars, exactly what Dr. Pruett had said in March, with the pain pills and an extra cone thrown in and not charged for.

I handed her my debit card. She ran it, and the little machine thought about it, and then it printed. I signed the slip.

Four hundred dollars out of my checking account, the same checking account that pays my electric bill and my car payment.

I would like to say I did not think about that, but I did.

I thought about it, and then I thought about Sadie walking Mom to the mailbox, and I stopped thinking about it.

“She’s a lucky old girl,” Ottoline said, handing me the receipt. “And so is your mom.”

The tech brought Sadie out through the swinging door on a leash, wobbling.

They had shaved a patch on the inside of her leg as big as my hand, and there was a neat row of stitches down the middle of it, maybe five inches long.

Her eyes were cloudy from the anesthetic. She saw me and her tail went once, slowly, like it weighed too much to lift.

“She’ll be dopey till tonight,” Dr. Pruett said. He had come out behind the tech, pulling off his gloves. “Keep her quiet. No stairs if you can help it for a few days. Stitches out in two weeks. Bring her back sooner if anything looks wrong.”

“I’ll carry her,” I said.

“She’s no feather,” he warned me.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll carry her anyway.”

Ottoline brought a clean towel from the back, a big soft bath towel, and wrapped it around Sadie’s middle so the stitches would not catch on my sleeve.

Then I squatted down and got my arms under her chest and her back legs and stood up.

She was heavier than I remembered. Fifty-some pounds of old collie, warm and loose and smelling like the clinic.

She put her long nose against my neck and sighed, and I felt her whole body go soft.

Dr. Pruett held the door. I carried her out into the sunshine and across the gravel lot, slow, watching my feet so I would not trip on the ruts.

Mom had the passenger door open before I was halfway to the car.

She had swung herself around sideways in the seat, in her rose-pink sweater, with her feet on the gravel and both her arms held straight out in front of her.

“Give her here,” she said. “Give her here to me.”

I bent down and laid Sadie across her lap, towel and all, as gently as I have ever set anything down.

Mom gathered her in. The dog’s back end hung off one side and her head hung off the other, and neither one of them minded.

Sadie opened one eye. She found Mom’s face. Then she closed the eye again and let out a long breath through her nose, and she was asleep.