Gone
THERE WAS A DARK HEARSE parked across the bottom of my driveway. Dad tells me to get in while he runs up to the driver’s side door, gets in and starts it up. I, with him in my arms, open the back door and get in. We sit where the coffins are usually placed.
I don’t remember the ride there, or the exterior of the building. The interior of the animal hospital was like a concrete refugee camp. There were children with their pets sitting in dingy cots with their animals hooked up to tubes and vials.
He is wrapped in a white blanket as I hold him in my arms. A nurse tells Dad and I to wait for the veterinarian to see us and while we wait we must put him in a drug-induced coma. His eyes close, but he is still breathing.
While we wait, I see a candelabra on a white support post holding three lit candles, all of which were partially melted down. The nurse explains to me that they light the candles in memory of the ill and dying animals. I look around again at my surroundings and see that all the windows are lined with lit candles.
The veterinarian will now see us.
A woman with short brown hair that curves under her chin and wears square spectacles greets us. She tells Dad and I to follow her as she turns to a doorway. She leads us into a room with a desk and two chairs, us following her white lab coat. She tells us to sit down in the chairs while she seats herself behind the desk. I place him, now sleeping, gently on the desktop.
She speaks to Dad, “There is nothing we can do. He is gone.”
I don’t want to listen. I don’t want to see Dad’s face. She continues to speak.
“He is gone.” She repeats.
I don’t want to listen.
I keep my eyes fixated on him, sleeping in the white blanket atop the wooden desk. He looks so content, but also very aged. His face more narrow, eyes sunken, ears more pointy, his nose with dry patches…
I don’t want to listen to what she is saying. I cannot understand what she is saying anymore.
“He is gone.” It rings in my head.
I continue to watch him wrapped in his white blanket, not listening to this woman.
I stare at him. Then I notice something peculiar. The white from his nose and face begins to spread. The white consumes his body until his entire fur coat is a glimmering white with an angelic quality. Not quite white, but with a hint of a golden glow around him. Suddenly, his eyes begin to open since before the drug-induced coma. The greens of his eyes are brilliant and his pupils look like black daggers. He stares right back at me. The contrast between his brilliant green eyes and his white fur are enough to make my body quake. His eyes are saying something to me that only I can understand.
“He’s awake!” I say.
No one is listening to me.
“He’s awake!” I say again, looking to the veterinarian.
This time the woman replies to me, repeating herself again, “No, he is gone.”
I look back to the desk to show her that he’s is awake and here, but he was not. All that was on the old wooden desk was the white blanket that I carried him in and a single candle, burning brightly.
He was gone.
