“Got it,” I agreed, wondering how long the woman might be out, if I had until seven, if she might take a turn for the worse unexpectedly.
“No matter what goes down, Ranger, we’ll figure it out.”
“Yep,” I agreed, ending the call, uncomfortable with the turn of conversation.
I didn’t have to like the part of me that was hesitant to allow people to care for me, take care of me, to know that it was a part of me. Maybe it was something I should have devoted more time to improving. Especially since that crew would always be there, no questions asked. I owed it to them to let them give a shit.
But, I reminded myself, they knew who I was. I had always been the same. They still came to visit, still invited me to their events even though they knew I wasn’t likely to come.
Maybe I didn’t always make it easy to care, but they did, regardless of my comfort level with it.
“Cap, come over here,” I called, patting my leg. His head turned, eyeing me, as he slowly lowered to the ground in front of the woman’s door, stubbornly – and uncharacteristically – defying me
I’d once nearly severed my middle finger, desperately trying to sew it back on in the kitchen with one hand… while he casually gnawed on a bone a few feet away from me, oblivious to it all.
Maybe, once upon a time, he had a female owner, someone he loved, protected. They didn’t have any information about him when I picked him up, other than he was food aggressive and lunged when he was scared. For six months, the only time he got to eat was if it was out of my palm until he learned not to be afraid of hands around his food, until he realized he didn’t need to protect it. And the lunging, well, I guess he’d never been scared of me. Or, more likely, trying to test an animal’s personality when it was ripped from the home it knew, thrown in a cage, forced to listen to other dogs cry and growl and howl day in and day out, get poked and prodded by doctors, be terrified beyond what was possible for a dog to process was a fool’s errand that ensured thousands of useless deaths every year.
“She’ll be alright,” I told him, maybe telling myself it as well.
I didn’t like seeing anything in pain. I’d had enough of that in my life before. Those thoughts kept me awake at night if I didn’t work my body into exhaustion during the day. I couldn’t stomach it now. Farm life was full of undesirable occurrences, accidents, sickly, dying, mortally wounded animals in your care.
It had been a long time since it was anything other than an animal. Longer still since it was a woman.
Maybe it was something primal, some caveman impulse to protect those that needed protection, but it had always been hard for me to handle female pain.
The service had beat out of me the basic human impulse to respond easily to the pain of my fellow men. I’d have made a terrible asset if I flinched at the sight of blood, if I got sick to my stomach making that blood spill in the first place, if I cringed at the sounds of begging or groaning.
A low, pained whimper came from the other side of the door, making me stiffen, making Cap let out a low whine as he got back up, pawed at the door.
And pawed.
And pawed.
Worried he might wake her up before it was absolutely necessary that she did get up, I walked over, sliding open the door, allowing him to move inside, watching for a moment as he stood at the side of the bed, tail wagging cautiously as he watched her toss in her sleep before carefully, more gently than a beast his size should have been able to, he stepped up on the bed, curling up in the small space between her legs and the wall, resting his head on her thigh, eyes open, staring up at her as she stilled again, let out a long sigh, and seemed to slip back into deeper unconsciousness.
There’d been countless women in this house before. All of which the dogs treated with either complete disinterest, or wary distrust. They’d never taken to one before, certainly never climbed up on the bed with one of them, eyes wide open, acting as a sentry.
Maybe it was the blood or the whimpers, but women had been here before in varying states of damage thanks to whatever bad situation they found themselves in, needing to hide away while it got handled.
There was, apparently, just something about this nameless woman that Cap took to. The other dogs – over the next few hours – would periodically walk by the door, peeking their heads in. Invariably, there would be a low warning growl from Captain to stay away, something they obeyed with no small bit of reluctance, coming over to me, staring up at me with confused eyes, tails wagging, waiting for me to somehow impart some wisdom about the whole situation on them.