What Do We Say to the God of Death?
(A quick aside to bring you up to speed: Recruit is Valor and Valor is Recruit. Like Finklestein is Einhorn. Now then, onward...)
Recruit was a good puppy. He exhibited all the positive traits of his breed. He was intelligent, eager to please, and thick headed. He immediately took to his crate, and regarded the space as his... which was a good thing. Recruit (Valor) as a puppy was like me as a child: an habitual line-stepper who spent a lot of time grounded.
First, though, the tiny puppy that was to become Valor had to survive.
Within a week of coming home from the shelter, Recruit was struck with a nasty case of kennel cough that rapidly progressed into full blown puppy pneumonia. My puppy was dying and there was nothing the Vet could do other than give us a vaporizer. I don't remember if he was given anti-biotics or not, but he stopped eating, and refused to drink water.
I got a big eye-dropper and would encourage him to lick the drops of water. When he would, I rewarded him with a “good drink water”... something I continue to this day whenever he drinks from his bowl.
I put veterinary protein paste on my finger and put in on the roof of his mouth. He hated me for it, but I hoped that hate would keep him warm.
No matter what I did, his whooping cough and congestion got worse, and this initially fat little ball of life became a tiny, weak thing of loose skin and bones.
Until one night he laid on his side, stretched out on the floor, and stopped breathing.
Flashback
Christmas morning 2004. I had gotten out of the Marine Corps earlier that year and was a rookie cop in the Area Command known as The War Zone in a Southwestern city already renowned for it's violence. All the rookies volunteered to work the day shift so the guys with more salt could be with their families.
First call after briefing was for an infant that wasn't breathing. EMS was dispatched, but I was close, so I rogered up to take it. Another rookie from my class volunteered to be my back-up.
Arriving on the call there appeared to be five generations of one Hispanic family weeping in a living room that was decorated with one of the most beautiful trees I had ever seen. In the center of the room laid the lifeless body of a six month old baby.
Little N was one of the largest human beings I had ever met in my life. We had to box each other in the Academy. I'm an experienced pugilist and did just fine until I irritated him.
We looked at the child and without saying a word we got to work. He checked the airway, I made a visual inspection of the child. No issues there. Ok, I'll do tiny compressions you do tiny breathing.
That little baby looked up at me with eyes that had been lifeless for too long. I didn't care. I looked into those dead eyes and willed life back into the baby.
I pleaded with a god I don't believe in to give me something, anything.
It was not to be. The arriving paramedics had been in touch with the child's doctor. He had a health issue of the sort that this was expected.
The Baby's mother hugged me, thanking me for trying. I fought back my tears and walked outside, taking in a lung full of cold air. The radio cam alive. There was another call. Christmas in the War Zone meant nothing. I left that family behind, but the memory of looking into that baby's eyes went with me.
And here I was living it again...
Recruit (valor) looked up at me with dead, half-lidded eyes, breathing shallow or not at all. Skin and bones and weakness and snot.
Throughout the night I hovered over him, doing everything I could think to do, terrified of doing too much, or too little, or the wrong thing, or the right thing at the wrong time, or... you get the picture.
Don't you die on me.
As the night crawled on, his breathing becoming more labored, more shallow with every hour.
Sometime before dawn he wheezed a soft, pitiful wheeze and stopped breathing.
I was convinced my puppy had died.
Recruit gasped in air, and was again still.
Was this his death rattle? I leaned closer, whispering encouragement into his ear.
His tiny white-tipped black tail gave the slightest of twitches.
He fought on. Gasping for air after impossibly long pauses.
Sometime around dawn I noticed his breathing had become ever so slightly less labored, his gasps more frequent. Slowly, and to much cheering, he began to walk on his own and even lap water. Hi appetite returned and he went from nutrient paste to soft food straight past hard food and right to eating my shoes.
Life, and weight, returned to my little Pup. His spark was renewed, he got right back to living...
...and he never wanted to leave my side.