Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(42)
Murph carried Olaf to the bed, and for a few minutes, they left the girl alone with the retriever, that she might look into his eyes and whisper endearments to him and promise him that they would meet again one day in a world without death.
When Bibi was ready, the vet returned to stand to one side and watch, prepared to intervene if the girl lost her courage or if she appeared to be about to make a mistake of procedure. Nancy and Murph got onto the bed with Olaf, to hold and stroke and reassure him.
The dog exhibited none of his usual fear at the sight of the needles, but watched his mistress’s hands with interest. They were delicate but strong and steady hands. Once the catheter had been placed in the femoral artery of the left rear leg and taped in place, Bibi inserted the needle in an ampule of sedative and expertly drew the required dose. Through the catheter port, she slowly administered the injection. Dr. Kerman’s preferred two-step technique was not to put the dog down in a sudden hard fall, but first to bring on sleep in a gentle fashion. As the barbiturate flowed from the barrel of the syringe into the vein, Bibi looked into Olaf’s eyes and watched as they clouded with weariness and fluttered shut to enjoy his last rest. When the dog was deeply asleep and certain not to feel even the barest moment of panic when his cardiac muscles stuttered, Bibi used the second needle to inject the drug that stopped his noble heart.
On the drive to the pet cemetery with her mom and dad, Bibi sat in the backseat, holding the blanket-wrapped body of Olaf in her lap.
The Power-Pak II Cremation System was housed in a garagelike building behind the pet-cemetery offices. Usually, if the family wished to wait during the cremation, they did so in the visitors’ lounge in the front building. After watching Olaf’s body be placed alone in the cremator—Bibi insisted his ashes must not be mingled with those of other animals—Nancy and Murph preferred to wait in the lounge, where there were magazines, a television, and coffee. Bibi remained in the back building, perched on a chair in one corner, watching the hulking cremator, sitting witness to her companion’s voyage through fire. More than two hours later, when the ashes were presented to her in a small urn, the bronze was warm in her cupped hands.
The Vikings believed that fallen warriors were conveyed to Valhalla by beautiful maidens known as Valkyries. On the bench at Inspiration Point, on beach walks, and elsewhere, Bibi sometimes had explained to Olaf that the world was a battleground, that in a sense, every man and woman was a warrior, which was part of Captain’s philosophy that he shared with her in the years before Olaf had come along. Everyone struggled; everyone fought the good fight—or raised arms against those who fought it. “You’re a warrior, too,” she said, and the retriever always looked at her as though with understanding. “Dogs try to do what’s right. Most of them, anyway. And dogs suffer. They’re tormented and starved and abused by people unworthy of them. Who knows what you endured before you found me? My furry warrior.”
That afternoon, leaving the crematorium, she was Olaf’s Valkyrie, although she could not take him to Valhalla, only home to the bungalow and to her bedroom, where she holed up for three awful days, felled by grief, unable to talk to anyone, not even to her mom and dad.
In the meeting with Nancy and Murph, when he had delivered the news of Bibi’s brain cancer, Dr. Sanjay Chandra had wanted to know what kind of girl Bibi was, her psychology and personality, so that he could determine how best to share with her the diagnosis.
Murph had said, Bibi is an exceptional girl. She’s smart….She’ll know if you’re putting even the slightest shine on the truth….She’ll want to hear it blunt and plain….She’s tougher than she looks.
When those words had not adequately conveyed the kind of girl she was, Olaf’s euthanasia was the story that Murph had then shared with the physician.
Bibi watched Calida Butterfly fleeing the courtyard until the woman disappeared into the parking lot and the night.
Amped on adrenaline, apprehension, and the mystery of all things, Bibi glanced at her wristwatch—10:04. Looking up at the third-floor balcony, she thought of her bed. Under the currents of energizing fright and amazement that kept her mind spinning, she felt a deep weariness that, given a chance, would surge up and overwhelm. The unfinished wine in the bottle of chardonnay might be just the key to open the door to dreamland. Would she really be at risk in that cozy haven where she had for years locked out the world and all its temptations, all its frustrations, to create worlds of her own? Calida said yes, said run, said hide. But the name Calida wasn’t a synonym for truth. When Bibi had left the apartment, the roses had been as beautiful and fragrant as when she’d first come home, not rotting as she thought they were while she’d been mesmerized by Calida at the kitchen table. Here in the fresh air and normalcy of the California night, she could half convince herself that nothing of the recent events had been as strange as it had seemed at the time.
Half convinced was not convinced enough. Heart still beating too fast, too hard, she picked up the purse that she’d dropped when she collided with the diviner, slung it over her left shoulder. Carrying her laptop in her right hand, she started toward the parking lot.
An object lying in a fan of trembling palm-frond shadows and lamplight caught her attention. She scooped up a small hardcover book that must have fallen out of Calida’s suitcase with the other divination gear. Bound in high-quality tan cloth, the volume featured two inlaid, stylized Art Deco figures crafted of intricately stained and engraved leather; they were depicted back to back, in profile—a panther leaping toward the spine, a gazelle leaping toward the right. There was neither a title nor an author’s name.