Miracle: A short story by Amy Glenn Vega

MIRACLE

A short story by Amy Glenn Vega

The morning comes, and I awaken to the sound of heavy panting and the smell of kibble breath.  I turn my head to find a big, black dog lying next to me. 

“DOWN!” I shout fiercely.

He looks at me with sweet, pleading eyes.

“I got you your very own fancy, top-of-the-line dog bed, and this is the thanks I get?”

He wags his tail and opens his mouth slightly.  It looks like he’s smiling.

“Don’t even think about making a habit of this.  This is MY bed.  Yours is on the floor.”  I reach for my pillow and playfully smack him on the rear end with it.  He barks and paws at me, and we begin what turns into a human vs. canine pillow fight.  He renders me defenseless when he chomps on my goose down pillow, and with one swift, loud rip, feathers go flying in every direction throughout my bedroom.   Tiny clouds of the fine, white fluff of are drifting to the floor like snow falling on the ground in winter.

And suddenly, I’m thinking about the last time it snowed it.

I was lingering at the bedside of my favorite patient when I saw a snowflake drift across the window.  “It’s snowing,” I told him.  “It almost never snows in Florida.”

 “Some might call that a miracle,” he said.  “Do you believe in miracles?”

His name was Ernesto Milagro.  Having studied Spanish in high school, I remembered the word ‘milagro,’ and what it meant in English: miracle.  He embraced his name as his calling.  As the son of a Cuban preacher father and an American mother that had been an overseas missionary, he was born and raised in a devoutly Christian household.  In college he studied religion, finished divinity school, and became a reverend.  I couldn’t remember the exact denomination, and neither could he.  Not that it really mattered.  What did matter to him, more than anything else, was completing one last good work before he left this earth.

Every day, he would ask me the same question.  And if I didn’t immediately answer, he would ask again.  “Miss Laurie, do you believe in miracles?”

It made me smile when he called me by name.  He’d been on the unit for a little more than a year, and he remembered little else about his life, but he always remembered me.

Me, and his dog Luke.  He asked for him often.  And repeatedly, I explained to him that Luke was somewhere else.  In truth, I knew nothing about Luke, except that he was, as the reverend described, a “big, black dog.”  I didn’t even know if Luke was still alive.  It’s quite possible that he was a pet from the reverend’s childhood, a devoted friend that lived and died decades ago.  Sometimes when people near the end of life, the memories that become the sweetest are the ones from the very beginning, and are somehow the ones that most easily resurrect to the forefront of the mind.

Often, my patient would wander out of his room and find his way to the exit in the rear of the Alzheimer’s nursing unit, which empties into a long stretch of wooded hills.  The door is alarmed and there is a security officer stationed there during the day.  More than once, the guard had escorted Reverend Milagro back to his room in a confused, angry state.  I was always on standby to comfort him.  I held his hands while he cried and told me that his dog needed to come in from the cold.

Distraction seemed to help.  I would make small talk about the weather or what was on the menu for lunch that day.  And just when he seemed to forget about Luke, he always returned to his favorite question.

“Do you believe in miracles?”

I never answered him.  He was no fool and he recognized that I avoided his question.  Most days, he’d tell me, “Someday you’re going to believe in miracles, Miss Laurie.  I won’t be going anywhere until you do.”

Each time I left his room and stepped back to the nurse’s station in the Alzheimer’s unit, I was reminded why I didn’t believe in miracles.  The dozens of men and women sequestered away in rooms down that long hallway in my unit were so frail, so fragile, and so alone.  With the loss of memory comes the loss of identity, the loss of the ability to relate to other people, and the loss of independence.   It is a cruel fluke of nature that the body can outlive the mind.  Of all the miraculous cures and treatments we owe to modern medicine, there were still few advances on the Alzheimer’s front. 

Where was the miracle that my patients so desperately needed?

Most days, I could shake off the heartache that comes with being a long term care nurse.  I had work to do, and I knew that if I indulged my anger and sadness, it would only slow me down.  So I didn’t let myself think about it.  I didn’t let myself feel anything. 

But when I arrived to work one morning to find three police cars parked in front of the facility, and orange-vested officers making their way into the woods behind the building, no one had to tell me what it meant, and nothing could stop my heart from breaking.   Before I even stepped onto the Alzheimer’s unit, I knew in my gut that Reverend Milagro had escaped from the building during the night. 

He was found four hours later.  Curled up in fetal position under a blanket of snow, he was hypothermic and unconscious.  He was returned to his bed on the unit, where a team of doctors and nurses surrounded him and administered lifesaving care.  The following day, as he spiked a fever and struggled to breathe, it became apparent that he had contracted pneumonia.

A doctor and a hospice counselor lingered outside of his room and spoke in quick, hushed exchanges.  “It’s a miracle that he’s held on for this long,” I heard one of them say.

And in his bed, my patient lifted his head every so often and called out for his dog.

Throughout the day, I found myself thinking about Beatrice, a former patient of mine.  Like clockwork, she would ask me every day for her little white dancing shoes.   As a bedbound double amputee, Beatrice had little need for shoes of any kind, but it didn’t stop her from longing for them.  I found a well-used pair of white ballet slippers at a yard sale one weekend and paid fifty cents for them.  The next time that Beatrice asked me for her white dancing shoes, I gave them to her.  She was content.

When my shift was over, I found myself driving to the county animal control shelter.  I was greeted unenthusiastically by a shelter attendant.  The name badge dangling from her collar read ‘Deb.’  I told her I needed a big, black dog.  She gave me a strange look and opened a heavy door, motioning for me to follow her.  “No one ever adopts big, black dogs,” she said with authority.

Behind doors of cage-link fencing on either side of us, dogs watched as we walked slowly down the long hallway.   “Here,” said the shelter attendant, stopping in front of a kennel.  When she looked at me, her eyes were blue and intense, and were rimmed with dark circles.  For a fleeting moment, it was like looking into a mirror.  I recognized the same ache, the same weary sadness that I see in my own eyes every single day.

There’s a term for it – compassion fatigue.  That’s what it’s called when people get overwhelmed by the demands of taking care of others.  Humans in my case, animals in hers.  I realized in that moment that we were kindred spirits; unlikely sisters in the accumulated grief that plagues all caregivers.

 “This lab just came in today.”  She pointed to a big, friendly-looking dog, sleeping on the floor.  

I took a step closer to the dog.  I noticed that he had a red collar fastened around his neck, with a large collection of metal tags dangling from a split-ring connector.  “With a collar like that, doesn’t he belong to somebody?” I asked.

 “He was surrendered by his owner today,” she explained.   “Coming into a shelter is stressful for an animal.  If the dog has a collar, I leave it on so that he can keep a familiar scent on him, and the familiar feeling of weight around his neck.  Hopefully it provides a little comfort.”

I nodded.  I knew all about comforting those in distress.  “This guy sure is weighed down.”

 “He may very well have the ID tags from both of his previous owners.  Have you ever tried to pry those things out of that split metal ring?  It’s close to impossible.  Wrecks your fingernails.  So most pet owners just leave the old ones on there, and keep stacking the new ones on top of them.”

“Did you say both previous owners?”

“Yes,” Deb says.  Then she read from a clipboard mounted on the wall next to the dog’s kennel. “Surrendered by owner.  Explanation:  Owner reports that  dog was adopted  from this shelter nearly a year ago.  Dog has jumped the fence at the owner’s home four times.  Owner reports that dog has run back to the home of original owner each time.  Original owner no longer resides in the home.  New homeowner is tired of calling current owner to come and get the dog.  New homeowner has threatened to file criminal charges for neglect and public nuisance.”

“Nuisance?” I knelt down in front of the dog’s kennel.   “He just wants to go home,” I said softly.

Deb’s voice suddenly became stern.  “Yes he does.  He needs a forever home.  Not a yard, but a home.  And a forever human, too.”

I kissed the air twice in his direction, and the sound woke him up.  The big dog’s eyes opened.  His pupils were cloudy with age, and the way that he slowly raised up on all fours told me that his playful puppy years are well behind him.  Forever, for him, didn’t mean that much longer.  Deb gave me a leash and asked me to take him for a walk outside.  I guessed it was to see if we would bond.  It was a very short walk. 

“You know what you call it when a big, black dog makes it out of a shelter once?” Deb asked me as I filled out the adoption paperwork.

“What?”

“Lucky.  You know what you call it when a big, black dog makes it out a shelter twice?”

“What?”

“A miracle,” she said.

With the big, black dog by my side in my car, I made a beeline back to work.  He wagged his tail and drooled on the armrest.  His collar and metal tags jingled loudly with every turn of his head, so I removed it from his neck and placed it the glovebox.  I didn’t want him to make a noisy entrance. It wasn’t against the rules to bring a dog into a long term care facility, but there was paperwork and an approval process that had to be followed.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for all that. 

                My heart pounded as I swiped my electronic cardkey to open the employee entrance on a different wing of the facility that wasn’t as closely monitored as the Alzheimer’s unit.  With careful, quiet steps, I walked Luke down the hallway.  Even without his collar and leash, he stuck close by my side.  I knew that he would.  I trusted him, and he didn’t disappoint me.  He seemed to understand that we were on a mission of grave importance.  Together, we rounded the corner to the Alzheimer’s unit.  

A few more steps, and we arrived at the doorway of the dying Ernesto Milagro.  I peeked in to find him sleeping.  I knocked gently, and his eyes fluttered open.

“Hello, Miss Laurie,” His voice was weak.

“Hello Reverend,” I said softly.  “You have a visitor.”  I stepped aside, and the dog entered the room.

My patient, upon seeing him, smiled broadly.

“Luke,” he whispered, “Come here, boy.  Come to papa.”  He tapped his hand lightly on the bed.

To my great surprise, the dog broke into a run and leaped onto the bed.  His tail wagged furiously, and he whimpered with joy.  Reverend Milagro wrapped his arms around his neck, and I hurried to his bedside to make sure that the IV tubing and nasal cannula didn’t get tangled up in the dog’s limbs.  Then I stepped back.

“Good boy, good Luke,” the Reverend said.  The dog gave my patient a sloppy kiss on the cheek and settled himself on the bed, resting his head in the crook of the Reverend’s arm.  His tail thumped the mattress loudly. 

I stared in disbelief.  These two knew each other.  How was it possible?

“Thank you Miss Laurie,” Reverend Milagro said.  Then he began to cry.  “I didn’t think I’d ever see him again,” he said, as he lovingly stroked the dog’s head.  “It was so very hard to say goodbye… I don’t remember why, but I had to move out of my house, and he couldn’t come with me…” 

I took a tissue from the dispenser on the wall and handed it to him.  “Reverend, I’ll leave you and Luke to catch up for a moment.  I’ll be right back.”

Bounding down the hallway and back to my car, I pulled the dog’s collar out of the glovebox.  Starting at the top, I flipped through the chunk of tags one at a time.

ID tag – IF FOUND PLEASE CONTACT THE LEWIS FAMILY, it read, with their phone number and address.

Rabies vaccine tag for this year.

And last year.

And then another ID tag –  I BELONG TO ERNESTO MILAGRO.

A name and number followed, but I didn’t see it.  My eyes blurred as tears of disbelief and wonder began to fall.

I returned to the reverend’s bedside to find that he was fading fast.  One hand rested on Luke’s head.   I took his other hand into my own, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Will you take care of him now?”  He asked me.

                “Of course I will.”  I was almost certain that once more, he would ask me if I believed in miracles. But he didn’t.  Instead, he took his last breath.  It was peaceful and quick.  With Luke at one side, and I at the other, he fell asleep smiling and didn’t wake up. 

The big, black dog came home with me that night, and he’s been here ever since.

And now that he has torn apart my favorite feather pillow, I can feel my jaw drop.  Every muscle in my body tightens as I inhale deeply as I prepare to yell BAD DOG, BAD DOG! as loudly as I can.  I reach for his collar to shoo him off of my bed.

But before I can even touch him, before the words of angry outburst can even form on my lips, something else happens.  Luke draws back his head and with a loud HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK, he coughs out a mouthful of feathers.   Saturated with his saliva and stomach fluids, they splatter all over me.  I glance sideways into the mirror on my dresser to see that my face, my hair and my clothes are now mottled with feather-slobber goo.

HACK, HAAAAAAAAAAACK goes Luke once again, and I turn my attention back to him to find that he, too, is wearing a clump of feathers.  They cling to his chin like a beard. 

And then, to my great surprise, I laugh. 

I laugh and laugh and laugh, until my belly hurts and my eyes are watering.   It’s been so long since I laughed this hard.  My tired soul is awake and alive, and my heart is so suddenly full that it feels like it’s going to burst.  For a moment, it seems like the world has stopped spinning around.  Everything and everyone else fades away.  It’s just me and the big black dog that defied the odds and twice walked out of an animal shelter alive, found his way back to the master he loved, and stayed by his side until the very end.

It’s the same dog who now bounces up and down on his front paws and greets me with loud barks and sloppy kisses when I arrive home from work each day.  The same dog who follows me on my heels everywhere I go, and nudges my hand with his muzzle every time he wants to be scratched and petted.   The same dog who wants so badly to be with me that he sneaks into my bed at night so he can rest by my side.  It’s the same dog that has the odd, amazing ability to make me laugh when nothing and no one else can. 

I wish that the good Reverend Ernesto Milagro had asked me just one more time if I believed.  I wonder if he can see us now, and if he knows that the last good work that he began on this earth has been finished.  For at last, I understand. 

That giving a gift from the heart often results in receiving an even greater one.

That often, when we seek to rescue, we are rescued in return.

                And that we don’t get to choose our miracles.  Instead, they choose us.  

What a great privilege it is to be loved by a dog.    And what a tremendous mess I’ve got to clean up.  I realize that as long as Luke is around, it is only the first of many, and that this is just a preview of bigger things to come. 

I’m not the least bit troubled by it.

And that, in and of itself, is a miracle.