Read Heroic Measures for Free Online Page B

disc
. Six hundred and eight matches appear. She can’t get herself to click on anyof them. She stares through the electric blue lines of Web addresses, as if they were the slats of a Venetian blind.
    Finally, she clicks the top link, a dachshund magazine. The cover features three dappled, shorthaired puppies about three months old, sunbathing near a swimming pool. Articles this month include
All You Need to Know About Disk Disease
and
Spring Finds Many Puppies Available
. She guides the cursor up to
All You Need to Know About Disk Disease
, but she can’t yet make herself open that door. Behind that door are nerves and bone and blood. She rolls the cursor down to
Spring Finds Many Puppies Available
. Behind that door is youth and spring. She forces herself to click on
All You Need to Know About Disk Disease
.
    The spinal cord is protected by membranes called the meninges. The innermost layer, the pia, contains the highly vascular network that delivers nutrients and removes wastes from the nervous system. The meninges are inverted by numerous sensory nerve fibers called meningeal nerves. When a disk herniates into the spinal canal, the meningeal nerves become compressed and inflamed …
    She stops reading: she already knows the article isn’t going to divulge the only answer she needs. Is
Dorothy
going to be okay? On either side of the text, in the left-and right-hand margins, are advertisements—dachshund calendars, doxie dolls, hot dog bun beds, dachshund jewelry, doxie duds. There is also a dachshund adopt/rescue site and a dachshund memorial garden with a grief-counselingchat room and a link to buy pet sympathy cards.
    Rainbow Bridge Cards
Design your own card

and send it to someone on the Net

who’s lost a pet
.
    Below is an example: a white rabbit in a field of grass. The message:
My deepest sympathy for the loss of your rabbit
. Ruth bursts out laughing, covers her mouth so as not to wake Alex, and then remembers he’s asleep in the living room. She scrolls down to the next example, a hamster in a wicker basket:
Losing a precious furchild is so difficult
. When she laughs this time, she suspects that the breathy explosions escaping from her throat are more hysteria than hilarity.
    The next service offered by the Rainbow Bridge Company is personalized death notices.
In Memoriam
the card line is called. The example: a black-and-white studio portrait of an Irish setter with today’s date, January 9 , 2004 , and an inscription that reads:
It is a sad day in our lives. Joey “Oggy” Richards, our best friend, and our son, died of heart failure. Marty and Mary Richards
.
    Ruth quits, signs off, clicks on Sleep. If only sleep were that easy. She climbs into bed, but she still isn’t drowsy, despite the sedatives and the fatigue pooled in her limbs. She reaches for the book on her night table,
The Portable Chekhov
. When she first retired, she read every new novel praised by the
Times
, a languid pleasure nearly impossible while she was busy teaching, but lately, she’s can only bear the company of long-dead Russians.
    The table of contents includes:
At Christmas Time, An Attack of Nerves, Heartache, A Calamity, The Man in a Shell, The Lady With the Pet Dog
. She opens to
The Lady With the Pet Dog
, an old favorite.
    A new person, it was said, had appeared on the esplanade; a lady with a pet dog. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had spent a fortnight at Yalta and had got used to the place, had also begun to take an interest in new arrivals. As he sat in Vernet’s confectionery shop, he saw, walking on the esplanade, a fair-haired young woman of medium height, wearing a beret; a white Pomeranian was trotting behind her.
    And afterwards he met her in the public garden and in the square several times a day. She walked alone, always wearing the same beret and always with the white dog; no one knew who she was and everyone called her simply “the lady with the pet dog.”
    “If she is here alone without her husband or