Read While I Was Gone for Free Online

examining table, and I remembered Sadie’s call from the night before.
    I glanced through the information quickly. The dog’s name was Arthur. A mutt. He was nine. He’d been experiencing trouble walking for a while, most acutely for the last couple of days. I stepped into the hallway and called the woman’s last name, “Bennett?”
    To my surprise as she appeared around the corner—I’d assumed glamorous youth—Jean Bennett was close to my age. I would have said forty-six or -seven to my fifty-two. A different type, though.
    Exotic. Long, frizzing gray hair was set free around her head and shoulders. I watched her approach down the hallway. She was carrying the dog, who was medium-sized—mostly cocker spaniel, I thought.
    Jean Bennett wore dangly earrings and several loops of beaded necklace. Black leather pants with a long knitted tunic top over them.
    Expensive leather boots.
    “Hello,” she said as she moved toward me.
    I said, “Hi,” and stood back to let her enter the room.
    She moved awkwardly past me to the table, where she set the whimpering dog.
    He lay down immediately.
    “I’m Jean Bennett,” she said, turning. She made a quick pass at smoothing her hair down.
    “Well, I’m awfully glad to meet you,” I said.
    “I’m Dr.
    Becker, the famous Sadie’s mom.”
    We shook hands. Her bracelets clashed metallically. She had smooth olive skin, dark brows.
    “I’m strictly forbidden on pain of death to talk about Sadie with you”—I drew my finger across my throat, and she smiled—“so let’s move right in on our friend Arthur here. Tell me what’s going on with him.” I moved to my side of the table and put my hand on his back.
    He was trembling with fear, long shudders every few seconds. He was short-haired, mostly a marmalade color, with a cocker’s sweet, reproachful eyes. His ears were flat to his head.
    “Well, Arthur ” She shrugged, an exaggerated helplessness.
    “What can I tell you? His story is, all of a sudden he seems not to be able to walk. But just in his hindquarters. He’s mostly just been dragging himself around by his front legs.”
    “For how long?”
    “Well. He’s been like this for a couple of days now.
    Actually, he’s had arthritis for a couple of years—he’s on medication for that—and it’s been lots worse this fall. Worse than ever. So that’s what I was thinking this was. And all fall, really, it would get worse for a few days, and then it would get better. And honestly, my life is so crazy right now that I just kind of ignored it, I guess, thinking the same thing would happen. And now it’s somehow over the edge. I feel terribly guilty. Mea culpa.” She patted her chest.
    “Has he lost bladder control? Bowels?”
    Now her hand rose to her throat.
    “Well, it’s hard to know, exactly, since he can’t get himself to the door anymore.”
    “So he has had accidents.”
    “Oh, yes. Plenty of those.” She sounded grimly amused.
    “And was there any trauma that you know of ? Did he have a fall or get struck by a car? Something like that. Even a glancing blow?”
    “No, no. Nothing. Nothing that I know of. Arthur has what you might call a quiet life. He’s inside by himself all day. And I probably don’t walk him enough at night either. He just got up Friday and .
    well, he couldn’t get up on Friday, actually. But I thought maybe it was just one of these temporary crises—something that would get better by itself. So I went to work And then I was in and out over the weekend and not paying him enough attention. I did have to carry him back and forth, you krKnr, because he didn’t want to move himself. But sometimes we’ve like to do that when his arthritis was bad. And he didn’t seem to be in pain, so I just waited. And now it seems clear that something is really wrong.” While she talked, her hands moved nervously, expressively, in front of her. She was plainly upset.
    I turned to the dog.
    “Well, let’s check you out, Arthur,” I