Juxtapose

...I pulled a neighbor's dog from the pool. We were called down there by the neighbor's mother-in-law, who was all alone as her daughter and son-in-law were at work. There was one dog on top of the poolcover, and we thought that was the only one. We pulled him off, finally, only to hear more squealing from underneath. After fumbling to get the poolcover off (it was tied with awkward knotted knots on top of knots), there was silence. I found the dog floating facedown, fished it out, and wrapped it in a blanket on the ground. He gasped and sputtered and my brother called Sar to ask for advice, since she's a vet tech type and works at an animal hospital. She said to rub the dog, give him a reason to breathe. I rubbed, I spoke to him. But, as we found out later, he'd been in there for probably a half an hour. I had run down the street after my mother called for me to come downstairs, quickly. I was putting on mascara, my glasses off, only recently dressed in work clothes and wet hair. I had run down the street without any shoes, with my glasses barely put on my face. Then, dog in hands, I ran with him up the street, wrapped in a towel, but the farther I walked the more dead he looked, with his eyes glassy and his jaws locked in a gasp. I got to my car and waited for two seconds as my brother ran for the keys to my car and my wallet, and as I waited, the dog lolled towards me and out of his mouth came blood. It was strange. I can't forget the weirdness of it - it just poured out of his mouth and he didn't move, and it filtered through his teeth and he didn't flinch. Still, I put him in my car, with my right hand patting his little body instead of resting on my gearshift like it usually does. I drove to the animal hospital like a maniac, but I didn't feel panicked and I didn't feel panicked at all through the whole ordeal. He was dead, anyways. I gave the hospital the information, waited for the dog's owner to arrive, and then left and drove home to change my clothes and go straight to work. I made it there on time.

I worked all day, went to the bank, answered phones, billed patients, called insurance companies, cleaned bathrooms, and ate lunch. Then my mother came in with Tess and Charlie for their appointments, and I took one look at my mother's face, and all the adrenaline of the day dissolved and fat tears rolled down my face like a child. It was just a dog. I don't even like dogs. But it scared me and encouraged me. Death is such a weird thing. It's different with animals than people, but there was a strange euphoria that carried me through my pre-work events, as my mother screamed, the mother-in-law mumbled and called for the dogs, and my poor brother, who doesn't even watch surgery documentaries on teevee, stood talking on the phone with Sar and looking on with a blank face. I couldn't have panicked if I wanted to, but while I drove to work, my hands shook and my wobbly ankles almost stalled the car as I left the stoplights. Not scared, not sickened, not horrified or with a thumping heart. I left my radio off and drove like an automaton. All I could think of was what it would be like to see a person die. This is what I'm going into. I've always been fascinated by death, always thought it might be interesting to be a mortician, or in forensics, but those are already dead bodies, the suffering so divorced from the mind of the body-preppers because they didn't see it. Does this animal, fundemental, get-the-job-done euphoric adrenaline rush carry over to the suffering of people? Will I come home from work as a nurse, someday, every night, see my own face in the mirror in the dim hallway and see another's face reflected therin? Will my energy and capability run out as I sit on the livingroom couch and hear wheezing breaths that stop for good? I don't have enough tears for this. I want the compassion for people, but somehow, I don't want to realize and feel it. I don't have enough tears.