A Big Little Life

that this beautiful day was beyond our enjoyment now, and that perhaps all other days in the future would be less beautiful for the absence of her golden grin, her shimmering coat, herself.
    Gerda had left the house on errands before Trixie refused her eleven thirty treat. She didn’t know that the day had taken a dark turn.
    Sometimes, when going places where she felt ringing cell phones would be an intrusion—we are old-fashioned in that regard—Gerda did not switch on hers. This was one of those times, and I couldn’t raise her. I called Linda, told her what had happened, and asked her to track Gerda down and tell her to join me at the specialty hospital, which was in Irvine.
    Trix and I arrived at the hospital shortly before four o’clock. When I led her to the front desk, she surprised me by standing on her back legs, putting her forepaws on the counter, and greeting the reception staff with a big grin. We occasionally called her Miss Sociable, and she was not going to let illness rob her of that title.
    Because Bruce Whitaker had called ahead, Dr. Adam Gassel was ready to see her when we arrived. He came out to the waiting room to explain to me the couple of tests he needed to perform before surgery and to give mea very preliminary prognosis. He inspired confidence, much as Wayne Berry had done four years earlier, and I knew Trix was in good hands.
    Gerda arrived, aware that our girl’s condition was serious, but she didn’t know how grave because I had not spelled it out in detail to Linda. Dr. Gassel thought there was a good chance that if this was cancer, it had spread to her liver. In spite of ultrasound scans, which had to be done, he would not know for sure how bad things were until he opened her to remove the spleen. In the kindest and most direct way—directness in such moments is the essence of kindness—he warned me that there was a possibility he would find cancer so widely spread that he would have to come out of surgery, leaving her on the table, so we could decide whether to close her up and revive her without taking further action—or end her suffering while she was already anesthetized.
    Gerda said sharply, “Don’t be so negative.” She pressed her lips together because they were trembling. I realized that I should not have done an information dump on her. I had learned these details and possibilities in stages, and I’d had time to absorb them. She was hit with it all at once, which made hope harder to hold on to. And we both needed hope.
    In the large waiting room, on a Friday evening, a few people came and went with their pets, but we were often alone. We sat side by side, sometimes holding hands, anchoring each other in the shallow optimism that circumstances allowed.
    Wayne Berry heard that Trixie had been admitted. He came to reassure us that she could have no better surgeon for this procedure than Dr. Gassel. “She’s a tough one, your girl. Never count her out. She’ll stand right up from this.” He hugged Gerda, then me, and reminded us how little fazed Trixie had been after spinal surgery.
    Sometimes kindness can devastate, perhaps because we see so little of it day to day that we are unprepared for the way it pierces when we experience it in a time of crisis.
    Alone again, Gerda and I tried to talk of other things than our girl, but nothing else mattered enough to be worth the words. So we recalled the best of those daily moments when Short Stuff made us laugh, and the memories could still raise a smile, though they also raised tears.
    Between us, we demolished a box of Kleenex. We assumed some people must have thought we were a pair of basket cases—until we realized that five large boxes of Kleenex were distributed around the room. Anguish was common in that place.
    We were told by staff that Dr. Gassel had opened Trixie, that the tumor had begun to burst, that a half liter of blood had poured into her abdominal cavity, but the situation had been addressed in time. The surgeon would report to us later, after he had closed her and assessed her recovery from anesthesia.
    If I had gotten her to the specialty hospital an hour later, she would by now have died.
    A bridge had been safely crossed. But a bridge to what?We would not know, for sure, until the analysis of the tumor samples came back from the lab the following week.
    At eight thirty Friday evening, Adam Gassel came to the waiting room. “She’s doing well. Ultrasound suggested her liver and kidneys were