Shadow Dreams Read online

  “Ronald, I don’t have time to talk. Now take your hands off me, I have to go!” I yanked harder on my arm which he still refused to relinquish. We were beginning to attract attention, some of the secretaries were staring and a few of the Bardine reps were poking their heads out of the conference room to see what the commotion was about.

  “Dean, there’s no excuse you could give me right now that would be good enough. You wrote that damn Bardine Ad campaign and you’re going to stay and sell it to them.” There was a sadistic kind of glee on Phelps’ freckled face—he was really enjoying this opportunity to assert his authority.

  I was getting frantic. Already I might be too late. I twisted in the punishing grip Ronald Phelps was applying to my arm and kneed him sharply in the groin. His red, freckled face turned a strange, dusty shade of purple and he crumpled to the floor, finally releasing my arm.

  “I told you, I didn’t have time to talk,” I tossed over my shoulder as I beat a hasty retreat. Well, so much for my job. But losing my job didn’t seem remotely important compared to what was going on at the moment.

  I got in my little silver bug and was on the road already when I realized I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was going. With all this talk of dropping Shadow off and picking him up at the vet’s, nobody had actually told me which vet he was scheduled to be at.

  I got on my cell and managed to get Barb out of a very important conference by assuring her secretary that it was a dire emergency.

  “Barb, the vet—where is it? What time was the surgery scheduled for?” I demanded, driving like a maniac in what I hoped might be the right direction.

  “Angelina, calm down. What are you talking about?” The maddeningly practical tone of her voice nearly drove me crazy.

  “Where is the vet? Give me directions right now,” I demanded.

  “Geeze, Okay, Okay,” she muttered. “It’s The WeCare Animal Hospital on West Fifty-fourth and Indian School but what—?”

  Great, I was headed in the wrong direction. “When was Shadow scheduled to get…” I couldn’t make myself say the word. “When was it scheduled?” I ended.

  “I don’t know. Sometime in the afternoon, I think. Maybe around two.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was one fifty-five.

  “What—?” Barb started again but I cut her off.

  “The minute I hang up with you call them and tell them to cancel it.”

  “Jelly, listen, you’re not making any sense. What’s all this about, anyway?”

  “Just do it,” I said, swerving across three lanes of traffic to make a U-turn. “It’s important, Barb, all right?” I hung up without waiting for her answer.

  The afternoon traffic was sluggish and my car was burning up despite the best attempts of my AC. Any other time I would have started the car and let the air run for a while to cool things down inside before I took off, but even though my steering wheel was so hot it burned my hands and I felt like I was breathing in pure desert, all I could think of were his words to me the night before.

  This is my last chance. I need you to believe in me, he had said. But like a fool, I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t believe that something so preposterous could actually be real. And now while I was sitting in traffic the man of my dreams might literally be having his nuts cut off. “Oh, God,” I moaned out loud. Did I really have to put it like that?

  I got lost twice and by the time I pulled in to the WeCare parking lot it was ten past two and I was frantic. Had Barb been able to get through? Or was it too late?

  The receptionist at the phone was a bored-looking middle aged woman in pink scrubs decorated with pastel kitty cats. “Yes, I see that,” she was saying into the phone, not bothering to look up as I rushed in. “But the surgery has already started and we can’t just stop…”

  She must be on the phone with Barbara that minute. I decided to bypass her and go straight for the back. I ran behind the counter and zig-zagged around her desk to get to the swinging metal doors that lead to the back of the building.

  “Hey, wait a minute! Miss, you can’t just…”

  But I was gone, leaving her gaping behind me. I was a woman on a mission. Please God, don’t let me be too late, I prayed frantically. I ran down the long corridor, pushing open doors to exam rooms as I went and not bothering to close them afterwards. There was a commotion behind me as a cat and several dogs got loose but I didn’t care. Nothing mattered except finding Shadow.

  Believe in me, he’s whispered in my ear the night before and I did, with all my heart. I just hoped it wasn’t too late.

  At the far end of the hall was another set of metal doors and since there was nowhere left to go, they had to be it. As I neared the doors, my heels clicking frantically on the tile floor, I heard voices drifting out into the hallway.

  “I can’t find a vein when he keeps thrashing like this,” complained one.

  “Give him a little more. He’s really fighting it,” said another, deeper voice. “He’s a big guy but I’ve never seen anything…” a third voice began.

  “Let him go!” I yelled, bursting through the doors into what was obviously a surgical suite. Three people draped in mint green scrub gowns turned to face me, their eyes looking shocked above the paper masks they wore. The wildly swinging doors knocked over a tray of silver instruments that fell to the ground with a loud clatter.

  “Lady, this is an operating room and…”

  “Who are—?”

  “What the hell?”

  They all spoke at once but I only had eyes for the furry head sticking out from under the green surgical drapes. There was a nozzle clamped over the long muzzle but even from where I was standing I could see that the muzzle was whitish-brown, not black.

  It wasn’t Shadow.

  “Where’s my dog? What did you do to him? Where is he?” I babbled. I kicked instruments out of the way and they skittered across the hard tile floor. Behind me the middle-aged receptionist, no longer looking very bored, burst into the room.

  “I’m so sorry, Dr. Katzenberg,” she said, giving me a very disapproving look. “I don’t even know who she is. She just barged right in.”

  “My dog, where’s my dog, Shadow?” I insisted, feeling like my heart might burst at any second.

  “Shadow?” One of the surgically draped people, (it was hard to tell male from female in that get-up) looked at me quizzically. “Was that the big black wolf-looking mutt?”

  “Yes, yes that’s him. That’s him!” I said. “Where is he? Please…”

  “Already in the recovery area.” He or she gestured with a mint-green arm.

  “Oh no. No, no, no,” I whispered, feeling like my legs were going to collapse. “Oh my God. Oh no…” I crumpled to the cold tile floor and put my hands over my face.

  I was too late.

  Chapter 12

  “…Dean, are you Angelina Dean?” someone was asking me.

  I looked up and nodded vaguely. It was one of the mint-green people. She had pulled off the paper mask she was wearing and was plainly a woman. Large gray-green eyes looked into mine with an expression of cautious sympathy.

  “I’m Dr. Kate Katzenberg,” she introduced herself. In lieu of shaking my hand she helped me off the floor. “Come on,” she said, putting an arm around my trembling shoulders. “Let’s go see your dog, Shadow. He wasn’t harmed, you know. He’s very much alive and doing fine.”

  She started to lead me towards another swinging door but I balked, not wanting to see.

  “I … I can’t,” I whispered, feeling the words catch in my throat. “I can’t face him … not after what I let happen to him…”

  “Shadow is fine,” the vet emphasized again, as though to a small child. “Come on. Let’s go take a peek at him.”

  I would have to face him sooner or later, I reasoned. Taking a deep, trembling breath I forced myself to go the way her arm around my shoulders was urging. We walked into a small, sterile-smelling room filled with wire mesh cages. In a bottom