Page 30 of On Dry Land

“Yeah,” I agree. It takes me a second to decide whether or not I want to pick the scab off this particular wound and if Dryden is the one I want to bare it to. I lower my voice, speaking softly to try and cover up the emotion. “But dogs don’t just attack people for no reason. I did something wrong. It was my fault.”

Dryden takes a sip of his drink, and I look down at the pool, swinging my arms idly through the water. It’s an odd feeling, loving something so much but fearing it at the same time. I love dogs. All animals, really. I couldn’t have gone through school and worked in an animal hospital if I didn’t.

But I also had panic attacks after that day. I’d wake up from nightmares of dogs barking—a cacophony of noise echoing through the room and ringing in my eardrums the same way it did at the clinic during the attack, the other dogs stressed, barking and clawing at their kennels. I’d walk past someone taking their dog to the park, and my heart would pound so violently I felt like I was going to be ill.

Now, the fear isn’t quite so visceral. It plays nice with the love and lets me enjoy something I used to take for granted. I can pet those dogs in the park, kneel down in the grass and let them kiss my face. I can be the one to give them the treat passed over by their owner. But it’s still there, always lingering in the back of my mind—the memories and the pain and the noise. It doesn’t require much to bring me back to that day.

Sometimes, all it takes is for me to look at my arm. To see the shiny patches of healed skin and the raised scars, faintly red to this day. To remember the way I’d begged the surgeon to cut it off, cut it off, just please cut it off. It didn’t look like my arm. It didn’t feel like my arm. I wanted it gone. I struggled with aftercare, unable to stomach touching the wounds, let alone even looking at them for long. I’d bend over the sink and dry heave every time I had to replace a dressing, tears slipping down my cheeks. I stopped wearing short sleeves and avoided looking at myself in reflective surfaces.

“I told Rudy.” I look up at Dryden to find him back to gazing out at the tree line and not at me. He glances over. “About the attack. And about the…well, I told him everything.”

“He hired you anyway,” Dryden comments, either because he knows Rudy or simply because he remembers I told him I was working at the clinic starting Monday.

“Yeah. I’m not certified as a vet tech anymore. I let it lapse when I wasn’t able to afford the continuing education credits any longer. He said he needed help with cleaning cages and exam rooms, stuff like that. I won’t be doing anything directly with the animals. Not right away.”

Or, possibly, not ever. I doubt I’ll be here long enough for my new boss to put me in charge of anything with four legs. And I can’t blame him. Honestly, I did my best to talk him out of hiring me in the first place. I told him everything I remember from the attack, and I told him about the hospital. I told him about losing my job, my apartment, and what felt like my sanity, all in one unstoppable downhill slide. I told him that I might have PTSD, self-diagnosed through the internet since I haven’t been to a doctor in three years unless a quick trip to the CVS for a flu shot counts. I told him everything, and he smiled kindly at me and offered me a job.

“May I ask a question?” Dryden inquires. I nod, finding it easy to talk to him. He has such controlled, calm reactions. Most people, when they find out, gasp and offer strange, useless apologies like they’re the ones who attacked me.

“Did you quit your job? You mentioned letting the certification lapse. Were you unable to continue working at the animal hospital?”

I smile wryly. This is what I get for saying he could ask a question. I should have guessed it would be one I don’t want to answer.

“I didn’t quit. They fired me. Well, layoffs was the company line. I…I missed a lot of time after everything happened. The doctor wouldn’t clear me to go back to work at the clinic, at first, worried about infection risk. But after a certain amount of time passed, my job said they’d no longer pay me, so I had to go back on severe work restrictions.”

I squint my eyes and look down at the vague shape of my feet in the water, legs moving gracefully, keeping me afloat. Workers’ compensation had been a nightmare from start to finish. Claims denied, medical treatment delayed, and finally that crisp white notice in the mail stating no further payout would be given. They had denied every single referral my doctor made for plastic surgery, stating it was cosmetic and therefore unnecessary, no matter that half of my arm looked like ground beef, and I still hadn’t regained feeling in parts.

For a long time, looking down at my own forearm caused a wave of revulsion so thick and cloying, bile would rise in my throat, and my vision would tunnel. I’d needed more help beyond the surgical. But I’d given up. I still had a fully functioning arm, no matter what it looked like. I didn’t want to go back under the knife and subject myself to more pain and healing and time off. I wanted to work. So I’d gone back, and everything had gotten so much worse.

“And even though technically I was allowed to be there, the work restrictions made my job almost impossible to do. Like, I wasn’t allowed to lift more than two pounds of weight. What weighs less than two pounds in a vet clinic? A pen? I was useless,” I continue. “But it wasn’t just that. It was…it was the barking and the smell and lights.”

“You were frightened of the dogs,” Dryden fills in.

“Oh yeah,” I agree readily. Frightened is putting it mildly. The moment I walked into work, my heart would start pounding and my hands would shake and it felt like I was underwater, trying to breathe through a straw. All I could hear was barking. “The thing about workers’ compensation is they’re trying to get you physically ready to return to work. They don’t worry at all about whether you’re mentally stable enough to be there.”

“I’m not a lawyer, but I believe wrongful termination of employment is both unethical and illegal. They cannot fire you because you became unable to do a job you were injured while doing.”

I shrug. I’d thought so, too. But the woman in Human Resources had given me a stack of paperwork thicker than my arm and explained everything to me in a way I hadn’t understood. I’d signed papers and taken my final check and thanked her before I walked out the door. Right then, I hadn’t felt like my rights had been violated. I’d felt relieved. I didn’t want to be in that room with all the cages and the shiny chrome tables and the barking dogs ever again.

“Maybe not. I don’t know. I think after a certain period of time off, they can? Like I said, they didn’t ‘fire’ me; the company was performing layoffs, and I was one of them.”

“Spencer, you were fired,” Dryden replies, and I laugh. Yeah, I was.

“I tell you what, I learned really quick how fast money burns. I thought it would be easy to find another job. And maybe it would have been if I hadn’t had healing skin grafts on my arm that prevented me from working in food service or nerve damage that was so painful at times I couldn’t move. I was a mess. Nobody wanted to hire me, and none of my bills were getting paid. My apartment complex gave me three months before they evicted me, and I got through another one living in my car before that was impounded by collections. After that, I moved in with a friend until the doctor gave me the all clear.”

“And then you left.”

“And then I left,” I agree, sweeping my arms in an arc and rippling the surface of the pool. When I lift one hand out, the skin on my fingers is pruned.

“That is an appalling story,” Dryden comments. I chuckle, lifting an eyebrow at him.

“Imagine how it felt to live it.”

He lifts his hand in a cheers motion and takes a sip of his drink. Switching his legs so the bottom ankle is now crossed over the top of the other, he settles the glass once more in his lap. He’s not staring out at the woods, but at me. Right into my eyes, in what should probably be the most awkward, uncomfortable eye contact known to man but somehow isn’t. It feels like an acceptance of all the ugly parts of myself I just showed him. He’s not looking away.

“Why walking?” he asks.

“Because I like to walk,” I reply dryly and can’t help but add, “Obviously.”