<Jenny Rado was dying. She’d known for about a year. She no longer cared.
There was no cancer eating away a vital organ. No incurable virus. No brain tumor. Jenny was killing herself, slowly but surely.
Since grade school, the pretty blonde girl had been afflicted with OCD. Somehow over the years, she’d developed a germ phobia to go along with the OCD, an irrational fear that somehow, somewhere, a germ lurked that would kill her in a manner more horrible than any she’d ever heard of. More than anything, she feared germs in her food, and eating was an ordeal. Consequently, she ate less and less, reducing her once-healthy body to a skeletal shadow.
Despite her phobia, Jenny had led a remarkably normal life until recently. She’d been happy and popular in high school, and had worked her way through online college classes to a Bachelors degree. She had enough credits accumulated to begin veterinary school; she’d taken what classes she could online, spoken with counselors at the University of Minnesota, and secured excellent letters of recommendation. All that stood between her and her dream of being a vet were the years of hands-on study. Back when life was somewhat normal, it had seemed so close.
About two years back, something in her mind had snapped. All the compulsions, the hand-washing, the obsessing…it was suddenly too much to deal with. She’d smiled and laughed and faked her way through so many years…the crash was inevitable. All the doctors, therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists had talked, prescribed and theorized her condition to death. She’d had high hopes for each new medication, each new treatment method. Over the years those hopes had all been crushed, leaving her with no hope at all. Professionals couldn’t treat her, couldn’t make her better. Wasn’t that as good as a death sentence?
Though she’d lived with roommates since high school, she’d moved back in with her mother when the fear reached an incapacitating point. She used the upstairs rooms as a makeshift apartment, with a bedroom, living room and bath. Her mother had been delighted at first, happy to have her around. She’d thought it was a good way to save more money for college; the idea of Jenny becoming a vet thrilled her.
Now, she was glad to have Jenny home because it meant that she could watch her. Watch and wait for the day she dreaded, the day she called up the stairs and got no response. The day her beautiful, smart, fun-loving daughter would die, robbed of a life so full of promise.
Jenny’s days were filled with books, television, and movies. She lived through the written word and through actors on the screen. They were her only escape. The only times she felt like herself again came while fully absorbed in a book, or while lost in a movie. Somehow the fear fell away during those times. Maybe she was just so absorbed that she didn’t notice it as much. Either way, she could feel the old Jenny, slowly creeping back, trying to push through. Those brief glimpses of normal life were precious, but the sadness and anger always crashed back down a little harder after they were gone, after reality set back in and she looked at what her life had become.
Fearing the germs that Gina carried, Jenny preferred it if her mother didn’t come upstairs. She had her own bathroom, and though there was no way to prepare food, she did have a stash in the closet of ready-to-eat stuff. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a meal that required preparation. Too much potential for contamination.
Twisted as it was, Gina would often come and sit on the stairs to talk to Jenny. They had always been close, and it broke her heart to see her reduced this way. The few times that Jenny risked coming close enough so that Gina could see her, Gina had been struck numb with fear and disbelief.
In the past, Jenny was the type of girl who hated to leave the house – even on a quick run to the store – without her hair and makeup done. She wasn’t vain; she just preferred to look her best. Gina had been the same way at that age.
Jenny’s hair had been her pride. Long, dark blonde and streaked with champagne highlights, it had fallen nearly to the small of her back in thick, shiny waves. She often straightened it, creating a look that occasionally prompted curious strangers to ask if it was real, or made up of salon extensions.
Now, Jenny’s hair was frizzy and dry from repeated over-washing, constantly pulled back in a ratty, sagging ponytail. She hadn’t been to the salon in well over a year, and her highlights had grown out nearly ten inches. Devoid of makeup, Jenny’s face was drawn, her skin pulled taut against her cheekbones and almost grayish at times from lack of food. She had always been a regular customer at the nail salon, having fun with different color combinations and airbrushed designs. Now the acrylic nails were gone, and her natural nails were bare and brittle. They were ragged, and often, in angry fits of self-hatred, Jenny raked them across her face. Strangely shaped claw marks marred her skin, some healed and scarred, some raw, some scabbed over.
More than anything, it was her daughter’s voice that frightened Gina. Dull and heavy, it spoke volumes more than any of the words she uttered. It was the voice of an old, angry, bitter woman, not a girl with her entire life in front of her. Looking at and speaking to her daughter, Gina often got the feeling that she wasn’t with Jenny at all. Somehow, it seemed, Jenny had been stolen, and another girl dropped in her place. She knew, though, that the truth was even more horrible. It wasn’t Jenny who had been stolen. It was Jenny who had been robbed of her own life.
It was early in January. Jenny woke up sometime near noon; she’d asked her mother to call up the stairs and wake her up earlier, but as usual, she’d begged “five more minutes” and fallen back to sleep. Now the light spilling through the blinds was gray, the near-mute television was showing a soap opera, and there were no sounds of movement from downstairs. Gina had gone to the chiropractor; three times a week she got adjusted, trying to make it easier to move around without pain.
Propping herself on one elbow, Jenny looked around the room. Her eyes were heavy, not with sleep but with dismay. Though the space was clean and neat, it was depressing. Several months ago, in a fit of impotent rage, she’d shredded all the posters on the wall. Many of them were old favorites, images that she planned to frame and hang in a house of her own one day. Now they were gone. The walls were bare.
The curtains were gone as well. She hadn’t ripped them down, but taken them off the wall carefully, suddenly afraid of the dust and germs they harbored. Now they sat in a cardboard box downstairs, taped shut and labeled in her mother’s precise handwriting, in a closet that held all the things that Jenny had deemed too contaminated to remain upstairs.
Gina refused to get rid of it all, refused to accept the idea that her daughter would never recover. To throw away the curtains…and the towels and the throw rug and the other household items that had come home with Jenny when she moved back in…would be to throw away the idea that her daughter was coming back someday. Her real daughter.
Jenny shoved aside the single blanket and sat up. Her entire body ached; she always curled into a tight fetal ball in her sleep, kinking up her neck and back horribly. Now she made a half-hearted attempt at stretching the cramped muscles, but winced and stopped. Instead, she reached into a bedside drawer and swallowed two ibuprofen capsules without water.
She considered opening the window, then decided against it. The tiny amount of light leaking in now hurt her eyes, and the sight of normal people making their way down the sidewalk would only depress her further. Besides that, she was comforted by the barrier the blinds created between her room and the contaminated air outside. She carefully rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with a tissue (never bare fingers) and tossed it in the garbage.
Jenny’s computer was her only contact, besides Gina, with the outside world. She hefted the little laptop onto the bed and turned it on.
She downloaded a lot of movies and music. She started a few downloads, then moved on and checked her email. There was lots of junk, a few coupons and sale offers from stores she used to frequent. That was back when she actually shopped. She deleted the offers and signed out.
Facebook was too depressing. Until a few months prior, she had used the site to talk with the few friends who still bothered with her. Most had taken her complete withdrawal as a signal that she no longer desired their friendship. It wasn’t true, of course. Her craving for social contact was so strong it was almost physical. However, it terrified her, and so it had been added to the long list of things she couldn’t do. Facebook gave her a chance, at least, to communicate with the few people she’d told about her condition, and those few people kept her up to date on what was going on with her old groups of friends.
Recently, though, the lives of her old friends had gotten to be too much. They were living their lives while she was waiting hers out.
Setting the computer on a table, she stood up and quickly made the bed. She slept with only one blanket; one pillow…any more was an invitation for excess dust and germs. Her mother, trying to accommodate, trying to do anything that would ease her daughter’s mind and, hopefully, encourage her to eat more, dutifully washed the single blanket, pillowcase and sheets every three days.
Like most people, Jenny usually woke up having to use the bathroom. For Jenny, however, the routine morning pee was an ordeal. Now, unable to squirm any longer, she walked across the hall.
Grabbing a Clorox wipe from the economy-size container on the floor, she wiped down the seat. Then, with a fresh wipe, she swabbed her own thighs. After fanning them with her hands to dry them, she sat down, content that neither her own body nor the toilet was contaminated.
Washing her hands and drying them on paper towels, then turning off the water using a fresh paper towel, she eyed her makeup and hair supplies. They sat in a large basket near the sink. If she didn’t compulsively clean them every day, they would have been coated with dust from month after month of disuse.
She’d tried several times, back when she’d first moved in with her mother, to do her hair and makeup like she used to. She’d once gotten as far as blowing out her hair, straightening it, and applying foundation before the germ phobia caught up with her. She’d literally leapt backward from the mirror over the sink, horrified at the danger she was putting herself in. All the germs in the liquid foundation…the unknown microbes lurking in the little sponge used to apply it…the germ-attracting film left on her hair by the straightening lotion…it was all too much. She had scrubbed her face for an hour that day, using scalding water, abrasive cleansers and finally Clorox wipes, resulting in redness that lasted for days. She hadn’t touched her hair products or makeup since.
She stared at the basket for a few seconds, and, as it always did, even that brief glimpse into her former life brought Jenny’s mood down a few notches. She sat on her bed, at a loss. There was literally nothing to do. No books sounded interesting, no movies called to her, nothing on television seemed worth watching. Stucco covered the ceiling above her; she laid back and stared at it, seeing nothing.
Even as she lay motionless, Jenny was acutely, painfully aware of the germs. They were everywhere. Tomorrow was wash day for the bedding, but it didn’t seem soon enough. She had showered the night before, nevertheless, her fuzzy, undone hair felt filthy. Touching her face, she was sickened by the amount of oil she felt. Not trusting conventional facial cleansers anymore, she reached for a Clorox wipe from the container she kept by the bed and wiped her face. The moist cloth stung as it touched areas of her face that had become so abraded by constant washing that they were raw. She relished the pain, for it meant that the disinfectant was doing its job.
Done with her face, she lay still again, literally paralyzed by fear. Any move, any turn of her head could bring her into contact with something dirty. It didn’t matter that she personally cleaned the room from top to bottom every day, sometimes several times a day. She knew the room was clean, but the OCD and the phobia didn’t let her believe it was clean. Perception, sadly, was reality.
She was crying when her mother got home. Not the long, drawn-out sobbing that often brought Gina running upstairs, but a silent cry; the tears were leaking from her eyes while her face remained emotionless.
She didn’t respond when Gina called up the stairs. Hoping that her mother would assume she was still sleeping and leave her be, Jenny laid still and envisioned, without trying, the millions of germs that were surely clinging to her mother’s clothing after a trip to the chiropractor’s office. All those chairs, shared by so many patients in the waiting room…lying on that table that the doctor didn’t sanitize, didn’t even wipe down, except for the headrest…it made Jenny shudder in revulsion.
Gina’s voice took on a shrill note of fear. Her mother was afraid she was dead. Again. It was, after all, nearly two in the afternoon. “Yeah, Ma, I’m fine,” Jenny called back. “Just lying down.”
“Can…can I come up? Top of the stairs, I mean?”
Jenny shuddered again. “I guess,” she managed to utter through clenched teeth, terrified.
Gina came to the top step and sat down. “So…what’s new?” she asked, by way of a running joke. Some days Jenny tried to laugh at her condition and joke back. Today wasn’t one of those days. “Shit,” she responded. “Good chiropractor?”
“Yeah, I think my neck’s getting a lot better,” Gina replied brightly. Her voice was cheerful, but Jenny heard the false note in it.
Sitting on the step, Gina wept silent tears to match her daughter. As she recalled her day, she had to stop several times to keep from breaking down completely. She didn’t want this to be Jenny’s life; didn’t want this for her daughter. She was willing to do all she could, willing to cater to every strange request, if only she’d get better. So far, however, with only a few too-brief instances, Jenny had done nothing but get worse.
Knowing what the answer would be but driven to ask anyway, Gina offered food. “I picked up a really nice-looking roast…doesn’t that sound good? I’ve got potatoes to go with it, and carrots - ”
“Ma, stop,” Jenny broke in, her voice pleading. “Just stop.”
Sighing, Gina talked a few minutes more, then got up. “You just call if you need anything,” she reminded her.
Alone again, Jenny’s tears flowed again. This time she gave in to them, curling into a fetal position, longing for the teddy bear she’d become afraid of months before. With nothing to cuddle, nothing to comfort her, she hugged herself tightly and cried herself into a long nap.

Three hours had gone by when she awoke. She didn’t know what had awakened her; the television was nearly soundless and there was no noise from downstairs. It was apparently sunny now outside, and piercing beams of light hurt her eyes as they slipped through the blinds.
She had only just turned her head to look at the clock when she heard the bark. A whine, really. A dog.
She rose up on both elbows. The whine sounded again. What the hell…
Using her cell phone, she called her mother on the house phone downstairs. “Ma, there’s a dog in here, isn’t there?”
Jenny could hear the excitement in her mother’s voice. It was heartbreaking. She realized how long it had been since her mother sounded happy without forcing it. “Jen, you should really come down. Or I could come up. Or send him up. You -”
“Ma! What’re you talking about? Is there seriously a dog here? How is there a dog here?” The words tumbled over each other as Jenny felt a panic attack rapidly building in her chest. She reached for the drawer that held her medications and quickly downed two Ativan pills. A dog? A filthy, drooling, crapping, pissing dog?
“Jen, I know. I know. Believe me. You just have to see him…” Jenny began to cut her off, but Gina countered her. “Okay, okay. Don’t see him. But I’ll come up and tell you everything, okay? I just got in the door…oh, you won’t believe it. I’m on my way.”
Jenny could hear her mother moving about downstairs. She heard the whining continue, heard her mother speaking to the animal in low, soothing tones, heard a door close before the footsteps started upstairs.
Half an hour later, Jenny knew what had happened. Knowing the full story, it had taken two more Ativans to calm her down enough to sit down on the bed instead of pacing her bedroom, her hands shaking and her breath coming in shallow gasps.

Gina Rado was sixty-two years old. Though she was in remarkably good health and took no medications for blood pressure, cholesterol, or any of the myriad afflictions that could accompany her age, she did have mobility problems. Due to several different sources…a pinched nerve in her spine, one leg that was slightly shorter than the other, constant stress over her daughter…she had continual pain in her back, hips and legs. Her knees would often buckle, and she couldn’t sit in any position for very long before starting to cramp up. It had been Jenny who finally persuaded her to see a chiropractor, and while the sessions were helping rapidly, Gina still had a lot of trouble.
Most of her friends worried about her. They knew about Jenny’s situation. Some of them had wondered out loud how Gina would manage if the worst happened. Could Gina carry her daughter out to the car if a hospital visit became necessary? Could the girl be of any help if Gina herself fell down?
Gina had always put aside their concerns. Of course she would be fine. Soon her chiropractic adjustments would show real results, and, of course, soon Jenny would be getting better and be able to help if any odd household accident occurred.
Apparently, her friends accepted her answers. They had been pushing for Gina to hire a live-in assistant for Jenny, sort of like hospice care. The high cost had not been the reason that Gina refused. To accept hospice care would be, like tossing out Jenny’s things, to accept that her daughter’s life was over at twenty-four. She would not consider it.
Giving up on the hospice idea, several of Gina’s friends had begun talking about companionship. A dog, they had come to reason, was ideal. Gina had owned a yellow lab for years. Honey. When she died, Gina hadn’t gotten another one, because of Jenny’s fears. Though she would never admit it to her daughter, living essentially alone downstairs was lonely, all the more lonely knowing that there was a living, breathing person just a floor above her. A floor above and worlds away.
Simply because one of her best friends was hosting it, Gina had attended a tasting party that afternoon. One of those gourmet food companies, with ridiculously delicious goodies that nobody could really afford. They had dips and cakes and salsas that were amazing, but cost blood. Gina had gone to sample the goods and see her friends.
After the gourmet representative had gone, the women sat around the kitchen table, scraping the last smears of dip out of bread bowls and talking about nothing in particular. Gina had noticed a few of her friends eyeing her strangely, but had said nothing.
She didn’t get it when a large dog had sauntered into the kitchen. She’d loved it on sight. Huge and fluffy and predominantly white, her friends told her it was a mixed breed, but that most of its blood was Great Pyrenees and Newfoundland. The dog had sat at Gina’s feet and looked up at her with placid brown eyes, panting softly.
Her best friend broke the news. The dog was hers. For companionship, they said. For home protection.
Gina was torn. The huge animal was unquestionably docile, but how could she possibly control such a big dog on a walk? It would have to be perfectly trained. A friend produced the animal’s “graduation” certificate from obedience classes, and together the group went for a short walk around the neighborhood, the big dog proudly showing off its good manners. Gina was won over. The dog was coming home with her. She hoped it would stay.

“Honey, you should see him,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how well he’s trained. For his size…you can’t imagine. It’s like having a person around. No barking or jumping or anything. And he was a stray, Jen. They were going to put him down. Everybody pitched in for the adoption fee, and the training…I couldn’t just say no. You see that, don’t you, honey?”
Jenny had nodded silently, and then remembered that her mother couldn’t see her from the stairs. “Yeah, I get it,” she called, wiping tears from her sunken cheeks. “How big is it? How old?”
She wished she hadn’t asked. A year-old, ninety-pound ball of germs was now loose in the house. “I got a gate, Jen, so he can’t get upstairs. The boy at the store said it’s the strongest one they make. He won’t come up here. I promise.”
“Okay. Okay, okay, okay. I get it. I…I just wanna be alone. Okay, Ma? Please?”
Her excitement gone, her small hope of reconnecting Jenny with her veterinarian dreams crushed, Gina nodded silently. “Okay, baby. Do you want anything to ea -”
“I’ll have a PowerBar, Ma.” Jenny hated to cut her mother off, but also hated to hear her offers of the homemade foods that had been her favorites. Gina nodded silently, and Jenny heard her descending the stairs.
Sitting on the bed, trying to force herself to pick up a PowerBar and eat it, she thought back to better days. Since moving out of her mother’s house after high school, she and her roommates had always kept animals. Usually cats, since most apartments didn’t allow dogs, with one exception. She had slept with the animals, taken care of them, fed them, walked the dog, scooped out the cat boxes…all with a smile. Now, thinking back on all of it, it seemed as though another person had done all those things. Touched all those dirty animals, gotten all those germs on her hands and body…impossible. Unthinkable. It disgusted her enough to quell the idea of eating the PowerBar, and she set it on the nightstand, unopened.
Though it was barely after six, Jenny was tired. The Ativan was making her groggy, and the adrenaline that had coursed through her during the panic attack was wearing off. Flopping back onto her bed, Jenny Rado closed her red, puffy eyes and slept.

Red glowing numbers on her bedside clock told Jenny it was after four in the morning when the crash came. For several seconds, she was sure it was a very realistic dream. The crash, the scrabbling sounds…surely some dreamland monstrosity was trying to follow her into the waking world.
Sitting up, shaking off sleep, she realized she needed to use the bathroom. Groaning inwardly, she swung her legs out of bed and stood up. She froze.
Sitting in the doorway, filling the doorway with its bulk, sat the dog.
Jenny could barely move. Panic flooded back into her, thudding her heart against her ribs, squeezing the breath out of her lungs. She staggered away from the dog on wooden legs, shakily, stopping only when she collided with a dresser.
It didn’t move. Didn’t bark, didn’t whine, didn’t do anything. In the blue glow of the television, she could see its face, placid and friendly, staring at her, tongue lolling.
She would call her mother. Her mother would come and remove the dog, and then Jenny could get to work cleaning the floor and doorframe, anywhere the animal might have touched.
Pressing the cell phone key down, Jenny listened as the house phone rang out in the darkened first floor. Three…four…five rings before the answering machine picked up. Dammit.
She considered calling again, calling and calling until Gina finally rolled over and picked up the phone. She had her finger on the phone, was ready to press down. She hesitated.
Her mother had nothing. She was dealing with a mentally ill daughter with such good cheer and optimism that it broke Jenny’s heart. Now her friends had gone and paid for this dog as a companion. No doubt Gina had gone to bed that night exhausted, but Jenny was sure she was also happy, for Gina loved animals just as much as Jenny herself.
Feeling like a leech on her mother’s good nature, Jenny tossed her cell onto the bed and returned her gaze to the massive animal. Massive was not an overstatement. Gina had told her that the veterinarian, after a short conference with his assistant, had pronounced the dog to be part Newfoundland, part Great Pyrenees, and some smaller part pit bull or Staffordshire terrier, due to his oddly shortened muzzle and extra chest bulk.
Jenny knew dogs. After actually seeing the animal, she had to admit that the strange guess was probably correct, or very close. The dog was at least four feet tall while sitting down, with the long, thick coat of a Newfoundland or Great Pyrenees. That coat was predominantly white, like a Pyrenees, but the muzzle was shorter than either of those breeds would allow, and the neck and chest area, even under all that fur, was obviously wide, well-muscled and powerful.
All in all, a formidable-looking animal. Jenny wasn’t frightened of the dog itself. She liked large dogs. She preferred them, in fact. She’d been raised around them. What made her heart knock almost painfully in her chest was the fear. Dogs, like every animal, every person, every single thing that Jenny hadn’t sanitized personally, carried germs. Untold amounts of them. With every friendly nuzzle or paw touch, unknowably horrible diseases could be transmitted.
“Stay.” The dog didn’t move. It hadn’t moved since she’d left her bed. She was uncomfortably aware that she still needed to use the bathroom, and her panic soared still higher. She would have to get past the dog somehow. Stepping forward, pulling her shirt over her nose and mouth to avoid breathing contaminated dog air, she came to within a few feet of the panting animal. “Back,” she commanded, pointing out into the hallway, realizing that the dog wouldn’t understand. Even if it was a smart dog, “back” was not a basic command, and she was an unfamiliar person.
The dog backed up.
Surprised, Jenny took a few more steps and repeated the command and watched in mild fascination as the dog stood and shuffled backward, glancing once over its huge shoulder to avoid backing down the steps. When there was a clear walkway from Jenny’s bedroom to the bathroom, the dog sat again, watching her from the corner at the top of the steps.
As she used the bathroom, having tiptoed across the hall to avoid as many paw-germs as possible, Jenny noticed a furry white head poked into the doorway. The dog watched her with curiosity, his big head cocked. All that trouble to pee?
With all the cleaning and washing done, Jenny returned to bed. Without being told, the dog had backed out of her way again. She used a Clorox wipe to wash her feet before getting into bed, then pulled the blanket over her and laid back.
She could focus on nothing but the germ machine sitting in the doorway; each panting breath fueling her panic. Staring at the television, she tried to focus on a movie. She chewed more Ativan. Finally, nearly half an hour later, the pills began to take effect as dawn filled the shaded window with soft gray light.
Jenny had closed her eyes, had taken several deep, slow breaths to try and calm her heart. She must have been dancing on the edge of unconsciousness, for she was aware of no noise, and was feeling that elusive, blissful peace that only visited her when falling asleep. Then it was there.
Her eyes snapping open, Jenny realized that the dog had crossed the threshold, approached her bed and was now resting its head on her mattress, its eyes on hers.
Exploding out of bed, Jenny stumbled twice as she reeled backward across the room. Finally she fell, too sleepy, disoriented, and food-deprived to move so quickly. She went down hard, her tailbone cracking against the wooden floor as a scatter rug flew out from under her feet. She didn’t cry out but silently sobbed, tears flowing down her face, petrified, horrified, frozen with fear at the knowledge that the dog was in her room.
At the same time she was crying for herself, for that lost, “other” Jenny who would have delighted in being woken up by such a handsome, well-behaved animal. Such a different person, gone forever.
It wasn’t as though Jenny was ever really unaware of her circumstances. She knew all too well how far she had fallen, and thought of it all the time. Thought about it, dwelt on it, tortured herself with it, sometimes hoping that the torture, the self-disgust of it would somehow spur her into recovery. It never worked, but she never stopped.
So it was strange that the ruin that her life had become should strike her so suddenly and so harshly. Nevertheless, sitting there on the cold wooden floor, the tank top and mens’ pajama pants she wore hanging loosely on her skeletal frame, Jenny Rado wept, with a wrenching pain that surprised her. She couldn’t breathe for her fear, and seriously considered a heart attack because her chest hurt so badly. She finally curled up into herself, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them like a small child.
There were no blankets in the room except the one on the bed, which was now contaminated. After sobbing for what seemed like hours, Jenny was on her side on the floor, and somehow fell asleep.

Gina was sure her daughter was dead when there was no response from Jenny by one o’clock in the afternoon. She had noticed the gate at the bottom of the stairs, violated, lying on its side and feared the worst, but since the dog was downstairs with her, she’d let it go. Now, though, she didn’t know what to think, and after Jenny failed to pick up her cell phone, Gina mounted the stairs.
She was screaming by the time her daughter answered her. Jenny yelled back irritably. She had slept long and deeply, exhausted by terror and pain, and the wooden floor had wrenched her body into unnatural positions. She had to work for a full minute to rotate her neck normally, and her ribs were sore. “What? I’m up…I just…” Her words dissolved into a coughing fit; she had cried so long and hard that her throat felt raw.
Gina clapped a hand over her mouth when she peeked through the doorway and saw Jenny sitting on the floor. She was horrified, but at least Jenny was alive.
A terse conversation followed; Jenny pacing her bedroom with a cigarette, Gina sitting on the stairs with the dog next to her. Gina apologized, and felt badly, but what could be done? Of course a dog would be curious about people in the house. “Dogs love you, Jen, you know that. Can you blame him? He just wanted to say hi…” Her words trailed off as her daughter’s had earlier, because she knew that the cute curiosity of the animal was lost on Jenny. Where once the blonde girl would have been on the ground, wrestling and playing tug with the animal, walking it proudly and watching it carefully for any sign of the possible illnesses her textbooks described, now Jenny was horrified to breathe the same air as the dog.
Gina sat on the steps as Jenny cleaned, the sharp edges of her bones visible beneath her skin. Despite her starvation, Gina knew that Jenny wouldn’t consider eating for at least a few dog-free days upstairs. The girl sprayed enough disinfectant to choke Gina, though Jenny herself seemed to draw some perverse pleasure in feeling the harsh aerosol spray burn her nostrils.
Jenny declined any offer of help and so, once she was reassured that her daughter was done cleaning and would lie down to rest, Gina went back downstairs. Tears stained her cheeks.
Alone, Jenny picked up the remote control. She turned on the television and stared blankly at the screen. The room was still. She could hear her mother cooking something downstairs, rattling pots and pans. Soon the aroma of garlic began to drift through the air. The smell made Jenny’s mouth water, but she covered her nose with her shirt, afraid that the food was contaminated, and that even the smell of it could carry germs.
Days went by. Jenny’s mother did her best to keep the big dog downstairs. She had named the animal Bond, after her favorite movie character. Jenny found the name amusing; the huge animal was anything but stealthy.
Jenny found herself thinking about Bond more and more. It was like her obsessions: the more she tried to shut the thoughts out, the more they intruded, the more they pushed their way into her mind.
Despite her former love of animals, having the dog in the house was depressing. It was a reminder of what might have been. Jenny held no hope of getting better. She wished, most of the time, that she would simply die of starvation or a heart attack, saving herself from a life not worth living, and saving her mother from the grief of watching her daughter die slowly.
A few times, Bond snuck upstairs. He hadn’t awakened Jenny after that first night, but he had slowly ascended the stairs, unnaturally quiet despite his bulk.
Each time, he seemed strangely aware of Jenny’s fear. Though he was a well-behaved dog, he was naturally friendly, but he kept his distance. He watched Jenny from the doorway, his eyes probing into hers, as if he was trying to understand. Several times he lay down in the doorway, his head on his large paws, watching her silently. Once he had crept a few feet into the room, crawling on his belly, stopping when Jenny had flashed him a razor-sharp look. He had uttered a short, sad whine and backed out of the door.

Bond had been living in the Rado house for nearly a month when the blowup came. The day had started like any other. Jenny was watching the Today show upstairs while her mother watched it downstairs. After the show ended, Gina would come and sit on the steps to chat for a while before taking the dog for its morning walk.
During the Today show, Bond left Gina downstairs. Quietly, he made his way upstairs. When Jenny heard a soft chuffing sound, she turned to see the huge white form filling her doorway. Bond was carrying something in his mouth. Looking more closely, Jenny realized that it was a blue-and-white tug rope, one of the many toys her mother had bought.
The gentle giant wanted to play.
Jenny could see it in his eyes. They were excited, anticipatory. Whatever made the animal think that things might be different that morning, Jenny didn’t know, but she knew that nothing had changed. She ducked her nose into her shirt and made a shooing motion with her hand.
Bond wasn’t having it. Normally so obedient, the dog advanced further into the room, the toy clutched in his mouth, a glistening string of drool inching from his lip. In a few seconds it would hit the floor.
All of Jenny’s attention was riveted on that strand of drool. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Perhaps the dog took her silence for acceptance. He approached her more boldly, his bushy tail wagging slowly back and forth. Finally he was in front of her as she sat at her desk. She watched, seeing everything in slow motion as Bond opened his mouth and dropped the soggy, drool-soaked, slimy tug toy at her feet.
What followed was not pretty. Part of the rope toy hit Jenny’s foot when it fell. In an instant, she was on her feet, screaming incoherently. She had no idea what she was saying, or if she was trying to say anything at all. Primal, unfocused terror had her in its grip, and nothing mattered except getting away from the source of that terror.
Jenny moved spasmodically. She wanted to run from the room, but walking on the floor that Bond had just contaminated terrified her. She wanted to jump up on her desk chair, but doing that would put her foot in contact with the chair, and her foot was contaminated by the rope toy. She slapped hysterically at her foot, and then realized she’d just contaminated her hand. She heard herself screaming and could hardly believe the sound was coming from her own mouth. It was an animal sound, devoid of any thought or consciousness.
Docile beyond belief, Bond didn’t get agitated by all the noise. He only cocked his head to one side, then the other, his eyes on Jenny. He backed up a few paces, utterly baffled. He’d only wanted to play.
He got the message loud and clear when she picked up a book and flung it at him, hitting him squarely in the forehead. Yelping in surprise, he backed up, forgetting about his toy.
Jenny picked up and flung another book, then another. Some of them hit the dog and some didn’t. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t control herself.
“Jenny!” Gina’s voice was shrill. Jenny hadn’t heard her mounting the stairs, but now her mother was inside her bedroom, staring at the pitiful spectacle, her eyes wide with shock.
Gina hurried the dog back down the stairs. “He only wanted to play, Jen,” she said, her voice sad and quiet. She was angry, but a deep melancholy overshadowed the anger. This person living in her house was not her Jenny. Jenny would not lift a finger against an animal. Never. As she descended the steps, ready to console the big dog who had quickly become a close friend, Gina felt, more than ever before, that her daughter was lost forever.
Jenny spent nearly five hours cleaning that day. Once the shock wore off, she had worked diligently, scouring every surface the dog or her mother might have touched. With that accomplished, she got into the shower and stayed there until the hot water ran out, turning it up so high that her skin turned bright red. When she emerged, she felt raw all over, but raw meant clean, and so she bore the pain.
Dusk was falling when she finally collapsed onto her bed. Without any cleaning to occupy her mind, she thought about what she had done. She saw herself screaming, saw herself throwing things at a defenseless animal. She had done volunteer work with abused pit bulls in the past, and felt a deep connection with the battered animals. She had never raised a hand in anger against any animal, and she took serious offense to people who did. What was she becoming?
For the first time, as she lay in bed, her thin body curled under the soft blanket, Jenny Rado seriously considered ending her life.


Jenny didn’t get out of bed for several days. She communicated with her mother only by phone. As disgusting as she felt, she couldn’t summon the energy to get up and shower. Feeling so filthy on compounded her self-hatred, and several times she wondered if it was possible for a person to will themselves dead.
It was late at night when the call came. Gina had fallen in the kitchen. She had landed hard on her wrist. Twisted her ankle badly. She’d broken both of those bones as well as causing a hairline fracture in her lower leg. She was in the hospital, and would be for several days.
She would call the next-door neighbor to care for Bond; feeding and walking him while she was gone. Jenny didn’t need to worry about anything.
After hanging up, Jenny sobbed. She should have been able to care for the dog. More than that, she should have been downstairs, should have been the one to drive her mother to the hospital, should have been a help instead of a hindrance in the woman’s life.
Setting the phone on the nightstand, Jenny buried her face in her pillow and cried herself to sleep.

Gina’s stay in the hospital was shorter than she’d expected, but once she was home, she was amazed to see just how much she couldn’t do. She walked with crutches and couldn’t use her right hand at all. As much as she hated to do it, she asked her neighbor to keep helping with Bond.
Jenny and her mother didn’t talk much. Gina was always tired, and the doctors had told her that rest was what her body needed more than anything.
More than medical advice, however, hung heavily between mother and daughter. Seeing Jenny flinging books at Bond had forced Gina to look at her daughter realistically. She didn’t like what she saw. Perhaps her friends were right. Perhaps her laughing, happy, normal daughter was, indeed, gone for good. It was painful to talk to Jenny. The girl had taken another downward turn. Her voice was flat. Lifeless.
Talking with her mother hurt Jenny just as badly. She longed for her touch, for a reassuring hug, for a kiss on the head to tell her it was all going to be all right. She could accept none of those things without flying into a panic.
Her room became more of a cell than it had ever been. She ate nothing, and drank very little. She could feel herself getting progressively weaker, though she told her mother that she was eating. As the days rolled into weeks, Jenny began to look forward to the day when she would not wake up.

Winter had Duluth firmly in its grip, with temperatures dipping into the thirty-below range at night. Jenny’s near-constant panic attacks were soothed somewhat by cold air, and so even on those frigid nights, she often cracked the window to let in a draft.
It was on such a night, wracked with panic, sitting in bed and watching a movie at two o’clock, that Jenny got up and crossed the room. Perhaps some cold air swirling through the stuffy room would clear her head a bit.
She was only a few steps from the bed when the pressure in her chest went from constant and dull to crushing. She’d experienced this before. It was a particularly bad panic attack, made worse by the fact that she hadn’t eaten for nearly two weeks.
She lowered herself back down onto the bed, trying to force deep breaths into her constricted lungs. It was difficult. Fear grew inside her, looming even larger than it had been only moments earlier. She wanted to call for her mother, but knew that her mother was hurt. She refused to give in to any more selfish impulses. She would get through this on her own.
She wasn’t sure how smart that decision was. In the past weeks, she’d felt out of breath after nearly any activity, and had felt her heart begin to pound after walking from the bedroom to the bathroom. She knew she had to eat. With the dog in the house, however, it was impossible. The few bites she’d tried to put in her mouth had stuck in her throat. Gagging, she’d spit them out. She’d been sure, irrationally but absolutely sure, that she could actually taste the dog germs on the food.
Shaking, and with tears streaming down her face, Jenny got to her feet and moved again toward the window. Again the pressure in her chest increased, and she was driven to the ground.
Determined to ride it out, Jenny sat down and tried to breathe. She practiced all the relaxation techniques that were etched into her mind after years and years of assorted therapies. Finally she was able to fill her lungs, and she got to her feet.
Immediately, a looming blackness blotted the corners of her vision. This was nothing new, either, but Jenny was still afraid. Once, a blackout had started out this way, and ended up in the ER.
Unwilling to abandon the window, desperately thinking that somehow a breath of fresh air would make up for weeks without food, Jenny pushed on. Reaching the sill, she shoved the window up hard, her eyes on the moon outside.
Even that small amount of exertion was too much, and she hit the floor hard. She hadn’t lost consciousness, not quite, but blackness had filled in all but a tiny point of light in her field of vision, and dizziness crumpled her legs beneath her. Her shoulder and elbow struck the floor first, sending shockwaves of pain through her body.
She could move, but didn’t really want to. Waves of freezing air were flowing over the windowsill, actually visible as the warm air inside met the cold. She put a trembling hand up into the foggy swirl, dreamily waving her fingers, enjoying the fresh, icy sensation.
She thought that if she was to die as a result of this phobia – and by now she was very sure she would do just that – that this wouldn’t be a bad way to go. The television was playing a favorite movie, filling the room with a cozy, flickering glow. A candle burned on the nightstand, in a crystal snowball-shaped holder her mother had given her for Christmas some years back. It was one of the few decorations she hadn’t yet become afraid of. The freezing air felt wonderful as it coursed over her body, but the vent below the window was blasting out enough heated air to keep her from shivering.
Jenny began to feel drowsy. She hoped that the heat vent would keep warming her, but she knew it would shut down in a few minutes. She felt too shaky to pull the blanket off the bed. She hoped she would fall asleep before she got too cold. With death both a lovely fantasy and a detached impossibility at the same time, she wasn’t truly worried. All she knew was that the cold air felt good. She also knew that she wanted her mother to come and hold her, and that she wanted to cuddle her old teddy bear, but both of those things were impossible.
Soon after Jenny closed her swollen eyes, the heat vent shut off. Frigid air, straight off Lake Superior, continued to swirl over her emaciated body.

It was still dark out when Jenny woke. She didn’t open her eyes for a moment, and wasn’t entirely sure of what had happened. Slowly it came back to her…the window, the fall. The wonderfully cold air.
It was no longer wonderful. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her teeth were chattering and her nose felt numb. When she attempted to move, she discovered something disturbing: she couldn’t.
She wasn’t paralyzed. She was simply too weak to move. Swallowing hard, she tried to think. Her mind was foggy. What was this? Hypothermia? A heart condition? Plain old starvation? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember all the differentiating facts. Her heart began to pound again, with a violence that frightened her.
Suddenly, finally faced with it, Jenny Rado was afraid of death. In seconds, just like all the stories, her life began to run through her mind like a movie. She saw high school, college, roommates, friends, boyfriends, and pets. She saw her normal life and watched it disintegrate. She suddenly wanted that life back with an intensity that she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of. A tear slid from her eye. Was this how it ended? Would she die alone, isolated by her own fears, suddenly realizing, too late, that she didn’t want to die after all?
Sobs wracked her body as her heartbeat thudded loudly and erratically. Her mouth felt dry from gasping for breath. She wanted desperately to live.
Jenny had left the hall light on, and her bedroom door was open slightly. She was aware of the sudden shift of light, but didn’t associate it with anything at first; her mind was spinning too fast to make any connections.
When the door inched open, she felt a surge of relief so pure that it nearly knocked her out. Her mother. Her mother had gotten up the stairs on her crutches. It was all going to be okay. She would ignore the germs. She would. She had to.
Then, in a moment of stark terror, Jenny realized who had opened the door.
Of course. Her mother would have called. Then she would have yelled. She wouldn’t be silent.
Bond stuck his massive head into the bedroom and looked at Jenny, his dark brown eyes fixing on hers.
Tears were flowing fast now. Panicked and afraid, she still wrestled with her fear. Germs. She could practically see them jumping off the big dog.
Slowly, quietly, the animal entered the bedroom. His tongue hung out comically, but he seemed serious, as if aware of the situation.
Jenny tensed up with terror as he approached. With each footfall, she imagined the germs he was tracking on her floor, the germs he was bringing nearer and nearer to her.
Shut up! she screamed in her mind. Stop it! He’s a good dog… She tried to talk herself down, reminding herself just how much she loved dogs. She thought of the strange kinship she’d always felt with the animals, how they seemed to understand her. She tried to force her fears away.
It didn’t work. As Bond came closer, Jenny began to writhe in agony, torn between a fierce desire to live and a blind fear of the germs the dog carried. She sobbed long and low, reduced to animal-like sounds of terror. Violently shaking, her hands clumsily wiped the tears from her cheeks, where they were quickly replaced with fresh ones. She shook her head as she cried, terrified.
As the dog’s fur touched her, Jenny wanted to jump out of her own skin. She was repulsed beyond imagining, screaming and sobbing at the same time. Already depleted, the rush of emotion was too much for her body, and again she passed out.

Gina Rado woke up shortly after dawn, as was her habit. Despite her injuries, she couldn’t bring herself to sleep in, as the doctor said she should. Glancing at the floor, she expected to see Bond. It had become a morning ritual for the big dog to accompany her while she put out fresh seeds and suet for the birds. Even on her crutches, she’d kept up their feeding. Bond loved the opportunity to watch, and to bark at the squirrels.
The big white dog was gone, however, and immediately Gina was worried.
Ten phone calls and several throat-straining shouts up the stairs later, Gina knew something was very wrong. Out of options, she started up the stairs, wincing with discomfort and certain that she would fall at any second.
Halfway to the second floor, she could feel the difference in temperature. It was freezing. She could see her breath in the air. Trying to hurry but knowing she shouldn’t try to go too fast, she made her way up the rest of the stairs, pushed Jenny’s door open with her shoulder. Looking inside, she stopped short.
From his spot on the floor near the open window, Bond lifted his massive head and looked at her. His big tail began to wag, and Gina realized with horror that her daughter’s foot was under that tail.
As fast as her crutches would allow, Gina rushed to her Jenny’s side and shook her. The girl was alive, and Gina realized with a flood of emotion that Bond, in a mysterious confluence of instinct and understanding, had realized Jenny was freezing to death. As his ancestors had done for centuries, he had covered the girl with his own body, sharing his body heat in order to keep her temperature from dipping any lower than it already was. As she worked to get Jenny moving, Gina marveled at the dog’s compassion. Jenny had shunned the animal, had thrown things at him and treated him horribly. A dog knows things, and Bond undoubtedly could feel the fear and fear-induced hatred pouring off Jenny in waves whenever she looked at him.
It took half an hour to get Jenny into bed. With her temperature back to normal, she didn’t need to go to the hospital. She was close to incoherent, however, and Gina took advantage of her daughter’s state in order to get some food into her. A PowerBar was all she could find, but it was something, and the fact that Jenny accepted it from Gina’s hands was something else altogether.
In the unused room, with Jenny’s old furniture, there was a stack of blankets. Gina piled them on top of her daughter, tucking them in around her as she’d done when Jenny was small. Tears that she’d been fighting back the entire time finally spilled when Jenny made no motion to stop her mother’s hands from touching her.
Gina didn’t know what to make of it. Was her daughter dying…or finally coming back? She had no idea. Her heart and breathing seemed fine, and Gina made sure she drank some water before she fell asleep.
“The dog,” Jenny said suddenly, her eyes opening. “Ma…the dog…”
“It’s okay, honey,” Gina soothed. “I’ll wash down everything. You just rest.”
Jenny shook her head as hard as she could. “Uh-uh.” Gina watched, in a state not unlike shock, as her daughter’s thin, trembling hand wriggled out from under the blankets and rested on Bond’s head. The dog’s eyes had not left Jenny since Gina had coaxed him to his feet, reluctant to leave his patient.


Years passed.
Gina Rado drove down a quiet street not far from her own house. She turned down a long driveway and pulled her car to a stop in front of a mid-sized house, got out of the car and made her way to the front door.
A single deep bark issued from within the house. As she always did, Gina ran her hand over a sign posted near the doorbell: Jennifer E. Rado, D.V.M.
The smell of pot roast filled the air as Jenny pulled the door open. Gina smiled broadly. Standing before her was a beautiful, shapely girl, her eyes twinkling, long blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. “Hey, Ma.”
They enjoyed dinner together. Occasionally, Jenny excused herself to check on her patients, disappearing into the veterinary office that occupied a large, converted garage attached to the side of the house.
During those short absences, Gina stared contentedly around the living room, gazing in wonder at the pictures of friends, and of pets with their grateful owners. She blinked back tears for what felt like the millionth time; reveling in the knowledge that her daughter was living the life she had started out to live, the life she had reclaimed.
After chatting for hours, Gina reluctantly got up to leave. As usual, the guest room was open to her, but Blackie, a large rescued Lab that Jenny had nursed back from horrid abuse, was waiting for Gina at home.
Jenny returned a few phone calls after her mother left. Gina called when she got back home, as Jenny always asked her to. Once the dinner dishes were stacked in the dishwasher and all the furry patients had been tended to, Jenny headed upstairs for bed.
A visit from her mother, as frequent as they were, never failed to make Jenny grateful. She was acutely aware of how close to death she had come, and of how much her mother had done for her. Now, gazing contentedly at the television, she sighed and snuggled back against the pillows.
Old habits die hard, and Jenny still slept with the television set on, the sound nearly muted. The room was suffused with a soft, blue glow. Sitting on the dresser in a place of honor, Jenny’s beloved childhood teddy bear, no longer banished for the germs it carried, watched over her with wise button eyes.
Eyes carrying even more wisdom than the bear’s looked up at Jenny as she curled up to sleep. Bond had been lying on the bed since following her upstairs, and the look in his eye seemed to be admonishing her to go to sleep. Gina loved to play tug with the gentle giant, and at his age, the big dog tired easily.
With the window cracked open to let in a draft of cold, fresh air, Jenny snuggled up against Bond. In her prayers, she thanked God for the furry beast at her back, the mixed-breed rescue who knew that his body heat would save the shivering girl on the floor. The noble dog who had seen through anger and fear, who had seen only a fellow creature in need of help. Bond had saved her life in several ways that night; not only had he saved her physical body, but his simple, automatic example of a dog’s unconditional love had reawakened her soul.
Jenny Rado slept as she had years ago, warmed by thick white fur, and comforted by the beating of a strong, steady heart.


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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 23.03.2010

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