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Willa lowered Muffin back to her lap and cuddled the blanket around her, making her comfortable.
Barrett shaved the fur off the vein and inserted the needle. Muffin did nothing to indicate that she noticed.
“Barrett, wait, are you doing it now?” Willa cried in a panic.
“Just putting in the needle, curly, but it’s time. Her suffering is greater than her enjoyment now. I can’t wait any longer. I’m sorry.” He whispered that last.
“No sorry, Viking. You’re right. Go ahead, honey, do what she needs you to do,” she whispered back.
With that, Barrett slid the prepared syringe into the tubing and slowly emptied the contents into her little vein. When the plunger was fully depressed, Barrett knelt on the floor in front of Willa and Muffin and pressed his stethoscope to her little chest.
Willa
My Viking knelt on the floor in front of me, after pushing the plunger of the syringe down, his frown lines deeply etched into his forehead. He hated this as much as I did, perhaps more. I returned my attention to Muffin, not wanting her to feel alone in her last moments, as she was all her life.
All her life, neglected.
All her life, disposable.
All her life, ignored.
All her life, used.
I rubbed her head, wanting her to feel my love until the very end. Barrett slipped a gentle hand under her chest to listen to her heart. I stroked my other hand down the short length of her back. I watched the light go out of her eyes, saw them go flat, lost her as they turned opaque.
“Oh, God!” I sobbed. “Is she gone, Barrett?”
I looked to him for confirmation. He nodded; his eyes locked onto mine. A lone tear rolled into his beard.
I leaned forward towards him, and he met me halfway. I pressed my forehead against his and keened.
“I loved her, Barrett! I really did. I don’t know how, or why, but I did!”
“I know you did, curly. You still do. You always will.”
I sucked in a breath. “It hurts.”
It did hurt. That tiny scrap of fluff got under my skin in a moment and now she’d stay with me forever. She deserved that. She deserved to be loved and remembered. She deserved so much more than what she’d gotten in her life.
Barrett scooped Muffin’s body out of my arms and placed her gently on the table. I bent over my knees, my stomach sick. The hot dogs I’d eaten only a few hours before roiling in my stomach.
“Come on, sweetheart.” Barrett pulled me to my feet. “Francis is here and she’s going to take over now.”
I nodded and kept my face averted as we headed for the door, not wanting a witness to my grief. At that thought, I stopped in my tracks and turned back to my dog on the table. I looked at Francis, and with tears rolling down my face, I said, “She was a good dog.”
Francis nodded, her sadness apparent. “She was a sweetheart. You chose well.”
I nodded. No words would pass through my grief-squeezed throat.
As soon as we were out of the surgery, I turned and pressed my face into Barrett’s wide chest. His arms came around me tightly and I felt my knees give out as I sobbed for that little life that loved me, for the fact that I had to say goodbye.
Barrett scooped me up in his arms and I tucked my face into his neck, his beard brushing the side of my face. He carried me briskly to his truck and tucked me into my seat. I was surprised by how bright it was outside. I shouldn’t have been. Only twenty minutes had passed, but everything had changed.
My arms were, again, empty.
Chapter 39
Fraud
