Clark nodded as he held his phone to his ear. I looked around the room, then pulled open the nearest cabinet to me. This seemed to have mostly dog stuff in it, bigger stuff than what was in his cabinet in the kitchen, like blankets and towels. I pulled out a monogrammed blanket and wrapped it around the dog, who was still shivering and shaking. I had no idea if this was going to help or not, but it’s what I would have done for a human who was shaking, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. “You’re going to be okay,” I murmured, though even as I spoke, I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the dog or to myself.
“Okay, it’s ringing,” Clark said as he put the phone on speaker and placed it on the carpet between us.
“Animal Barn Emergency,” a man said in a clipped, no-nonsense tone.
“Hi,” Clark and I both said at the same time. We looked up at each other over the phone and he gestured to me. “Hi,” I said again. “So we have an emergency with a dog. He’s a . . .” I paused, looking at the dog, realizing I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of dog Bertie was.
“Great Pyrenees,” Clark chimed in, leaning closer to the phone.
“Right,” I said, “and he ate some chocolate, and now he’s shaking all over. He doesn’t seem like he’s doing too well.”
“I’m going to transfer you to poison control,” the voice said. “They can get more information from you and find out if you need to bring the dog in.”
“Thanks—” I started, but the call had already been transferred, and a moment later, Muzak started playing. I looked up, then drew back slightly. We’d both been leaning over the phone, and I hadn’t realized quite how close together our heads were.
“They have poison control for animals?” Clark asked as he gently patted Bertie’s leg again.
“I guess so,” I said, not wanting Clark to know how far out of my depth I was here. I looked over at Bertie as an instrumental version of the Piña Colada song began to play. His eyes were still tightly closed, but he seemed to be shaking less, which I assumed was a good sign. Unless it was a bad one. I ran my hand over the dog’s head. But it wasn’t like we could even ask Bertie where he was hurting, what he was feeling. How did vets do this?
“Hello?” A gentler-sounding woman came on the line, and Clark and I both leaned forward at the same time, coming within a centimeter of bumping our heads together.
“Hi,” I said, then took a breath and started to run through what had happened so far. The woman at the poison control center—Ashley—walked us through a series of questions. She seemed to be trying to figure out exactly how much chocolate Bertie had eaten and what kind. Clark ran to the kitchen to get what was left of the box as I tried to describe the chocolate to her.
“It was dark chocolate,” I said, but even as I said this, I wondered if it was right. Had it been milk chocolate? I had been so focused on not tasting the hazelnut, I wasn’t entirely sure. “I think.”
“Milk or white would have been better,” she said. “But you’d have real trouble if it were baking chocolate. That’s the most dangerous. Dogs can’t process caffeine or theobromine like we can. I get this call a few times a week. Their systems just overload.”
“Okay,” Clark said, running back into the room, holding the pieces of the box in his hands. “It was . . . ten ounces. Dark chocolate.”
“And he ate all of it?” Ashley asked, her voice getting sharper.
“All but a few pieces,” Clark said, meeting my eye. “What does that mean?”
There was a tiny pause, and Ashley said, “I think you’ll be okay. But you’re going to need to get this out of his system. You’re going to need to get him to throw up—”
“Oh, he’s been doing quite a lot of that,” Clark said.
“That’s a good thing,” Ashley said. “He’s basically been poisoned, and he needs to clear it out.”
“So we don’t need to take him to a vet?” I asked, surprised. I’d assumed that the professionals were going to take over at some point. I hadn’t thought this was going to be left to us.
“You’re going to need to monitor him for the rest of the night,” she said. “If he starts seizing, you’ll have to bring him to a vet immediately. But otherwise, based on his weight, I don’t think he ate enough for this to be truly life-threatening.”
“Oh, thank god,” Clark murmured, sitting back and running a hand over his face.
“But you need to to get him to drink fluids so he doesn’t become dehydrated,” she said. “And keep watch on him tonight. If the shaking gets worse, bring him in.”
“Got it,” I said, looking over at Bertie. “Thank you.”
“Thanks a lot,” Clark said, leaning forward slightly to reach the phone. Ashley said good-bye, and a moment later, hung up. And then it was just me and Clark and the sudden silence that filled the room now that Ashley was no longer telling us what to do. “So,” Clark said, looking at the dog, then back at me. “Now what?”
• • •
Since it seemed like Bertie wanted to be in the laundry room, we got settled in there. Clark went to clean up the kitchen, and though I offered to help, I was secretly glad when he insisted on doing it himself. Not only was I not thrilled with the idea of cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, but after talking to Ashley, I really didn’t want to leave Bertie alone. While on one hand I was relieved that he didn’t seem to be in any serious, immediate danger, the fact that he had come so close to it was terrifying. As was the fact that Clark and I were the ones responsible for making sure he stayed out of it.
Bertie tried to kick the blanket off, and I took it off of him, running my hand over his back. I set it down just to the side of him, in case we needed to have it on hand. I was about to call to Clark, to see if he could bring out Bertie’s water dish, when my phone rang.
The caller ID read MAYA, and I picked up immediately. “Hi,” I said, beyond relieved to hear from her. Maybe she and Dave were on their way over, and they could take over the dog night watch. I knew neither of them were vets, but they had way more experience with dogs than Clark and I had combined.
“Hi!” Maya said, and I could hear she sounded like she did when she was trying to wrangle her pack of dogs away from an aggressive barker—stressed, but trying to hide it with cheerfulness. “I’m so glad you picked up. I just heard from Clark. It sounds like he’s having a problem with Bertie—”
“Yeah,” I said, cutting her off before she could tell me what I already knew. “He called me. I’m over there now.”
“Thank goodness.”
“Told you,” I heard another voice say—after a moment I realized it was Dave. I’d only met him once, when I had gone to their tiny office to drop off my tax and payroll forms. I’d expected the male version of Maya—tattoos, cheerfulness, dyed hair—and had met someone who looked like he could have been an investment banker, except for the spare leashes clipped to his belt with a carabiner. “I knew Andie would have this under control. Hi, Andie.”
“Hi, Dave,” I said, realizing that I must be on speaker in a car—I could hear both of them clearly, as well as the occasional car horn passing by.
“What’s the situation?” Maya asked.
I took a breath and filled them in, ending with what Ashley had told us—that someone needed to sit up with Bertie all night. “So . . . ,” I said when I’d finished, waiting for either one of them to jump in and tell me they were on their way, that I could go home.
“Here’s the thing,” Maya said. “We’re up in New Hampshire, visiting Dave’s mother, who hates me—”
“She doesn’t hate you,” Dave interrupted, and I could hear a sigh somewhere in his voice, like they’d had this discussion a few times before. “She just doesn’t understand the tattoos. I did suggest that maybe you could have worn a cardigan.”