thought of the morning at Marie Davis’s house, the look on the TBI agent’s face after he’d seen the Dobermans out back. Natasha. Could she be lurking out here in the woods somewhere? Did she sic her dog on my daughter?
“We need to get you to a hospital,” I said as I quickly tried to examine the bite marks. Her forehead was streaked with red. “Did it bite you on the head?”
She nodded. I parted her hair and could see a gash in her scalp.
“Where else?”
She pointed to her shoulder, about three inches from her neck. There were at least two puncture wounds near her collarbone and more on her forearm.
“You did good fighting him off,” I said. “You did good, honey. You’re going to be fine now.”
I picked her up off the trail and put her arm around my neck.
“Can you walk?”
She nodded.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Sunday, November 2
The lights were bright, the floors clean, and the smell antiseptic as the doctor in the white coat looked at us sympathetically. His name tag dubbed him Ajeet Kalam. He looked to be in his late thirties, very slightly built, with a roundish face, small teeth, and suspicious dark eyes. His accent told me he was born in India.
I was standing next to a gurney on which my daughter was lying. She’d been sedated, but she was awake. We’d been in the emergency room for three hours, and I was afraid the Indian doctor was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
“It’s good that you brought the dog with you,” he said.
“It wasn’t much fun going back there and dragging him out,” I said.
“It was a female, actually.” I hadn’t bothered to look, and I really didn’t care. “How did you kill her?”
“I bashed her head in with a tree limb.”
“A violent way to die,” he said wistfully.
“I didn’t exactly have the time or the means to do it more humanely.”
“Rabid dogs are a terrible problem where I come from. They kill tens of thousands of people every year. Especially in the poorer provinces.”
Another time, under different circumstances, I might have been sympathetic to the public health problems in India, but at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less.
“Do you have the test results?”
He nodded his head.
“And?”
“The dog wasn’t rabid,” he said. “Lucky for you.”
There was a collective sigh of relief as Caroline, Lilly, and I realized that Lilly wouldn’t have to undergo the painful treatment for rabies.
“So what’s the plan?” I said.
“You look familiar to me,” the doctor said. “Have we met?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I can’t put my finger on it. It seems I’ve seen you recently. Perhaps on television?”
I shook my head, but he looked at me more closely. I could see he was about to put it together.
“Can we get back to my daughter?” I said.
“The crazy woman!” he said triumphantly. He pointed at me. “The crazy woman! You are the lawyer the crazy woman yelled at on the television!”
“Please,” I said.
“Do you know what she was saying? It sounded like a bunch of babble.”
“I think she was trying to put a curse on me,” I said, immediately wishing I could grab the words out of the air before they reached his ears.
His voice lowered and his eyes widened. He spoke slowly. “Ah, a curse. Very dangerous. Very scary for you, no?”
“No. Not scary. Now, if you don’t mind-”
“Right.” He looked as though he’d just awakened from a dream to find a young girl lying on a gurney. “How did you come across the animal?”
“We were jogging,” I said. “We were going to race. She went out first, and I heard her scream…”
He looked down at Lilly, then back at me.
“Perhaps it is the curse,” he said. “Perhaps you should be more vigilant.”
“Is there anything else you should be doing?” I snapped. The look on my face must have told him not to mention the curse again, because he quickly got back to the matter at hand.
“I’ll give her an injection that will help fight infection,” he said. “And I’ll prescribe some pain medication. The stitches will dissolve, but you need to take her to her doctor in ten days or so, just to make sure everything is healing properly.”
“Can we take her home now?”
“You can. The test is very reliable, but I want you to keep a close eye on her for a few weeks. If there is any sign of headache, fever, irritability, restlessness, or anxiety, you must bring her to the emergency room immediately.”
I patted Lilly on the hand and reached down and kissed her on the forehead.
“You’re gonna be fine,” I said, as much for me as for her. “You’re gonna be fine.”
“If you will excuse us, the nurse and I will go ahead and give her the injection. You can come back in about ten minutes.”
I winked at Lilly, took Caroline’s hand, and walked out of the room, down the hall, and through the automatic doors that led into the sunshine.
“What’s this about a curse?” Caroline said after we stood in silence for several minutes. “I thought you didn’t know what she was saying.”
“It’s nothing. Really. Don’t worry about it.”
“What ever happened to being open and honest?” she said. “I thought you weren’t going to hide things from me anymore.”
In years past, I’d made a habit of keeping things from Caroline, things I didn’t think she needed or wanted to know. But last year, shortly after my mother’s death, I’d finally opened up to her. I told her about Sarah being raped when we were children and about my shame in being unable to defend her, about my terrifying experiences in the military, about the mayhem I witnessed every day at work, about the frustration I felt at being raised without a father. The conversation seemed to lift a psychological burden I’d been carrying for years, and I’d promised to tell her everything in the future.
“I’m not hiding anything,” I said. “I just thought you had enough on your mind. Besides, I’m not taking it seriously.”
“Who told you she put a curse on you?”
“It was just some old guy who came into the coffee shop the other day.”
“So tell me about it.”
“I’ll tell you on the way home. Let’s go get Lilly.”
A nurse brought me a wheelchair, and I rolled Lilly out to the car. During the drive home, I told Caroline and Lilly about the old man who came into the coffee shop Friday morning. I left out the part about one of us having to die, and I didn’t say anything about Natasha’s Dobermans.
“Did he tell you his name?” Caroline said.
“I didn’t want to know his name.”
“Do you think he was some kind of Satanist?”
