Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself by Zachary Anderegg Read Free Book Online Page A

just down from the Motel 6, where a sign said there was a vacancy. Ordinarily, I prefer to camp in the truck, but tonight I decided to get a room, to prepare. I parked in a nearly empty parking lot, hoping that someone would be inside to offer assistance. As I walked into the fire station, I considered how I would plead my case and thought I might spin it a bit and mention what great publicity it would be for whoever helped me.
    The lobby was empty, but there was a red telephone on a desk next to a sign that said “Please Call for Assistance.” A woman answered, and when I told her the reason for my visit, she told me to hang on and someone would be out shortly.
    A minute later, a kid who looked like he was in his mid-twenties, with a buzz cut that reminded me of my time in the Marines, came out and asked me nonchalantly what was up. He was wearing a navy blue T-shirt and baggy firefighting pants held up by yellow and silver reflective suspenders.
    “I was in a canyon today, about an hour from here,” I said, telling him where it was, “and I found a dog in a pothole, and I think he’s going to die if we can’t get him out.”
    “Okay,” he said.
    “I was wondering if you had any thoughts.”
    “If I have any thoughts?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well,” he said, “we can’t really send out the manpower and the equipment you’d need to do that. We have to be on standby if we get a call to a fire.”
    “That makes sense,” I told him, and it did, but it was disappointing. “Is there any sort of volunteer search-and-rescue group I could contact?”
    “In Page?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Not in Page. That I know of.”
    “What do you do if someone gets lost in the Grand Canyon?”
    “That’s the Park Service. You find the dog in a National Park?”
    “No.”
    “Sorry.”
    I could tell that he really was. He was still trying to think of a way to help me, but he was coming up empty. I thanked him anyway.
    “You going in yourself?”
    “I guess,” I said.
    “You know what you’re doing?”
    “I think so,” I said. “If I screw it up and get stuck myself, then will you come get us both?”
    “Sure,” he said.
    “Don’t worry—that’s not part of the plan,” I said, though it occurred to me that if all else failed, it could be. “Is there an animal hospital in town?”
    He wrote down the name and the address, gave me directions, and wished me luck. I told him I’d need it.
    Page Animal Hospital was a small, single-story white cottage with an addition for offices on the side, on the corner of Eighth and Elm in the center of town. As I parked the truck, I felt relieved, thinking I would at least be getting some kind of good professional advice. The sun was getting lower in the sky, intensifying the light. The front door was open, but the lobby was empty, and the front desk was unoccupied. On a Sunday night, I was happy the door was open. The place was dead quiet. The floor was gray linoleum. Charts on the walls displayed the anatomies of cats and dogs.
    When I heard a noise, I called out, “Hello?”
    I heard someone shout back, “Just a minute.”
    A few seconds later, a weathered looking woman in her early fifties came out, a rag in one hand and a spray bottle of Windex in the other. The only help I could get was from the cleaning lady. She told me the doctor would be back in the morning. I briefly described the situation and asked if she knew where I could get some kind of cat or dog carrier to transport the puppy in. She said they had a few I could choose from and led me to a back room, where I selected one of an appropriate size, red plastic with mesh windows and doors and a handle on the top. I asked her if she thought the doctor would be able to treat a sick animal. I knew it was a stupid question—that’s what they did.
    “Oh sure,” she said. “Dr. Roundtree takes all kinds of strays.” A diploma on the wall indicated the head veterinarian was a Dr. Jerry Roundtree, DVM.
    I thanked her. As