Grace Fully Sleeping

The dog limped towards my sister, and collapsed on the floor, exhausted.

“Grace, I’m here, my girl!” murmured Nancy as she kneeled beside her old friend, and started patting her neck.

“Nanou! She recognized you!” I cried. I was ecstatic. We had been so worried these past two days. We thought Grace was dead.

The vet lowered his head. I bet he thought about calling the cops the minute he heard us demanding to see Nancy’s collie.

“I have to admit... it looks like you love your dog!” he said in a low voice.

“Of course I love my dog!” Nancy was defensive.

“We came to your house to save your dog. We had been told she was dying and her owners had abandoned her to go on holiday...”

“Nonsense! We went on a holiday but we had a friend looking after Grace.”

“Your friend definitely failed in her mission!” He was getting the upper hand. “Your dog was lying in the hot sun, unconscious. She had no water, and the food in her plate was rotten. We have photos we can show you.”

It went on and on. He kept depicting the horrible picture of Grace dying in the sun. Nancy had no way to justify herself without blaming her friend, so she kept quiet to the accusations of ill-treatment to an animal.

“I am here now; I will take care of her... And take her home.”

The vet insisted. Grace could not travel.

“But your clinic is too big, you are too busy... Let me stay with her. She is 14 years old, she has paralysing arthritis and a mouth cancer...”

“There is not much we can do... You can stay one hour.”

I had been in that garden with my mother, after the friend called. They had already taken Grace away when we got there. It was like a nightmare: everything only came together and started to make sense once it was all over... and too late. I remember asking the friend:

“Why did you not take Grace inside the house, where it is nice and cool?”

She replied something like “I thought about it, but since she was not moving, I didn’t do it.”

During the next two days, Nancy went often to the clinic, waited endlessly in the hall until she was allowed to see Grace. She sat beside her and held a spoon of food to her mouth. Sometimes, the old dog would take a nibble and swallow it, but most of the time she just stared at Nancy, motionless.
On Friday night, my sister saw no improvement. She decided to take Grace back to our village the next day; her vet had agreed to help.

On Saturday morning, when she went to the clinic, Nancy was handed a white zipped plastic bag containing Grace’s remains. The nurse said she had passed away during the night.

It was a sad day in Mesterrieux, where my sister owns the land where she put her dog to rest for eternity. A neighbour’s tractor dug the ground and my father shovelled the soil over Grace as I hugged my sobbing sister in my arms.

“When I think about that heat, and how we feel right now, I think of her watching death come slowly, agonizing in the sun... Poor Grace, poor Grace!”

It was such a hot day, I think we all had the same thoughts.

That evening, Nancy and her husband bid a last farewell to Grace. Their two horses were standing nearby in the dark, and my brother-in-law saw his first falling star.

(598 words)