Bond, Jamie Bishop [fiction novels to read .txt] 📗

by now she was very sure she would do just that – that this wouldn’t be a bad way to go. The television was playing a favorite movie, filling the room with a cozy, flickering glow. A candle burned on the nightstand, in a crystal snowball-shaped holder her mother had given her for Christmas some years back. It was one of the few decorations she hadn’t yet become afraid of. The freezing air felt wonderful as it coursed over her body, but the vent below the window was blasting out enough heated air to keep her from shivering.
Jenny began to feel drowsy. She hoped that the heat vent would keep warming her, but she knew it would shut down in a few minutes. She felt too shaky to pull the blanket off the bed. She hoped she would fall asleep before she got too cold. With death both a lovely fantasy and a detached impossibility at the same time, she wasn’t truly worried. All she knew was that the cold air felt good. She also knew that she wanted her mother to come and hold her, and that she wanted to cuddle her old teddy bear, but both of those things were impossible.
Soon after Jenny closed her swollen eyes, the heat vent shut off. Frigid air, straight off Lake Superior, continued to swirl over her emaciated body.

It was still dark out when Jenny woke. She didn’t open her eyes for a moment, and wasn’t entirely sure of what had happened. Slowly it came back to her…the window, the fall. The wonderfully cold air.
It was no longer wonderful. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her teeth were chattering and her nose felt numb. When she attempted to move, she discovered something disturbing: she couldn’t.
She wasn’t paralyzed. She was simply too weak to move. Swallowing hard, she tried to think. Her mind was foggy. What was this? Hypothermia? A heart condition? Plain old starvation? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember all the differentiating facts. Her heart began to pound again, with a violence that frightened her.
Suddenly, finally faced with it, Jenny Rado was afraid of death. In seconds, just like all the stories, her life began to run through her mind like a movie. She saw high school, college, roommates, friends, boyfriends, and pets. She saw her normal life and watched it disintegrate. She suddenly wanted that life back with an intensity that she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of. A tear slid from her eye. Was this how it ended? Would she die alone, isolated by her own fears, suddenly realizing, too late, that she didn’t want to die after all?
Sobs wracked her body as her heartbeat thudded loudly and erratically. Her mouth felt dry from gasping for breath. She wanted desperately to live.
Jenny had left the hall light on, and her bedroom door was open slightly. She was aware of the sudden shift of light, but didn’t associate it with anything at first; her mind was spinning too fast to make any connections.
When the door inched open, she felt a surge of relief so pure that it nearly knocked her out. Her mother. Her mother had gotten up the stairs on her crutches. It was all going to be okay. She would ignore the germs. She would. She had to.
Then, in a moment of stark terror, Jenny realized who had opened the door.
Of course. Her mother would have called. Then she would have yelled. She wouldn’t be silent.
Bond stuck his massive head into the bedroom and looked at Jenny, his dark brown eyes fixing on hers.
Tears were flowing fast now. Panicked and afraid, she still wrestled with her fear. Germs. She could practically see them jumping off the big dog.
Slowly, quietly, the animal entered the bedroom. His tongue hung out comically, but he seemed serious, as if aware of the situation.
Jenny tensed up with terror as he approached. With each footfall, she imagined the germs he was tracking on her floor, the germs he was bringing nearer and nearer to her.
Shut up! she screamed in her mind. Stop it! He’s a good dog… She tried to talk herself down, reminding herself just how much she loved dogs. She thought of the strange kinship she’d always felt with the animals, how they seemed to understand her. She tried to force her fears away.
It didn’t work. As Bond came closer, Jenny began to writhe in agony, torn between a fierce desire to live and a blind fear of the germs the dog carried. She sobbed long and low, reduced to animal-like sounds of terror. Violently shaking, her hands clumsily wiped the tears from her cheeks, where they were quickly replaced with fresh ones. She shook her head as she cried, terrified.
As the dog’s fur touched her, Jenny wanted to jump out of her own skin. She was repulsed beyond imagining, screaming and sobbing at the same time. Already depleted, the rush of emotion was too much for her body, and again she passed out.

Gina Rado woke up shortly after dawn, as was her habit. Despite her injuries, she couldn’t bring herself to sleep in, as the doctor said she should. Glancing at the floor, she expected to see Bond. It had become a morning ritual for the big dog to accompany her while she put out fresh seeds and suet for the birds. Even on her crutches, she’d kept up their feeding. Bond loved the opportunity to watch, and to bark at the squirrels.
The big white dog was gone, however, and immediately Gina was worried.
Ten phone calls and several throat-straining shouts up the stairs later, Gina knew something was very wrong. Out of options, she started up the stairs, wincing with discomfort and certain that she would fall at any second.
Halfway to the second floor, she could feel the difference in temperature. It was freezing. She could see her breath in the air. Trying to hurry but knowing she shouldn’t try to go too fast, she made her way up the rest of the stairs, pushed Jenny’s door open with her shoulder. Looking inside, she stopped short.
From his spot on the floor near the open window, Bond lifted his massive head and looked at her. His big tail began to wag, and Gina realized with horror that her daughter’s foot was under that tail.
As fast as her crutches would allow, Gina rushed to her Jenny’s side and shook her. The girl was alive, and Gina realized with a flood of emotion that Bond, in a mysterious confluence of instinct and understanding, had realized Jenny was freezing to death. As his ancestors had done for centuries, he had covered the girl with his own body, sharing his body heat in order to keep her temperature from dipping any lower than it already was. As she worked to get Jenny moving, Gina marveled at the dog’s compassion. Jenny had shunned the animal, had thrown things at him and treated him horribly. A dog knows things, and Bond undoubtedly could feel the fear and fear-induced hatred pouring off Jenny in waves whenever she looked at him.
It took half an hour to get Jenny into bed. With her temperature back to normal, she didn’t need to go to the hospital. She was close to incoherent, however, and Gina took advantage of her daughter’s state in order to get some food into her. A PowerBar was all she could find, but it was something, and the fact that Jenny accepted it from Gina’s hands was something else altogether.
In the unused room, with Jenny’s old furniture, there was a stack of blankets. Gina piled them on top of her daughter, tucking them in around her as she’d done when Jenny was small. Tears that she’d been fighting back the entire time finally spilled when Jenny made no motion to stop her mother’s hands from touching her.
Gina didn’t know what to make of it. Was her daughter dying…or finally coming back? She had no idea. Her heart and breathing seemed fine, and Gina made sure she drank some water before she fell asleep.
“The dog,” Jenny said suddenly, her eyes opening. “Ma…the dog…”
“It’s okay, honey,” Gina soothed. “I’ll wash down everything. You just rest.”
Jenny shook her head as hard as she could. “Uh-uh.” Gina watched, in a state not unlike shock, as her daughter’s thin, trembling hand wriggled out from under the blankets and rested on Bond’s head. The dog’s eyes had not left Jenny since Gina had coaxed him to his feet, reluctant to leave his patient.


Years passed.
Gina Rado drove down a quiet street not far from her own house. She turned down a long driveway and pulled her car to a stop in front of a mid-sized house, got out of the car and made her way to the front door.
A single deep bark issued from within the house. As she always did, Gina ran her hand over a sign posted near the doorbell: Jennifer E. Rado, D.V.M.
The smell of pot roast filled the air as Jenny pulled the door open. Gina smiled broadly. Standing before her was a beautiful, shapely girl, her eyes twinkling, long blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. “Hey, Ma.”
They enjoyed dinner together. Occasionally, Jenny excused herself to check on her patients, disappearing into the veterinary office that occupied a large, converted garage attached to the side of the house.
During those short absences, Gina stared contentedly around the living room, gazing in wonder at the pictures of friends, and of pets with their grateful owners. She blinked back tears for what felt like the millionth time; reveling in the knowledge that her daughter was living the life she had started out to live, the life she had reclaimed.
After chatting for hours, Gina reluctantly got up to leave. As usual, the guest room was open to her, but Blackie, a large rescued Lab that Jenny had nursed back from horrid abuse, was waiting for Gina at home.
Jenny returned a few phone calls after her mother left. Gina called when she got back home, as Jenny always asked her to. Once the dinner dishes were stacked in the dishwasher and all the furry patients had been tended to, Jenny headed upstairs for bed.
A visit from her mother, as frequent as they were, never failed to make Jenny grateful. She was acutely aware of how close to death she had come, and of how much her mother had done for her. Now, gazing contentedly at the television, she sighed and snuggled back against the pillows.
Old habits die hard, and Jenny still slept with the television set on, the sound nearly muted. The room was suffused with a soft, blue glow. Sitting on the dresser in a place of honor, Jenny’s beloved childhood teddy bear, no longer banished for the germs it carried, watched over her with wise button eyes.
Eyes carrying even more wisdom than the bear’s looked up at Jenny as she curled up to sleep. Bond had been lying on the bed since following her upstairs, and the look in his eye seemed to be admonishing her to go to sleep. Gina loved to play tug with the gentle giant, and at his age, the big dog tired easily.
With the window cracked open to let in a draft of cold, fresh air, Jenny snuggled up against Bond. In her prayers, she thanked God for the furry beast at her back, the mixed-breed rescue who knew that his body heat would save the shivering girl on the floor. The noble dog who