. . . We neared a tree on the left shoulder of the road, and I could see a rather large dog lying near its trunk, its white fur matted down with rain and mud. It looked rather beastly, and I kept a bit of a distance as Penny approached him and held out her hand for him to sniff. He recognized her, that was certain, and slowly he proceeded to raise up on all fours and respond to her with some long, wet licks. Then Fido looked in my direction, and walked towards me. I held out my hand, slowly, wanting to give him an opportunity to familiarize himself with my smell.
I've been around dogs as much as the next person, I guess. I even owned a dog for a short time. I know animals can smell fear or nervousness. So as we approached one another, I monitored my emotional base to make sure he could sense trust from me. He sniffed at my hand, my fingertips, the cuff of my pants, my ankle. And then he reciprocated with a few slobbery but gentle licks, which seemed to say he accepted me. All seemed to be going according to plan.
But in a split second, everything changed. A deep, low, fear-invoking growl suddenly surfaced from somewhere closeby, but before either Penny or I had a chance to realize what was happening, I saw a flash of white and felt a burning sensation as something deep and sharp cut into the flesh just above my ankle. I looked down in shock to see this dog, who had just a moment ago given me a token of friendship, tear into my leg with determined aggression. I pulled back, completely stunned, my mind straining to interpret the nerve signals firing up from what had instantly become a bleeding mass. I limped further away from the dog, my only solace being the rope tethering him to the tree just beyond my reach.
I looked down to see blood gushing from a long, deep gash, and instantly the sight of it, coupled with the effect of hiking for over an hour on an empty stomach, left me feeling light-headed and weak. We were only about 3/4 mile from home, but as Penny and I attempted to continue on the road leading back to town, I realized that I was not going to be able to make it back on foot.
Within minutes, Penny had flagged down an approaching car, carring a local farming family headed out of town. Through gestures, we were able to quickly garner their help -- one look at my leg, and they herded us into the backseat of their car, minutes later dropping us off just outside my apartment door. The next few hours were more or less a nightmarish blur. I grabbed my wallet and health insurance papers from my desk, and hopped into a taxi with Penny heading towards the local hospital. Once admitted to the emergency room, I was ushered to a cot while an on-call doctor began removing my shoe and sock and inspecting the wound. His assistant approached and as soon as she took a look at my leg, began making terrible noises that, regardless of language, indicated that whatever was going on down there was NOT pretty.
Two hours later, I had been allergy tested for contraindications to some kind of medicine the nurse was planning to shoot me up with, shot in both the arse and my left forearm with menacingly large needles, and had nearly fainted and vomited from the immediate effect of these unfamiliar drugs as they started coursing through my bloodstream.
With little ability to communicate with the doctor, I had to be content with the shoddy patch-up job that the doctor had done on my wound. He somehow was able to explain to me that I needed stitching, but that because the wound was from an animal bite, they have to wait a few days first. I was still bleeding through the gauze as I hobbled out of the hospital. I thought I had understood something about recieving a pain/antibiotic prescription, but there was no one there to help us find the pharmacy and, as the evening was dragging on and on, Penny and I finally decided it was time to head home.
An hour later, I was at Penny and Francois' kitchen table, my leg propped on an adjacent chair, trying with all of my energy to focus on the plate of clams and pasta and fresh parsley loving laid out before me, and not on the perilous incident that had undoubtedly changed the course of the next few weeks. Penny apologized profusely, but I wouldn't hear it. She was not to blame. No one was to blame. It was just one of those things, and it happened, and that was that. There was no undoing it and it was best that I just start focusing on my healing.
But all kinds of fears creep up under the guise of realistic concern when you're brought head to head with an unexpected crisis. What about rabies, I thought in a half-panic. With the dozen plus jabs that I received before embarking on my round-the-world travels in 2006, rabies had NOT been on the agenda. How would I know if I were at risk? And why couldn't they stitch me? What would happen when I returned to the hospital tomorrow? How was I going to get through the night with the throbbing pain from my ankle?
A few glasses of wine and an hour of candlelight later, and my mood was tranquil, my spirits calmed. I was ready for sleep and anxious to meet with Harrison, who had offered to take me back to the hospital for more treatment Sunday morning. As I laid my head back on my pillow and thought of the trauma of the past few hours, and of the past few days, I took solace in the sweet reminder that I was not alone, that I was so very fortunate to have many caring people around me, and many caring people far from me, whose thoughts and prayers would surely be reaching me over the days to come. It was almost enough to allow me to black out the angry bite that a four-legged stranger had inflicted on me just hours before. The devilish jaws of this insidious animal may have wounded my flesh, but I was determined to see that my spirits stayed high, intact, and unharmed.
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