when we were ourselves (part ii)
Joe was roused from a fitful and uneven sleep by a sudden weight on his chest and high-pitched whimpering somewhere above him. He struggled back to consciousness, fighting off clingy dreams of running, chasing...something, and found himself nose-to-nose with the little fluffball, who had heretofore been tucked comfortably between his knees where he lay on the couch in the living room. (Closer to the door. He’d hear if Nick came in. Nick hadn’t come in yet.)
“What, again?” he asked groggily, rubbing his face as the puppy thumped down onto the floor and beat it hastily toward the kitchen door. Joe picked up his phone off the table and squinted at the time (and the absence of any missed calls or further texts; all the replies he’d gotten had been negative in the most depressing way). “You just went out like an hour and a half ago.” Joe’s memories of Elvis as a puppy were a little hazy, but he was positive that dog hadn’t had to go out anywhere near this often. Elvis had been a bigger puppy, admittedly, but this was ridiculous.
The puppy scratched at the door and whined. “Alright, alright,” Joe grumbled, tired but good-natured. It wasn’t the puppy’s fault he had a bladder the size of a lima bean. Joe got up, wrapping himself in the throw draped over the back of the couch, and padded into the kitchen to let the puppy out. It was late-early, the moon already set and the back patio and pool all picked out in dim non-light, strangely orangeish from light pollution blotting out the stars. Elvis was sacked out, dead to the world on his bed next to the massive grill, but it was cool out tonight and Joe had been afraid to leave the puppy out here to sleep. He was beginning to rue that decision a little bit.
The puppy had at least always been quick about it, sniffing his way out into the yard and squatting without ceremony; he’d turn tail and come back in only a few seconds. Joe had yet to see him do anything but pee, and this was the third time he’d been let out already. The puppy was a lot slower this time, though, than he had been on previous outings, and he whimpered sadly as he struggled up the back steps. Joe was alarmed; the pup hadn’t had any problem with them earlier, and now walked as if he hurt, or didn’t have the strength to make it up to the back door.
“Puppy?” he said softly, worried, and bent down, helping the little thing up the last step. He sat down on the patio, slumped and dejected-looking, and whined pathetically. “Oh my god, what’s wrong with you?” Joe asked, really concerned. He scooped the puppy up, feeling it shivering in his arms again, and hurriedly went back in, flipping on the kitchen light and sitting down in the middle of the kitchen floor, pulling the blanket off his shoulders and puddling it on the floor for a makeshift little bed. He tucked the puppy into it, trying to rub him warm with a corner of it. “You cold? Here, here, just stay put and let me get you warm,” he said quickly, because the puppy was sluggishly getting to his feet again, nose outstretched and sniffing toward Elvis’ water bowl. “Here, wait, wait.” Joe reached over and pulled the bowl over, water sloshing up on his hand and into the floor. The puppy drank long and grateful, lapping sloppily for several seconds. He seemed tired out by even this much activity, subsiding after a while, panting and whining a little; Joe reached out to push the water bowl back into place and the puppy nearly gave him a heart attack by suddenly growling and nipping at his hand. It wasn’t a hard bite, but it surprised Joe, worried him. This puppy had seemed as disinclined to meanness as Elvis, so having it nip at him was as alarming for Joe as having Elvis do the same had been, earlier.
“Okay, okay,” he said, pacifying, and left the bowl where it was. After a moment, the puppy drank some more, and then curled up in a sad little ball in the blanket, head on his paws, looking up at Joe helplessly. Joe looked helplessly back, tucking the blanket in around the puppy’s little furry body again. “We need to get you to a doctor,” he decided after a moment, feeling scared and alone and ignorant. “Hang on here just a sec.”
He ran into the living room to grab his phone and returned to plop right back down next to the puppy, who, obediently, had not offered to move. Joe quickly searched for a 24-hour vet clinic nearby, despairing to find that the nearest one was nearly a half-hour’s drive even in the middle of the night. They had a hotline, though, so Joe called it, heart skipping a beat in relief when a placid-sounding woman picked up on the other end.
“Emergency-24 Veterinary, this is Rosa. Is this an emergency?”
“Um, I think so,” Joe said, folding a knee up against his chest and watching the puppy lie still and sad-looking in the blanket. “I have this...my, my puppy, he’s acting really weird. Um, I mean. Slow. Tired and weak. All of a sudden, he was fine like an hour ago when I let him out to pee.”
“Has he eaten anything strange in the last twenty-four hours?”
Joe winced. “Uh, um. Yeah. Yeah, I gave him a little barbecued beef earlier in the evening. But my other dog ate some of it too and he’s fine.”
The disapproval in Rosa’s voice made Joe’s stomach knot guiltily. “It could still potentially be food poisoning. Has he vomited?”
“No, well, no, not that I’ve noticed. I just woke up, but. I haven’t seen any vomit, and he was sleeping with me fine til he woke me up to go out again.”
“Has he gone out frequently? Had a bowel movement?”
“Uhm, no, no bowel movement, but...yeah, I. I think it’s frequent? I dunno, he’s gone out, er, well, he’s peed four times in like four hours.”
“What breed is he?”
“I’m...not sure? Uh. He’s a...shelter dog, um. Looks like a cocker spaniel?”
“That sounds a bit excessive. Sir, is your dog diabetic?”
Joe blinked. Blinked again. He stared at the puppy for a long, silent moment, remembering every single time Nick had ever had a sugar crash - the scary pall of weakness and irritability that would come over him, how he’d grow exanimate until his levels evened out again, how pale and tired he’d look as he drank bottle upon bottle of water and went to the bathroom too much. How for a very brief time, Nick would be suddenly and visibly sick - would remind them all that he had a disease that could, given the right circumstances, kill him with ruthless efficiency.
He looked at the sad, weak-looking puppy, his brown, familiar-seeming eyes blinking slowly as if he couldn’t quite bring the room into focus, and prayed hard that he wasn’t about to do exactly the wrong thing.
“Yeah. Yes. He is.”
Rosa’s quick, sharp sigh said You monumental idiot better than the words themselves would have. “Sir, your dog is having a hypoglycemic episode,” she said, but at least she finally sounded as worried as Joe felt. “You need to bring his blood sugar up quickly and then feed him a meal - of approved dog food - to work on stabilizing it. A half-hour or so after he eats, give him a half-dose of insulin, and I suggest monitoring him after to ensure he doesn’t crash again. And I insist that you take him to your regular veterinarian first thing in the morning to discuss feeding and regulating your dog’s blood sugar. Diabetic animals require special care. Do you have a vet, sir? Or do I need to make you an appointment with one of the doctors here?”
“Um...” Joe scratched restlessly at his hair. “No, we’ve got a vet. I’ll make an appointment first thing in the...later today. But just...for now. What do I give him to--”
“Do you have any honey, or simple syrup? Maple syrup will work too. Rub it just gently on the insides of his lips, against his teeth, where he can lick it off. Once he starts perking up a little bit, give him more water and all the food he’ll eat. If he doesn’t improve in the next half hour or so, bring him in immediately. Okay?”
Joe was already levering himself up off the floor and opening the pantry door, rummaging around for the pancake syrup he knew was here somewhere. “Okay. Okay, thank you. Oh no wait! You said half-dose of insulin, that should be...” Joe was trying to think of how much a full dose of insulin was and halve it, and then got tangled up in trying to decide how much a little puppy should have, instead of a full-grown human.
“No more than 15 IU per kilogram. Always round--”
“Down, yeah,” Joe said, moving a tin of oatmeal and mouthing a-ha! to himself as he found the bottle of maple pancake syrup and pulled it down. “Okay. Rosa, thank you very much, you’ve really been a lifesaver.”
“Call again if you have any complications,” she said, and sounded like she was reluctant to hang up at all. But Joe had a sick puppy to nurse back to health and no time to feel guilty about freaking out a vet tech with his ineptitude. So he made his rapid goodbyes and hung up, tossing his phone on the counter and kneeling down next to the curly-haired little animal that Joe suddenly knew he needed to protect with his life.
“Here, Nicky,” he whispered to the puppy, making him whimper a little. He put sticky syrup on his fingers and ran them along the little dog’s gums. “Let’s get some sugar in you.”
After lapping up all the syrup Joe gave him and a lot more water, the puppy was persuaded to eat some of Elvis’ food, too, out of a cereal bowl because he wouldn’t eat out of Elvis’, and gradually he perked up, slowly coming back up to something closer to his wiggly, cuddly self. While he was busy nibbling the last little bits and drinking some more, Joe ran upstairs and, after a couple minutes of searching, found Nick’s satchel under his desk. He pulled it out and fished his testing kit out of it. Joe had no idea if you could use a human’s testing supplies on a puppy, but he was going to make a valiant effort (and not think about how, if he was wrong about this puppy thing, if he really was losing his mind, then wherever Nick was right now, he was without his kit, without his medicine, and without Joe).
The puppy wagged his tail and looked up from his empty bowl as soon as Joe returned to the kitchen, and was swarming up over Joe again before Joe had even sat back down. Joe laughed a little broken laugh, setting the kit aside and gathering the puppy in his arms, and it wasn’t until the little thing was licking the tears off his face that he realized he was crying. He hugged the tiny animal, tight but careful, feeling the flutter of his rapid heartbeat against his hand.
“Please,” he whispered into the puppy’s fur. “Please, Nicky. Be okay.”
The puppy licked his nose for his troubles, and Joe wiped his eyes again and carefully started undoing Nick’s kit.
To Joe’s surprise, the puppy lay still and obliging when Joe arranged him in his lap and picked up one of his front paws, gently rubbing his thumb over the soft pad of his foot. He eyed the lancet dubiously, he and the puppy trading a skeptical look, but then, murmuring an apology, he pricked him, the puppy only flinching a little and whimpering, but not pulling away.
“Good boy,” Joe murmured.
He quickly googled the appropriate blood sugar level for a dog while Nick’s meter processed. The number it returned was nowhere near in the range Joe had long since come to recognize as healthy for his little brother, but it was at the low end of normal for a dog, apparently. Joe only hoped the meter was reading it right; it had never been designed to read for a dog.
“Here,” Joe said, pouring more food into the cereal bowl. The puppy sniffed it disinterestedly, looking up at Joe after a moment as if to say, Do I have to, really? Joe huffed a laugh. He was insane, and he knew it, but if that wasn’t exactly the same look he’d gotten from Nick about ten thousand times before, after Joe had tossed him an apple or pressed a carton of orange juice into his hand, then Joe would eat his shirt.
“Maybe it’s universal,” he said, petting the puppy’s head. “Just...eat when you’re ready, okay? When you get hungry. You’re a growing boy - erm, dog - and you need your vitamins. Not to mention your complex carbohydrates.” Joe sighed and settled his back against the cabinets, picking up the blanket and draping it across his lap, the puppy following almost immediately and settling himself in on Joe’s legs as if he belonged there. Joe didn’t even want to disagree with him; he pulled the bowl of food over next to his thigh so the pup wouldn’t have to go far to get it, then leaned his head back against the cabinets and stared at the slats of pale orange cast on the ceiling from the ambient streetlight outside the miniblinds. The puppy grew still and heavy with sleep in Joe’s lap, and he rested his hand around the small ribcage, feeling the warmth and the steady rise-and-fall of breathing, like once he’d done to a very human Nick when he lay, equally as fragile, in a hospital bed.
“Just be okay,” he whispered again, but he wasn’t crying anymore.
***
Joe did not know this about their kitchen in LA, but if you sat on the floor against the cabinet next to the back door with your head tipped to one side and your mouth hanging open in dire danger of drooling all over your shirt, then at about eight o’clock in the morning, the sun moves into perfect position, slanting across the room and down across your face, hot and blinding and utterly unable to sleep through.
Joe found this out about 8:05 the next morning.
He grunted unhappily as he squinted open his eyes only to have to squeeze them shut again, flailing a hand up to block out the brutal yellow glare, disoriented and wondering why the fuck he left his curtains open and, oh god in heaven, why his neck hurt so much right now, along with every other joint and muscle in his body, fuck.
Then it came back to him, that he was sitting in the kitchen floor at his parents’ house, propped up poorly against the counter, his legs asleep under him, with Nick’s head in his lap.
Wait.
“Nick!” he cried, blinking several times rapidly to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating or something. But he wasn’t. Nick lay curled on the kitchen floor beside him, stark naked, his head pillowed on Joe’s thigh. He looked pale and cold and he only stirred sluggishly when Joe half-yelled his name again, panicked and overjoyed at once.
His brother was here. He was safe. But he was not well. Joe shook Nick until he blinked open his eyes sleepily and smiled up at him, sleep-stupid and unaware and seemingly perfectly content for one silent, drawn-out moment. Joe wanted to cry, he was so happy to see Nick’s smile.
Then Nick frowned and looked down at himself, his face going slack in horror when he realized how very, very naked he was.
Joe couldn’t help but laugh, and while Nick got busy blushing like crazy, Joe untangled the blanket from around him and draped it over his little brother. It was cold in here, and it took Joe a minute to figure out why: the back door was standing open about six inches, fresh early-morning breeze raking in over their exposed skin and making Nick one big pale mass of goosebumps. Joe did not remember leaving the door standing open the night before, but then, a great deal of the night before was a sick sort of blur. He was a little alarmed to know it had stayed open all night, and he reached out and shut it.
“Nick, are you okay?” he asked his brother urgently, pushing back the tangled curls from his forehead. His skin was clammy-feeling. “Where were you? I was worried out of my mind, and now, shit, you’re really sick.”
“Don’t feel good,” Nick agreed, nodding weakly. “Can you get me my kit?”
“I’ll do you one better,” Joe murmured, feeling up behind him on the counter for where he’d placed the kit, out of the reach of chewing puppy (and Elvis) teeth.
The puppy. The puppy was nowhere to be seen. And Nick was lying in his lap instead.
Joe would take the time later to appreciate his mental breakdown (or, perhaps, the fact that his craziness hadn’t been unmerited after all). For now, he busied himself with swiftly pricking Nick’s finger, testing his sugar, and having a more-than-minor freakout to see that high a number. “Jesus,” he murmured, and pulled up the blanket to feel around Nick for his pump.
It wasn’t there. Joe flipped up the blanket, running his fingertips low on Nick’s bare stomach, where the cannula would insert, and found only a bruised section of skin and a small scab, a little line of dried and flaking blood down his side.
“Where the fuck is your pump?” Joe asked, possibly a bit shrill. He’d only had like four good hours of sleep to work on, so he thought he had a right to panic a little. He was already fumbling out a clean syringe, tearing open the plastic wrapper with his teeth.
Nick grumbled and pulled the blanket back down over him. “Came off when I went under the bed,” he said, voice muffled in Joe’s stomach, where he was pressing his face. “Guess it’s still there.”
“Under the...” Joe grew still. He leaned close to Nick and pushed his hair back again, and Nick blinked up at him, eyes growing big and surprised.
“Holy shit,” Nick said faintly.
“Oh my god,” Joe replied, somewhere between triumphant and appalled. “You were the puppy! I knew it!” He very carefully shifted Nick off his lap, bunching up some of the blanket under his head for a pillow, and jumped up to grab the bottle of insulin he’d used last night out of the fridge. (Where “jumping” more closely resembled the movement of a ninety year old man, all Joe’s joints stiff and aching from sleeping sitting up on a tile floor in the cold air.) “I’m not going crazy!” he crowed.
“Or we both are,” Nick mumbled back at him, still sounding a little shellshocked; he was looking at his hands, turning them over and back like he couldn’t believe they were his. “So that wasn’t a cracked-out dream?”
“Afraid not,” Joe told him, subdued, coming back over to plunk down next to Nick and fill the syringe. Nick obediently held the blanket up so Joe could pick a spot on his stomach reasonably distanced from the bruise he’d given himself ripping out the cannula the night before. The two of them were silent for a long couple of minutes, Joe injecting Nick’s medicine and thumbing away the droplet of blood that welled behind the needle, Nick watching with sleepy eyes and then resting his head on Joe’s knee again. Joe breathed a quiet sigh - relief, incredulity, what-the-fuck-do-we-do-now, all at once - and carded his fingers through Nick’s soft hair.
“So,” he said after a while, voice as light as he could make it. “Do we have any theories?”
Nick didn’t reply, but Joe could hear him thinking, feel the shift of his face muscles that meant he was puckering his brow thoughtfully. So he stayed quiet while Nick puzzled on it for a moment. “I was...really a dog, Joe?” he finally asked, which made Joe have to stifle a laugh, because, yeah, it was hard not to get stuck on that. Joe was still working on it himself.
“Frickin’ cute little puppy, actually,” Joe told him. Suddenly he scowled. “You peed on me!”
Nick looked horrified. “Oh my god, I did,” he said, distressed. “I couldn’t help it, Joe! I was...I was excited to see you.” He blushed hotly, and Joe grinned. There was no way he could be mad about it now, not seeing Nick squirm so much about it. “I was...really scared, at first, and I didn’t know what was going on. And Elvis was freaking me out really bad.”
“I think the feeling was mutual,” Joe said, smirking. Nick harrumphed.
“Well he was a lot bigger, so I don’t see what he had to freak about,” he grouched. “And then you were there, and I just...I knew you were safe and you’d make it okay, and I was so glad to see you.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s a lot harder to control yourself when you’re a puppy.”
Joe nearly choked, he laughed so hard, Nick scowling at him then huffing a sigh and gradually having to fight off a smile. Joe beamed at him, petting his hair back again, all his usually carefully-controlled curls gone to tight ringlets for his time spent as a dog and running in and outside into the cool, damp air.
Speaking of which, “Hey, you didn’t wake me up again...did I forget to close the door?”
“Yeah,” Nick confirmed. “I just went out when I needed to. I needed to a lot.”
“Did you feel any better? After I got you food?”
Nick squinted up his eyes a little. “I only sort of remember it. I remember feeling bad and you giving me something sweet. But I did feel better, mostly, after that.”
“Are you okay now?” Joe asked, voice more serious and quiet, as he looked Nick over, touching at his cheeks, his shoulders and collarbones, squeezed at the nape of his neck. Nick nodded slowly, looking like he was taking a thorough assessment of all his component parts.
“Yeah, pretty sure. I feel like crap, but not worse than I’ve felt before. Don’t think I need to go to the doctor, though I do think I’d like to get dressed at some point,” he added, clutching at his blanket a little tighter. Joe relaxed fractionally. If Nick was okay enough to gripe about the working conditions, he would probably be okay.
“Yeah, but what if you go Underdog again?” Joe said, smiling broadly just for the aggravated look Nick shot him. “You’ll just end up having to put your clothes back on.”
Nick sighed and sat up, rubbing his face with the palm of one hand. “Yeah, well. I don’t have to be buck-naked in the meantime.” He slowly tried to get to his feet and Joe quickly got up to give him a hand; he was weaker than he was trying to play off. “Besides, I’m cold. It was a lot warmer in here with fur.”
Joe laughed, a startled, abrupt laugh as Nick’s serious attitude kind of crashed into him and he realized he was not about to wake up, what they were talking about was not going to suddenly make any more sense. The surreality of the night before hadn’t totally worn off yet, Joe’s head still a little muzzy and achy from lack of sleep, but the more they talked about it and the longer Joe kept his hands on Nick’s arms, steadying him, the more it became clear that this wasn’t some long, protracted dream sequence but was actually him and Nick, standing in their kitchen, talking about Nick being a puppy dog.
So Joe took a quick, deep breath, let it out. Okay. So Nick turned into a puppy. Okay.
He was looking at Joe with one eyebrow raised, as if waiting for the psychotic break he expected any moment. Joe just shook his head, smiled at him.
“Okay. Clothes first. Then I think we should make an appointment with Elvis’ vet to figure out how to dose you right, or I’m gonna end up sticking you with too much insulin while you’re all small and furry and then we’ll really be in trouble.”
part iii
“What, again?” he asked groggily, rubbing his face as the puppy thumped down onto the floor and beat it hastily toward the kitchen door. Joe picked up his phone off the table and squinted at the time (and the absence of any missed calls or further texts; all the replies he’d gotten had been negative in the most depressing way). “You just went out like an hour and a half ago.” Joe’s memories of Elvis as a puppy were a little hazy, but he was positive that dog hadn’t had to go out anywhere near this often. Elvis had been a bigger puppy, admittedly, but this was ridiculous.
The puppy scratched at the door and whined. “Alright, alright,” Joe grumbled, tired but good-natured. It wasn’t the puppy’s fault he had a bladder the size of a lima bean. Joe got up, wrapping himself in the throw draped over the back of the couch, and padded into the kitchen to let the puppy out. It was late-early, the moon already set and the back patio and pool all picked out in dim non-light, strangely orangeish from light pollution blotting out the stars. Elvis was sacked out, dead to the world on his bed next to the massive grill, but it was cool out tonight and Joe had been afraid to leave the puppy out here to sleep. He was beginning to rue that decision a little bit.
The puppy had at least always been quick about it, sniffing his way out into the yard and squatting without ceremony; he’d turn tail and come back in only a few seconds. Joe had yet to see him do anything but pee, and this was the third time he’d been let out already. The puppy was a lot slower this time, though, than he had been on previous outings, and he whimpered sadly as he struggled up the back steps. Joe was alarmed; the pup hadn’t had any problem with them earlier, and now walked as if he hurt, or didn’t have the strength to make it up to the back door.
“Puppy?” he said softly, worried, and bent down, helping the little thing up the last step. He sat down on the patio, slumped and dejected-looking, and whined pathetically. “Oh my god, what’s wrong with you?” Joe asked, really concerned. He scooped the puppy up, feeling it shivering in his arms again, and hurriedly went back in, flipping on the kitchen light and sitting down in the middle of the kitchen floor, pulling the blanket off his shoulders and puddling it on the floor for a makeshift little bed. He tucked the puppy into it, trying to rub him warm with a corner of it. “You cold? Here, here, just stay put and let me get you warm,” he said quickly, because the puppy was sluggishly getting to his feet again, nose outstretched and sniffing toward Elvis’ water bowl. “Here, wait, wait.” Joe reached over and pulled the bowl over, water sloshing up on his hand and into the floor. The puppy drank long and grateful, lapping sloppily for several seconds. He seemed tired out by even this much activity, subsiding after a while, panting and whining a little; Joe reached out to push the water bowl back into place and the puppy nearly gave him a heart attack by suddenly growling and nipping at his hand. It wasn’t a hard bite, but it surprised Joe, worried him. This puppy had seemed as disinclined to meanness as Elvis, so having it nip at him was as alarming for Joe as having Elvis do the same had been, earlier.
“Okay, okay,” he said, pacifying, and left the bowl where it was. After a moment, the puppy drank some more, and then curled up in a sad little ball in the blanket, head on his paws, looking up at Joe helplessly. Joe looked helplessly back, tucking the blanket in around the puppy’s little furry body again. “We need to get you to a doctor,” he decided after a moment, feeling scared and alone and ignorant. “Hang on here just a sec.”
He ran into the living room to grab his phone and returned to plop right back down next to the puppy, who, obediently, had not offered to move. Joe quickly searched for a 24-hour vet clinic nearby, despairing to find that the nearest one was nearly a half-hour’s drive even in the middle of the night. They had a hotline, though, so Joe called it, heart skipping a beat in relief when a placid-sounding woman picked up on the other end.
“Emergency-24 Veterinary, this is Rosa. Is this an emergency?”
“Um, I think so,” Joe said, folding a knee up against his chest and watching the puppy lie still and sad-looking in the blanket. “I have this...my, my puppy, he’s acting really weird. Um, I mean. Slow. Tired and weak. All of a sudden, he was fine like an hour ago when I let him out to pee.”
“Has he eaten anything strange in the last twenty-four hours?”
Joe winced. “Uh, um. Yeah. Yeah, I gave him a little barbecued beef earlier in the evening. But my other dog ate some of it too and he’s fine.”
The disapproval in Rosa’s voice made Joe’s stomach knot guiltily. “It could still potentially be food poisoning. Has he vomited?”
“No, well, no, not that I’ve noticed. I just woke up, but. I haven’t seen any vomit, and he was sleeping with me fine til he woke me up to go out again.”
“Has he gone out frequently? Had a bowel movement?”
“Uhm, no, no bowel movement, but...yeah, I. I think it’s frequent? I dunno, he’s gone out, er, well, he’s peed four times in like four hours.”
“What breed is he?”
“I’m...not sure? Uh. He’s a...shelter dog, um. Looks like a cocker spaniel?”
“That sounds a bit excessive. Sir, is your dog diabetic?”
Joe blinked. Blinked again. He stared at the puppy for a long, silent moment, remembering every single time Nick had ever had a sugar crash - the scary pall of weakness and irritability that would come over him, how he’d grow exanimate until his levels evened out again, how pale and tired he’d look as he drank bottle upon bottle of water and went to the bathroom too much. How for a very brief time, Nick would be suddenly and visibly sick - would remind them all that he had a disease that could, given the right circumstances, kill him with ruthless efficiency.
He looked at the sad, weak-looking puppy, his brown, familiar-seeming eyes blinking slowly as if he couldn’t quite bring the room into focus, and prayed hard that he wasn’t about to do exactly the wrong thing.
“Yeah. Yes. He is.”
Rosa’s quick, sharp sigh said You monumental idiot better than the words themselves would have. “Sir, your dog is having a hypoglycemic episode,” she said, but at least she finally sounded as worried as Joe felt. “You need to bring his blood sugar up quickly and then feed him a meal - of approved dog food - to work on stabilizing it. A half-hour or so after he eats, give him a half-dose of insulin, and I suggest monitoring him after to ensure he doesn’t crash again. And I insist that you take him to your regular veterinarian first thing in the morning to discuss feeding and regulating your dog’s blood sugar. Diabetic animals require special care. Do you have a vet, sir? Or do I need to make you an appointment with one of the doctors here?”
“Um...” Joe scratched restlessly at his hair. “No, we’ve got a vet. I’ll make an appointment first thing in the...later today. But just...for now. What do I give him to--”
“Do you have any honey, or simple syrup? Maple syrup will work too. Rub it just gently on the insides of his lips, against his teeth, where he can lick it off. Once he starts perking up a little bit, give him more water and all the food he’ll eat. If he doesn’t improve in the next half hour or so, bring him in immediately. Okay?”
Joe was already levering himself up off the floor and opening the pantry door, rummaging around for the pancake syrup he knew was here somewhere. “Okay. Okay, thank you. Oh no wait! You said half-dose of insulin, that should be...” Joe was trying to think of how much a full dose of insulin was and halve it, and then got tangled up in trying to decide how much a little puppy should have, instead of a full-grown human.
“No more than 15 IU per kilogram. Always round--”
“Down, yeah,” Joe said, moving a tin of oatmeal and mouthing a-ha! to himself as he found the bottle of maple pancake syrup and pulled it down. “Okay. Rosa, thank you very much, you’ve really been a lifesaver.”
“Call again if you have any complications,” she said, and sounded like she was reluctant to hang up at all. But Joe had a sick puppy to nurse back to health and no time to feel guilty about freaking out a vet tech with his ineptitude. So he made his rapid goodbyes and hung up, tossing his phone on the counter and kneeling down next to the curly-haired little animal that Joe suddenly knew he needed to protect with his life.
“Here, Nicky,” he whispered to the puppy, making him whimper a little. He put sticky syrup on his fingers and ran them along the little dog’s gums. “Let’s get some sugar in you.”
After lapping up all the syrup Joe gave him and a lot more water, the puppy was persuaded to eat some of Elvis’ food, too, out of a cereal bowl because he wouldn’t eat out of Elvis’, and gradually he perked up, slowly coming back up to something closer to his wiggly, cuddly self. While he was busy nibbling the last little bits and drinking some more, Joe ran upstairs and, after a couple minutes of searching, found Nick’s satchel under his desk. He pulled it out and fished his testing kit out of it. Joe had no idea if you could use a human’s testing supplies on a puppy, but he was going to make a valiant effort (and not think about how, if he was wrong about this puppy thing, if he really was losing his mind, then wherever Nick was right now, he was without his kit, without his medicine, and without Joe).
The puppy wagged his tail and looked up from his empty bowl as soon as Joe returned to the kitchen, and was swarming up over Joe again before Joe had even sat back down. Joe laughed a little broken laugh, setting the kit aside and gathering the puppy in his arms, and it wasn’t until the little thing was licking the tears off his face that he realized he was crying. He hugged the tiny animal, tight but careful, feeling the flutter of his rapid heartbeat against his hand.
“Please,” he whispered into the puppy’s fur. “Please, Nicky. Be okay.”
The puppy licked his nose for his troubles, and Joe wiped his eyes again and carefully started undoing Nick’s kit.
To Joe’s surprise, the puppy lay still and obliging when Joe arranged him in his lap and picked up one of his front paws, gently rubbing his thumb over the soft pad of his foot. He eyed the lancet dubiously, he and the puppy trading a skeptical look, but then, murmuring an apology, he pricked him, the puppy only flinching a little and whimpering, but not pulling away.
“Good boy,” Joe murmured.
He quickly googled the appropriate blood sugar level for a dog while Nick’s meter processed. The number it returned was nowhere near in the range Joe had long since come to recognize as healthy for his little brother, but it was at the low end of normal for a dog, apparently. Joe only hoped the meter was reading it right; it had never been designed to read for a dog.
“Here,” Joe said, pouring more food into the cereal bowl. The puppy sniffed it disinterestedly, looking up at Joe after a moment as if to say, Do I have to, really? Joe huffed a laugh. He was insane, and he knew it, but if that wasn’t exactly the same look he’d gotten from Nick about ten thousand times before, after Joe had tossed him an apple or pressed a carton of orange juice into his hand, then Joe would eat his shirt.
“Maybe it’s universal,” he said, petting the puppy’s head. “Just...eat when you’re ready, okay? When you get hungry. You’re a growing boy - erm, dog - and you need your vitamins. Not to mention your complex carbohydrates.” Joe sighed and settled his back against the cabinets, picking up the blanket and draping it across his lap, the puppy following almost immediately and settling himself in on Joe’s legs as if he belonged there. Joe didn’t even want to disagree with him; he pulled the bowl of food over next to his thigh so the pup wouldn’t have to go far to get it, then leaned his head back against the cabinets and stared at the slats of pale orange cast on the ceiling from the ambient streetlight outside the miniblinds. The puppy grew still and heavy with sleep in Joe’s lap, and he rested his hand around the small ribcage, feeling the warmth and the steady rise-and-fall of breathing, like once he’d done to a very human Nick when he lay, equally as fragile, in a hospital bed.
“Just be okay,” he whispered again, but he wasn’t crying anymore.
***
Joe did not know this about their kitchen in LA, but if you sat on the floor against the cabinet next to the back door with your head tipped to one side and your mouth hanging open in dire danger of drooling all over your shirt, then at about eight o’clock in the morning, the sun moves into perfect position, slanting across the room and down across your face, hot and blinding and utterly unable to sleep through.
Joe found this out about 8:05 the next morning.
He grunted unhappily as he squinted open his eyes only to have to squeeze them shut again, flailing a hand up to block out the brutal yellow glare, disoriented and wondering why the fuck he left his curtains open and, oh god in heaven, why his neck hurt so much right now, along with every other joint and muscle in his body, fuck.
Then it came back to him, that he was sitting in the kitchen floor at his parents’ house, propped up poorly against the counter, his legs asleep under him, with Nick’s head in his lap.
Wait.
“Nick!” he cried, blinking several times rapidly to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating or something. But he wasn’t. Nick lay curled on the kitchen floor beside him, stark naked, his head pillowed on Joe’s thigh. He looked pale and cold and he only stirred sluggishly when Joe half-yelled his name again, panicked and overjoyed at once.
His brother was here. He was safe. But he was not well. Joe shook Nick until he blinked open his eyes sleepily and smiled up at him, sleep-stupid and unaware and seemingly perfectly content for one silent, drawn-out moment. Joe wanted to cry, he was so happy to see Nick’s smile.
Then Nick frowned and looked down at himself, his face going slack in horror when he realized how very, very naked he was.
Joe couldn’t help but laugh, and while Nick got busy blushing like crazy, Joe untangled the blanket from around him and draped it over his little brother. It was cold in here, and it took Joe a minute to figure out why: the back door was standing open about six inches, fresh early-morning breeze raking in over their exposed skin and making Nick one big pale mass of goosebumps. Joe did not remember leaving the door standing open the night before, but then, a great deal of the night before was a sick sort of blur. He was a little alarmed to know it had stayed open all night, and he reached out and shut it.
“Nick, are you okay?” he asked his brother urgently, pushing back the tangled curls from his forehead. His skin was clammy-feeling. “Where were you? I was worried out of my mind, and now, shit, you’re really sick.”
“Don’t feel good,” Nick agreed, nodding weakly. “Can you get me my kit?”
“I’ll do you one better,” Joe murmured, feeling up behind him on the counter for where he’d placed the kit, out of the reach of chewing puppy (and Elvis) teeth.
The puppy. The puppy was nowhere to be seen. And Nick was lying in his lap instead.
Joe would take the time later to appreciate his mental breakdown (or, perhaps, the fact that his craziness hadn’t been unmerited after all). For now, he busied himself with swiftly pricking Nick’s finger, testing his sugar, and having a more-than-minor freakout to see that high a number. “Jesus,” he murmured, and pulled up the blanket to feel around Nick for his pump.
It wasn’t there. Joe flipped up the blanket, running his fingertips low on Nick’s bare stomach, where the cannula would insert, and found only a bruised section of skin and a small scab, a little line of dried and flaking blood down his side.
“Where the fuck is your pump?” Joe asked, possibly a bit shrill. He’d only had like four good hours of sleep to work on, so he thought he had a right to panic a little. He was already fumbling out a clean syringe, tearing open the plastic wrapper with his teeth.
Nick grumbled and pulled the blanket back down over him. “Came off when I went under the bed,” he said, voice muffled in Joe’s stomach, where he was pressing his face. “Guess it’s still there.”
“Under the...” Joe grew still. He leaned close to Nick and pushed his hair back again, and Nick blinked up at him, eyes growing big and surprised.
“Holy shit,” Nick said faintly.
“Oh my god,” Joe replied, somewhere between triumphant and appalled. “You were the puppy! I knew it!” He very carefully shifted Nick off his lap, bunching up some of the blanket under his head for a pillow, and jumped up to grab the bottle of insulin he’d used last night out of the fridge. (Where “jumping” more closely resembled the movement of a ninety year old man, all Joe’s joints stiff and aching from sleeping sitting up on a tile floor in the cold air.) “I’m not going crazy!” he crowed.
“Or we both are,” Nick mumbled back at him, still sounding a little shellshocked; he was looking at his hands, turning them over and back like he couldn’t believe they were his. “So that wasn’t a cracked-out dream?”
“Afraid not,” Joe told him, subdued, coming back over to plunk down next to Nick and fill the syringe. Nick obediently held the blanket up so Joe could pick a spot on his stomach reasonably distanced from the bruise he’d given himself ripping out the cannula the night before. The two of them were silent for a long couple of minutes, Joe injecting Nick’s medicine and thumbing away the droplet of blood that welled behind the needle, Nick watching with sleepy eyes and then resting his head on Joe’s knee again. Joe breathed a quiet sigh - relief, incredulity, what-the-fuck-do-we-do-now, all at once - and carded his fingers through Nick’s soft hair.
“So,” he said after a while, voice as light as he could make it. “Do we have any theories?”
Nick didn’t reply, but Joe could hear him thinking, feel the shift of his face muscles that meant he was puckering his brow thoughtfully. So he stayed quiet while Nick puzzled on it for a moment. “I was...really a dog, Joe?” he finally asked, which made Joe have to stifle a laugh, because, yeah, it was hard not to get stuck on that. Joe was still working on it himself.
“Frickin’ cute little puppy, actually,” Joe told him. Suddenly he scowled. “You peed on me!”
Nick looked horrified. “Oh my god, I did,” he said, distressed. “I couldn’t help it, Joe! I was...I was excited to see you.” He blushed hotly, and Joe grinned. There was no way he could be mad about it now, not seeing Nick squirm so much about it. “I was...really scared, at first, and I didn’t know what was going on. And Elvis was freaking me out really bad.”
“I think the feeling was mutual,” Joe said, smirking. Nick harrumphed.
“Well he was a lot bigger, so I don’t see what he had to freak about,” he grouched. “And then you were there, and I just...I knew you were safe and you’d make it okay, and I was so glad to see you.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s a lot harder to control yourself when you’re a puppy.”
Joe nearly choked, he laughed so hard, Nick scowling at him then huffing a sigh and gradually having to fight off a smile. Joe beamed at him, petting his hair back again, all his usually carefully-controlled curls gone to tight ringlets for his time spent as a dog and running in and outside into the cool, damp air.
Speaking of which, “Hey, you didn’t wake me up again...did I forget to close the door?”
“Yeah,” Nick confirmed. “I just went out when I needed to. I needed to a lot.”
“Did you feel any better? After I got you food?”
Nick squinted up his eyes a little. “I only sort of remember it. I remember feeling bad and you giving me something sweet. But I did feel better, mostly, after that.”
“Are you okay now?” Joe asked, voice more serious and quiet, as he looked Nick over, touching at his cheeks, his shoulders and collarbones, squeezed at the nape of his neck. Nick nodded slowly, looking like he was taking a thorough assessment of all his component parts.
“Yeah, pretty sure. I feel like crap, but not worse than I’ve felt before. Don’t think I need to go to the doctor, though I do think I’d like to get dressed at some point,” he added, clutching at his blanket a little tighter. Joe relaxed fractionally. If Nick was okay enough to gripe about the working conditions, he would probably be okay.
“Yeah, but what if you go Underdog again?” Joe said, smiling broadly just for the aggravated look Nick shot him. “You’ll just end up having to put your clothes back on.”
Nick sighed and sat up, rubbing his face with the palm of one hand. “Yeah, well. I don’t have to be buck-naked in the meantime.” He slowly tried to get to his feet and Joe quickly got up to give him a hand; he was weaker than he was trying to play off. “Besides, I’m cold. It was a lot warmer in here with fur.”
Joe laughed, a startled, abrupt laugh as Nick’s serious attitude kind of crashed into him and he realized he was not about to wake up, what they were talking about was not going to suddenly make any more sense. The surreality of the night before hadn’t totally worn off yet, Joe’s head still a little muzzy and achy from lack of sleep, but the more they talked about it and the longer Joe kept his hands on Nick’s arms, steadying him, the more it became clear that this wasn’t some long, protracted dream sequence but was actually him and Nick, standing in their kitchen, talking about Nick being a puppy dog.
So Joe took a quick, deep breath, let it out. Okay. So Nick turned into a puppy. Okay.
He was looking at Joe with one eyebrow raised, as if waiting for the psychotic break he expected any moment. Joe just shook his head, smiled at him.
“Okay. Clothes first. Then I think we should make an appointment with Elvis’ vet to figure out how to dose you right, or I’m gonna end up sticking you with too much insulin while you’re all small and furry and then we’ll really be in trouble.”
part iii