The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,78
following him. She realized Strudel was missing and threw Oliver an uncertain glance as he followed her inside.
“Something up?”
“I don’t know.”
They found the dogs in the living room, Smitty standing over Strudel, his tail down. Strudel glanced at them from beneath her eyebrows but didn’t move, the tip of her tail barely twitching in welcome.
“Hey, sweetheart. Are you okay?” Oliver said, crouching to run a hand down her body.
She turned her head to lick his hand briefly before closing her eyes again. It was so removed from her usual buoyant behavior that Mackenzie felt a spike of alarm.
“Maybe the bone didn’t agree with her?” she wondered out loud.
She glanced around, looking for it, and spotted a gelatinous mess by the French doors.
“Oh. It looks like she’s thrown up.”
Oliver followed her gaze, his face creased with worry.
“Has she ever done that before?” she asked.
“Not since she was a puppy. She used to eat the filling from her toys and then throw it up a few days later. But she hasn’t done that for over a year.”
Mackenzie joined him by Strudel, patting the dog’s silky coat.
“What do you want to do? Take her to the vet?”
“Is there one nearby?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been to a clinic in Rosebud a few times, but I don’t know if there’s anything closer.” She checked her watch. It was nearly seven. “But they probably wouldn’t be open now, even if there was one nearby.”
As though she sensed their dilemma, Strudel pushed herself to her feet and started wagging her tail in earnest, nuzzling her snout into Oliver’s hand.
“Okay,” he said slowly. The look he gave Mackenzie was baffled.
She shrugged. She had no idea what to do, either. “This is where a basic grasp of English from you two would be really handy,” she said to the dogs.
Oliver ran his hands over his dog, pressing on her belly, checking her paws and eyes. Strudel tolerated the inspection happily enough, waiting patiently for it to be over.
“Well, I’m a sound engineer, not a vet, but she seems okay to me.”
“She’s not quite herself, though, is she?” Mackenzie said.
“No.” He scratched under Strudel’s chin. “Why don’t we keep an eye on her, and if she’s still lethargic in the morning, I’ll take her to the vet?”
He didn’t voice the other option—that her condition might deteriorate even further—but they both knew the possibility was there.
Mackenzie was aware of a low level of anxiety within herself as she made spaghetti for dinner, something she’d like to attribute to concern for Strudel but that she suspected had been present since their arrival at her Melbourne apartment.
It had been unsettling, walking into a space that had felt more like a museum celebrating her former life than her home. The furniture, the food in the cupboards, even the toiletries in the bathroom had looked familiar but strange. She’d always been proud of the decor—she’d paid an interior designer enough to create it for her—but all she could think when she stood in her living room was that the couch looked incredibly uncomfortable and that the sculpture by the window was dangerously sharp.
The whole experience had been jarring. As though she’d spied an old family snapshot and not recognized herself.
Gordon’s phone call and subsequent job offer hadn’t helped, either. Despite having had several hours to digest what had happened, she was still no closer to making a decision—yet another marker of how everything in her life had shifted since the accident. Home wasn’t home anymore, and apparently her ever-present ambition had mellowed.
At least, that was the way it felt right now. But maybe Oliver was right. Maybe she had only to move into her apartment and it would become home again. The same with Gordon’s job offer. If she took it, she’d essentially be slipping back into her old life.
It should have been a reassuring thought. It was what she’d been striving for through months of arduous rehab, after all. But it didn’t feel reassuring. It felt...empty. Hollow.
They settled in for a quiet night, turning in early after watching half a movie. Mackenzie was aware of Oliver getting up twice in the night to check on Strudel, but both times he returned to bed and assured her everything was fine.
Strudel wasn’t interested in her breakfast the next morning, however, sniffing her bowl disinterestedly before returning to the cushion and settling down to sleep again.
“I could defrost some chicken to see if she’ll eat that,” Mackenzie offered.