Nine Finger Manicure

I want to tell you a funny story. I want to, but I don't know if I can. See, as I repeatedly tried to find the right way to frame what happened last weekend, I realised I didn't know for sure if this is a funny story, or if it's tragic, or if it's an inextricable mix of the two, with some bonus feelings mixed in for added confusion. It's like I want to bake you a cake, but at some point my elbow slipped, and now I don't know if there's too much salt in the batter for what comes out of the oven to be considered sweet. So instead of trying to wrangle reality into the shape I'd like it to take, I'm just going to tell you what happened, and you can decide for yourself what it tastes like.

In the cake analogy: let's see what mangy brioche we can extrude from this accident.

It started when I chose to save a drowning dog. We were enjoying a spring day at Beaver and Elk Lake, walking our own pup along the banks, when we came across a large dog standing in the water a couple of metres out from the shore. He had a collar but was alone, whining, his big head dunking under the water like a desktop dippy bird. Was he caught on the big branch his teeth kept returning to? Had he been abandoned? Despite the million questions in my mind, at that point I stopped thinking, and went into Superhero Mode.

Let's pause for a second so you don't get a misguided image in your head. I am not Superman. I am not Superman still hanging after a three-day bender, crawling to rescue a cat from a tree only to find it has a kryptonite collar. I am a five foot two collection of milky curves clomping through the woods in Doc Martens, given colour only by tattoos and a dash of April sunburn. I am three scoops of vanilla ice cream with sprinkles, coming to the rescue of a dog that on all fours came up to my hip bones. I am exactly as strong as you'd expect a copywriter to be, I am often bamboozled by my own dog whose tallest portion reaches my ankles, and there is an entire absence of grace from my body, partially accounted for by anatomical flat-footedness, but mostly due to a lack of finesse or dexterity so core to my identity, I sometimes panic that even my brain is clumsy, my words (the only thing I really have to offer) a mushy pile of barely discernible sensations. I am looking at a rottweiler mix, champing on a branch in muddy water, infested with blue-green algae, with no way to gauge the depth other than the water sloshing against the dog's collarbones. I am wearing boots and cycling shorts and sun cream and prescription sunglasses and a light flannel over a silly t-shirt of three podcasters howling at a moon. I am not remotely super by terrestrial standards, but when I see the dog in the water, see the other hikers glance and look away, I can already feel the soggy lake bottom creeping into my shoes like destiny. If I am a superhero, I am pre-glow-up Peter Parker, about to swing face-first into a billboard.

I hang the flannel on a tree and tromp into the lake. The water immediately swamps my boots, threatening to seep up my shorts as I reach the dog, but falling just shy of the hem. I can't see my knees. Up close, I can immediately see the dog isn't drowning. It isn't even caught. It's just alone, beavering down on a branch, whining desperately. The water is entirely opaque with mud and floating leaves, and though it's shallow, the dog's insistence—tugging at a branch as if life depended on it—makes me wonder briefly if there is someone trapped beneath. I almost instantly know that's not true, that I'm not about to become one of those dog walkers who happens on a body, but there's also the tragic empathy I feel for animals, namely: these are not dumb creatures. They have reasons for their actions. If humans are rational, so too are non-human animals, and on this point I decide the dog must have a reason for its constant grappling, the high-pitched whine as it pulls again and again at the lodged branch. He won't come with me without that branch, and I won't leave him alone to fend for himself. Yes, this dog is clearly the same weight as I was pre-COVID gains, with a mouth easily engulfing a tree limb thicker than my arm, but he's also a lost domestic dog left in the woods—either someone is looking for him, or else he has been abandoned. Whichever turns out to be true, the solution is compassion. Instead of attempting to drag him out of the lake, I try to assist him with the branch, figuring he'll come along happily once satisfied with his stick.

I reach my hands into the water, wrap them around the lump of tree, and pull. The branch is seven feet tall just in its exposed part, with some waterlogged piece entrenched in the mud, and refuses to relinquish even a piece of itself to the dog. I wrench back with all my body, and unsurprisingly, have no better luck than the extremely muscular dog by my side. I ignore the dawning reality that humans also have irrational impulses, that maybe the dog just wants a stick for the sake of having it, that perhaps as the higher-minded creature I should just treat him like a toddler and drag him to shore, but that feels arrogant. I decide to give it one last pull before taking a different tack.

At this point, the dog bites down on the branch, catching my left-hand pointer finger in the crossfire of his maw. I leap back screaming, pulling away a bloody mess where the tip of my finger once was. It was an accident, an extremely painful one; the dog whines in panic, alarmed by my noise, circling like a child who doesn't know their strength. I stand in the water clutching my hand, frozen, until my partner snaps me back to reality and demands I get out of the bloody lake. They hand me our dog, who is currently experiencing a pique of jealousy, taking her lead and, after a few swipes, successfully clipping it onto the collar of the beavering rottweiler. They pull the dog to the shore, and we begin a brisk walk back the way we came, hoping some earnest volunteer has nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than to man the information centre by the toilets. Couples turn their heads away as we pass; I hold my finger aloft, trying to elevate it against the bleeding, realising I am effectively holding a gory flare up in front of my face. Like a siren, it helps us cut through the oncoming human traffic quite efficiently. No one attempts to talk to us as we stomp back the mile or so to the information centre, no one takes a second glance as we let ourselves into the staff-only outside picnic area (the only place with a fence where we can keep two dogs penned with one leash), no one answers as we batter on the door of the little hut where tour guides and nature lovers reside in off-peak hours. We have two dogs, one leash, a bleeding wound, some trail mix, and another half mile away, a hybrid Prius car-share.

We separate the dogs. Fig, our corgi, yaps furiously at the wet intruder; the unnamed rescue shivers and howls, taking the opportunity to lick away the stray blood that has somehow landed on my thighs, to kiss my face apologetically. I ask him to sit, for a paw, for kisses; he complies and this calms him. He's well-trained, with salt in his eyebrow fur. He isn't aggressive, just a gentle giant cooling in the sun, feeling sorry for himself. We call an animal shelter, who don't work Sundays; we text ROAM, a group for missing dogs. As my partner Dan tries to explain the situation on the phone, I beg Fig to please be quiet, please stop yelling jealously at the dog we have now nicknamed Buddy, who is cowering at the opposite end of the picnic table. I am trying not to look at my finger; last time I spared a glance, it looked like a grape on the end of a toothpick. When I catch sight of the bloody lollipop it's become, my head swims. Fingers aren't supposed to be so perfectly round. It is as fat as a bumblebee, gooey as a mashed raspberry. I hope it doesn't pop, but I can't exactly cross my fingers about it.

We wait ten minutes, fifteen; the pain is driving me to the end of my patience, and if we're honest, I didn't have that much to begin with.

"We should take him home, or drop him off at the animal hospital," I suggest. "They'll know what to do."

And then I can get myself to Emergency, I think. My finger is so angry, I don't want to risk first aid—I can picture trying to clean it and passing out from the pain. I am dizzy with adrenaline and sunshine. There is blood in my periphery. Dan relents, and we walk the dog up the hill toward the car park, racing as fast as an injured writer and a software engineer carrying a corgi can manage, when a car rolls down the window.

"Is that your dog?" the woman asks, nodding to Buddy.

"No," I pant, "we found him. We're trying to get him home. Is he your dog?"

"That's Jackson," she says, nodding to Buddy, whose tail wags with recognition. "Hey Jackson!" The dog wiggles. "His owner is up in the top parking lot. Old guy. White hair."

We thank her and quicken our pace.

"We're taking you home, Jackson!" I pant, dragging him away from the smell of a bush. I can picture the old man wearing holes in his shoes, pacing and chewing up his insides in the agony of Jackson's absence. At the top of this slope waits relief, the smile of a thankful codger, the feeling I have done something good, that this was worth it.

A man sits in a white SUV in the top parking lot. He is scrolling on his phone as we approach, and clambers languidly out of his car. Just like Jackson, he has no sense of urgency. The dog bounds up, filled with sudden cheer.

"We found him in the lake," I gasp, noting that my cardio needs some work. I unclip Jackson from Fig's lead so Dan no longer has to carry her wriggling twenty-something pounds across a shoulder. My finger is still aloft, bloody and pulsating. The man turns his phone screen to me. It is filled with pictures of Jackson gnawing on logs in the lake.

"We call him the beaver of the lake," he smiles pleasantly, scrolling through the camera reel. "He just loves chomping on wood."

"He bit me," I say, trying to drag him towards a shared reality. His eyes flick to my finger, a hint of shock as he notices the blood, then back to perfect peace.

"I'm sure it was an accident."

"It was, but…" How do I express to this man that I am not mad at his dog, but at his nonchalant lack of responsibility? "It did a lot of damage," I add, trying to press upon him the situation.

"Is this where you found him?" He's hit a highlight reel of Jackson frothing just off the shore of the lake. It could be exactly where we found him, or one of a thousand other spots like it. He smiles at the footage. "He really does love sawing wood."

"Does he have his shots?" Dan cuts in. The man's face drops—not with guilt, but with sudden bewilderment.

"I don't know," he says. "I mean, I've never given him any in the two years I've had him."

"We contacted ROAM," I said. "We called the shelter and the VCA for help." He does not blink. "What breed is he, anyway?" At this point I can at least satisfy my own curiosity as to what kind of bite I can boast to have survived.

"A rottweiler mix," he says, adding: "He's really very friendly."

"He's a very good boy," I agree, holding back the addended scream but you're a fucking idiot. My knees are starting to shake. No vet visits for two years. I think of the giant licks to my face, the gentle whimpering as cold crept back into his wet fur, all the while this berk sitting back in the AC, waiting for him to Homeward Bound himself to the car. Jackson deserves better. A childish impulse wants to snatch him back and run, but the guy isn't cruel—he's incompetent, utterly negligent, but he loves his dog and the dog loves him.

Superman gets thanked when he saves the cat, but I'm not Superman. I'm not even teenage super-geek Peter Parker. I'm a scared thirty-five year old with wet shoes trying to remember when I had my last tetanus boost.

"This has been lovely," I lie, "but I have to go to hospital now."

The man does not say sorry, or thank you. The last we hear is him yelling for Jackson, who ran off into some bushes as soon as he was unleashed.

I do not have rabies. I do not have tetanus. My nail has not been pierced—the bite landed just beyond the cuticle, leaving a large split and a swollen finger pad, but ultimately the injury is superficial. After three hours wearing sunglasses in Emergency, during which time I am given wet gauze to soak off the scab and tylenol for the pain, I realise I can rock up to urgent care in the morning instead of waiting all night for a bandage. Dan picks me up where they left me, at the entrance to Emerge. At the sight of fresh socks, pants, and shoes, I almost cry. We drive to a nearby pub for dinner, where I hide my bloodied finger under my flannel sleeve and eat too much mac and cheese. By the end of the meal, I am no longer shaking, but still exhausted.

"Why did I do that?" I ask Dan on the drive home.

"Do what?"

"You know. Dive in. Be reckless."

"It's who you are," Dan shrugs kindly. "Your heart is a ball of chaotic good impulses."

I sit on that for a while. They are right, but there is a feeling of incompleteness to what they said. I tried to save a drowning dog; why do I feel ashamed?

At home reality returns. My dog is waiting, and so are the plants that need tending, the recycling that needs taking out, the little responsibilities winking from all corners. On the chores board, Dan has moved the ticket Buy flights from To Do to Done. I look down at my pulpy finger. Two weeks until my sister-in-law's wedding. I have a dress, I have shoes, I have slowly pieced together a beautiful outfit for the day; all that's missing is a professional coat of paint on my nails. A stone sinks to the bottom of my stomach.

"Guess I'm getting a nine-finger manicure," I tell Dan.

"It could have been worse." Dan squeezes my shoulder.

I think of Jackson, the way negligence has dulled the shine on the love the old man gives him. I look at my finger. I feel the cold, still lingering in my toes under the warm dry socks Dan brought—socks I didn't think to ask for—and that's when I realise I am not Superman. I am a five foot two bloodied mess who risked a finger to save a dog that wasn't drowning.

Isn't that funny?