Free Love Is the Best Medicine by Dr. Nick Trout Page B

and, getting no reply, leapt to Dillon’s side, squatting beside him.
    “Can you smell it? Well, can you?” He cocked his head back, forcing a long sniff, in and out, copious nasal hair caught in the flow, and to his delight one or two in the audience cautiously joined in.
    “Am I right?” Mr. Turret nodded and kept on nodding as he encouraged the tentative in an olfactory investigation that yielded little more than confirmation of the new and pervasive aroma of alcohol in the room.
    “Of course I am right. It is the devil’s virus. The rabies. And mark this.” He stood towering above them, holding out the back of his hand for all to see.
    “Satan has bit me too.” He pointed to what looked like an innocuous scabby cut near his thumb. “That’s right, he has possessed my dog and now he comes for me. Now, my friends, on this very night, he is coming for us all.”
    His final words might have stretched into a maniacal cackle if it were not for the attempts of a hospital supervisor to take Mr. Turret by the arm and steer him, and his ambivalent pet, toward a wooden bench.
    Even from his sitting position, with the dog lying at his feet, the sermon continued, spittle flying, his arms gesticulating far and wide regarding the plague that Dillon would unwittingly inflict upon mankind.
    Enter our bright and shiny overnight doctor, Dr. Sweet. Elliot mayhave been a relatively new veterinary graduate, fresh-faced though prematurely balding, yet despite his awkward, gangly, mumbling and bumbling manner, he possessed a dedication to animals and owners alike that was fueled by a heart of gold.
    The supervisor collared Elliot, shoved a hastily created record into his hand, and insisted, with an enigmatic smile, that he take the madman and his dog off into an examination room. Elliot did as he was told, guiding patient and owner, though failing to halt the incessant, vociferous sermon that condemned poor Dillon to a slow and gruesome demise.
    “Rabies, rabies, my dog’s got rabies.”
    Mr. Turret would not be pacified. His belief in his diagnosis was total, unwavering, although eventually simplified to a single word that he repeated over and over again, in a whisper that softened while Elliot began to perform a physical examination on Dillon.
    “Rabies, rabies, rabies.” Two syllables merged into one wobbling, hypnotic sound, a rhythm percolating into the tired and sleepy gray matter of this hardworking intern, as Elliot stretched open Dillon’s mouth and found exactly what he had suspected he would see in the back of the dog’s throat.
    Mr. Turret leaned forward in his chair, the whisper reduced to repetitive lip sounds as he waited for the verdict.
    Conversely, Elliot leaned back in his and took a deep, cleansing breath.
    “I am one hundred percent certain that your dog does not have rabies” is what Elliot had
meant
to say. But, unfortunately, he did not. Chalk it up to brainwashing, sleep deprivation, or some inherent phonetic deficiency—Elliot left out, forgot, or slid by the single most important word in his sentence:
not
.
    There followed a brief moment of silence in which neither man spoke. But just as Elliot realized the absolute horror of his mistake, divine judgment, swift and final, descended upon Mr. Turret.
    Even the Persian cat, now munching his way through his secondbag of Cheetos from a vending machine, sat up when he heard the relentless screaming headed back toward the waiting room.
    “The devil’s benediction! He is rabid, he is. Dillon is rabid, and I am rabid too. Dear God, you have forsaken us both.”
    Mr. Turret dropped to his knees, shoulders pitching forward in time with his sobbing; drool, mucus, and tears trapped in luxuriant whiskers as he heaved, wailed, and swiped at his face.
    It was another twenty minutes before Mr. Turret finally accepted that the cause of Dillon’s problems had been a chicken bone lodged in the back of the poor dog’s throat.
    A NGELL boasts twenty-six examination