And that’s how we—paid, professional firefighters for the esteemed city of Lillian, Massachusetts—wound up doing CPR on a Chihuahua.
I gave the rookie a look, like,You are never telling anybody about this.
And he gave me a look back, like,Oh, I am tellingeverybodyabout this.
The rookie pumped the chest, and I administered the oxygen, and the old lady wiped shaky tears from her cheeks with knobby fingers, watching us like nothing else would ever matter in the world.
I’ll give it three minutes,I thought.
Then I gave it seven.
Finally, I sat back and flipped off the oxygen.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meeting the old lady’s eyes. And I was.
The rookie and I bowed our heads for a moment of pseudo-respectful silence, and that’s when—I swear to God—that crazy Chihuahua gave a snort as loud as a backfiring car, flipped up onto its pointy little paws, and blinked at us.
I gasped and dropped the mask.
The rookie jumped back.“Holy shit!”
“I don’t like that language,” the old lady said, like a reflex.
Then we all stared as the dog bent low and clenched every single abdominal muscle as tight as stone until a pile of dog-food-smelling vomit flopped out of her mouth with a splat. Next, she shifted position, and a metal thimble came flying out of her face like it had been launched by a slingshot.
It hit the window with a clank and rolled to a stop next to the still-sleeping old man.
We looked back and forth between the dog and the thimble, which seemed to have a circumference wider than the dog’s own throat.
Then the dog looked at us for a second, like she couldn’t imagine what we were doing there, before peeing on the floor and then trotting off through the doggie door to get on with her day.
Next thing I knew, the old lady—surprisingly strong—had clamped us into a group hug, and my face was in the crook of the rookie’s neck, my cheek registering some sandpapery stubble and my brain registering panic over being so close to him. The old lady held us there a minute, snuffling tears of relief and saying, “Thank you, thank you,” before grabbing both our hands and leading us to a broom closet in the kitchen.
Inside, down on the floor, was a box full of fat, squirmy puppies.
“Take some,” she said, urging us down toward them.
She wanted to give us puppies? “No thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We can’t accept—”
I was going to say “gifts,” but as I watched the rookie bend right down and pick up and cradle one of those little squirmers in his arms, I finished with “puppies.”
The rookie stood back up to show me, his face bright with good fortune. “Look at these little guys!”
“Half Chihuahua,” the old lady said, “and half poodle.” Then she tilted her head to gesture next door. “The neighbors.”
“A Poo-huahua,” the rookie said, nuzzling his face down into the puppy’s fat belly.
“Rookie,” I said, shaking my head. “No.”
“Don’t you think the station needs a mascot?”
“Shut it down, rookie,” I said, as menacingly as I could.
But he held the puppy up to me. “Look at that face.”
That was it. I drew the line at puppies. “I’m out,” I said, walking away.
When the rookie caught up with me a minute later on the front walk, I did not turn back to look. “Tell me you don’t have a puppy in your arms.”
