‘Oh no,’ said Ed. ‘I’m so sorry love, this is my fault.’
‘No it isn’t, I had no idea he could stretch all the way up there. Bugger, bugger, bugger.’
Liz looked in the box. ‘He’s finished the lot.’
‘Bear, we were gone for two minutes!’ Alice held her head for a moment. ‘I need to take him to the vet, they say you need to get them there ASAP if they eat chocolate. It’s toxic.’
Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. She couldn’t handle it if anything happened to Bear, who had no idea he’d done anything wrong and was wagging his tail like the happiest dog alive.
‘We’ll go in our car,’ said Liz, taking charge. ‘Come on Ed, you find Bear’s collar and lead and carry him to the car, Ali you get your things together and find the address for the vet.’
‘I’m such an idiot, leaving them out,’ Alice mumbled as she pulled on her trainers.
‘I’m the idiot, love,’ Ed said with sorrow.
‘No you’re not, he’s my responsibility,’ she replied sharply.
The three of them zoomed the five-minute drive to the vet’s (as much as you can zoom anywhere in Greater London) and Alice’s heart was thudding the whole time.
Bear was just pleased to be being taken somewhere new, so he bounded into the vet’s like it was Disneyland.
‘My dog, my puppy, my Bear just ate some chocolate brownies,’ Alice babbled to the veterinary nurse behind the counter, who from the minute they raced through the door was leaning forward, cooing at Bear and handing him bone-shaped dog biscuits. ‘We rushed straight over here.’
Alice was expecting a situation like onGrey’s Anatomy. She thought sirens would wail, a trolley would appear, vets would be shouting about emergency surgery and people in scrubs would start running through the building.
Instead of freaking out, though, the nurse simply said, ‘Whoopsie-daisy! I bet you loved them, didn’t you, you naughty boy?’ and called through to the vet. ‘We have Bear Bright and he’s got hold of some chocolate,’ she said down the receiver, calm as anything. ‘You’ll be next in,’ she told Alice with a smile, and went back to doting on Bear.
The clinic door opened and out stepped a kind-looking vet. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Peter. You must be Alice – we spoke on the phone?’
Alice nodded. She’d called her local vet’s earlier in the week to register Bear and arrange a check-up. ‘Is it okay that I brought him? I know he hasn’t had his . . . new patient appointment yet.’ She had no idea what she was talking about.
‘Yes, that’s fine, I’ll give him a little look over while you’re in.’ Peter ushered all of them through and Alice unclipped Bear’s harness once the door was safely closed behind them.
‘So he ate some brownies, eh?’
‘It was my fault, I left them where he could reach them,’ said Ed.
Peter laughed with kindness. ‘Don’t worry about it, owning a new dog is a learning curve. And this just happened?’
‘Maybe fifteen minutes ago,’ answered Liz.
‘What were the ingredients of the brownies? Were they made of dark chocolate?’
Liz and Ed shrugged at each other. ‘I don’t know, they were Waitrose ones,’ Liz said.
‘Oh, very nice for you.’ The vet ruffled Bear’s ears, who was looking super pleased with himself. ‘All righty, you did exactly the right thing bringing him in as soon as it happened. I’m just going to give him an injection and it’s going to make him throw up rather a lot, I’m afraid. It’ll basically clean out his stomach. Sound okay to you?’
‘Yep,’ answered Alice, sitting on the floor, her bad leg stretched out, and looking anxiously at Bear.
‘He’ll be absolutely fine,’ Peter reassured her. ‘After the injection we’ll have about five minutes where he’ll be completely normal, and that’s when I’ll give him a mini check-up. Then he’ll get a bit droopy and dribbly, and his tail and ears will go a bit low, and then we’ll have lots and lots and lots of sick and he’ll feel very sorry for himself. And after he’s done he’ll still be a bit flopsy for a few hours. Maybe don’t take him on any more walks today. But he’ll start to perk back up again by this evening.’
‘Okay,’ Alice said, feeling rotten.
‘Aaaand, there we go, all done,’ said Peter, and Bear had barely noticed a needle being pressed into the squish of the back of his neck.
Alice spent the next five minutes watching him closely, watching for signs of waning, dreading the sickness coming but wanting the brownies out of his system. She’d only owned Bear for a week but she felt like she’d been a part of him all along, since the first time she’d gone with Jill to visit the three-week-old puppies.
True to the vet’s word, Bear started to look less smiley after a few minutes. His ears flopped down and then his tail, and then he walked into Alice’s open arms and rested his forehead against her tummy, as though saying, ‘Mum, I don’t feel well.’
