Proof of Angels by Mary Curran Hackett

Author:Mary Curran Hackett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

ONCE INSIDE THE APARTMENT BUILDING, SEAN LOOKED across the lobby. He had lived here for three years, and the space had never looked quite so palatial.

“All I gotta do is make it to the elevator, Chief. Twenty feet and I’m there.”

Chief walked alongside Sean, and when he got to the wall, he hopped up on his hind legs and pressed the Up button just as Libby had trained him to do several months before.

“Good boy, Chief. Good boy.”

Sean entered the elevator and felt the sweat pouring down his back. He was beginning to feel lightheaded. Between the exercise with Tom during PT and now this walk, he was about done in.

“How am I going to get to Italy, Chief? Huh? How am I going to do that if I can’t make it across my own lobby?”

Chief grunted as if he agreed.

“I am such a jackass. I can’t do this. I can’t. What am I doing? You think Tom is right? You think I need to get my act together before I go find Chiara?”

Chief looked blankly back at him and cocked his head to the side.

“That’s what I thought, buddy. I don’t know what to do, Chief. Tell me what to do,” Sean demanded, having grown so accustomed to ordering the dog around and talking to him that he half-expected Chief to start talking like the dog in the Bush’s baked beans commercials. Roll that beautiful bean footage.

Just then the elevator door opened and Sean and Chief arrived outside his apartment.

Sean had put the keys in when Chief started barking.

“Settle down, boy. It’s okay!”

Chief continued to bark. Unaware that the dog was trying to warn him that he was the one in danger, Sean thought something was wrong with the dog.

Suddenly, Sean felt the blood draining from his head. A hint of nausea rose from within. He thought he might faint or throw up. He was unsure which. “Quiet, boy, I have to go lie down for a minute.”

As the keys went in the door Sean’s body gave way and he landed with a thud on the tile floor in the foyer. On his way down, he hit the left side of his head on the adjacent kitchenette counter. The impact of the blow caused his eardrum to burst and a smattering of blood shot out of his good ear and pooled around him as he lay unconscious on the cool tiles.

Chief circled Sean calmly two times. He put his paw up on his back. If anyone didn’t know better, you would think he was feeling for a heartbeat or checking Sean’s vitals.

He tried to revive Sean by nudging his face with his own nose. He licked him over and over, and then put his paw up on his back again and tapped him, as if to say, “Come on, chap. Up and at ’em.”

Sean didn’t budge.

Chief lay close beside Sean, so that his torso touched Sean’s. He propped his head on his paws and waited for Sean to wake.

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