The dog came when she called. He came slowly, shivering in his pelt as he walked, picking his way lightly and gracefully on slender Dobermann feet. By her voice, he was pulled along through the rooms of the apartment and past the open door to the outer hallway. He entered the kitchen with the light clatter of nails on linoleum and met his mistress there. All the muscles of his body tightened in the dog's version of attention.
The animal's eyes were soft brown wounds in a sleek black face, and there were more literal scars on the skin beneath the dark fur. He owed his life, many times over, to youth and quick recovery, but he was no longer a puppy.
The woman was seated in her chair, and the dog knew it would be a while before she moved again. It was something in the smell of her when she was in this state, even before the woman's eyes would go all wide and staring.
A small misery of crying began deep in the dog's throat. He paced back and forth before the chair, sensing the woman's temporary blindness to her surroundings, her deafness to the dog's fear.
Time. How much time before the woman came round again? The eyes were rolling back in a trance. Soon now. The dog barked. Nothing, no blink, no reflex of any kind in the woman. The dog circled the chair, fear rising up to a human crying. He moved her hand with his nose. Nothing. The hand fell limply to her lap.
The dog wailed.
Soon.
The dog's mind was breaking. Regimentation instilled by pain was falling apart. He was departing from ritual, backing out of the room, terrified eyes fixed on the woman till he was clear of the kitchen. Now he turned and flung himself into the next room, racing across the carpet, passing through the open door and down the long hallway, paws touching lightly to ground in the perfect poetry of a beautiful animal in motion, muscles elongating and contracting, eyes shining with purpose. Now springing, rising, flying, crashing through the glass of the fifth-floor window.
The dog's heart was killed by the fright and strain of flight without wings. He was dead before his bones were broken on the pavement.