The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout Read Free

right front wheel smashed my right foot and I was dragged to the ground. The truck’s rear wheel rolled over my left thigh and snapped the femur. Luckily, other pedestrians stopped to help me. As I lay bleeding in the street, I was conscious but in terrible pain. While some passersby got a policeman to call an ambulance, others chased down and stopped the truck. When the ambulance arrived, paramedics told me I would be taken to Bellevue Hospital, the city’s famous trauma center.
    I spent the next three weeks in the hospital. Besides my leg and foot injuries, I had broken my pelvis and sustained significant internal injuries. One of the
doctors told me that if the truck’s rear wheel had struck my left thigh just two inches higher, I would have been killed. After surgeons operated on my leg and inserted a titanium rod, I was told that I would have to spend six weeks in bed and then learn to walk again.
    As I began my recovery in Bellevue, I learned to move from bed to wheelchair by using only my arms and upper body. Soon I started an intensive course of physical therapy; working side by side with patients who had sustained terrible head injuries, I realized how lucky I was. The nurses on the front lines of my care were always adroit and warm. I remember that the first time I had to move from my bed to a wheelchair, my nurse Angela told me to clasp my arms tightly around her neck as she carried my entire weight. “Dance with me, baby,” she joked, as she supported my limp body.
    Once home, a skilled physical therapist named Pearl visited me three times a week. I was like a baby again, but Pearl taught me how to progress from crawling to walking, first by using crutches and then, finally, a cane. Feeling so helpless was very hard for me, and I became easily frustrated when I couldn’t do simple tasks, such as putting clean dishes away in the kitchen.
    I missed Buddy terribly during this difficult time—it would have been such a comfort to have him by my side. The climb to get back on my feet was hard, and
three months after the accident I still walked unsteadily. But the human body, even in middle age, is remarkably resilient, and my years of dog walking and gym workouts helped the bone grow back over the rod in my leg relatively quickly. Slowly, my physical mobility returned.
    Just as I was returning to something approximating normal, a depression descended and seemed to smother me like a hot blanket. I had never experienced anything like it and was somewhat reassured when I learned that an episode of depression is fairly common after a traumatic injury. Fortunately, I was able to get some good counseling from a therapist. During one session, my therapist told me that when I talked about Buddy my whole face lit up. “Maybe you should think about getting another dog,” she gently suggested.
    Henry, the kids, and Jane Mayer—my best friend and fellow dog nut—promptly launched a massive cheer-up campaign. Their collective diagnosis was a severe case of midlife blues: in the past few years I had turned fifty, seen my grown-up children leave our nest, and lost my beloved Buddy. Now, as I struggled to recover from the accident and my depression, they were certain that what I needed above all else was a new dog.
    Over the years, Jane and I had enjoyed many capers, both professional and personal. We had cowritten a best-selling book about Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, a project that involved some of the most challenging reporting of our careers. This undertaking did have its lighter moments, however; in one instance, our investigation required that we watch X-rated videos featuring a porn star named Bad Mama Jama, and they were so ridiculous and boring that we both fell asleep on my living room couch. A couple of years earlier, we had rescued Jane’s lovable yellow Lab, Peaches, from the clutches of a very bad boyfriend who had insisted on keeping Peaches after he and Jane split up. One hot Friday, as I was