A Face Like Dodam's
"Do— Dodam?"
The name slipped out before Na Haram could catch it, and she startled at the sound of her own voice. Then she scoffed at herself. Dodam. Honestly...
Dodam was not here. Not in this world where she still drew breath. Somewhere beyond pain, that little dog was surely running herself ragged with joy.
Knowing it changed nothing. The Maltese on the monitor looked exactly like her — not as she had been in her last days, but as she had been the first time they met. Those huge, frightened eyes. The back hunched tight with fear. Even the tongue lolling from her mouth. The resemblance was uncanny.
Once, she might have thought the dog was putting on a cute face. She knew better now. Dogs with heart disease panted with their mouths open and their tongues out. Which meant this little one might be sick with the same illness.
"Maybe not," she muttered, clinging to the hope that it was nothing more than an adorable expression. She scrolled down anyway. Of course.
"Oh, why?"
And the reason a sweet, adorable dog still hadn't been adopted?
"Obvious, isn't it."
She was old, and she was sick. No one wanted to take on the medical bills of a dog they hadn't even raised from a puppy. That was why everyone had passed her over.
And if no one came? Once an adoption listing expired, eventually...
Sometimes a shelter kept an animal on even after the posting closed — but those were usually young purebreds, dogs and cats with a real chance of finding a home. The little one on the screen almost certainly did not have that hope.
A click. Na Haram shut the computer down and switched off the monitor completely. Then she stood, walked out of the house, and closed the door behind her. If she stayed, she knew she would turn it back on.
The sun had already gone. She started walking. She had no destination. She simply walked.
Strange, how that worked. She hadn't chosen a place, and yet before she knew it her feet had carried her down a path she knew by heart — the trail she used to walk with Dodam. She did not even register that she had arrived, or that she was still moving. Her head was too full of the Maltese she had just seen.
Someone called to her.
"You're Dodam's mom, aren't you? It's been a while."
Her name, spoken close by. Na Haram pulled herself together and looked toward the voice.
It was someone she had often passed on these walks, and who had, over time, become a friend.
"Oh — Hongdangi's mom. Hello. Out for a walk with him?"
At her feet sat Hongdangi, a Bichon Frise. He had come home as a puppy with a carrot toy already in his mouth, and the name had stuck. He looked up at Na Haram and grinned, panting happily.
"Have you been well, Hongdangi?"
She bent her knees and stroked him. He seemed to like her hands; his tail whirled in loose, eager circles. Then he peered around her, searching.
Looking for Dodam, most likely.
Na Haram gave a bitter little smile and simply kept petting him.
"And Dodam...?"
Hongdangi's owner hesitated, then asked carefully,
"She went peacefully, didn't she?"
She had already known how severe Dodam's heart disease was. Dodam would walk a little way along the path and then end up in Na Haram's arms, or settled into the pet stroller, and she coughed often. They had walked the same stretch for more than ten months; there was no way not to notice. For about half a year, whenever their timing lined up, they had even walked together.
Na Haram could not bring herself to answer at first. She stood still, and then said quietly,
"I don't know."
Whether she had gone in comfort, or in too much pain.
A brief silence settled between them. Then Hongdangi's owner said,
"Shall we sit for a minute?"
Na Haram nodded instead of speaking. The two of them went to a bench and sat — the same bench where she had so often rested with Dodam on their walks.
"Coffee all right?"
Before Na Haram could say yes or no, Hongdangi's owner pressed the leash into her hand.
"Hongdangi, you play with Dodam's mom for a bit."
And then she hurried off. Probably afraid Na Haram would refuse. It's all right, though... Na Haram thought, and lifted Hongdangi onto her lap. He was solid. Heavy. That weight felt good. It meant he was healthy.
"Hongdangi, you live a long, healthy life. All right?"
She stroked the plush round of his head, groomed so neatly it looked as if he were wearing a little helmet, and then the soft of his back. He was used to this; he surrendered himself to her hands with a look of perfect ease. Even so, he kept turning his head, searching for something.
"Hongdangi, Sister Dodam went far, far away. She's off on a trip to the Dog Star."
Saying it made something catch in Na Haram's throat. Afraid that if she spoke again the tears would come, she simply kept stroking him.
About ten minutes later, a cup of warm coffee appeared in front of her.
"It's evening, so I got you a hot one."
"You know me."
"Of course. Iced by day, hot by night. I know the drill."
"Thank you."
They sat with their coffee and let a quiet stretch of time pass. When Na Haram had drunk about half of hers, Hongdangi's owner spoke.
"Dodam went peacefully. Grateful to you, even. I'm sure of it."
"I hope that's true, but... I keep wondering if I was too greedy. She must have been in so much pain."
Na Haram took another sip, then went on.
"I wonder if I should have let her go before it got worse. I do. I think that."
"I don't think so. Dodam would have wanted more time with her mom. She would have wanted to look at the face she loved a little longer."
Whether the words were true or not did not matter. They warmed her anyway. She had wanted to look at Dodam a little longer, too.
"If that's how it was, then I'm glad."
"I know it is. That's exactly what she would have wanted. The person in the middle of it never can tell."
"...?"
"On your walks, Dodam always looked at you. There were trees. Other dogs going by. And in spring, do you know how many flowers bloom along here? The scent of them. And still, Dodam never once looked anywhere else."
Now that she said it, it was true.
"When you set her down, she stared at your legs. When you held her, she stared at your face. Even in the stroller, it was the same. Dodam looked only at her mom. Ah — except when we sat like this. Then she played with Hongdangi now and then."
"I should thank Hongdangi, then. For being her friend."
"Oh, stop. Do you know how much Hongdangi loved her? At home, all I have to say is, 'Want to go see Sister Dodam?' and he goes bouncing straight to the front door."
"Thank you, Hongdangi. Thank you for loving Sister Dodam."
When the two of them laughed, Hongdangi laughed with them, panting, bright.
"Dodam was happy she found you. She was. I mean that."
That night, Na Haram dreamed.
Dodam was there, and Neulbom, and Eundong, and Sol-i, and Kkongi, who had been her first dog — all of them gathered close. Five little bodies racing across a wide green plain beneath a blue sky. Not one of them looked as if she were in any pain.
It made Na Haram so happy she smiled.
Then the five of them saw her, and they beamed, and they said,
Na Haram called them to her. Come here. But the dogs only smiled their bright smiles and did not come.
It hurt too much. She ran toward them, calling as she went. Kkongi. Sol-i. Eundong. Neulbom—
"Dodam...!"
She woke with a gasp on the last name.
"Hah... it was a dream."
Even a dream would have been enough, if she could have touched them once — those soft, plush little bodies. If she could have held them, just once. The ache of it went on and on. And still, a smile found its way onto her face. She could still hear them, five voices bright with laughter, telling her they had been happy.
"Thank you. Thank you."
Not one of them. All five, thanking her. There had to be a reason for that.
She lay still in the bed for a while.
"Right. If there's something to regret, I can regret it when I get there."
Na Haram sat up, switched on the computer, and went back to the site she had visited the day before. Then she submitted an application to adopt the Maltese she had thought looked like Dodam.
The next day, at the shelter, Na Haram made a low sound in her throat.
The Maltese she had applied for looked, as she had feared, like a heart dog. When she approached, the little one coughed — short, sharp bursts. No runny nose. Only the cough. It sounded exactly like Dodam's.
Dogs with heart disease coughed when they got excited. They would cough when they drank water, too. At night, that sound would only get worse.
The Maltese hunched her back and drew her head in like a turtle, and looked at Na Haram with a face full of fear. It was pitiful. Her heart was already failing, and on top of that she was wound tight with tension.
The fear in her went even deeper than Dodam's had, and Na Haram soon learned why.
She had been abandoned. Whether because of the heart disease or for no reason at all, Na Haram did not know — only that when her original family moved, they had left her behind. Then they had cut off all contact. A history like that had left her with a deep distrust of people. She had even been adopted once, and then returned.
Na Haram had already made up her mind. She signed the adoption papers at once.
And so the Maltese became her dog, and she decided to call her Bokshil. She had heard somewhere that old-fashioned names meant a long life, and she knew a poodle named Bokshil who was still going strong at seventeen. It was a name that carried a wish: that this Maltese, like that poodle, would live a long time.
Six months passed.
In that time, Bokshil became a devoted lap dog, happiest of all on Na Haram's knees — though for a long while she had only watched from a corner, eyes rolling, her heart slow to open.
Na Haram's guess had been right. She took Bokshil to the animal hospital, and the tests put her already midway between Stage B2 and Stage C. Stage C meant the heart failure had progressed far enough to bring on pulmonary edema. The symptoms were the same as Dodam's had been.
She made a decision. She would give this child — Bokshil — memories as happy as Dodam's. No. Happier.
Whenever she could, Na Haram picked her up and stroked her. She never spared the words, either: pretty, cute, good girl. It might not have looked like much. To a dog, it was everything — especially to an animal who had been left behind, once or twice.
The more affection Na Haram poured out, the more Bokshil smiled. You could see it even without trying, but the photographs made it unmistakable. Her face grew brighter and brighter.
Bokshil ate whatever she was given. She never once refused the bitter medicine. She went on walks, too — in Na Haram's arms sometimes, in the pet stroller sometimes, the way Dodam had. And she came to get along with Hongdangi.
They were on the bench with Hongdangi that day, too, when Bokshil's breathing changed. Hongdangi's owner heard it as well.
"Bokshil seems so worn out. We only went around in the stroller, and she still looks like she's struggling."
Bokshil was sitting with her mouth open, working for air. A bad feeling rose in Na Haram. She stood.
"I think we need to go to the hospital."
"Y-yes. Let's go."
They lived in the same neighborhood and used the same clinic. They went straight there.
And then—
"It's pulmonary edema."
"Pulmonary edema — that means her lungs have filled with fluid?"
"That's the idea, yes. Simply put, fluid has collected in the lungs, and that's why she's having so much trouble breathing. It comes from the heart disease Bokshil has been living with."
"...But I gave her every dose of the medicine you prescribed. Every one..."
"And that's why she's held on this long. We'll admit Bokshil and draw the fluid out of her lungs."
The director said it was an emergency and went straight into the treatment room. Na Haram stood staring at the closed door, unable to look away.
She knew heart disease worsened even on medication. Knowing it did not help. It was simply unfair. She had wanted a little more time. This was a dog who had suffered so much in her heart, and she had only just begun to feel at ease. You'd only just started sleeping with your legs stretched out...
Why did you have to get this sick? You had only just begun to have a life worth living. Why?
Bokshil was discharged three days later.
A month after that, she was admitted again. For the same reason.
Na Haram carried her into the hospital with her breath coming in ragged pulls, and as they admitted her, she could see the road ahead. A hard, grinding fight against the illness, and then, in the end...
She asked the director,
"Doctor, does it have to keep being like this? Does Bokshil have to keep living this hard? Isn't there another way? Don't dogs get heart transplants? Or heart surgery — something? I know a dog who had heart surgery as a puppy, and she's doing well. Isn't there something?"
The longer she spoke, the higher her voice climbed, until the last of it came out as a cry, thick with tears.
The director drew a long breath, then answered.
"A puppy who had surgery that young was most likely treated for a patent ductus arteriosus — closing a vessel that should have sealed after birth. Or else a portosystemic shunt, tying off a blood vessel that shouldn't have been there at all."
"Th-then isn't there some kind of surgery you can do for Bokshil? The valve — you said this started because her heart valve was weak, so a heart valve surgery, something like that. Can't you operate? Please?"
"Valve surgery? There is such a procedure, but..."
"There— there is? Doctor, we'll do that surgery. Please operate on Bokshil. Please?"
The director's face grew troubled. He answered slowly.
"That surgery has only been performed in this country for a few years. And the veterinarians who can do it, you can count on one hand."
"Then please introduce me to one of them. Please?"
He looked at the desperation in her face and let out a long sigh.
"Bokshil's mom. I'm telling you this because it is that dangerous. There aren't many successful cases. And we don't even know yet whether Bokshil would be a candidate."
"Then at least — at least let us get her evaluated. Please, Doctor."
He studied her face for a long time. Then he nodded.
"I'll make an introduction. That's all I can do. As I said, I don't know whether Bokshil will be able to have the surgery."
"Yes."
The director took out a sheet of paper and began to write. Three animal hospital names. Then he said,
Daehan Animal Medical Center
Jeil University Animal Hospital
Mongmong Animal Hospital
"Daehan Animal Medical Center will probably be difficult. As far as I know, the doctor who performs this surgery isn't in the country right now."
That left Jeil University Animal Hospital and Mongmong Animal Hospital.
Na Haram looked down at the paper, then asked,
"Getting her evaluated at both of these — that would be too much, wouldn't it?"
"With Bokshil's condition, I would think so."
One was a university teaching hospital. The other was an animal hospital — Mongmong Animal Hospital, which she already knew. For a surgery this large, perhaps it would be better to go to a professor...
The thought had only just formed when the hospital's reputation rose in her mind. Patient after patient, people said, had come through surgery there and gotten well. And Heemangi's surgery really did go beautifully. Heemangi, who used to drag himself along in an awkward crawl, now bounded and leaped without a care in the world.
"Then what about Mongmong Animal Hospital?"
"We'll have to check the director's schedule. Shall I call?"
"Yes! Please."
Na Haram bent at the waist in a full ninety-degree bow.