“How is my sweet doing today?” her daddy’s voice joyously bursts through the opening metal.

“Daddy!” she shouts excitedly. A bit of residual anger tumbles off her tongue like a breaking dam.

“What are you doing, Vanilla?” he asks sternly, the door now fully open.

He looks down at her, seeing her leg covered in a film of pink and the syringe peeling specks of blood in her hand. His nose scrunches up. His stomach growls. He takes a deep breath in. She’s losing it.

“Am I having déjà vu? Haven’t we gone through this already?”

His abdomen weeps with hunger.

“But, Daddy! I’m trying to fix the dog! Just like you!” she cries.

He chuckles, the laughter concealing his concern. “And what is it that you are trying to fix?”

She waves for him to come sit down with her, a pleading expression stamped across her face. He grins, shuts and locks the door, and sits cross-legged in front of her, holding his breath. Together they sit on the floor like two children sharing secrets.

“Look,” she says as she sets the stethoscope’s eartips inside his ears. She presses the drum against her chest. “Can you hear it?”

He nods. “Yes, my sweet. Of course I can.”

“Now, look.” She moves the drum to the dog’s chest. “Can you hear it? Can you hear it, Daddy?” Her frustration overflows into her words.

He shakes his head, amused by her impatience. “No! I can’t!”

He takes the dog from her and turns it over in his hand. It’s filthy. His stomach whines at the sight of it: bloody and ripped open like the beginnings of a botched surgery.

“So, you are trying to make it like you?” he asks.

“Yes!”

“And why is that?”

He watches as the conviction in her eyes dims.

“Look.” He mimics her, setting the stethoscope’s eartips back into her ears. He presses the drum against the dog. “Do you hear anything?”

“No, I don’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

“Ah, yes. But now . . .” He moves the drum to his chest. “Do you hear anything?”

His chest is silent. A cage of emptiness. Concrete and still.

Nothing.

She shakes her head softly.

“Right. And do you think I need fixing?”

She shakes her head again. Never.

“So. Maybe the dog is not the one who needs fixing.” He raises an eyebrow at her, then looks down at the stuffed thing. His face grimaces. “Actually, maybe this dog does need fixing . . .” Another clump of bloody stuffing falls from its open wound. It might as well have fallen onto his surgical table. He would have stuffed it back in and sown it shut with its dirty insides swelling. Too damaged to be worth the fix. “Perhaps I should get you a new one . . .”

“No!” she yelps, and reaches to snatch the dog from his hand, afraid of it being taken away from her forever. As she does, she lets go of the syringe. It falls in slow motion, twirling through the air until it lands. But there is no clink of glass against concrete.