Shades of Gray

A man and his dog

I hear the faint crying of an older woman in the room next to mine. The sound carries through the plaster gray walls—a stark contrast to the oppressive silence that otherwise engulfs this place. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting a sickly pallor on everything in the room. The air is thick with the acrid smell of disinfectant. I shift in the hard plastic gray chair, my surgically repaired knee appreciating the reprieve.

I am alone in a room at the only emergency veterinary hospital that is taking patients on this Saturday afternoon. Everything in my line of sight is gray: the light gray floors in the room, the striped gray floors in the hallway outside, the dark gray door, the metal gray table on which animals are examined, the laminate countertop, the plastic chairs. The gray on the walls is broken only by a few canvas prints of animals—a bulldog, a calico—flanked by garish splashes of color that don't represent anything discernible.

The slushing of a mop bucket echoes as a blonde woman wheels it around, cleaning as she goes. I watch through the doorway as the occasional sign of life appears. The vet tech who triaged Duke, a young guy with a mohawk-adjacent haircut and tattoos, walks by rubbing his temples. Another sedated dog is wheeled by on a gurney. Then, back to gray.

Despite having spent a few consecutive days at the vet earlier this week, Duke, my thirteen year-old black lab mix, never got back to anything resembling normal. His breathing remained labored, he panted profusely, and he had little interest in eating or walking more than three or four steps. When I noticed that his gums and tongue were starting to turn a shade of blue-purple, I was out of good reasons not to take him to the emergency room.

On the way to the car, as Duke walked a few feet behind me, I wondered if I was just being paranoid. Maybe he was fine. I was ruminating on this as he stopped, wobbled, and then collapsed a few feet from the car. 

I bent down next to him. He was conscious, still breathing. But he wasn’t going anywhere on his own. I deadlifted him off the ground, shouldered him to the hot car, turned the ignition on and the AC to full blast, and floored it.

—

The endless sea of gray reminds me of the time seven or eight years ago when my friend Michael told me I had a bland wardrobe. He wasn’t wrong. Most of the clothes in my closet were gray, black, or white. Neutral, flat, risk-free. My wardrobe mirrored my life. I had an inconsequential job I hated, lived in a sterile industrial loft with storeroom floor furniture, and had no non-sport hobbies or outlets of expression. I didn’t have a point of view to speak of. There was nothing I could point to that suggested that my existence belonged to me. 

It was a departure from my vibrant years in college, which included a colorful decision to spontaneously adopt a dog.

On a whim, I took a girl I had a crush on to the local animal shelter. She liked animals; I liked her. The equation made sense. I had no intention of leaving with an animal—not until I held the first puppy we saw, a black lab mix with a white spot on his chest, a shit-eating grin, and eyes that would for the entirety of his life bore a hole into my soul. A few hours later, I returned to the fraternity house with that dog in tow. 

The rest of my life at the time was painted with the same degree of vibrant color. I captained an NCAA lacrosse team; was president of my fraternity; started a business; presented economics research at the Dallas Fed. If it felt alive, colorful—I went after it.

But when I graduated, that zest for living gave way to a bland neutrality that would cast a dark cloud over my adult life for years to come.

—

It’s been thirty, maybe forty-five minutes since we got to the hospital. I continue to watch through the door frame. 

A few days before Duke started acting abnormally, I was laughing with a friend about how much shit I’d been wading through over the past few months. A catastrophe in every arena of my life—financial turmoil, a major surgery, personal strife. The universe, in its infinite humor, reminded me with an old dog’s dyspnea that there are always more containers for chaos.

The light in the hallway suddenly shuts off. Apparently this is a signal; a doctor walks into the room moments later. 

They want to do more tests, more x-rays. The primary concerns are aspiration pneumonia, laryngeal paralysis, and pulmonary hypertension. Duke is almost thirteen, his face now more gray than black, so these possibilities carry some gravity. 

“Do you expect to see anything different from the x-rays and tests that were done two days ago?” I ask.

“Given how quickly he has deteriorated, we’re likely to get more of an idea of what’s going on at this point.”

I sign the initial estimate, approving another $1,687. That puts us up to about $2,600 for the week so far. Most of my money has been going toward legal fees for the business bankruptcy case, and my credit cards are maxed out, so I have no choice but to transfer the money out of my business’s Debtor in Possession account—the account that the court monitors over the course of the case to ensure I’m sticking to the budget. An ER trip for my dog is not in the budget. I email my lawyer and tell him that I hope this doesn’t jeopardize our case.

The doctor tells me they are short-staffed; it will be a while. I’m allowed to see Duke before they get started. They bring him into the room on a leash with a white hospital bracelet around his neck, making him look like clergy. He is still panting, but his tongue seems a bit less blue. He stands and stares at the wall working to breathe, as he has for most of the past few days. He looks spooked.

Duke being in anything other than a jubilant mood is itself a clinical sign. If there was ever an enlightened being on earth, it is this dog. The Buddha incarnate, perhaps. Living in a fraternity house, driving 23 hours from Austin to North Carolina and back, hiking up an intimidatingly steep peak in Colorado—no matter the occasion, Duke smiles, wags his tail, and trots along or lounges—whatever the situation calls for. Everything edible (or not) is the best meal a creature ever consumed. Every nap another glorious reminder of the fundamental bliss of existence. Every moment an opportunity to be close to you, or next to you, or on top of you. A canine Forrest Gump.

He has been this way since he was two, after he got over his angsty adolescent phase. Once, at Enchanted Rock during an atypically cold Texas winter, a group of us took mushrooms and got lost, too busy being enchanted by the rock. Duke shepherded us back to our campsite. He has gone on enough car rides—those two words that still, at nearly thirteen, make him hop around and wiggle his butt like a wind-up toy—to cover the continent a few times over. He has broken a bone in his tail and had TPLO surgery to fix the cruciate ligament in his knee (like father like son). At all times, he has remained a black, hairy, goofy ball of joy. 

This week, though, he’s a ball of stress. He’s been doing a weird cough-hack-lurch thing pretty regularly, and it was evident that each breath he took required serious effort. He kept getting up and staring at me, adamantly wanting something, but refused food (!!), a walk, a toy, and an ear scratch. Now I realize he wanted the one thing I was unable to provide: a clear airway. 

My hope is that the doctors at Partners Veterinary Emergency Hospital can help with that. After spending a few minutes in the room with Duke, I return him to their care. I leave to spend some time with a friend who lives nearby before inhaling a cheeseburger and tray of fries at Five Guys, a comfort food that today provides little comfort. My instinct is to tell Jenna about what’s going on. I pull out my phone to text her before I remember that I ended the relationship a few months prior. 

—

I’m not sure if it was fear of uncertainty or the alluring cocoon of a safe life that pushed me to stifle myself in my twenties. Probably both. It was easier to hide behind neutrality and status symbols and wait for someone else to inject some color into my life than to paint my own canvas and risk rejection.

Outsourcing the decoration of your existence, it turns out, does not end well. This became clear one spring night in early 2017. I left Duke with my roommates and fled Houston's urban sprawl for a ranch reunion with old friends in Hallettsville. As I drove, the city's skyscrapers were replaced by loblolly pines and live oaks, and my cell service dwindled with each mile. I arrived to learn that the ranch’s WiFi was more of a promise than a reality. This was problematic, as my job at the time demanded ceaseless vigilance over email alerts. I remembered what one of the owners had recently asked a co-worker who missed an email: What the fuck is wrong with you???? 

I paced back and forth in the bathroom holding my iPhone in the air like an Olympic torchbearer, desperate for a signal that never materialized. Every twenty minutes a barrage of emails would sputter in, far too late to act upon. 

The feeling of helplessness was reminiscent of how I often felt during those years when I was sitting at home with Duke. He’d be staring into my soul, sending a beam of love and loyalty, and all I could do was stare back as I laid in bed under a leaden cloud of depression. So many days we could have spent hiking, or playing, or just going for a drive with the windows down so he could stick his head out the window were lost to an endless stretch of impotent paralysis.

The email debacle brought the leaden cloud I was trying to escape to Hallettsville with me. There was nothing I could do but drink, so I did. Beers. Shots. Whiskey neat. More shots. But the alcohol, rather than adding some glow to my experience, only served to thrust the colorlessness of my life into my awareness, moment after moment. A giant, flashing gray sign: Your life is not yours.

Later, hours blurred by a drunken haze, I found myself beneath a sprawling oak tree with a gun I had found laying on a workbench in my hand—cold, heavy, and yet somehow insubstantial. I fired it into the night, the sound ricocheting through the branches. Then, as the explosion faded and the cicadas resumed their chorus, I contemplated whether to use the gun for more than an existential warning shot.

Voices broke through the stillness. Two friends, their silhouettes wobbling in the darkness, drunkenly debated the future of the Houston Astros organization, oblivious to my tightrope walk between two worlds. My heart bludgeoned my chest wall as I held the gun behind my back, my hand soaking it in sweat. I joined their conversation.

“I think we have a shot at the title this year,” I stammered. They seemed not to notice the tremor in my voice. 

“Hell yeah we do! Verlander is a monster, and we have one of the best offenses in the league.”

“Biggest franchise turnaround in the modern era.” 

It went on like this for some time, slurring back and forth about young prospects, trade targets, the teams to beat. A few minutes or hours later they finally stumbled back inside. 

At that moment, something shifted. Maybe it was the sheer mundanity. Whatever it was, it cut through my drunken cloud of self-pity. I returned the gun to the workbench, fled to my Jeep, and sped down the gravel road. On the way home I stopped at Whataburger for a Honey BBQ Chicken Strip Sandwich. Two hours later, I was back in my bed next to Duke, the night’s events settling into the disjointed narrative of a fever dream.

—

The lobby of Partners Veterinary Emergency Hospital, while still prominently gray, at least has some fake plants and pictures of the city. The overhead lighting is blindingly fluorescent. A movie plays on a glare-soaked TV—Untamed Heart, I think. A mother and her teenage daughter emerge from behind some set of doors and walk by, crying. Not long after, a man who got here a little while after I did emerges from the same doors, also crying. Wailing.

I decide to go for a walk. 

When I return, drenched in sweat from the scorching heat, the doctor has an update. We return to one of the rooms to talk in private, and I sit on a gray chair underneath a fractal print of a Belgian Malinois while the doctor remains standing. Oxygen has helped stabilize Duke for the time being, she tells me. The x-rays have non-definitive signs of a number of different possibilities. His pulmonary artery is enlarged, his alveoli have abnormal patches, and his lungs are showing signs of what might be pneumonia. They are going to do more bloodwork and start him on various medications to see how he responds, which will hopefully help clarify the root of the problems. 

I don’t know how long it will be, so I opt to go back to the lobby for the time being. Untamed Heart has ended, and now Valley Girl is on. Deborah Foreman plays Julie, a young woman who can’t resist bad boy Nicolas Cage because he is so unabashedly himself. He is raw and colorful.

That night under the oak tree in 2017 jolted me back on a path toward my own raw, full-spectrum self—gradually, and then all at once. It started with a move from Houston to Austin and a new job in sales that was less prestigious but more me. Slowly, day by day, I added more of my own brushstrokes. 

Next thing I knew, it was 2022 and my existence was unrecognizable. I remember one particular day that spring, five years after the oak tree. I woke up around 10am, without an alarm, energized and refreshed. Duke and I walked over to the coffee shop a few hundred feet from my apartment where I chatted briefly with Aaron, the owner of the shop, who had become a friend.

He made my coffee to-go, as I had a call to get to: a podcast episode, where I would discuss how the e-commerce business I acquired the year before had changed my life.

After a wonderful conversation on the podcast, I texted Kevin, the professional lacrosse player who would eventually partner with the company I co-founded with a close friend and an incredible designer we stumbled upon to create a product that we believe will change the game.

Then it was time to take Duke out. Instead of our usual fifteen-minute drive to Pony Pasture to walk through the woods along the James River, we opted for a stroll around the Museum District, where he could pee on all the gorgeous plants and vibrant flowers that accented our neighbors’ homes and say hello to his constituents.

After some work on the e-commerce business and a pressure washing business I had recently started, a run around a nearby lake was punctuated by a beautiful rainstorm. I came home laughing, soaking wet, as Duke inspected the collection of new smells.

I called my parents that night, and they asked how I was doing. “Absurdly well,” I said. “My life feels like a dream.”

—

This saga with Duke feels rather like another fever dream. Time trudges by like molasses, thick and viscous. It’s dark out now. I sit in the lobby half-watching Valley Girl in a daze. A friend calls to check on Duke, and I tell her about all the people crying. 

At 10:30 PM Duke is well enough to be released with five prescriptions: two antibiotics, a bronchodilator, an NSAID, and a blood pressure medication. The blood pressure medication is sildenafil—brand name Viagra. We have placed my dog’s health in the hands of boner pills. 

Over the next few days, his health becomes a cruel rollercoaster. His breathing oscillates between periods of relative calm and terrifying bouts of rapid, shallow panting. Remembering that the normal respiratory rate for a dog is between 30 and 35, I find myself constantly counting his breaths, my own chest tightening when I reach 40, 50, 60.

The cardiologist appointment on Wednesday feels like our last hope. That morning, Duke's respiratory rate skyrockets to over 60. My hands shake as I lift his frail body into the car and we again head to the ER, the familiar route blurred by tears.

More sterile rooms, more tests. Another $2,800 disappears from my account as the hours crawl by. 

The echocardiogram confirms pulmonary hypertension, but the cause remains elusive. Each new piece of information, rather than providing relief and clarity, just seems to pile on to the weight of unknowing. They adjust his medications, removing an antibiotic, adding a blood thinner. Trying everything.

After eight grueling hours, they deem him stable enough to go home (stable, I’ve come to learn, is quite a malleable term). As we discuss next steps, my sister and brother-in-law’s suggestion of Blacksburg and the Virginia Tech specialists looms in my mind.

That night is another eternity of whimpers and watchfulness. Duke's eyes again stare into my soul, now pleading for a relief I can't provide. He refuses food, turns away from his medications. The carpet bears testament to his failing health, and I mindlessly scrub at stains, needing to do something, anything. Around 2 AM, exhaustion finally claims us both.

Morning arrives quickly as Duke's labored breathing again cuts into my consciousness. There are brown stains on the bed sheet. I open his mouth to find a tongue that has turned grayish-purple, the hallmark of a being with a life-threateningly limited amount of oxygen available to them.

We repeat the drill. Carry him to the car, blast the AC, blurry-eyed drive to the ER. This time the feeling I had been trying to suppress for days finally becomes an explicit thought: I may have to put my dog down today.

We arrive, and the receptionists’ faces drop when they see Duke and me again. I ask them to please put him on oxygen right away and get him comfortable while we figure out what to do.

—

An hour later, right after I cancel my physical therapy appointment for that morning, the doctor comes into the room with the fractal Malinois print and says that Duke is doing pretty well. I nod and ask her what interventions they’ve done, how much oxygen they’ve got him on.

“None, actually,” she says.

I blink, certain I’ve misheard.

“When we took him back and got him in a room, he just sort of…laid down and relaxed,” she continues. “His breathing is normal, heart rate only slightly elevated. Do you want to see him?”

Before I can formulate a response, she's gone, returning moments later with a sight I'd almost forgotten: Duke, walking on his own, his eyes alert and curious. The change is so stark it's almost comical. Gone is the labored breathing, the pleading eyes. He sniffs the air with interest, his tail giving a tentative wag.

Duke ambles over to a bowl of dry food and begins to eat as if we’re just hanging out at home on a Sunday morning. The sound of his crunching fills the room as the doctor and I stand in stunned silence, waiting for the punchline. When he looks up at me, his tongue lolls out—pink and healthy, a far cry from the cyanotic hue from a few hours ago.

After some time the doctor finally speaks. "We’d like to give him an anti-inflammatory steroid injection to help keep his airway open," she says. I agree, expecting this to cost another $1,000 and not caring in the slightest. They give him the injection, wrap a red and purple band-aid around his ankle, and hand me an invoice. 

I glance toward the bottom at the total: $61.

—

We arrive back home and Duke settles onto a sunlit spot on the carpet, his breathing steady. Home is no longer a sterile, industrial place; it is now a refuge of my own making. My taste, it turns out, is splashy and eclectic, light and airy. There are no gray items to be found.

I have a hearing for the bankruptcy case today, my fourth so far. As usual, all of the attendees log in to the WebEx a few minutes early (of course our government uses fucking WebEx), and though we're all on camera, nobody speaks. There's one camera square showing the back of an empty courtroom. A few minutes after the scheduled start time, the judge appears in that square and announces the docket. The lawyers enter their appearances, as do the two trustees in the case. The US Trustee always notes that he’s there on behalf of the Department of Justice. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

These hearings always prompt the same reflection in me. First, it strikes me how much my circumstances have changed since that spring day in 2022 with the coffee and the podcast and the flowers. Then I look at all of the WebEx squares, at all the lawyers and clerks and trustees with their gray, sullen faces, speaking very serious legalese to each other. It strikes me that, somehow, I—the guy whose business is in bankruptcy, who is in unfathomable amounts of debt and just had ACL surgery and ended a relationship and expected to put his dog down this morning—am the only one besides the judge who seems to remember that we’re just humans playing a cosmic game. He makes deadpan jokes about being old and bad at math while reviewing my financials. I smile and laugh while explaining, for the third or fourth time, how my business has been hemorrhaging cash.

It’s funny: when I sat under that oak tree and thought about killing myself, things were objectively great. I was healthy, Duke was in his prime years, I was making a bunch of money, and I had an extensive social network. My only problem was that the world was gray. Nobody had colored it in for me. 

Now, my life has by most measures fallen apart. There is a crisis in almost every facet of my existence. But I cannot even begin to fathom the thought of ending my life. It’s laughable. Behind all of the torrents of emotion this year has brought, there is a fundamental foundation of happiness and optimism. Everything will be okay. Everything is okay. This is the sort of thing that happens when you become the artist of your own life.

A gray life has minimal exposure—few opportunities for failure, for loss, for pain. It is mostly risk-free, right up until the point when you realize it’s not worth living.

As the lawyers talk at each other, I turn around in my chair to watch Duke as he sleeps on the plush navy, pink, and yellow carpet. His eyes flicker open, meeting mine for a brief moment before closing again, content in the warmth of the bright amber sun.

---

Thank you so much

Rick Lewis

,

Charlie Bleecker

,

Latham Turner

, and

Camilo Moreno-Salamanca

for your contributions to this piece.