Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
underside. “Mm. And it’s a little lassie....With a hernia in her
umbilicus... About five weeks old, I reckon, likely not properly
weaned.”
“A lassie,” Esmé said wondrously. Then: “Can you save her? Those
girls in the hotel were just going to let her die. That’s why I had to
take her with me.”
“Of course you did,” Harry said.
“But darling,” Marlena intervened, “the sad, sad thing is, we can’t
bring a dog with us, no matter how much—”
Harry put his palm up to indicate that her tack was going to back­
fire. He continued petting the pup as he spoke to Esmé. “She is a
beauty.” And then in tones of admiration: “How in the world did you
get her past security and onto the plane?”
Esmé demonstrated by draping the triangled make-do scarf as a
sling for her arm. She put a zippered sweatshirt over that. “It was
easy,” she said proudly. “I walked right through. She never made a
peep.”
Marlena looked at Harry, and for the first time since the debacle at
the temple, their hearts and minds sought one another.
“What are we going to do?” Marlena mouthed.
Harry took charge. “Esmé, do you know when it last ate?”
“I tried to give her some eggs this morning. But she’s not very hun­
gry. She ate only a tiny bit, and when she burped, it came up. ”
“Mm. How about her stools?”
“Stools?”
“Has she been making any poops?”
“Oh, that. She’s peed, but no—you know, none of what you called
the other. She’s really well behaved. I think whatever it is has to do
with that lump on her belly.”
“Umbilical hernia,” Harry said. “That’s not necessarily serious or
uncommon. Rather prevalent in toy breeds. Strangulation of the in­
testines could be a problem later, but most resolve in a few months’
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