What’s the most horrible thing you found out about someone after their death?

The Race Against Time

He started to say something about it, probably being fine, but I was already running to our bedroom, throwing on the scrubs I’d worn earlier that were still draped over the chair. My hospital badge was still clipped to the pocket, and I grabbed my purse while yelling at him to get his shoes on.

When I ran back to the living room, he was still sitting there looking confused. So, I explained in a rush that rabies has a really narrow window for treatment, and once symptoms start showing, it’s basically a death sentence.

His face went white, and he stumbled getting up, almost tripping over his own feet as he shoved his feet into his sneakers without even untying them.

I grabbed the car keys, and we rushed out to the garage, him holding his injured hand against his chest while I started the car with shaking hands. The drive to the emergency room felt like it took forever, even though I was going way over the speed limit, taking turns too fast, and running through yellow lights that were definitely turning red.

My hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles hurt while he sat quietly beside me, pressing his palm against his shirt and wincing every time we hit a bump.

Every red light made me want to scream because I kept thinking about what I knew from medical school that once rabies symptoms appear, the survival rate is basically zero. And he’d already said his throat hurt and the lights were bothering him.

At the ER entrance, I pulled right up to the doors, even though you’re not supposed to the park there, and we rushed inside to the intake desk where a tired looking nurse barely glanced up from her computer.

I told her we needed immediate treatment for possible rabies exposure, and she gave me this skeptical look, probably thinking I was overreacting like most people do.

But when I pulled out my hospital ID and explained I was a surgeon here and my husband had been bitten by our rabid dog who’d just been put down, her whole attitude changed instantly.

She stood up so fast her chair rolled backward and called for someone to take us straight back, bypassing the whole waiting room full of people with broken bones and stomach bugs.

A nurse led us to a trauma room, and within minutes, the ER doctor arrived, a younger guy I recognized from staff meetings, but had never worked with directly.

He put on gloves and carefully examined the puncture wounds while I explained everything really fast about Harper’s symptoms. The foaming mouth, the aggression, the confirmed raid raccoons in our neighborhood that week.

He kept nodding and said we were absolutely doing the right thing because with symptoms already presenting, we couldn’t afford to wait for any test results.

Two nurses came in with supplies and they started cleaning the wounds with an intensity that made my husband grip the bed rail with his good hand. They were flushing each puncture with what looked like gallons of saline solution, then scrubbing with betadine until the whole room smelled like iodine.

The nurse explained they had to flush out any virus particles that might still be in the tissue because the rabies virus travels through nerve tissue to the brain. I held his other hand while he gritted his teeth, trying not to yell as they irrigated each wound over and over.

The saline running pink with blood into the basin they held underneath.

The doctor came back carrying a tray with several vials and explained he’d be injecting rabies immunoglobulin directly into and around the bite wounds, warning us it would hurt significantly because they had to infiltrate all the tissue around each puncture.

My husband just nodded and squeezed my hand harder. As the doctor started injecting, the needle going in again and again around each tooth mark, pushing the medicine deep into the tissue.

I could see tears running down his face, but he didn’t make a sound. Just kept squeezing my hand so hard I thought my fingers might break.

After what felt like forever getting the immunoglobulin into the wound sites, they gave him the first dose of rabies vaccine in his upper arm along with a tetanus shot just to be safe. The doctor explained he’d need to come back on days 3, 7, and 14 for the rest of the vaccine series, and that missing any of them could be fatal since the immunoglobulin only buys time for the vaccine to work.

Then the doctor asked to speak with me privately and we stepped into the hallway where he asked detailed questions about my own exposure risk, whether I’d had any contact with Harper’s saliva in the past 10 days.

I explained I hadn’t even seen her for 2 days before today because of my crazy work schedule and he said I probably didn’t need treatment but to monitor myself closely for any symptoms.

Just as we were finishing up, a woman from the billing department showed up with a tablet. I’m trying to understand how the husband managed to handle all of this alone. Getting Harper to the vet while she was raid must have been incredibly dangerous.

Did he use a catchphole or thick gloves?

and started explaining the costs. And my stomach dropped when she said the rabies immunoglobulin alone was $8,000 per vial and my husband had needed three based on his weight.

Adding in the vaccines at 2,000 each dose, the ER visit, the wound care, and everything else, we were looking at close to $30,000 before insurance, and she wasn’t even sure how much our plan would cover since Raby’s treatment was considered a special case.

The nurse finally brought us the discharge papers at 3:00 in the morning along with a stack of appointment cards for the rest of the vaccine series. My husband moved like an old man as we walked to the car, holding his bandaged hand against his chest.

I did the math in my head while driving us home. Even if insurance covered half, we’d need at least $15,000. That meant picking up every extra shift I could get for the next 6 months.

The house felt wrong when we got back. Too quiet without Harper’s breathing from her bed in the corner. Neither of us could sleep, so we ended up on the couch.

My husband started telling me what really happened that afternoon. His voice cracked when he described Harper trying to attack a group of kids playing on the sidewalk. She’d been foaming at the mouth and snarling like she didn’t even know him. He’d had to grab her collar and drag her inside while she bit at his arms.

The kids had been crying and their parents were already calling animal control. He showed me his phone and played a voice memo he’d recorded right after getting back from the vet.

I could hear him sobbing in the recording as he explained why he couldn’t wait for me. He kept saying he was sorry over and over and that he hoped I’d understand someday.

Listening to how broken he sounded just hours ago made my chest hurt. I told him I was sorry for the things I’d said earlier.

The next morning, someone named Theo Steelbridge called from public health. He needed to document Harper’s case for their rabies tracking system. When I explained she’d been cremated, he got quiet for a long moment.

He said the cremation meant they couldn’t test her brain tissue to confirm rabies. Without that confirmation, they couldn’t properly track how the outbreak was spreading through our area. He asked a bunch of questions about where we walked Harbor and which animals she might have come in contact with.

I gave him the vets’s number, and he said he’d follow up with them directly. After that call, I phoned the vets’s office myself and asked to speak with whoever had put Harper down. The vet remembered everything clearly because Harper had been her patient since she was 8 weeks old.

She told me Harper’s pupils had been completely dilated and fixed when they brought her in. Her back legs were starting to show paralysis, and she was having trouble swallowing. Those were all latestage rabies symptoms.

That meant Harper was already dying. The vet said my husband had made the only choice possible.

Around noon, the animal control officer showed up to inspect our backyard. He took photos of every spot of blood on the fence where Harbor had hurt herself. He measured the height of the blood splatter and wrote notes about the bite marks in the wood.

Then, he put on a respirator mask and sprayed industrial disinfectant over the entire fence line. The chemical smell was so strong it made my eyes water from inside the house. He told us to stay out of the yard for at least 2 weeks while the disinfectant worked.

He also said we needed to report any wild animals we saw acting strange.

While he was working, I started my battle with the insurance company about covering the rest of the vaccine doses. The first person transferred me three times before I got someone who even knew what post-exposure prophylaxis meant. She kept putting me on hold to check with supervisors about our coverage limits.

I explained over and over that this wasn’t optional, that my husband would die without the full series. She said she understood, but still needed to verify our benefits.

After an hour, she came back and said they’d only cover vaccines given at in-network facilities. The ER we’d gone to was out of network, so we’d have to pay full price for those doses.

I asked if she understood that we went to the closest ER because rabies exposure is a medical emergency.

She said she’d note that in our file for the appeal process. The appeal could take 6 to 8 weeks to process.

Meanwhile, my husband had started going through Harper’s things in the garage. He wore thick rubber gloves because we didn’t know what might have her saliva on it. Each toy went into a black garbage bag along with her food bowls and leashes.

I found him sitting on the garage floor holding her favorite tennis ball and crying.

He said it still smelled like her.

We had to throw away her dog bed, her blankets, everything she’d touched in the last week. It felt like losing her all over again with each item we bagged.

That evening, my husband’s temperature spiked to 101°. He started getting muscle aches in his shoulders and back. The discharge paper said these were normal side effects from the vaccines, but I couldn’t stop worrying.

I checked his temperature every hour and kept shining my phone flashlight in his eyes to check his pupils. He told me to stop, but I couldn’t help myself. Every time he winced or rubbed his neck, I wondered if the treatment was failing.

After he finally fell asleep on the couch, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop reading medical journals about rabies treatment. Most of the studies said the vaccines were 99% effective when given quickly after exposure, but that 1% kept sticking in my mind.

I found case reports of people who got the full treatment but still developed rabies weeks later. The papers described how the virus could sometimes hide in nerve tissue where the antibodies couldn’t reach it. Once symptoms started, there was nothing anyone could do.

I kept reading until my eyes burned, looking for any sign that would tell me if the treatment was working or not.

The doorbell rang early the next morning, and I found our neighbor standing there with his phone already out. He showed me footage from his doorbell camera from 5 days ago, and my stomach dropped as I watched Harper grab that raccoon by the throat.

The video was clear enough to see the raccoon’s claws raking across Harper’s face while she shook it hard. Blood sprayed across our driveway as Harper’s teeth sank deeper and the raccoon twisted to bite her muzzle.

I could pinpoint the exact second when infected saliva probably got into Harper’s bloodstream through those scratches. My neighbor said he’d been checking his camera after hearing about what happened and thought we should see this. He backed away from us quickly after showing the video like we might be contagious, too.

2 hours later, we were sitting in plastic chairs at the health department while Theo filled out contact tracing forms. He needed every single person who might have touched Harbor in the past 2 weeks.

I wrote down the groomer’s name, our dog walker, the kid next door who always gave Harbor treats. Each name felt like I was putting someone else’s life at risk, even though Theo kept saying Harbor wasn’t contagious until closer to when she showed symptoms.

We spent another hour going through dates and times, trying to remember who petted her at the park last weekend. My husband’s handwriting got shakier with each form as the vaccine side effects kicked in harder. His injection sites were swelling and turning purple while we sat there answering questions about Harper’s vaccination history.

Theo needed her vet records going back 3 years, but our vets’s office was closed until Monday.

I had to step outside to call my chief of surgery because my hands were shaking too bad to text. She picked up on the third ring and I could hear the O noise in the background.

I told her I needed coverage for my scheduled surgeries because I hadn’t slept in 36 hours.

She was quiet for a long moment before saying she understood, but this would definitely come up in my performance review. I knew she was already doing the math on how this would affect our department’s numbers.