Love Saves the Day

Josh sank onto one of the benches in the waiting room, wooden benches that suggested festive outdoor activities where people might bring their dogs, and that held wicker baskets containing magazines like Cat Fancy and Best Friends. “For our anniversary, I went to the florist who made your wedding bouquet. I had him make an identical one. It was supposed to come before you left for work today.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Nothing this morning has gone the way I’d planned.”

Laura felt tears sting her eyes. “Oh, Josh,” she murmured, and sank down onto the bench next to him.

“Prudence ate some of the lilies.” Josh seemed to address this to the bulletin board with flyers for lost dogs and kittens for adoption that hung on the wall across the tiny room, unable or unwilling to look her in the face.

“Okay,” Laura said, confused. “Cats eat plants sometimes.”

“Yes,” Josh said. “But lilies are toxic to cats. There’s something in them that shuts their kidneys down.”

“But she’ll be okay, right?” Laura willed Josh to look at her, but his eyes stayed fixed on the wall. “You got Prudence here quickly and they’ll be able to … to fix her, won’t they?”

Josh’s hands rose to cover his face. “I don’t know. They’re still working on her. Nobody’s been able to tell me anything yet.” Josh rose and began pacing the room again. When he finally turned to Laura, his eyes were outraged. “Why doesn’t anybody tell you something like this? There should be a … I don’t know, a manual or a warning label that gets sent home with every cat, with a picture of a lily in one of those big red circles with a line through it. I didn’t know.” His voice was ragged. “I had no idea. I would never have let those flowers into our house if … if I’d …”

“You couldn’t have known, Josh,” Laura said, softly. “I had a cat growing up, and I didn’t know, either. You did the right thing. You brought her here, and that’s the best possible thing you could have done for her.”

Josh nodded, although he looked unconvinced, and came to sit by Laura once again.

The minutes ticked by, marked by an oversized clock above the reception desk, until Laura was so tense from the ticktock ticktock she thought she might scream and hurl the nearest blunt object at the thing. Twice she walked over to the reception desk and asked, in a hushed voice, if there was any word yet about Prudence Broder? The first time, the dark-haired woman—wearing blue scrubs and a nose ring—pressed Laura’s hand and said, “I was sorry to hear about your mother, mamí.” Laura was unable to respond beyond nodding and leaving her hand in the receptionist’s for a moment. As she returned to her seat, a black-skinned man in a white guayabera walked in with a large green parrot perched on his shoulder. “Hello, this is Oliver. Hello, this is Oliver,” the parrot squawked. “Hello, Oliver,” the receptionist greeted the parrot in a cheerful, trilling voice, and the three of them—man, woman, and bird—disappeared through a swinging door into an exam room. The receptionist returned in time to welcome a large woman carrying a tiny dog of indeterminate breed, wearing a pink sweater and attached to a rhinestone-studded leash. “Dr. Luk is waiting for you and Pancake in exam room three,” the receptionist told the woman. “You can go on back.”

Laura rose and walked to the reception desk again. Was there anything the receptionist could tell them? Any news about Prudence at all? “Dr. DeMeola is with her right now.” The receptionist’s voice was so sympathetic that it made Laura’s heart lurch, certain the news could only be bad. “She’ll be out to update you as soon as she can.” Laura nodded once more and returned to her seat next to Josh. She tried flipping through one of the magazines in the basket next to her, but page after glossy page filled with photos of other people’s happy, healthy cats did nothing to ease the knot in her stomach. Finally, she gave up and tossed the magazine back into its basket.

“You never told me you had a cat when you were growing up,” Josh said suddenly.

“Well, she was our upstairs neighbors’ cat.” Laura smiled wanly. “But we were close. She … died. When I was fourteen.”

Josh’s long legs were stretched out in front of him, and Laura studied his jeans. They’d come home one Sunday afternoon to find Prudence sleeping comfortably on them where Josh had tossed them across the bed, and Josh hadn’t had the heart to make her move. There were a couple of snags where Prudence’s claws must have caught them. “I had a cat when I was a kid, too,” Josh said after a moment. “For about five minutes.”

“What are you talking about?”