Love Saves the Day

The apartment is silent after Laura leaves. The only thing I hear is the sound of Josh pacing and rain pounding on our windows. Josh walks around and around the kitchen and living room, and then he walks up the stairs and back down the stairs and up the stairs again. I hear him opening drawers and slamming them back closed, and once it sounds like he kicks something. Every so often I hear him say, “Dammit!” under his breath. I don’t think he’s looking for anything specific as he walks around and opens drawers. I think he’s trying to find a way to feel less anxious. He must feel anxious, because I don’t think I’ve ever been this upset. I haven’t heard humans yell like that since I lived outside with my littermates. The doorbell rings, and I can hear Josh open the door and say a curt, “Thanks,” to whoever is there. He walks into the kitchen, and I hear him set something on the counter. Then he grabs an umbrella from the tall stand near the front door like he’s angry at it and goes out. The apartment is silent once again.

Sarah is dead. Sarah is never coming back. I’ll never see her again. Maybe we were just roommates, but we loved each other. All those times Laura told me things about Sarah, how could she not have told me this? And then I have an even worse thought: What if Laura and Josh don’t want to be a family anymore because of the vicious words they just said to each other? What if they don’t want to live with each other? What if neither of them wants to live with me, either? They might not love me like Sarah did, but if Sarah is really gone forever then there’s nobody else in the whole world to care even a little about where I live or what happens to me.

What I should do now is finish my breakfast, like I do every morning. If I do everything the way I usually do, Laura and Josh will have to come back and be happy together the way they usually are. Except I can’t quite manage it right now. My chest is hurting and so is my stomach. The hole in my chest from Sarah’s not being here has moved down to my belly. Now it’s in both places.

It’s the new smell from the kitchen that finally draws me out from under-the-couch. There’s a bunch of flowers on the counter, arranged in a glass vase. The flowers have little drops of water on them from the rain outside, and the spicy-earth scent of them fills the whole downstairs of our apartment.

I know what kind of flowers these are. They’re the same kind as Laura is holding in the pictures from when she and Josh got married.

The smell of the flowers pulls me up. Almost before I’ve made the decision to do it, I’m sitting on the counter next to them. I remember the cat grass Sarah used to keep for me when we lived together. When my stomach felt upset like it does now, the cat grass would help make it feel better.

Josh must know how upset I am, and that’s why he had the man at the door bring flowers for me to eat. He knows I like to eat the things he leaves on the counter.

So I put my whole face into the middle of those flowers and breathe in their delicious smell. Then I start to eat. I chew on the leaves and stems and the soft parts of the flowers themselves. I eat and eat and wait for my stomach to stop twisting around so much, and when my stomach doesn’t feel better right away I eat some more …

… and now there’s nothing except Badness. I feel the Badness all over my whole body. My stomach heaves and spins trying to get the Badness out of me, but it doesn’t work. I throw up and catch my breath and throw up again, and still I can’t get the Badness out. I’m thirsty and try to drink from my water bowl, but the Badness rises up and throws the water out of my mouth as soon as I take it in. It’s making everything look funny. Small things look too big and things that are far away look too close and my legs won’t work right and my mouth won’t stop making water. I bump into things because I can’t see them right and they’re playing tricks on me, sneaking closer when I’m not looking, on purpose to make me trip over my own feet. All these things are happening, but none of them is making the Badness go away.

I try to meow for help, so that somebody can hear me, like that day when Sarah and I first found each other. But when I open my mouth I throw up again and it just makes me feel dizzier. I try to walk to a cooler part of the room, maybe under-the-couch or down the hall away from the big windows, but my legs aren’t working right. I fall over once and then twice, and then I realize I’m not getting closer to where I’m trying to go because I’m walking in circles.

When I lived with Sarah and my belly felt upset, she would stroke my forehead and say, Shhh, little girl. Don’t worry. Everything’s okay. Everything’s going to be just fine …