Page 17 of Knocked Up

My whole life was a series of systems. The ones that held were the ones I got to keep.

I did the kitchen on a Sunday. Everything out, everything wiped, everything back in an order that made sense. I consolidated Walt's four half-empty coffee cans into one, which took twenty minutes of standing there with a can in each hand.

Then I taped a laminated sheet on the fridge with Bear's medications, times and doses. Then came a second sheet for the fluid days, marked out three weeks ahead.

Then house rules, which I wrote on an index card and taped to the cabinet:

No stairs unsupervised. Nothing off the counter. He does not sleep on the bed.

He slept on the bed the first night.

He was eleven days out of surgery and he could not get his back end off the floor. He stood there with his front paws on the mattress and looked at me.

So I picked up eighty pounds of dog and put him on my bed. Rule three was gone. By the end of that week rules one and two were also gone.

I did not throw the card away. I looked at it most days.

Auggie started calling her the hot vet on a Wednesday and never stopped.

"How's the hot vet?"

"I'm hanging up."

"You can't hang up. We're in a car."

"Auggie."

"I have four sisters, Beckett. I'm world class at conversation." He put his blinker on. "You have gone to that clinic nine times."

"That's not…"

"It's nine. I have a note in my phone. It's called Beckett Vet Tracker, and entry six says, quote, Tuesday afternoon, dog does not have an appointment."

"How would you know whether he has an appointment?"

"Because you're a bad liar with a beautiful face," Auggie said. He took the exit.

Two weeks became every other week, and then became whenever Bear had a thing. Bear was thirteen, so Bear always had a thing.

I'd done the fluids at home nine times. I walked in that afternoon feeling roughly the way I felt in the tunnel before a game I already knew I was going to win.

"Show me," Tessa said.

So I tented it and went in beautifully. Bear turned his head and looked at the needle in his own back. Then he stood up and walked off the end of the exam table.

The line came with him. The bag came off the hook. The hook came out of the ceiling tile.

"Bear. Bear, no…"

"Grab the bag."

"I've got the dog."

"The bag is the thing that…"

The bag hit the floor. A liter of fluid went out across the tile. Bear stood in the middle of it looking extremely pleased with the outcome. Tessa put both hands on top of her head and made a noise like a laugh being strangled in a back room.

"I'm sorry. I'm going to pay for the…"