Page 38 of Knocked Up

I knew tired. I've been tired since 2016. This was a different animal. This was falling asleep sitting up on the stool at four in the afternoon between a nail trim and a lump check. This was standing in the treatment room with the chlorhexidine open, the disinfectant I've smelled every day of my adult life. I had to put my head out the back door for a second.

I filed it. Parvo ward, bottle feeds, Apex, no sleep since spring. Any one of those would make a person tired and I had all four.

The recheck was a Wednesday, four weeks out, four-thirty.

Of course he kept the paper. He came in and put it on the counter, folded in quarters, soft at the folds the way paper gets when it's been carried. Marisol said, "Oh, you don't need to bring that, we have it in the system." He said, "I know," and took it back.

Then I had to stand in an exam room and read a chart I wrote at dawn as an excuse to get out of a room.

"Weight's the same," I said. "That's what I want. Hips are hips. He's using the left better. Are you doing the morning dose?"

"On the bad days."

"How many bad days?"

"Two a week. Three last week, it got cold."

"That's about right for October."

I looked at the chart. There was nothing else on the chart. I had written the chart.

"Kidney numbers are holding. Phosphorus is up two points, which is nothing, but I'd rather see it flat. So go back to the daily binders. You'll run out around the 20th."

"I have a second box."

"Of course you do," I said.

He stood on the other side of the exam table with his hands on the edge of it. I stood on my side with a clipboard. There were about thirty inches of stainless steel between us and neither of us moved for a second.

"How's the season?" I said.

"Nine and six."

"That's good, right?"

"It's fine."

"That's a word, Beckett."

"It's fine," he said. "It's good. Yeah."

"Your father."

"Same."

"Beckett."

"He's exactly the same," he said. "That's the one thing about him."

Bear stood up on the mat and walked around the end of the table. He put his whole head against my leg, which was not helpful.

I bent down and put both hands on the sides of his face. I told him he was a very good boy in a voice reserved for animals. When I stood up Beckett had come around the corner of the table to hand me the leash.

He was about a foot away, maybe less. The leash was out and his hand was open. I could see the tendon on the back of it and the freckle below the second knuckle. My hand was already going.

I took the leash by the loop at the far end.

"Thanks," I said.