Page 43 of Knocked Up

Bear got up.

"You can't come. It's ten o'clock."

He got his leash off the hook himself, which he did by pulling on it until it fell. He stood there holding it.

So we both went.

I drove east on Thirty-Eighth and south on Federal without the radio on. I was building the same sentence I always built, which was that I was in the area.

The lot was dark. One light was on out back over the runs, and her car was in the spot it was always in. That meant she was in the house behind the building. It meant she was asleep, which was the entire reason I could do it.

I parked with the engine running and walked up to the front door with a bag of soup. There was a metal ledge under the mail slot exactly the depth of a container. I set it down flat.

I did not knock. I did not text. I did not write anything on it.

I stood there a second with my hand flat on the glass of a door I'd never once been able to walk past.

Then I drove home with a dog in the passenger seat. I made myself a bowl of the same soup and ate it standing up at the counter.

Chapter 12: Tessa

The week before Thanksgiving, a client's carrier came in smelling like the inside of a carrier. I put my hand over my mouth and walked out of my own exam room.

Marisol came around the corner with a chart.

"You okay? You're gray."

"I skipped breakfast."

"You skipped breakfast Thursday too," Marisol said. She did not push it, because she was a person of tremendous discretion. That was the most irritating thing about her.

I finished the appointment and did not smell one thing. I had stopped breathing through my nose entirely, a workaround I had apparently been running for two weeks without deciding to.

At five o'clock I sat down at the desk with the appointment book and my phone and did the math.

Then I did it again, because I did not trust arithmetic I did not like.

Nine weeks. Nine by the way it's counted, which is not from the night. It's from before the night. Everybody in medicine knows that and still has to say it out loud to themselves in a lobby at five in the afternoon.

Then I called Violet.

"Can you come here?"

There was a pause. "I'm getting my keys," Violet said. "I'm walking to the car. I'm in the car. Do you want to tell me now or when I get there?"

"When you get there."

"Is anyone dying?"

"Nobody's dying, Violet."

"Okay. I'm going to the pharmacy on Federal first," she said. She hung up before I could answer. That woman had been six steps ahead of me since we were nineteen.

She came in at six-forty with a paper bag and her coat still on.

"I got three. Two brands and a third that was on sale, which I understand is not how science works, but I felt it was thorough. I also got crackers, a ginger ale and a bag of little oranges, because I panicked in an aisle." She put the bag down. "Here or at the house?"

"Here. The house has a broken thermostat and my brother has a key."