The Shape of Days

The paperwork clearly says that visiting hours are from 9:00 to 10:00 in the morning, 1:00 to 4:00 after lunch and 7:00 to 10:00 at night. It says this clearly. I checked twice.

But today the vet has a sign on the door of the hospital saying that due to a blah blah didn’t pay attention, visiting hours won’t begin until 2:00.

I think it’s a clue into my current emotional state that, when I got there, I seriously considered ringing the “this is an emergency, please let me in” bell. I, like, stood there for five solid minutes thinking real hard about it. On the one hand, I might piss somebody off. But on the other hand, they’d get over it, and Nelson is in there all alone and he needs me.

Wisdom won out. I came home, ate a little bowl of oatmeal, wished I hadn’t, watched an episode of Jeopardy on the TiVo, wished I hadn’t, and looked for ways to kill forty-five minutes. “I know,” I thought to myself. “I’ll play with Nelson!” And then I remembered, and then I cried.

My roommate called me around noon. I’d left her a message with the details of what the doctor told me this morning, the stuff about the echo cardiogram and all that. Her question to me was blindingly obvious and a total shock: Why? Why subject Nelson to an uncomfortable test, and subject ourselves to the expense? What will this test tell us? How will it change our course of treatment? These questions are obvious, and they never occurred to me for a second. Of course we’re doing the test. That’s what you do. When somebody is sick, you do everything until he’s better again. That’s what you do.

Isn’t it?

Twenty minutes to go.

This post is part of a series. You can read the whole thing here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

• What auspicious timing
• Timing
• Hurricane Frances: I question the timing