Member-only story
There’s Something Wrong With My Heart
What will I do when Felix is gone?
The morning after a man violently attacked me in my home, I walked by cages of cats. My Sophie had died of an unknown sickness that whittled her body down to four pounds. She was a puff of fur when the vet inserted the needle with care as I sobbed in the other room. I would never dare take her into the cold clinical offices with their smells and snarls and silver surfaces. No, no, her final moments were with me, in my arms, as I held her until her final breath shuddered out. Until she found her way back home.
I never forgave myself for her passing because I was always busy. I was always pre-occupied in a meeting, on a conference call, on a plane. I missed the signs of her growing illness. Or maybe I didn’t want to deal with yet another loss of one of the few things I truly loved.
So when she died that hot morning in August, I opened a bottle of vodka and kept drinking through the afternoon, the evening, in a bar, in another bar, in a pool hall, back to the first bar, and the last thing I remember before saying no was me trying to push this stranger out of my house. But he would not go. When I woke the next morning, hurt in all the usual places, I nodded. Yes, I had deserved it.
