Page 107 of Knocked Up

I put my hand on the back of the couch behind her.

"He comes with me," I said. "Everything in this house comes with me. I'm not going anywhere, so it's a hypothetical."

She wrote something on the clipboard and did not let me see it.

"Final question. Is there anything the authorizing veterinarian should know about the name?"

"No."

"Mr. Douglas."

"It's a cat," I said. "It got named in October by a seven-year-old off a list. It's the only one moving into this house."

Tessa Reeves looked at me for about four seconds, then put the clipboard on the floor and got a fist in the front of my shirt.

"Approved," she said.

"That's not procedure."

"I'm the authorizing veterinarian."

"There's a form."

"Beckett," she said, and pulled. I went, because I always do.

She wrote it in the notes field afterward, in that slanted hand, The only Roy moving into this residence is this one.

She was cleared on the 10th of July, at a follow-up on Wadsworth. A woman with a clipboard said it the way a person says a car has passed an inspection.

She did not tell me in the car. She waited until eleven at night. Willa was down and I was at the sink. She came and stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded.

"I have a medical update. I was cleared this morning."

I turned the tap off.

"Say it in words," I said.

"I'm saying it in words, I'm telling you the…"

"Tessa."

The clock on the stove said eleven.

"I want you to come to bed," she said. "Mine. Not the nine-by-eight one. And I want you to stop being careful. Before you say it, I know it's six weeks and I know what my own body has done this year. I've read more about it than you have. I'm not asking you to forget it. I'm asking you not to treat me like a patient in my own house."

"That's all of it?"

"That's all of it."

"Say the last part again."

"Beckett."

"Say it," I said. "I've had eleven months of you telling me what you don't need. I want the one where you tell me what you want, and I want it in a room with the light on."

Tessa took two breaths.

"I want you," she said.