Page 36 of Knocked Up

I had three people whose calls I answered. That was why.

My father called Sunday.

"Good response Thursday. I said so on the air. The glove was better. You're still late on the push and now the league's seen you can be got early, so they'll test it. Vancouver will test it Tuesday. Watch their four. I'm not going to soften what I said before the game."

"I didn't ask you to."

Under two minutes.

Tuesday I got to the rink at two for a seven o'clock game.

Two hours out the room was four guys and a trainer. I sat in my stall with my pads on and my blocker in my hands.

I felt for it through the leather. Nobody can feel a piece of paper through a blocker. I checked anyway, with my thumb along the seam, until I found the place where the lining sat a little high.

Then I put the glove and blocker on. Then I did what I always did before I went out, which was put both hands flat against the front of my chest for about three seconds. I've done it since I was nineteen. There's a photograph of me doing it on a wall in the concourse.

Nobody has ever asked what it is, because it doesn't look like anything.

I stood up and went out.

Chapter 10: Tessa

Three days after, a woman came in at nine at night with a four-month-old shepherd in a laundry basket. She said the words nobody wants, he's throwing up and there's blood in the other end. Parvo, positive in minutes.

Then she said the second thing nobody wants, there's five more at home.

We got four of the five. I ran that ward from nine at night until nine the next morning, Marisol until two and then Eli after that. Eli was not a tech. He was a bartender who did the runs on Wednesdays. He stood in isolation in a gown and gloves at four in the morning holding a bag of fluids up because the pole was taken.

"You have one pole," he said.

"I have three poles."

"You have three poles and four dogs, Tess."

"Then you're a pole."

"I want that on my headstone."

At six he pulled the gown off and said, "You look terrible," with a great deal of love. He went home to sleep four hours before his shift.

All four lived. It cost $1,100, which went on the card that was for emergencies and by then had two other emergencies on it.

Then a litter came in on a Sunday. Five, three weeks old, found under a deck in Wheat Ridge. That meant bottle feeding every three hours, which meant somebody slept in the building.

The second graders named them. Luna and Gump and Dryden had gone to homes by then. So, we got a Hasek, a Brodeur, a Plante and a Parent. The last one they insisted on calling Mister Tony, after a goalie I was told was actually named Tony.

Roy stayed. Nobody adopted the little gray one and I did not push him. I did not look too hard at why.

Violet took the midnight feeds. I took the threes. Eli took Tuesdays and complained in a way I've come to understand is his love language.

"He bit me," Eli said at three in the morning, about a kitten with no teeth.

Violet had theories.

Week one it was that I was overworked. Week two it was that I was overworked and something else. Week three she came in with two coffees and said, "I'm going to say a name."

"Don't."