Reflections on the Seventh Week of Summer – Giving George Fluids

   Early Monday afternoon, I walked down the driveway past my son Charlie’s red car, stepped into the log house, and yelled, “I’m home.”

    The refrigerator hummed, the cats’ water fountain gurgled, but neither Charlie nor the cats answered.

    Puzzled, I dropped my wet swim gear on the bathroom floor and tiptoed to the guest room.

    Charlie, who usually crashed at his Seneca apartment after working 3:00-10:00 a.m. for UPS, lay motionless on the bed. The cats, George and Emma, yawned at me from curled poses on the floor.

    Charlie had driven to Wells Wood to help with George’s subcutaneous fluids. I’d rejected the idea of waking two hours early so that my husband Spence could hold George for me before leaving for a day in Columbus, Ohio.

    I stepped toward the bed. “Are you in pain?”

    Charlie turned bleary eyes toward me.

    Slipping into concerned mother mode, questions cascaded from my mouth. “Was work horrible? Were folks mean to you?”

    “Work went fine. I’m just tired.”

    Tired? He looked zoom-to-the-emergency-room exhausted.

    “Do you want to give George his fluids now so you can sleep?”

    “Eat your lunch.” He murmured and lay his arm over his eyes.

    I scolded myself for fussing at a forty-three year old man, rinsed my swim gear, and made a salmon salad sandwich.

    George meowed at my feet.

    I dropped a piece of fish.

    George gobbled the fish, meowed, and gazed at me with pleading green eyes.

    I put the place mat with pink salmon specks on the floor and sat with my lunch tray in an Adirondack chair.

    Snores floated down the hall.

    An hour and a half later, Charlie ambled into the great room.

    I hung the bag of Lactated Ringer’s Injection fluid from the track light affixed to the twelve by six inch white pine beam supporting the loft bridge.

    Charlie bent and scooped sleeping George off the blanket by the sliding glass door.

    Careful not to prick my finger with a sharp tip again, I screwed a sterile needle onto the end of the plastic tubing.

    Wrapping George in muscular, bare arms, Charlie carried the cat across the room and gently set him on the kitchen table.

    Charlie’s fingers massaged George’s head while I pulled the loose skin on George’s back into a fold and jabbed in the needle.

    George merrowed and licked my hand.

    I opened the clamps on the plastic tubing.

    Fluid flowed.

    Charlie massaged.

    George relaxed.

    Standing on the chair to monitor the fluid level, I envisioned Charlie as a nine year old walking away from me to the radiation room in Mount Sinai Hospital. Had Charlie’s tender handling grown out of his extended hospitalizations and prolonged cancer treatments?

    I shut the clamps, eased the needle out, and pinched George’s skin tight to close the hole.

    George didn’t complain. With a Quasimodo hump of water on his back, he gobbled soft chicken-flavored cat treats.

    Flashing me a weak smile, Charlie sat in the other Adirondack chair with a bag of chips and bowl of salsa. He munched, and we chatted about point of view in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Whose Body until he yawned and ambled back to the guest room.

    Ten minutes later he carried Emma out to the great room. Standing by the sofa, he scratched her neck.

    She flicked the end of her tail.

    Scratch. Flick. Scratch. Flick. Scratch. Flick.

    “You’re too nice to Emma.”

    “No I”m not. I’m evicting her from my bed.”

    I giggled.

    He set Emma on the sofa.

    She crossed her front legs.

    Charlie walked down the hall and closed the guest room door.

    Sunshine poured through the sliding glass door.

    The mattress groaned.

    Emma purred.

    Despite the closed door, snores floated down the hall again.

   I smiled at images of Charlie cuddling cats, helping me with George’s life-prolonging fluid treatments, and engaging me with conversation. Thank goodness he moved to Western Pennsylvania.