is she one of the most dedicated nurses I know, she has some sort of intuition for the profession. She always seems to know who actually needs the most attention.
“Hello, sorry to keep you waiting.” Mary’s pleasant voice kept me from feeling too bad about my dependence. If she had been annoyed before it was all forgotten now.
“David, do you have a few minutes? I want to show you something down in room 310.”
As we walked down the hall, Mary told me a little about Lilia Davis. “She’s one of your colleague’s patients. She’s about eighty now, and has been here on the unit for eighteen months. About three months ago, she started losing a bunch of weight. Then one morning, she started to bleed from below. We sent her to the hospital and they diagnosed her with colon cancer that had spread everywhere. Given her severe dementia, her family decided not to treat it; they sent her back on hospice services.”
A reasonable approach, I thought to myself.
We found Mrs. Davis lying on her back, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow. A morphine pump was connected to her left arm via an IV. On the other side of the room was an empty cot, the sheets displaced off to the side. Someone had been sleeping here not long ago.
“Mrs. Davis’s daughter,” Mary said before I could ask. “I sent her home for a few hours to shower and change her clothes. I think she’d been here for thirty-six hours straight.”
“So, what did you want to show me?” I asked.
Mary pointed to the base of the bed. “Take a look.”
As I approached, the head of a black-and-white tabby cat rose up off the sheets. Moving caused the bell on his collar to jingle slightly. The cat’s ears perked up and he glanced at me with questioning eyes. I ignored him and moved toward the patient. The cat put his head back down on his front paws and purred softly while nestled against Mrs. Davis’s right leg. I looked over at her face and noted that she was clearly comfortable.
“She looks okay,” I said. “Do you need an order for medication or something?”
“Not the patient, David. She’s fine. It’s the cat.”
“The cat? You brought me in here to see a cat?”
“This is Oscar,” she said, as if introducing me to someone at a dinner party.
“Okay,” I said. I was starting to share Maya’s bad mood. “He’s a cat hanging out with a patient.”
“Well, that’s just it. Oscar doesn’t really like to hang out with people. I mean, how many times have you actually seen him up here? Usually he’s hiding somewhere.”
It was true: I’d only seen Oscar a handful of times, even though he had lived on the unit for about a year by then. Sometimes I would see him by the front desk, where his food and water bowls were, or curled up asleep underneath the remains of a tattered old blanket. Oscar did not have a reputation as a sociable cat.
“He’s probably just warming up to us a little,” I said. “Though I don’t profess to be an expert in cats, my experience says they do whatever it is they want to do. He’s probably sitting here because he found someone who won’t bother him.”
“I know this is weird, David, but the thing is, Oscar never really spends any time with the patients. He usually just goes off and hides, mostly in my office. Lately, though, a couple of us here have noticed that he’s spending more time with certain residents.”
I shrugged. “And why is that weird?” Looking at Oscar curled up beside Mrs. Davis, I was reminded of the cats they buried with the ancient Egyptians. This scene was certainly peaceful enough.
“The thing is,” Mary said slowly, “Oscar only spends time with patients who are about to die.”
Now I’d heard everything.
“So you’re telling me Mrs. Davis is going to die today?” I looked over at her and immediately regretted what I had said. Her breathing was clearly labored and I felt guilty for my breach in decorum. I realized that Mrs. Davis indeed might die today—a fact that had more to do with her dementia and rapidly progressing cancer than the presence of a cat on her bed.
Mary smiled but I could sense her embarrassment. I felt bad for scoffing at her.
“I suppose it’s possible that a cat might know when someone’s going to die. Remember that article recently about the cancer-sniffing dogs? And there are those Japanese