The Insulin I Carried to My Mother’s Door

The text

I got home at 7:40 that Wednesday morning, after a night that had been one ambulance after another. A rollover on I-80. A man with chest pain who turned out to be fine. A little girl with croup who sounded exactly like I did at four years old.

I unlocked the door and Tucker wasn’t there.

That was the first thing. He is always there.

I called his name. I checked the closet he likes, and under the bed, and behind the dryer. His food bowl was gone. His bed was gone. His litter box was gone.

My heart was going the way it does when a trauma call comes over the radio.

Then my phone buzzed in my scrub pocket. It was a text from Mom, sent at 2:11 in the morning, which I had not seen during a shift where I hadn’t sat down once.

“I took Tucker. You’re never home. He’s skin and bones. He’s better off with me.”

I read it standing in my kitchen with my coat still on.

Then I opened the family group chat, the one my sister started for Christmas plans three years ago that never stopped. There were forty-one new messages.

At 2:30 that morning, my mother had posted a photo of Tucker sitting on her kitchen linoleum, looking up at the camera with his crooked tail curled around his feet. He looked thin. He always looks thin.

“Look how thin he is,” she had written. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. Somebody has to take care of him.”

My Aunt Carol had written, “Bless you, Deb. That poor baby.” My cousin had written, “Megan works so much, I’m not surprised.”

My sister Kristen had written, at 6:15, “Megan, what is going on? Call me.”

And then twenty more messages from people I hadn’t talked to since a funeral, all saying some version of the same thing. Poor kitty. Good for you, Deb.

The insulin

I want to tell you what I felt first, because it wasn’t anger.

It was the refrigerator.

I walked over and opened the door and looked at the shelf on the inside, next to the eggs, where Tucker’s insulin vial and his box of pens sit. They were both there. His meter and his test strips were on the counter beside the notebook.

My mother had taken my cat, his bowl, his bed and his litter box. She had not taken his insulin, because she did not know it existed.

His last shot had been at 6:45 the night before. It was now 7:50 in the morning. He was due.

I called her. It rang until her voicemail, which still has my dad’s voice on it from 2009 saying “you’ve reached the Doyles.” I called again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail. Again.

I texted. “Mom. Tucker is diabetic. He needs insulin twice a day. He needs a shot now and another one at 7 tonight. Please call me.”

Then I sat down on my kitchen floor where his bed used to be and waited. At 9:58 she wrote back.

“He’s fine. He ate a whole can of tuna and drank a whole bowl of water. He’s just hungry. Get some sleep, you sound tired.”

A whole bowl of water.

I closed my eyes. I knew what a whole bowl of water meant. It meant his sugar was already climbing.