Part 7
The first appointment produced no clean beginning. Jonah’s oncology team ordered updated blood work and imaging before recommending the next treatment plan. Some results were better than he had feared. Others showed that delay had narrowed his choices. Dr. Shah said this without scolding him and without pretending it did not matter.
Jonah listened. He asked questions. When the nurse offered to write down the schedule, he let her.
Gus drove him to the first treatment because Jonah might be too tired to drive home. They argued about music for thirty miles and stopped once so Gus could inspect a roadside utility pole that no longer belonged to him. The delay irritated Jonah. Its familiarity did not.
On difficult afternoons, he came home with only enough energy to remove his boots and sit on the kitchen floor. Mica would settle several feet away, as she had on her own difficult nights. Neither approached until the other moved first.
Jonah began helping with winter outreach when his health and the weather allowed. He inspected backup generators, repaired a wheelchair ramp, and drove the tracked rig after a late March snowfall. Once, his entire contribution was labeling extension cords at the community center because Beth refused to let him lift anything. He labeled them in handwriting large enough for Ruth to read without admitting she needed glasses.
Mica came on quiet visits. She was not a service animal, an emergency mascot, or a lesson. She was a young dog who liked boiled chicken, distrusted men who moved too quickly, and occasionally stole one of Gus’s gloves. People learned to let her approach or not.
The food containers remained in Jonah’s house. He did not remove them to prove she had recovered. The one beneath the table gradually became a place for dust. The container by the mudroom still held six pieces of kibble after an entire week.
Mica no longer slept facing the nearest exit every night. Sometimes she stretched in the middle of the living-room rug, belly exposed, legs angled without dignity. The first time Jonah saw her there, he stood in the doorway long enough for his coffee to cool.
The house changed by similarly unimpressive degrees. Anna’s blue mug stayed in the cabinet. Her photographs remained on the walls. In April, Jonah took her sweater from the hook behind the bedroom door. He pressed the sleeve between his fingers and remembered her in the kitchen, accusing him of folding towels with hostile intent.
He placed the sweater in a cedar box with her letters and the dried ribbon from their wedding bouquet. He did not seal the box. On the empty hook, he hung the jacket he wore to treatment.
Nothing in the room objected. On a wet morning in May, Jonah packed the canvas daypack for another clinic visit. Water, medication list, a paperback Gus had recommended and Jonah did not intend to enjoy. Mica watched from the kitchen.
An open bag had once summoned every piece of food she possessed. This time she sniffed the side pocket and walked to her bowl.
Jonah zipped the pack. “I’ll be back after lunch.” Mica began eating before he reached the door.
The treatment took longer than expected. A lab result had to be repeated, and rain turned the highway silver on the drive home. Jonah’s shoulders ached. For part of the trip, he let Gus drive without inventing a reason.
When they pulled into the driveway, Mica’s head appeared in the living-room window. She did not bark or race in circles. She watched until Jonah opened the mudroom door, then stepped forward and pressed her nose to the back of his hand.
“Inventory complete?” he asked.
Her tail moved against the cabinet. Jonah hung his damp jacket on the hook upstairs and returned to the kitchen. Mica had gone back to finish her meal. She ate while he stood at the counter, no longer requiring him to turn away.
Rainwater ticked from the eaves. The daypack rested by the chair. Beside the mudroom, Jonah’s old work boot held only a little melted snow.