Page 13 of Knocked Up

"Do it."

He did. He went in too shallow and came out the other side. A jet of warm saline caught me across the collarbone.

"I put a hole in your…"

"I've been peed on today, Beckett. This is a spa treatment. New needle. Go again."

He went again. This time he stopped halfway, hand frozen, needle a quarter of the way in. The muscle in his jaw was doing something complicated.

"Hey."

"I've got it."

"You're going to bend it. Push."

So I put my hand over the back of his hand and pushed. To reach I had to come in against his shoulder. That was where I was when I felt him stop breathing.

I felt it. He stopped breathing, and then started again badly. The needle went in. Bear sighed and put his head back on the mat like a man being read the minutes of a meeting.

"There," I said, roughly into his sleeve. "Open the clamp all the way and let it run."

I stepped back fast, too fast to look casual to a professional athlete whose entire job was reading what a body does a quarter-second before it does it.

"How long?" he said. His voice had gravel in it that had not been there a minute ago.

"Six or seven minutes. He'll get a lump like a camel. It settles. Don't call me about it at nine at night."

"I wouldn't," he said. There was something underneath it. I made a decision not to go down there and get it.

While the bag ran into an old dog, I brought the kittens out. If I stood in one place with that man for seven minutes with nothing in my hands, I was going to say something I could not take back.

There were four of them, four weeks old, in a plastic tub with a towel.

"What are those?"

"Kittens."

"I can see they're kittens. There are four of them."

"There are always four of them. Or five. Or seven, once, which was a bad autumn. Somebody finds them in a wheel well. It's the job."

He crouched down and looked into the tub, and the orange one screamed at him.

"That's Dryden. He's screamed since the day he got here."

Beckett went very still.

"Dryden. Like Ken Dryden."

"I have no idea who that is. There's a second-grade class that sponsors the foster litters. They get to name them. Their teacher's husband is apparently a hockey person, so every kitten through this building has been named after a goalie who won a Stanley Cup." I lifted the black one out. "This is Luna. That's Gump, which is a name, apparently, Gump. And that one…"

He was already looking at that one.

"That one's Roy."

I heard it come out of my mouth. I heard it land. I watched it get all the way across the room to him.

Because I knew who his father was.