Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words

by Michael Ausiello

As we surrounded Kit, tissues and tears everywhere, the most remarkable thing happened. Like if I saw this play out on my favorite TV show I would roll my eyes and delete my season pass remarkable. Mister Scooch strolled into the bedroom and did something he had not done in the eight months since Kit tasked me with going to Bed Bath & Beyond with a 20-percent-off coupon to buy a foam mattress cushion, only to be told I had gotten the wrong one and sent back to get the correct, far plusher—and cheaper—one: Scooch hopped on the bed. For whatever reason, the texture of the mattress pad had been like Kryptonite to his paws, leading him to avoid the bed like the plague. So I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched him gingerly, carefully make his way over the morphine pump and past the catheter tubing before plopping down right next to Kit, one side of him grazing Kit’s abdomen and the other side of him brushed up against my leg. I looked at Kit’s mom and dad in utter disbelief. I pulled out my iPhone and took a photo of Scooch shoehorned between his two dads because I knew I’d want proof later that in my compromised emotional state I hadn’t imagined it.