Die, of course, was what I was thinking. But I saw no point in frightening her.

“An ambulance will be here soon, and they’ll take good care of you,” I said, not realizing the stoic woman from across the street had come over and followed me into the house. She stood at the bedroom door wearing a heavy blue robe and slippers, which wasn’t as strange as it sounds as it was just past seven A.M.

“What’s wrong with her?”

I swallowed my annoyance at someone barging into the house like that, but what did I know? Maybe she was a friend and that was their way. She did live across the street. So, I didn’t make a big deal about it. “I’m sorry, should you be here?”

The woman looked at me. Her hair was windblown, her face oily and devoid of makeup. Her brown eyes were wide, but her lips were set in a hard line, as if I’d surprised her with an inquiry at the supermarket. “I’m Sandy Kolchek. I live across the street. Is she gonna be okay? She’s been sick as death.”

I started to reply that Barbara would likely be fine, prepared to omit any details of her condition, or the approaching ambulance. The truth was, I didn’t know if Barbara Grimmel was going to be fine or, for that matter, even alive come the weekend. I figured the hospital would put her on a respirator, pump air in and out of her frail body for a few days until the congestion got worse and the lungs filled too fast and she either drowned in bed or her heart gave out. None of this was anything Sandy from across the street needed to know, of course. Still, it’s important, I think, for you to understand just how bad things were for Barbara. How dire her situation. So that what happened next will … well, it’ll make more sense just how miraculous—not a word doctors use frequently, I assure you—it really was.

“Should the cat be on her like that?” Sandy said and nodded behind me toward the bed.

I turned and saw what she meant. The tabby I’d nearly stepped on moments before was now lying atop my patient. No, not lying, it was sprawled atop the poor woman. Its hairy body stretched from her thighs to her neck, where it sort of padded at her chin with one of its paws. Like it was trying to get her attention.

Something about the sight was terribly unnerving. I stepped toward the bed and tried to shoo it away. “Get off, now!” I snapped. “Get away!”

And that’s when I noticed something odd.

The cat wasn’t just atop the body, it seemed to be … this is going to sound … well, regardless, it seemed to be fastened to her body. As if the cat wasn’t a cat at all, but a hairy orange leech that was stuck to the old woman, sucking her blood. And, like a leech, it was swelling. Growing larger right before our eyes.

“My God!” the neighbor woman said, loudly enough that it shook me. The whole damn situation shook me, if I’m honest.

Furious and frightened, I ran to the bed and gripped the cat around the waist. I swear to God it was swollen as a water balloon! I pulled back hard, but the damn thing was stuck fast to Barbara’s body as if glued there! I looked at the woman’s face to see if she was in pain, but she looked … fine. As a matter of fact, some of the ghastly paleness had left her face, and some color had even returned to her cheeks. Even more strange, she now seemed to breathe normally, whereas only minutes before each intake of breath was accompanied by a harsh wheezing sound, each exhale a gurgled moan, the sound of blowing bubbles through a straw into a glass of milk.

When I touched the cat again it mewled—a long, whining, pathetic cry. Then it rolled off her, staggered to its feet like a drunk man carrying a barrel of oil on his back, and jumped gracelessly off the bed.

I immediately checked Barbara for injuries—scratches, I guess, but honestly, I was looking for a larger wound, the kind a leech might leave, bloody and fresh.

But there was nothing. Furthermore, I noticed with surprise, her chest was rising and falling normally, deeply, as if ….

As if nothing was wrong with her in the least.

It was then that I heard the wet, violent hacking sound behind me. I spun around and, at first, noticed that Sandy the neighbor was looking a little green. Her hand was stapled tightly to her mouth, her eyes filled with disgust. She was pointing at the floor.

I looked down, saw the fattened tabby lumped in the corner. It was hunched over, jaws wide, eyes shut tight. Its midsection was sort of rolling, and the most horrible sound you’d ever heard was coming from its throat. The most obvious thing I could compare it to would be a cat trying to bring up a hairball, but my God—this was the mother of all hairballs!

When it finally got it up, after what felt like hours—me and the neighbor woman watching with rapt fascination, unable to look away—it spewed out a golf ball sized knot of black, wet, fur. Along with the massive knot came, oh, I’d say a measuring cup’s worth of bile. Liquid, yes, but filled with chunks and strings, all of it black as ink and thick as Hershey syrup.

The neighbor woman sort of yelped, then took off running down the hall. As for me, well, I’m a doctor, and I’ve seen some things much worse than what came out of that feline. And in that moment, my curiosity was much stronger than my revulsion. I moved toward the cat slowly, fascinated that it was no longer engorged, but slim and sinewy once again. It licked one of its paws daintily, uncaringly. It must have sensed my attention because it turned to look at me with bright, jade-colored eyes, and it meowed a question, or perhaps an apology.

The rest is common knowledge. The cat ran off and by the time the ambulance arrived Barbara was sitting up in bed, clear-eyed and care-free, her breathing normal and healthy, and her lungs—sitting with you now, I still can’t believe it, but it’s true—were clear.

While the paramedics checked her over, I muttered something about possibly overreacting, or misdiagnosing. I cared little for my pride at that point, I was still so transfixed by what had occurred.

Sandy, meanwhile, had regained her wits and was kind enough to clean the vomit from the floor while I sat with Ms. Grimmel. I’ll never forget what the old lady asked me, sitting in that warm room filled with the stench of whatever the cat had puked out, the morning sun catching the lace window curtains and making them glow.

“I’m starving,” she said. “Who wants pancakes?”

Now, doesn’t that just beat all?

SANDY KOLCHEK

At first, I wasn’t sure it would work. Heck, I wasn’t even sure the cat would cooperate. I mean, it’s a cat, right? Who knew what it would do? Just as likely to piss in the corner or chase down a speck of sunlight than sit on a sick man’s chest.

But she did cooperate.

Honestly? That critter was fighting to get out of my arms the very moment I walked into the room where my dying husband was lying, shrunken and pale, hardly enough energy left in him to stand. By that point he’d lost almost sixty pounds if you can believe it. And he wasn’t an obese man to begin with, or especially large. Lying in that bed, bald and sickly, he looked like a hundred-year-old man, not the fifty-three-year-old banker who played softball on Saturday afternoons and worked out at the gym three times a week. He’d gone from eating grilled steaks and roasted potatoes every other weekend to barely keeping down chicken broth. I had to hook him to an IV most days just to make sure he was getting nutrients. A nurse showed me how to do it. We couldn’t afford to have someone come every day, so it was up to me to, you know, clean him. But heck, he’s my husband, right? Sickness and health, et cetera.

Anyhow, that cat sprang from my arms the second I walked through the door, ran to the bed and hopped right up onto the heavy quilt that covered my husband’s thin frame, as if I’d tossed a few cat treats on top the bed. It was almost like … this sounds kind of strange …

but it was almost like Ted was food. And dear little Marmalade, I suppose, was hungry. Like she’d gotten a taste for it, you know? Gotten a taste of disease, of sickness; and wanted more. Wanted whatever she could get her little paws on.

Well, Ted was plenty sick, alright. And that cat climbed right up his legs and onto his chest, its green eyes never leaving his face, as if she were stalking prey. Ted, albeit showing some apprehension, pushed down the quilt so the cat could settle atop his chest, only a sweat-stained t-shirt between them.

And then it happened. Just like before.

Marmalade sort of meowed real soft, like she was happy. Content. She might have started purring a bit, I can’t really recall. What I do remember is how she latched onto my husband’s chest as if stuck there. Ted moaned a little, maybe from the pressure of the animal or from something he felt going on inside him. When I asked him later, what it felt like? He said he didn’t remember much, that it was hazy, but that it was a bit like being lifted up.

“Like a magician’s trick,” he said.

Like levitating, is what he meant.

Well, that cat swelled up just like before. Almost cartoonish, really. Like on TV. You know, when the end of a water hose gets jammed into someone’s mouth and they blow up like a balloon until water shoots from their ears.

The whole thing lasted maybe five minutes, maybe ten, I’m not sure. But not long. And when Marmalade was done, she jumped off the bed, landing sort of awkward because of all the extra weight in her stomach (I swear, even standing up her belly was brushing the hardwood floor). Then she waddled over into a corner and started that awful hacking, trying to get it out of her.

Like with Barbara, the first thing that came out was the hairball. But this one was twice the size of what it had brought up in Barbara’s house. It was a big, soggy turd-sized thing. Slid out of her wide-open mouth and plopped onto the floor. Then came the vomit, and oh boy, did it come! That cat emptied a bucketful of the same stuff as before, all gooky and black. It stank to high heaven. Like spoiled milk, or rotten eggs, maybe.

As she was getting the last of it out of her, I ran to the window and threw it open. I could see Barbara across the street, standing on her porch, watching.

And when I turned back around … I saw the most wonderful sight.

Ted was up on one elbow, his eyes more clear, more lucid, than I’d seen in weeks. He was watching the cat. After a minute, he looked up at me and smiled.

He said, “Can you believe how much I had in me?”

As if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Right after, he fell asleep for a while, but I could tell it had worked. Just looking at him, I knew. His sleep was deep and relaxed. His color had returned, and it didn’t surprise me at all when he ate two bowls of chicken soup later that day. Or when the doctors told us, about a week later, that the cancer had gone into full remission.

Within days everyone knew what had happened. They’d all known, of course, about his cancer. We have good neighbors here in Sabbath, and we keep tabs on one another, not like those big-city folks.

Next thing you knew, Marmalade became the most popular cat in town. She ….

…