And then tonight, right as I’m about to leave the lab, I hear Snortorious say a new word: Lonely. I approach his playroom and sit with him, scratching behind his ears. Lonely pig, he says. My phone buzzes; it’s my ex again, a photo of Fitch holding a giant stuffed tiger on his final day. Snortorious repeats himself, and I feel guilty for having given him this life, one that would have ended weeks ago had he remained silent—a heart to Indiana, a liver to Michigan, lungs to Washington, DC. Of course, we’ve made other arrangements, sent other pigs. But something tugs at me as he speaks. I think about how when I go home, I’ll heat up a microwave dinner, curl up in bed, watch one of the few videos I have of Fitch, a two-minute clip of him building a sand castle, over and over until I fall asleep. Instead, I grab the sleeping bag I keep in my office for when I’m burning the midnight oil and decide to keep Snortorious company.
He rests his chin on my shoulder as I read to him. His snorts create a tiny slimy pool in a wrinkle of my lab coat. We read Where the Wild Things Are. He points a foot when he wants me to linger on a picture, sometimes bringing his snout to the page as if he might inhale the words.
Max, he says. Wild Rumpus.
“That’s right,” I say. He can’t quite read yet, but Patrice and Ammie are working with him. He’s got his ABCs down and I linger over each word so he can put two and two together. We finish and switch to The Velveteen Rabbit. I try to flip past the title page and Snortorious sticks his foot on my hand, points to the orange stegosaurus nameplate pasted inside the front cover with my son’s name scrawled in black crayon.
“Fitch,” I say. I take out my phone and show him a few photos. I point to myself and then back to the pictures to drive home the relationship. “My son.” I don’t know if Snortorious can comprehend what I’m saying, though. He was raised in this building since he was a piglet.
Fitch, he says. Fitch son.
I recall how Fitch used to yell to me from across the hall after he brushed his teeth, telling me it was story time. He always asked for one more fairy tale, a few more pages, always falling asleep as soon as I gave him what he wanted. Snortorious is growing sleepy, too. His eyes are fluttering. At home, on my nightstand, story time has been waiting for years. There’s a bookmark a few chapters shy of the end of The Return of the King, right as they’re approaching Mount Doom. Fitch had been trying to read it on his own despite the book being much too advanced for him, but when he was admitted to the plague ward, he’d asked if we could finish it together, our words drowning out the sounds of the hospital. I put away the books and drape a blanket over Snortorious, lie down beside him, dwarfed by his body that’s never seen an open field or another barnyard animal. I wonder if he dreams of that life （or if he dreams about the kind of life we once took for granted, until the plague threatened to take it away）。
I wake to a still empty lab, mouth dry and head disoriented from breathing in the lab’s recycled and sanitized air for so long. I find a sticky note on the plastic of my respirator mask that reads PRIZE SWINE. Typical juvenile pranks—even during a pandemic. Snortorious is snoozing in his holding pen near the workstations, alongside the other animal stalls. I slink back to my office and find my inbox filled with emails from friends in the department and beyond, asking about this pig they keep hearing about—Snortorious P.I.G. Someone leaked a video on social media. My colleagues outside of the lab no doubt believe it’s some sort of joke, but the associate dean has scheduled an impromptu visit and seems less amused by the attention. Outside, Patrice is arranging our workstations for the day.
“Do you know anything about this video?” I hold up my phone.
Patrice is a good seed, albeit sometimes too buttoned up and serious. In contrast, her older sister Ammie spins flaming poi balls at raves, which I only know about from browsing her social media.
“I’m not accusing you, by the way. But if you have any idea who might have done this . . .”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe one of the interns?”
“I really didn’t see anything.”
I grill the others as they arrive. I need to turn my attention to Snortorious and run damage control. Should I hide him? But how to explain his absence? Can I somehow get him to shut up when my colleagues arrive? He’s outside yelling hungry, hungry, hungry. Ammie is already tending to him, rubbing her nose affectionately against his snout.
“Patrice, get in here. I need you to run interference. Let me know as soon as anyone shows up.”