“Maybe we should get something to eat,” Ammie suggests. I look in the kitchen and heat up all the remaining frozen dinners that I have—three beef stroganoff, two veggie lasagnas—and run to the twenty-four-hour market for a cake and some candles. By the time I return, our weird little family is watching George Bailey promise the moon to Mary. I can tell Snortorious is preoccupied by the new environment, looking around at the photos on the wall, sniffing all manner of stains and spills on the carpet. I curl up beside him and pull out a family photo album, try to keep my mind wide open for him. Snortorious asks questions about every memory. Who? Where? How old? I have never had someone so genuinely interested in my life before. Ocean, he says.
“My ex-wife and I went to Hawaii for our honeymoon.”
So big, he says. So blue. I try to visualize Dorrie and me scuba-diving off the coast of Maui, bearing witness to the long-dead coral reefs, and hope Snortorious can feel the water surrounding him.
Midway through the second film, we pause for cake. Patrice comes in with the candles already lit, and we sing “Happy Birthday,” even though Snortorious was released from his gestation pod in March of last year.
“Make a wish,” I say. And I wonder what goes through his mind, knowing that whatever he wished for will never come true. Maybe he knows this, too.
Charlie Brown is decorating his pathetic tree when I receive an email from Dean Hayes. Effective later this week, Snortorious will be relinquished from our care and permanently transferred to a facility off-campus under federal supervision. Ammie and Patrice, both sitting beside me, see the message, too. We share a look, remain silent on the couch behind Snortorious, allow him to enjoy the rest of the movie. I attempt to clear my mind of fear, muddle my thoughts with noise—an image of Fitch singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” during a school play, the lyrics to “Frosty the Snowman,” funerary television promos from Sal the Coffin King and Ernie’s Urns. Ammie types out a message on her phone, holds it in front of me: What are we going to do now?
We give him choices, I type back.
When the film is over, I turn off the TV. Patrice has tears in her eyes. Ammie sits on the floor, rests her head on Snortorious’s belly.
Sad friends. Sick pig. Sad friends. Pig go away.
“Yes,” I say. “Pig knows?”
Snortorious snorts, shakes his head. If he knows about being sent away, about his growing brain, what else does he know?
“We want what’s best for you,” Ammie says.
“We don’t want you to go away,” Patrice says, the words barely intelligible through her sobs.
“We’ll find a way to keep you safe,” I say. “We’ll find a way to make the rest of your life as happy as we can.”
The awkward silence and Patrice’s sniffles are killing me. I turn the stereo on low for background noise, realize we need some music from happier times. Snortorious sways his head to Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Only Wanna Be with You.”
Pig sick, he says. Friends get trouble.
“We can take care of ourselves,” I say. “Don’t worry about that.”
We go through two more songs before Snortorious speaks again. At this point, I’ve decided that we need to either return him to the lab or make a break for it.
Pig go back. Pig sick. Pig help people.
“I don’t understand,” Ammie says. But Patrice begins bawling again. She knows Snortorious is asking us to free him in the only way we really can.
Pig heart help.
“No, no, no, no,” Ammie says. Her voice breaks. “You can stay with us. See more of the world. Whatever time you have left.”
Pig go back. Pig help people.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “Do you understand what you’re asking us?”
Snortorious sits up, touches his snout to Ammie’s forehead before walking over to Patrice and doing the same.
Pig sure.
On the campus quad, I sit with Snortorious and let him take in the first glimmers of sunrise. Orange. Purple. Yellow. Pink. Ammie watches us from afar. Patrice is already back in the lab making the necessary calls to hospitals in the tristate area in need of organs. I sit with our pig son on the frosted grass.
Beautiful, he says, shivering. I drape my jacket around him.
“It is,” I say.
Story time?
“Sure, what kind of story?”
Finish Fitch story, he says. Snortorious turns his head and looks straight at me as if to say I know about that, too. I know more than I could ever tell you. And almost as a reflex, I pull him closer and kiss his forehead. He rests his head on my shoulder, and I do my best to remember how the story goes. I tell him about the King of Gondor. On our short walk to the lab, I tell him about the hobbits returning to the Shire. Home, I say—family, like you. And in the operating room, as he’s slowly fading from anesthesia, I tell him about Frodo’s final journey, leaving Middle Earth with the elves, before I place my hand on his heart, now beating steadily for a boy two hundred miles away, and tell him thank you.