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Back 3 a.m.
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

“I did not yell, ‘I’m gonna eat you,’ then bite your ear.”

He shows me. There is dried blood on his ear.

And then it all comes back to me.

The nightmare. How, after two weeks without food, I decided to eat the tiger, aka Big Lassie. I tackled him, took a huge bite out of him, but then he clawed me to death and ate me.

“Oh my God.”

I explain to him what happened. My nightmare. That I must have acted it out in my sleep.

“Sorry I tried to eat you.”

He forgives me.

I give him a Slim Jim beef jerky stick I was saving for a special occasion, then find some Neosporin and spread it on the thirty-feet-worth of scratches on my body.

At 3:07 a.m., I sit down to eat breakfast.

A minute later, the front door opens and Ingrid walks in. She is wearing jeans and a blue tank top. Her auburn hair is pulled back in what she likes to call her “work pony.” She is holding a medium-size cardboard box. Her normally chestnut brown eyes are red and puffy.

I jump up.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

She sets the box on the counter and falls into me.

She sniffs and says, “My mom had a stroke.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, I just got off the phone with my dad. She got up to get a glass of water and my dad heard a loud crash.”

She pushes me away a couple inches, glares at me, then asks, “What the hell happened to your face?”

“Lassie and I had a disagreement.”

“Over what?”

“Over him eating me in my nightmare. It’s a long story.” I change the subject back to her mom. “Where is she now?”

“The ER in downtown Atlanta.”

“What’s going on?” my dad asks, stumbling down the stairs and cinching a blue robe around his widening girth.

“Her mom had a stroke,” I tell him.

“Oh, honey,” he says.

Ingrid breaks free of me and falls into his arms.

“It’s gonna be okay,” my dad says softly. “They have some of the best doctors in the country down there in Atlanta. They’re gonna take real good care of her.”

He rubs Ingrid’s back with one hand and asks me, “And what happened to you?”

“Lassie used my face as his new scratching post.”

There is a loud bang, then Murdock gallops into the room, his face unable to contain the million watts of energy churning through him. At the sight of Ingrid crying in my dad’s arms, his face falls. What happened? Why is everyone so sad? What’s going on? Wha, wha, wha…

He runs up to Ingrid and snuggles his head into her side.

She falls to her knees and lets him lick the tears from her face.

“Thanks, big fella,” she says, half laughing, half crying.