Omega and Alpha

by John A. Tures   

John A. Tures with Cat

John A. Tures is a regular newspaper and magazine columnist  and college professor who has also published several short mysteries, suspense and thriller stories. These include “Deep Plots,” “Prime Time Crime Drama,” “Publish or Perish,” and “The Very Error of the Moon.” He has also published the non-fiction story “Bridge Builders,” and the flash fiction story “The Sophist.” He has several other fictional mystery, suspense and thrillers forthcoming: “The Propagandist,” “The Deregulator,” “LaGuerrera,” as well as the nonfiction piece “Rodeo Clown vs. Heavy Metal.” He now lives in LaGrange, Georgia.

            “Well, what brings you here?” Dr. Isaiah Piven asked the small black cat, shivering in the New Year’s Eve snow outside the nursing home known as Poplar Creek Manor.

            The rational side of the doctor’s brain said to leave the stray. Did it have a good temperament? Was it well-trained? Could it carry diseases? But the emotional side won out. The physician was rewarded with a cute mew, a snuggle, and the start of a very long purr in his warm overcoat.

            Neither his rational side nor his emotional side had any idea of the real consequences bringing this black cat into his medical facility, and his life, would have.

            “She’s so cute!” Libby, the student nurse gushed as Dr. Piven brought the orphan inside. “Can we keep her here? I’d take her home, but you know Jonas is allergic.”

            Piven nodded at his plus-sized colleague. Her rail-thin young husband was sweet but suffered from a myriad of allergies.

            “Well, if she’s indoor trained, properly fed, and doesn’t get underfoot,” he began, but he could see the blonde already searching on PetSmart’s website for kitty litter and cat food.

            By the next shift, she had purchased the box and a pair of bowls for water and food. The doctor sighed. But their new arrival seemed to know exactly what to do.

            “She needs a name,” Piven declared.

            “How about Omega?” Libby offered. “That means the end. And didn’t you find her on the last day of the year?”

            The cat became a hit with the nursing home residents. During the daytime, she made rounds with Dr. Piven or Nurse Libby, lounged in the TV room, and appeared at mealtimes, munching on snacks handed down from friendly diners. But at night, she chose to stay in Mrs. Antonia Vitelli’s room for the first few weeks, until one fateful night.

            “Strangest thing,” Nurse Libby told Dr. Piven. “Mrs. Vitelli seemed to be doin’ well. Doctors in Asheville gave her a clean bill of health and said the infection in her arm would heal with medicine. Then wham—she passed away. Just like that.”

            Piven nodded sadly. “We’ll all miss her, especially Omega.”

            Libby shook her head. “Our little black cat has already made a new friend: Ray-Ray.”

            “Oh,” the physician remarked. “Did you move the cat’s bed to his room?”

            “Omega doesn’t sleep in her bed,” the nurse explained. “She naps on the bed with the patients when she stays with them.”

            Doc Piven frowned. His next stop would be Mr. Murphy who was in his room, lying on his side. Omega was curled up by his leg. Ray-Ray, as he was known, was awake, pointing to his red shirt identifying him as part of the Arkansas Football fan club.

            “You ever play football?” he asked.

            Piven smiled while Libby rolled her eyes. Same old question. “I tried out but didn’t make the squad.”

            “I played for the Razorbacks,” he announced proudly. In his prime, Ray Murphy was a defensive lineman, though decades later, he looked shrunken, smaller than a safety now.

            “I remember,” the doctor said off-handedly, but looked at Omega’s position. She was scrunched up against one of Ray-Ray’s legs.

            Piven looked at Libby. “Did he sleep like that with Mrs. Vitelli?”

            Her eyes went wide. “Oh no—he slept by her arm.”

            “The one with the bacterial infection that was being treated last year?”

            “I think so,” she gasped. “I’ll check the charts to confirm it.”

            Dr. Piven reached down and held his hand out to Omega. She briefly abandoned her position and purred like an Evinrude motor when he scratched her cheeks, neck, and chin, and gobbled up the snack he carried in his lab coat. But as soon as he was done petting her, she resumed her post, barely regarding the comfy bed Libby had deployed in the corner.

            “How long has Omega been doing that?”

            The nurse hooked her finger inside her lip, contemplating. “Since Ray-Ray’s fall during the hospital visit, I think.”

            On a hunch, he called Ray-Ray’s physician in Asheville. “When Mr. Murphy fell the other day, did you notice anything unusual about his legs?”

            “Just the broken hip, scrapes and bruises,” his colleague claimed.

            When he caught up with Libby, Piven decided to play a hunch. “Have the weekend team monitor Ray-Ray a little closer than usual, okay?”

            But that hadn’t been the case, as those on duty Saturday and Sunday were business as usual. Monday morning, their worst fears were confirmed.

            “The medical examiner said it was an undetected blood clot in the leg,” Libby explained through her tears. “The doctors in the hospital missed it when treating him for the fall.”

             After reviewing the M.E.’s files, Piven asked “Where’s Omega now?”

            “T.V. Room.”

            The doctor breathed a sigh of relief. As Auric Goldfinger said in Ian Fleming’s James Bond book bearing his name “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence.”

            He didn’t want to think about the third.

            Omega’s routine seemed normal, though some patients and a few nurses began giving the black cat a wide berth. But after a few weeks, she began hanging around with Sonny Whitt, who was easily the most active resident at Poplar Creek Manor.

            “His doctors gave him a clean bill of health last week,” Libby pointed out, looking at his charts. “Sonny even petitioned to run the Memorial Day 5k, or at least walk it.”

            He visited the man who was again sipping an energy drink. He had slicked hair, thick glasses and running shorts, sporting a t-shirt from some long-ago race. “How are you feeling?”

            “Great, Doc! Never better!” Sonny was perpetually cheery.

            “Omega bothering you?”

            “Of course not. I love having this little kitty around.”

            “Can I convince you to get another physical, just in case?”

            “I’ll schedule one at the end of the month when I’m due,” he promised. “That is if you’ll sign off on letting me run the Peachtree Road Race this summer!” He reached for another energy drink.

            Piven laughed and waved him off. “Maybe I’ll let you walk a nice cool 5k sometime this Fall if you keep up the good health.”

            But Sonny didn’t. The next day, summoned by the alarm, he found one of the nurses, Jonaka, kneeling by the runner’s body. “What happened?”

            “Massive coronary, I think” Jonaka sighed as the other attendants tended to Sonny. “He was sitting on the edge of his bed, tying his shoes, talking to me, when he simply keeled over. He was dead before he hit the floor.”

            “The final report confirms it,” Libby told Piven. “He had massive blockage in a key artery, yet seemed to be doing just fine, until he wasn’t. I was worried about all of those energy drinks he sipped on. But nobody knew this would happen.”

            “Except Omega.” The doctor eyed the black cat, intently watching the others in the lounge.

            “I’m Aria Martin, NBC News, here in Hendersonville, North Carolina, at the Poplar Creek Manor, a nursing home where a little black cat named Omega has an uncanny ability to detect when residents have only a short time to live, better than doctors themselves.”

            The reporter launched into Omega’s origin story, and what happened when she watched over other residents.

            “Doctor Piven, to what do you attribute this amazing cat’s ability to determine when patients have a serious affliction or problem?” she began.

            The older physician stroked Omega in his lap. “There are stories about dogs being able to detect some cancers, but the science is still out on that. Animals have a much better-developed sense of smell than humans in general, and cats seem to have a sixth sense. We do know that cats react strongly to certain changes in humans. Perhaps what this shows is that we need more research into what our pets can tell us.”

            After the interview, Omega jumped off his lap and ambled down the hallway. Piven apologized to the journalist for leaving suddenly and followed the feline. She ducked into the room of perhaps the doctor’s favorite patient, Gwendolyn Sanders.

            The African American woman raised the top part of her bed, so she was in a semi-sitting position. Omega snuggled up by her chest.

            “Do you know about Omega and her—ability?” the physician asked nervously.

            She nodded. “Some call her the death cat, and keep away, but I like having her around. She’s right by my lungs. I can feel the changes too. Shoulda never started smoking as a teen. I’ve lasted a long time, but Omega is telling me it’s the end.”

            Dr. Piven remembered that Gwendolyn’s pulmonologist speculated weeks ago that she would probably live on those lungs for a while despite her past behavior. But Omega was thinking otherwise.        

            “Are you scared of dying, Gwen?”

            She shook her head. “I’ve lived a good long life. Omega is giving me the sign to bring the family around one last time, instead of waiting for the summer, like we originally planned. Plus, I can get my affairs in order.” She stroked Omega behind the ears, as the cat gave an appreciative purr.

            A week later, after Gwen’s family reunion, Libby’s tears told the doctor all he needed to know. “I—I’m happy she’s in a better place,” the nurse sobbed. “I’m gonna miss her.”

            “Me too,” he admitted. “You know. I was thinking about that interview. Most doctors seem skeptical about dogs and cats detecting diseases or other medical problems, and our sample size is too small. But if I can convince some donors to invest in a bigger study with these animals and what they can show us, maybe we can find a way to help patients.”

            “And the pets.” the nurse insisted. “Someone saw the special about Omega and offered to donate one of the kittens among their newborns to us. He is old enough for adoption. Think we should?”

            Isaiah Piven, M.D. smiled. “Why not? They could help more patients.”

            Late into the evening, the doctor worked on his letter, pitching his research plan to the bigwigs. He knew the medical community in general was skeptical of pet prognostications of clots and cancers. “Hokum at best,” wrote one doctor in a scathing online critique posted below Ms. Martin’s article online. He probably feels threatened, Piven thought. But doctors adapted to using more sophisticated tools and machines throughout history, didn’t they? Physicians should use anything they can to make the patient feel better or ease their suffering.

            Exhausted after writing the proposal, Dr. Piven felt unwilling to drive the winding mountain roads to his North Carolina home at that late hour. Sliding into a nearby open bed in an unoccupied room seemed like the more logical choice to him. Sleep came to him quickly.

            In his dreams, he experienced a terrifying nightmare, which bordered on hallucination. He was being chased by a lycanthrope, while he struggled to breathe. This had frequently happened to him in real life over the past few months, which he attributed to the cold days and elevation.

            Piven awoke with a start. He heard an unfamiliar sound. It was a cat purring, but much closer to his ears. Omega had curled her body over his head! Terrified, he flung himself backward, toppled over the edge of the bed, and hit his head on the hard floor of the Poplar Creek Manor, where all went black very quickly.

            He woke, not in the nursing home, but at the hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where he once made his rounds before his semi-retirement in nearby Hendersonville. A former colleague, years younger, was now tending to him.

            “That’s a nasty bump on your head, Isaiah,” his friend said. “But we gave you something for the swelling. That problem should get better in a couple of days.”

            Piven smiled, but then realized something was unspoken. “You said that problem, Zeke. Is there something else?”

            His former colleague hesitated. “I don’t know how to tell you, but you’ve got Glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor. Unfortunately, it’s malignant, and it’s way too late for us to operate. I’m sorry, but you don’t have much time.”

            The phone rang in his room. It was Libby. “Dr. Piven, are you okay? I heard you just regained consciousness.”

            “Get that damn cat out of Poplar Creek!” he roared.

            “W-w-what?” she stammered.

            “He’s an angel of death,” the physician growled. “An assassin. Get her out before she takes out another resident!”

            “You can’t be sayin’ this!” she begged. “Tell me what happened.”

            He told her the story, from waking up suddenly, to falling out of bed, and then the fatal diagnosis when he awoke. “That’s why Omega’s got to go back from where she came from—today!”

            “Wait, what if Omega hadn’t taken a nap by your head?” She shifted from cat-lover to medical professional.

            “Then…”

            “Would you still have the tumor?” she pressed.

            Dr. Piven hesitated, then looked at his doctor pal, Ezekiel Nathanson, who nodded. “Yeah.”

            “So, Omega couldn’t have killed you then,” Libby reasoned. “Just as this cat couldn’t have been responsible for Mrs. Vitelli’s infection before Christmas, Ray-Ray’s fall, Sonny’s coronary, or Gwen’s smoking at age fifteen, right?”

            “I guess,” he sighed. “Learning that you’ve only got a short time to live will make you say stuff you didn’t mean.”

            Her tone indicated that she had already forgiven him. “I’m also really sorry about the brain tumor, and I can’t even imagine working at Poplar Creek without you.”

            She choked back a sob or two. He could already feel the pain in her voice for what was about to come.

            “Tell you what,” she announced. “I’ll start pulling all the data from the charts of the patients Omega hung out with and get permission from their families to use the information for our study. You focus on writing up what you know. I can visit you in three days and bring you the stuff so we can at least send the proposal out to the donors.”

            After a beat, she added. “We can even call it The Piven Project, in your honor, for having discovered it.”

            The older doctor shook his head. “I’m thinking ‘The Omega Project’ is a better name. If it wasn’t for that black cat, we wouldn’t have known any of this.”

            As promised, Libby showed up with the data, having secured all permission forms from the families of the deceased. They were eager to help the study, she insisted. She also handed him a large card, signed by just about every resident at Poplar Creek Manor, as well as her fellow nurses, doctors, and even the administrator.

            “How’s the request for funding the project going?”

            “I’ve been working on it nonstop. It’ll be done by the end of the week,” he insisted.

            “Do you have enough time?” she asked.

            “Doctor Nathanson thinks I’ve got at least a month, maybe two,” he rasped. Breathing was getting harder, but he would at least have time to get the proposal sent off. His physician promised to take over the study when the time came.

            He noticed his nurse was smiling a little too widely. “Okay, I’m guessing you’ve got some other good news. Did Jonas remember your first anniversary?”

            She shook her head but kept her grin. “Remember how you let me take in that new kitten from the family who saw the report about Omega? They said he was born on January 1 of this year, so I named him Alpha.”

            “That’s nice.”

            “You know how I take a short nap after my lunch break? Well, for the past few days, I’ve woken up with that little white cat Alpha pressed right up to my chest, purring. I grew up with cats and ain’t none of them ever done that.”

            She saw the stricken look on Piven’s face. “I was worried that something was wrong with me, that I had breast cancer or somethin.’ But on a hunch, I took a pregnancy test last night.”

            Libby paused, then squealed. “I’m finally gonna be a mom!”

            He leaned in to take her exuberant hug. “If it’s a boy, I’m namin’ him Isaiah. And if it’s a girl, I’m—well—callin’ her something beginning with the letter I, like Iris or Isabel.”

            “So, it sounds like we need to revise the project somewhat,” Dr. Piven concluded. “Maybe the Omega and Alpha Project?”

            The nurse nodded. “Just like Omega can figure out when someone is dyin’, lil’ Alpha seems to know when life is comin.’”

            Piven looked at the photo Libby brought. The white cat and black cat were curled together in a ball, taking a nap. Yin and yang. Life and death. Both were beautiful together.

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