He laid a hand on the tank and the turtle swam into the reflection. From this angle it looked like he was cupping the small animal in the palm of his hand. Greens and pale orange lines decorated its shell, and its black eyes regarded his blue ones with what he imagined to be tenderness.

He smiled and thought: from this tank, turtle, you’ve watched me fall in love twice.

The turtle splashed a little in the water and snapped some air from the surface, rearing up like a puppy. Circling the murk of the bottom of the tank were several large goldfish.

“Do he and the goldfish get along?”

The police officer had a shaved head and a gentle expression. His partner stared off at an angle toward the floor, her dark hair in a loose bun. They both had their hats off.

“Mostly,” He answered, “There used to be a lot more of them when they were little but he ate them. These guys must have gotten too big.”

“Oh.”

The turtle had not moved from the imaginary cup of his hand. He didn’t much like cops, but he was grateful nearly to tears to these two for being gentle with him, for asking absurd questions about the relative truce existing between turtles and goldfish.

In the bedroom, the paramedics sounded as if they were wrapping up and he turned from the tank in time to watch them wheel her out of the bedroom strapped tight to the gurney. As they passed, he met her eyes and saw the fatigue in them, the failure in the pallor of her skin. One strand of dark hair was plastered to her forehead by sweat, her mouth stained by spit.

“You said it was aspirin?” One of the paramedics asked him.

He nodded. “But she tossed the bottles before she came back here. So I don’t know for sure.”

“Okay. We’re taking her to St. Vincent. We’re gonna pump her stomach.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Then they took to the freight elevator and out of the apartment for good. The police officers put their hats back on and nodded to him before leaving. When everybody had left him in the cavernous silence of the loft, he sank into a chair and exhaled a breath that felt too big for his lungs.

He walked past the bed and its rucked sheets, stained with fear and stress and anger and sweat. In the bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror, expecting to read some new truth in the bags under his eyes, but there was nothing.

“You could be done. Right now.” He told the face in the mirror. “You can just leave it here, cut it loose. Nobody would blame you.”

A feeling of freedom rose inside his breast, lightness and joy. Anger followed and then shame. He ran the cold water and splashed it on his face and used what was left on his fingers to neaten his hair.  “Done.” He tried for finality but in the end there was no help for it and he shrugged on his jacket and grabbed a cab to the hospital.