"I'll be quiet. You won't even know I'm here."
He absolutely will not be quiet, and I will definitely know he's here. But somehow I find myself walking back to my office with Dean trailing behind me, and somehow I don't kick him out.
He settles into the chair across from my desk, long legs stretched out, coffee cradled in his hands. True to his word, he doesn't say anything while I finish my notes. He just... sits there. Present. Patient.
It's unsettling.
"You don't have somewhere else to be?" I ask, not looking up from my laptop.
"Day off."
"And this is how you spend your days off? Sitting in veterinary clinics?"
"Only the ones with interesting owners."
I glance up. He's watching me with an expression I can't quite read—curious, maybe, or careful. Like he's trying to figure something out.
"Tell me about the hamster," he says.
"What?"
"The hamster. I heard you on the phone earlier. Something about a pregnant hamster?"
"You were eavesdropping?"
"I was sitting in the waiting room. Sound travels." He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Was it a surprise pregnancy? Hamster birth control failure?"
Despite myself, I laugh. "The owner thought she had two females. She did not."
"Classic hamster mix-up."
"It happens more than you'd think."
He asks more questions. About the clinic, about the weird cases, about the time a snake got loose in the waiting room and Mrs. Patterson nearly had a heart attack. He's genuinely curious—not performing interest to be polite, but actually listening, actually engaged.
I learn things too. That he's been in the Air Force for twenty years. That he flies cargo and transport, which he claims is less glamorous than fighter jets but more interesting. That his squadron thinks he's a disaster but loves him anyway.
That he's been avoiding his re-enlistment paperwork for three weeks and has no idea what he wants to do about it.
"Big decision," I say carefully.
"Yeah." He stares into his coffee. "My brother wants me to come home. Help run the family business. K9 training, security work."
"Is that what you want?"
He scrubs a hand over his face. "I don't know." He looks up, and for a moment the mask slips entirely. "I've been doing this for almost twenty years. Flying, deploying, following orders.” His voice drops. “I don't know what I am if I'm not that."
The honesty of it stops me cold. The admission hangs between us. No charm. No deflection. Just raw honesty I didn’t expect.
"You’ll figure it out," I hear myself say. "Eventually. It's terrifying and uncomfortable and sometimes you have to start over, but you figure it out."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Maybe."
He holds my gaze for a moment longer than comfortable. Then the tension in his face eases, something warmer taking its place.
"Thanks, Doc."
