The clinic door swings shut. Dr. Theo stares at it for a long moment.
“She’s up to something,” he says.
I don’t ask what. I already know, and I’m not ready to say it out loud.
* * *
Dr. Theo leaves at two for a house call. A rancher’s wife with recurring migraines, he says, grabbing his ancient medical bag and muttering about people who refuse to come into town for proper scans. He tells me to lock up if nobody comes in before four.
Nobody comes in.
I spend an hour reorganizing the exam room drawers, which don’t need reorganizing. Restock the gauze. Wipe down the counter twice. And I’m aware that I’m cleaning things that are already clean, and I’m doing it because my hands needsomething to do that isn’t thinking about the fact that Rhett Hawthorne is coming to this clinic and I’ll be alone when he arrives.
This is ridiculous. I’m a medical professional, and have inserted chest tubes in screaming patients, held a man’s hand while third-degree burns were debrided from his back. I can handle a firewood delivery.
At a quarter to three, I hear a truck engine. Low, heavy, the sound of something that works for a living. Tires on gravel. Then the engine cuts, and there’s nothing but the wind and the faint creak of a truck door opening.
I don’t go to the window. I stay at the desk and look at the chart in front of me and read the same sentence four times without absorbing a single word.
The clinic door opens. He fills the doorway. That’s the first thing I notice, and it’s not a thought so much as a physical fact. He’s tall enough that the frame seems built for someone else, and broad enough that the afternoon light narrows around him. Dark hair. Stubbled jaw. The scar I remember from the window, running down the left side of his face, and the tattoos climbing his left arm, disappearing into the rolled sleeve of a flannel that’s seen better days.
His eyes find mine, and I forget how to hold a pen.
I don’t know what color they are. That’s the thing. He’s standing ten feet away, and I can’t process the color because all I can register is the way he looks at me. Guarded. Careful. Not cold, but not warm either. He’s already decided how this interaction is going to go, and he’s not planning to stay long enough for it to go any other way.
“Nora sent me,” he says. His voice is low. Rough. Gravel under boots. “Firewood.”
“Right.” I stand up and the chair rolls back too far and hits the wall. I pretend that didn’t happen. “Yes. The woodpile is around back. I can show you.”
He nods once. Doesn’t move.
That’s when the German Shepherd pushes past his leg and walks into the clinic.
The dog is enormous up close. Dark face, tan legs, intelligent brown eyes that sweep the room with the same calm vigilance I noticed from the window. He moves to the center of the waiting room and stops, standing still, ears rotating.
I wait. I don’t reach for him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, past all the noise my pulse is making, this isn’t a dog you approach. This is a dog you let come to you.
He takes his time. Looks at the chairs. The bulletin board. The desk. Then he walks to me.
His nose touches my hand. A single, deliberate nudge. Not a sniff. A decision. He presses his muzzle into my palm and holds it there, and my breath catches so hard it almost hurts.
I look at Rhett.
He’s staring at his dog. Not at me. And his expression is unguarded for a second. Surprise, maybe. Or confusion. Then he pulls it shut.
“He doesn’t do that,” Rhett says. Quiet.
“Do what?”
He shakes his head. Doesn’t answer.
I run my fingers over the dog’s ears. He leans into it, just slightly, and his tail moves once. Not a wag. Something smaller. An offering.
“Hi,” I whisper to him. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
His tail moves again.
Rhett clears his throat. “Woodpile.”
