“Right. Yes. This way.”
The woodpile is behind the clinic, against the back wall, under an overhang that keeps the rain off. It’s low. Nora wasn’t exaggerating about that. A few split rounds, some kindling, and a lot of empty space where a proper stack should be.
Rhett looks at it and says nothing, which I’m understanding is his version of a strong opinion.
He goes to the truck. I follow because standing still feels worse than being useful. Split firewood, neat and tight, fills his truck bed; someone who’s been doing this a long time stacked it. He drops the tailgate and reaches for the first armload, and I watch the way his body adjusts. His right leg takes the weight. His left leg follows, stiff, a half-beat behind. He doesn’t grimace, but his jaw tightens. The smallest tell.
He carries the first load to the woodpile and stacks it with surgical precision. Every piece fitted against the next. No gaps. No wasted space.
I pick up two logs from the truck bed.
He turns around and sees me carrying them and stops.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
I carry them to the pile and set them down. They’re heavier than I expected, and I can feel the bark biting into my forearms, but I don’t put them down early, and I don’t fumble. I set them on the stack the way he did. Snug. Fitted.
He watches me for a second. Then he turns back to the truck and gets another load.
We work in silence.
It should be awkward. Two strangers who’ve exchanged maybe ten words, carrying firewood back and forth without speaking. But the silence doesn’t feel empty. It feels like the silence in the exam room when a patient is finally breathing normally and you don’t need to say anything because the worst part is over and everyone knows it.
I notice his hands. They’re large, scarred across the knuckles, calloused in the places that come from gripping tools. He handles the wood carefully, deliberately. No wasted motion.
I notice the scar on his face more clearly now. It runs from just below his left eye down to his jaw, a thin white line against tanned skin. Not surgical. Something rougher. Something that happened fast and healed slow.
I notice the way he favors his left leg more as the work goes on. The slight hitch that gets less slight with each trip to the truck. He’s pushing through it. The signs are clear. I’ve seen a hundred patients do exactly this—refuse to stop, refuse to ask for help, refuse to admit that the body has limits the will can’t override.
I want to say something. But I don’t.
The nurse in me wants to say sit down, let me finish this, you’re making it worse. The rest of me knows saying those words to this man would be the fastest way to make him leave and never come back.
So I just carry wood. And I make sure I carry the pieces from the end of the truck bed closest to the woodpile, so his trips are shorter.
If he notices, he doesn’t say so.
His dog lies in the dirt between the truck and the woodpile, chin on his paws, watching us both. His eyes move from Rhett to me and back again, steady and patient, and something about that steadiness makes me feel like I’m being evaluated by a dog who takes this sort of thing seriously.
The last load goes on the pile. Rhett stands back and looks at the stack, and I see something shift in his shoulders. Not quite relaxation, but the absence of strain. A task completed. A thing he can measure.
“That’ll hold you through the month,” he says.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to—”
“Nora asked.” He says it the way someone else might say the sun came up. Inevitable. Non-negotiable.
I almost smile. “She’s hard to say no to.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile. The ghost of one. A hairline fracture in something that hasn’t cracked in a very long time.
“Yeah,” he says. “She is.”
He looks at me for one more second. I hold his gaze, and it costs me something. My chest is tight, and my skin feels too warm, and I don’t look away because looking away right now feels like losing something I haven’t earned yet.
Then he turns.
