The main drag is quiet on the walk home. Streetlights pooling orange on the sidewalk, a town half-asleep. Cal walks beside me, beer label still in his fingers because Cal never finishes anything. Drinks, sentences, label strips.
“Diaz isn’t wrong,” Cal says.
“I know.”
“But she hasn’t told you to stop coming, either, so that’s good.”
He’s right. She hasn’t. The wall’s up, but the door isn’t locked. I’m not going to look at what that means.
Janet watches me walk into the clinic. She’s been watching me walk into this clinic every day, and the look she gives me over her glasses has evolved from curiosity to something that’s probably amusement and is definitely not pity, because Janet doesn’t seem to do pity.
The burns are healing well. Dr.Hartley peels back the dressing and the skin underneath is pink and new, still tender, still working, but the worst of it is behind him. The dog holds still for her. Always does.
“Dermatitis is responding to the medication,” she says, writing in the chart. “He’s ready to live outside the crate. I’ll send you home with the medication schedule and wound-care instructions. Drop the visits to every other day for checkups.”
After days in the crate, he’s well enough to wander with supervision, and the crew has already set up a corner in the day room with a bed Navarro bought and a water bowl Keller labeled SMOKY in Sharpie, which means the dog has a name and a home and a labeled water bowl at a fire station in a town I’m supposed to be passing through.
Every-other-day checkups. Fewer trips to this exam room. I should be relieved.
She goes over the medication, dosage, timing, what to watch for. All of it aimed at the chart, professional, thorough. I’ve been coming here every day. Each visit I’ve told myself it’s about the follow-up. The first time, that was true. I’m not so sure about all the other times.
Dr.Hartley looks up. Catches me watching her.
For half a second something crosses her face that isn’t the reserve or the professional wall. A crack. She shuts it down fast and closes the chart.
The dog looks between us, one ear up, one ear down, entirely too satisfied with himself.
“Every other day, Sullivan.”
“For the dog,” I say.
She holds my eye. One beat longer than necessary.
“For the dog,” Dr.Hartley says.
The dog yawns, full jaw, tongue curling, total disregard for whatever the humans are doing. He puts his head on her shoe and closes his eyes.
Buddy. Same.
Chapter 4
Sloane
Mrs.Delgado at the feed store has started saving me the good grain.
She doesn’t ask if I want it. She sets it aside, the organic blend, the one I mentioned once for the goats at Copper Ridge Veterinary. When I come in, it’s on the counter with my name on a sticky note. My name. In her handwriting. As if I’m a regular, which I’m not. I’m a locum vet on a temporary contract filling a gap until Dr.Fenn’s hip heals, and temporary people don’t get their names on sticky notes at the local feed store.
Micah at Peak Grounds knows my order. Black coffee, no sugar, no conversation beyond a nod and the quiet slide of a mug across the counter. He starts pouring the moment I walk in, which means he’s watching for me, which means I have a routine here, which means the routine has become visible to other humans. That’s a problem.
I know the name of everyone who saves things for me without asking. There are now four. I haven’t unpacked my suitcase.
And then there’s the card.
The rancher whose colicky mare I saved, the one south of town, the emergency that had me driving back roads at midnightand spending hours with my arm inside a horse, sent his daughter to the clinic with a plate of cookies and a handmade thank-you card. From the horse. The horse’s name is Duchess. The card is in crayon. It says “Thank you for saving my life” with a drawing of a horse that looks like a dog wearing a hat.
I put it on the fridge.
I don’t think about what that means—a card on a fridge in an apartment where nothing else is on any other surface, where the suitcase is still packed, where the walls are bare because bare walls are portable and portable is the point. I stuck a crayon horse on the fridge and I’m not examining it.
