My stomach growls, so I heat up soup and eat at the counter while reviewing tomorrow’s schedule. The mare at the Breslin ranch. The puppy vaccines. And now, the dog. The burned, itchy, scared dog with one ear up and one ear down who pressed his nose into my wrist and decided I was safe before I’d finished my assessment.
Through the thin floorboards, from the recovery kennel: a whimper. Then another. The sound a dog makes when it’s alone in the dark and the dark is too large and there’s nothing on the other side of it.
My soup is getting cold, and tomorrow starts early. The dog is safe, warm, medicated, and doesn’t need me sitting on the kennel floor with him. He’ll settle. Dogs always settle. I’m extremely good at identifying the rational choice. Acting on it is apparently a separate skill.
The whimper comes again.
I go downstairs.
The kennel is dim: one low light, the hum of the heating pad, the faint antiseptic smell that lives in this room permanently. The dog is curled in the corner of his kennel, bandaged side up, eyes on me the instant I open the door.
I sit on the cold tile floor, back against the wall, legs stretched out.
The dog lifts his head. Looks at me. Then he crosses the kennel and puts his head in my lap. His nose tucks against my thigh and his whole body goes warm and heavy, the way animals do when they stop holding themselves together and let someone else do it for them.
“You’re temporary,” I tell him. My hand finds the scruff behind his good ear. “Don’t get comfortable.”
The dog sighs.
Tomorrow, Grady comes back. For the dog. For the follow-up. The firefighter.
Chapter 3
Grady
The clinic smells like antiseptic and hay and something warm underneath—animals, maybe, or the building itself holding heat. I walk in and Janet looks up from the desk, looks at me, and her expression does something behind those glasses that I choose not to investigate.
“Follow-up,” I say. “For the dog.”
“He’s in exam two waiting for you and the doc.” She points.
Dr.Hartley comes into the room from the back. The second the dog sees her, it’s over. Tail going, body wiggling, paws scrabbling on the linoleum, his whole self aimed at her like I’m not even in the room. She crouches. Scratches behind his good ear. The dog collapses against her, boneless, done.
“Hey, buddy.” Her voice drops: warm, open, unguarded. A completely different person from the one who stands up.
She stands. Resets. “Sullivan.”
The exam is quick. She checks the burns, adjusts the dressing, makes notes. Fast, sure, no fumbling. She talks to the dog in a warm voice and talks to me in the professional one, and the gap between those two registers could swallow a canyon.
“The burns are healing,” she says. “Dermatitis medication needs a few more days to show results. He can go home with you but bring him back tomorrow.”
“Will do.” I give her the smile, the reliable one, warm and steady, tested across multiple states and every room I’ve ever walked into.
She looks at me like I’m a weather report she already checked.
“Tomorrow, Sullivan.”
The dog and I leave. I’ve had longer exchanges with parking meters.
Both crews are at the table that night, my hotshots and Station 7’s structural team, eating Rivera’s chili, which Rivera insists is mild and which has made Navarro reach for his water three times.
The war stories start the way they always do. Somebody mentions a call. Somebody else tops it.
“Dumpster fire on Maple,” Rivera says. “Last winter. Guy had fireworks stored in there. We didn’t know.”
“You found out fast, though, didn’t you?” Ty asks. He’s one of Beck’s crew, Hanna’s fiancé, easy like someone who’s been here long enough to stop fronting it.
“We found out LOUD,” Rivera says. “Two hydrants. One very surprised raccoon.”
