Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Noah
The practice is so similar to the kennels in some things, and totally different in everything else. It has the same constant noise; barking, padding, the occasional whimper, but it isn’t miserable.
These aren’t the sounds of my girls. The air smells different, too. Not the stale urine I've learned to block out, but a fresher, antiseptic smell. It's brighter, and everyone is so nice.
I can learn new routines, I can learn where everything is kept. And I want to train in everything else. I'll do it.
I'll train to become a veterinary nurse.
I head to the office, knock, and step inside when called.
“Ah, Noah, you're here about the new trainee job.” Martha grins at me as if she’s been waiting this whole time.
“New?”
“The role didn't exist until you hauled your exhausted ass in here and filled us with puppies.”
“Sorry about that. I couldn't leave them where they were.”
“Oh, don't worry, I watched the first broadcast on TV. I'm finding it hard to resist taking one home.”
“If you want me to tell you about anyone, personality, where they like to be tickled…”
Her raised eyebrows cause my words to die on my lips. “Sorry. No sales pitch.”
“Save that for the camera. I hear the national news show wants a daily adoption section for the old girls.”
I give a weak nod and slide into the chair by the desk.
Old girls! They are mine. Now I have to let them all go.
I don't really hear much about the job; a job is a job. Pay is food.
But the numbers are interesting. Minimum wage during training, a bump once qualified. And a nice rate for the TV appearances. It’s more money than the brothers ever paid me. But the brothers paid for the room. And the food.
Minimum wage suddenly has to stretch across rent, electricity, groceries… deposits.
Bills I’ve never had to think about before. Numbers I don’t know how to survive.
My brain does the math and I hate how tight the numbers feel.
Here I have to do that myself. If I can make the numbers work for a house and food.
Once qualified, I could afford new clothes, some nice luxuries, maybe.
I'm good at doing things, feeding puppies when they don't meet parameters, but working out if a minimum wage job covers a rented room and meals isn't something I can imagine.
But others do it.
People who understand how the world works. Maybe Rhys will help or tell me who to ask. Or just… expect me to figure it out.
But this isn't a dead-end, minimum-wage job. It's a career. And the film role is a nice bonus, which could open doors for my future. Good pay for a short-term gig. A down payment on my own place one day.
A shot at a proper life.
I sign the contracts with shaky hands. My name looks wrong on the official form.
Like I’ve stolen someone else’s future.
Rhys did this for me. He created the job; he's planning the barn renovations to make a role for me. He was watching my ass when I changed.
These aren't the actions of a man worried about exposure or trying to silence a witness. Unless this is how he keeps me close. This is a man who treats me. He's going out of his way to make me feel secure here.
Safe.
These are the actions of a man building something.
For the rest of the day, I feel ten feet tall. It's the scrubs. I refuse to let it be because he’s watching me.
Even if I know he is.
“Noah. Could you hold my tape measure, please?” Rhys's smooth TV narrator voice calls from the kennel room door.
I glance up from my work. I'm midway through weighing Toffee's puppies. Apparently, I'm the only one qualified for that because no one else can understand my identification markers. But I freeze, midway through putting Dug back.
Hold his tape measure?
My brain refuses to process the sentence in its innocent meaning. I know what he means, but a heat rises up my neck anyway. Toffee licks the hand holding her baby, encouraging air back into my lungs.
“Two more puppies and I'll gladly hold your…tape measure.” The last two words are a struggle, but he nods and walks off, seemingly unbothered by my reaction.
I’m such an idiot. He didn’t even react.
I weigh the last two pups, confirm all of them have put on weight, and tuck Toffee back in with a head rub.
Once everything is packed away, Rhys is gone. The practice is large, and by going through the office, it's possible to walk around in a circle. Which means I could be simply following Rhys around and never catching up.
“Hi, um…” I catch the attention of the nurse in the checked mint green tunic. I know it means she's a student like me, but these nurses all look the same. “Sorry, I am not good with names. People's names. I'm good with animal names. But I don't remember…”
She looks at me, not offering her name or any way to save myself from my pathetic ramblings. “Sorry.”
“That's okay. I'd be the same if Dr Calder asked me to hold his tape measure somewhere secret.”
There is no amusement in her voice, no red flush like the one returning to my face. She doesn't find this funny; she's jealous. I'm the new boy, coming in with no experience and outshining her. I doubt she wants to hold Rhys's tape measure, but I bet she'd love my TV spotlight.
I think I'll name her Snowy. Cold and easy to remember. I’ve only been here half a day and I’ve already made an enemy.
I turn before I let the smile escape across my lips. No wonder I can remember dogs better than people. I name them things that remind me. Toffee, for example, has brown swirls through her black patches.
I head outside via the back door and across to the barn. I doubt Rhys is keeping this a secret; Snowy is just too far down the pecking order to pick up more than whispers, but it's enough to lead me to where Rhys is waiting.
He's in some kind of power-down mode, like someone switched him off mid-thought. Just standing, waiting, staring at a red brick in the middle of the barn.
“Um, hello?” I call out nervously, reluctant to disturb him from his daydream. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Ah, Noah! Puppies okay?”
“Oh, they're doing great. I'm worried about the little one, but…”
He thrusts the end of the tape measure into my hand and guides me to the red brick. “Keep the end over the middle of the brick.”
For the next hour, I stand over a brick, turning as he measures in every direction over and over.
I adjust the brick millimeters at a time until it is exactly center of the barn.
But this isn't about finding dead center.
I'm sure architects will do this again with something more accurate than a length of numbered tape.
This is about the words. As he measures, he talks, as if I'm someone he can trust with the obsessive nature of this project.
To his staff working inside the practice, running through the cleaning routines and welfare routines, and all the rest of his lists hanging inside cupboard doors, this is just more kennels.
To me, the keeper of his chaotic urges, this is a vision. Something softer than the man himself.
I can almost hear it.
Not barking. Just quiet breathing. Warm bodies. Safe sleep. No fear.
A place away from the antiseptic smell of the practice, away from the harsh lights and constant distractions.
A place where the ginger stray cat from last season could have stayed after his leg was fixed.
He could have been featured for adoption when it was healed, instead of being sent to the cat rescue center while disowning its own plastered limb.
Rhys, meanwhile, talks more in this empty barn than he does in the entire practice. I realize after a while that he isn't explaining the building to me.
He's thinking aloud, as if I’m already part of the plan. Like he expects me to be here when it’s finished.
“You can run the entire building,” he adds at the end, confirming what I didn’t dare assume.
“Me?”
“Kennel manager. No. Hospital manager. You can be in charge of all the wards. I know you can do it; you've been doing it alone for months. Now you can have staff rota’d on to help you.”
“Snowy will not like that.”
“You've picked a favorite dog? Or is this one who hates kennels?” He frowns.
“No, it's the student nurse. Please don't get her in trouble, but she's been a bit cold towards me. I think I'm outshining her.”
“Of course you are.” He paused for a moment, finding the red brick between my feet fascinating once more. “This barn is going to take a while to complete. So we'll get you through your training. You'll be qualified before it's ready.”
That is something to smile about. Not that he isn't angry I've named his nurse Snowy, but that he is thinking that far ahead.
I'm not a short-term pity project. I'm someone he can count on to be here for the long haul.
Like Tree, the head nurse, and Tammy, the senior surgical nurse. I'd be Noah Calder, hospital manager.
Woah.
Slow down.
Let's take that back about ten steps.
Noah Humphries, hospital manager.
“I love your vision for this place, and I love your vision for me being part of it. But I'd like to start my training before accepting the promotion.” One miracle at a time.