Chapter 15
Astrid
Ten days after the council vote, I unlocked the front door of Hartsdale Veterinary at seven-fifty in the morning and stood inside it for a beat without turning on the lights.
The sign over the door was new. I watched the man from the print shop screw it into the brick on Friday afternoon, and I stood on the sidewalk in my coat with my hands in my pockets and looked up at it long enough that he asked me twice if it was straight.
It was straight. I just wanted to keep looking at it.
The sign read Hartsdale Veterinary in dark green letters on a cream ground. My name was in smaller letters underneath: Astrid Matthews, DVM. I called the printer back twice about the comma.
Inside, the waiting room smelled like fresh paint that hadn't fully cured and the lemon polish I put on the front counter the night before.
The chairs were from a consignment place two towns over, four of them, mismatched in the right way.
The coffee maker on the side counter was my mother's, dug out of a box in the garage in September and driven across the river on the passenger seat of my car.
Moose was already in his bed in the corner. He walked into the waiting room like a man on his first day at a new job, surveyed the chairs, and lowered himself onto the bed I put there the week before.
The cat moved himself in over the weekend. I brought him on Saturday to see how he'd do. He walked out of the carrier, strutted the perimeter of the back room, jumped onto the filing cabinet, and lay down. By Sunday morning, he was still on it. I took the hint.
I turned on the lights and started the coffee. I put my stethoscope around my neck because that was the part of getting dressed that always made me feel like I was at work.
The clock above the door said eight.
The bell over the door went off two seconds later.
Audrey came through it in scrubs, lipstick, and a sash.
The sash was bachelorette-party pink satin.
She drew GRAND OPENING on it in black Sharpie.
The lettering went uphill on the second word.
Sunflowers in one hand, the white bakery bag from the place on Main in the other, and on her face, the full makeup a woman does at six in the morning when she has not yet been to bed.
"Audrey."
"Don't start."
"I wasn't."
"You had a face."
"I'm smiling."
"That's the face."
She set the bakery bag on the front counter, unwrapped the bread, and cut the first slice with a steak knife she pulled out of her purse—a knife she had no business carrying in a purse, and which she did not explain.
She set the slice on a paper plate she'd also brought and slid it to the corner of the counter.
"For the first client."
"What if the first client is allergic to cinnamon?"
"The first client will not be allergic to cinnamon. Stop."
She'd brought a vase, too, of course. Filled it at the sink in the back and put the sunflowers in. Turned around with her hands on her hips.
"It's beautiful."
"It's empty."
"It's eight o'clock in the morning. Of course it's empty."
She crossed the waiting room into the back. I followed her with my coffee. She stopped at the filing cabinet.
"Hi, Steve."
I looked at her.
"Steve?"
"That's his name."
"How do you know that's his name?"
"Look at him, Astrid. That is a Steve."
I looked at him. He looked back at me with the yellow eye and the half-shut one, his front paws tucked under his chest in the loaf shape cats made when they'd decided a body was safe. I'd been waiting for the word to fall out of somebody's mouth. I wasn't particular about whose.
"Steve," I said.
He blinked at me once.
"Steve, it is."
Audrey rubbed the back of his head with two fingers. He leaned into them.
"You're welcome."
"I didn't thank you."
"You will."
She left at eight-fifteen. She kissed me on the cheek in the doorway and put her hand on my shoulder a second longer than I expected.
"You're going to be busy by ten."
"You don't know that."
"I do know that. People in this town have been watching you for six weeks. They're going to walk in here today."
She went.
I spent the morning doing the work of a woman who had a clinic and no clients.
I labeled drawers. I called the supply company about a gasket that hadn't arrived.
I wiped down the exam tables twice. I sat at the front counter with my coffee and watched the leaves come down off the maple across the street, one at a time, in the particular quiet of a small town at eleven in the morning.
Mrs. Halloran walked by on her way to the post office, saw me through the window, and lifted her hand in a small wave. I waved back.
She didn't come in.
The bell finally went off at eleven-forty.
A woman in her thirties came in with a tabby in a carrier and the apologetic posture of a person who'd walked into a place she hadn't been planning to walk into.
"I'm sorry. I didn't make an appointment. He's scratching his ear so hard I thought he was going to take it off, and Dr. Caldwell's booked solid till Thursday."
"Bring him out back."
I took her to the first exam room. The cat was a four-year-old gray named Bartleby, which I had her tell me about before I asked her anything she came in for.
Bartleby had a textbook ear infection in his left ear.
I cleaned it, gave her the ointment, and showed her how to apply it twice a day for ten days.
The whole appointment took twenty minutes.
She paid at the front counter. She put her card back in her wallet, picked up the carrier, and paused at the door.
"He didn't even cry."
"He's a good cat."
"He cries at Caldwell."
She left.
My phone buzzed on the counter at two-fifteen.
Easton.
Easton
Open day going alright?
Astrid
One walk-in. Three hours of nothing in between.
Easton
Want me to come by?
Astrid
You're on shift.
Easton
I'm at the station eating Halsey's eggs. I can come by.
Astrid
Eat your eggs.
Easton
I can come by with eggs.
I smiled at the phone. I'd been smiling at the phone for a week, and I wasn't ready to look at what that meant yet, but I wasn't trying to stop it either.
Astrid
Save them for me. Come by tonight.
Easton
Tonight. Locked door, deadbolt, the whole performance.
Astrid
The whole performance.
I set the phone face down on the counter.
The afternoon settled into the shape of an afternoon at a practice nobody was coming to. Two o'clock came and went. Three came in the same shape.
The phone buzzed again at three-fifteen.
It was Audrey.
"You sitting down?"
"I'm at the counter."
"Sit down."
"Audrey."
"Astrid. Sit."
I sat on the stool behind the counter.
"Talk to me."
"Caldwell's been working it. Telling the older folks at the diner that you're young, that you haven't run your own practice before. That your methods aren't what most of them grew up with."
"Well, he's not wrong."
"He's not wrong. He's just saying it. He's not saying anything you could sue him for. He's just saying it in every room he walks into."
"Who's switched?"
"Three of the families I know told me at the church coffee two weeks back that they were coming over to you. None of them has moved their charts. They're still on his books."
"How do you know that?"
"I've known his receptionist since high school."
"Audrey."
"I'm a good friend."
I let it sit. She let me.
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
"Eat the cinnamon bread."
"There's nobody here to eat it with."
"Eat it for me."
"I will."
"He's not winning, Astrid."
"I know." My throat closed once and opened.
"You're going to outlast him."
"I know."
She hung up.
I set the phone face down on the counter, got off the stool, and went into the back.
Steve was on the filing cabinet. He watched me come in. I went around the cabinet, put my back against the wall, and slid down to sit on the floor beside it.
"Steve."
He blinked.
"You and I are going to have a day."
He leaned his head over the edge of the cabinet against my shoulder.
I sat with him for a minute. Then I got up, washed my face at the sink, walked back out to the front, and refilled my coffee.
The bell went off at four-thirty.
Five of them came through the door, counting the dog. Two parents. A girl, maybe ten, and a boy, maybe eight, both in jackets too thin for the weather. The boy had the leash. The dog was a black lab going gray at the muzzle, and he came through the door pulling toward me before the boy was through.
"Cooper," the boy said. "Cooper, sit. Cooper."
Cooper did not sit.
The mother smiled at me, and the face came back. Bishop. She'd come to the house after my grandfather died when I was eleven. I didn't remember her first name, the way a child doesn't always know the first names of the grown women in her mother's life.
"Mrs. Bishop."
"Astrid. Look at you."
She held her hand out across the counter. I took it.
"We heard you were back. I would have called for an appointment, but we were coming back from town, and I figured I'd come by and see if you were open."
"I'm open."
"Good."
The husband looked around the waiting room with the slow approving nod of a man who knew when a building was put together right.
"It's nice in here."
"Thank you."
The mother kept her hand on the counter. "We heard about the boy at the lake."
"Oh."
Her fingers spread flat on the counter, the way a woman places a hand to make sure you can see her. "My sister-in-law works at the reception at the hospital. She said the firefighters told the doctor a civilian did the work. She said the civilian was a vet from out by Maple Avenue."
I didn't know what to do with my face.
"That was something, Astrid. That was a big thing."
"I just happened to be there."
"That isn't a small thing to just happen to be there."
The husband cleared his throat.
"Cooper's about due. He's eight. We haven't had him in for a year and a half. Caldwell was supposed to do his shots last spring, and we kept meaning to call and reschedule, but we kept not calling. We figured we'd start fresh."
"Bring him around back."
I took them into the second exam room because the first one still smelled like Bartleby's ear ointment.
Cooper was a good lab, the kind whose tail didn't know when to stop.
He climbed onto the exam table on his own when I patted the surface.
I did his vaccinations. I looked him over.
He had a small lipoma on his left flank, which I told them was benign.
His hips were a little stiff. I gave the mother the name of a joint supplement at the feed store on the highway and the dose for a lab his weight.
The boy held Cooper's collar the whole time and watched my hands.
"Are you a doctor?"
"For animals."
"For people, too?"
"No, just animals."
"My mom said you helped a kid not be drowning."
"I did."
"That's a doctor."
I rubbed the top of Cooper's head.
"That's a person who happened to be there."
He thought about that for a beat.
"My grandma says everybody's just a person who happens to be there."
"Your grandma sounds smart."
"She is."
The mother smiled at the back of his head.
I walked them to the front. The father paid in cash. The mother paused at the door with her hand on the frame.
"We'll be back in for the spring shots. You'll see us in March."
"I'll be here."
"Astrid."
"Yes."
"Welcome home."
She went out. The husband nodded at me on his way past. The girl gave me a small smile on her way out the door, the smile of a ten-year-old who'd been paying attention to everything and was not going to give any of it away yet.
The boy looked back at me from the sidewalk.
He waved.
I waved.
The bell settled.
I locked the front door at six.
The sunflowers were in the vase on the counter. The bakery bag had two slices of cinnamon bread left in it. Moose was asleep on his bed with his chin on his paws. Steve was on the filing cabinet through the open door to the back, awake and unbothered, ruling.
I had two clients to show for opening day. And one wasn't even mine. Bartleby's owner told me at the counter she was a Caldwell person, and she only came in because Caldwell was booked. The Bishops came because they heard about a boy at a lake.
A practice didn't open in a day. A practice opened in months. I knew that. I said it to Audrey at the diner three weeks ago. I said it to my mother on the phone yesterday. I said it to myself in the mirror this morning at six-thirty.
I said it because I needed to say it.
I told myself, when I signed the lease, that I'd be fine if it was slow. That I came back to Hartsdale for me, not for the practice. That the practice was something I was building because I had a license and wanted to use it, and if it took years to fill, that would be fine.
I told myself I didn't need this to work.
Standing in my empty waiting room, I found out how much I did.