Chapter 2
Sloane
The goat doesn’t want its hooves trimmed.
This isn’t unusual. No goat in recorded history has ever wanted its hooves trimmed.
But this particular goat, a Nubian with ears like velvet curtains and the disposition of a dictator, has decided that today’s appointment is a personal insult, and she’s making her position known by screaming.
Not bleating. Screaming. A sound that makes the dogs in the back kennels go quiet out of professional respect.
“You’re being overly dramatic,” I tell her. It doesn’t help in the slightest, but narrating the situation to animals keeps my hands steady, and steady hands are the only currency that matters in this job. Animals are ideal for this. They don’t ask follow-up questions.
The goat screams again. Her owner, Mrs. Harding, who’s been bringing livestock to Copper Ridge Veterinary longer than I’ve been alive, watches from the doorway like a woman who considers a screaming goat barely worth ranking.
“She does this all the time,” Mrs. Harding says.
“I believe you.”
The trim takes less than a minute once I get hold of the hooves.
My hands know this work: the grip, the angle, the steady pressure that tells the animal’s nervous system that fighting is optional but will be ignored.
It’s the one constant across every practice I’ve filled in at: the animals don’t care who you are. They care what your hands do.
Mrs. Harding pays and leaves. She doesn’t ask where Dr. Fenn is, which puts her ahead of most. Every other client asks where Dr. Fenn is, as if I might have hidden her somewhere between the autoclave and the supply closet. I haven’t. I want to be clear about that.
Dr. Fenn is recovering from hip surgery.
I’m here until she’s back. That’s how locum work goes: I fill the gap, I do good work, I leave clean.
Copper Ridge is another town in a string of them, and I’ve got the pattern down to muscle memory.
Learn the filing system. Memorize the regulars.
Be warm, be competent, don’t become a real person to anyone.
Becoming a real person means the clients stop treating you like a substitute and start treating you like theirs, and that’s when leaving gets complicated. I don’t do complicated.
The practice is well-run. That helps. Dr. Fenn keeps meticulous records: every vaccination, every procedure, every note written in handwriting that suggests she was either a doctor or a seismograph in a previous life.
The equipment is decent for a rural clinic.
The exam room smells like antiseptic and hay, the same smell as every rural vet clinic I’ve ever worked in, and the familiarity is the whole point.
The afternoon is quiet. A Lab with an ear infection, standard: clean, irrigate, medicate.
A cat whose owner is convinced it’s depressed.
The cat isn’t depressed. The cat is a cat.
I recommend environmental enrichment and a feather toy, which is veterinary for “your cat is bored, not existential.” The owner nods like I’ve handed her a prescription for enlightenment and leaves feeling better, which is sometimes the actual job, treating the human so the animal gets left alone.
Between appointments, I eat a sandwich at my desk and review tomorrow’s schedule. Farm call at the Breslin ranch, a mare with a hoof abscess. Wellness exams. A puppy vaccination series. A day that fits inside a box, edges clean, nothing spilling over.
My apartment is above the clinic. A studio that came with the position: a bed, a counter, and a shower that treats hot water like a personal favor it may or may not grant depending on its mood.
The commute is a flight of stairs. The view from the one window is the clinic parking lot, which is less a view and more a daily confirmation that I live where I work and work where I live and neither space contains much evidence of an actual person.
My suitcase is still packed. I’ve had time.
Unpacking is a statement I haven’t agreed to make.
The apartment looks exactly like someone is here temporarily.
We are in complete agreement about this.
Through the window, Copper Ridge does its thing: trucks on Main Street, someone walking a dog past the feed store, mountains sitting on every horizon like a screensaver.
My first week, a man came into the clinic to introduce himself, shake my hand, and ask how I was settling in.
He wasn’t a client. He didn’t have an animal.
He was just introducing himself. I kept waiting for the pitch, the church invitation, the nephew he wanted to set me up with, something—but he shook my hand, said welcome, and left.
I stood in the exam room afterward and tried to categorize what had just happened, and the closest I got was: a town being friendly at me on purpose, which is something I’ve encountered before but have never developed the antibodies for.
The phone rings mid-afternoon. Janet, the receptionist Dr. Fenn shares with the insurance office next door, pokes her head in.
“Fire crew’s bringing in a dog,” she says. “Found it in a brush fire east of town. Burned, no collar.”
My hands stop.
Half a second. Maybe less. The word sits in my chest the way a stone sits in still water: it lands, the ripples move outward, and the surface goes calm again.
“How bad?” I ask.
“They said minor.”
“Set up exam two, please.”
I wash my hands and lay out the burn kit: silver sulfadiazine, sterile gauze, saline flush, and clippers for debriding singed fur. My hands know this work, too. Different work. Same hands.
The door opens and smoke walks in ahead of them, brush-fire smoke, heavy in their clothes and hair, settled into the fabric like it’s not leaving without a fight.
The waiting room isn’t large. Four chairs, a pamphlet rack about heartworms, and a poster of a golden retriever wearing a stethoscope that Dr. Fenn apparently considers decorative.
The first firefighter through fills it the way a St. Bernard fills a studio apartment: thoroughly, instantly, and with no awareness of the spatial problem he’s creating.
Broad shoulders, backwards cap, a grin aimed at everyone in the room simultaneously.
“Hi—hey—we found a dog.” He’s addressing Janet, me, the golden retriever poster, and possibly the parking lot.
“In the fire. East of town. Little guy’s singed but breathing fine, walked on his own, we’ve been giving him water—is this the vet?
This is the vet. Great. I’m Cal.” He reaches across the counter to shake my hand, but I’m holding gauze, so he shakes the gauze.
“Larsen. Cal Larsen. Station 7. My sister’s a paramedic, not that that’s relevant, but she wanted me to tell you she’d have come herself except she’s on shift—anyway. The dog.”
Behind him, the second one comes through the door carrying the animal.
He’s tall, brown hair pushed back, sun-dark skin, a scar on his left forearm he doesn’t seem to notice.
Broad enough through the chest and shoulders to make the doorframe feel optimistic about its dimensions.
His eyes are green, and they won’t sit still, checking exits, distances, corners, the way farm dogs sweep a fence line before they settle.
Everything about him moves even when he’s standing in one place.
But his hands on the dog are steady. Careful. The only part of him keeping still.
The dog is a medium-sized mutt. Brown and gray, one ear up, one ear down, which is the universal flag of a dog assembled by a committee. Singed along the left flank. Shaking but not snapping, scared, not aggressive.
“Exam two,” I say. “This way.”
They follow me. Cal is still talking, the timeline of the rescue, the fuel conditions east of town, the dog’s behavior during transport, and a detailed comparison of the clinic’s smell to his grandmother’s barn, which he wants me to know is a compliment.
The barn is apparently a barn of some renown.
I don’t ask. The tall one says nothing. He sets the dog on the exam table with those careful hands, steps back, and watches.
Burns: superficial, mostly along the left flank and shoulder.
Fur singed but skin intact underneath. Paw pads: minor blistering, shallow.
Dehydration: moderate, the gums are tacky, capillary refill sluggish.
Smoke inhalation: mild, lungs sound clear but worth monitoring.
And underneath all of it, something older.
The skin along the dog’s underbelly is inflamed, flaky, thickened in patches.
Chronic. Predates the fire by weeks, maybe months.
Ears: early otitis, secondary to the dermatitis.
“Dermatitis,” I say, more to the dog than to anyone else. “You’ve been dealing with this for a while.”
The dog’s tail moves. One cautious wag, like a hypothesis it’s testing.
“Minor burns, smoke inhalation, dehydration,” I report to the room.
Professional voice. “The burns are superficial—I’ll clean and dress them, start fluids.
The bigger issue is the skin condition. Chronic dermatitis, probably from living rough.
Mites, allergens, or both. I’ll need a scraping to confirm. ”
“Will he be okay?” the tall one asks. Nice voice. Warmer than the question needs to be.
“He’ll be fine. Are you the owners?”
“Found him in the fire.” He shifts his weight, one foot to the other, like standing still for this long is physically uncomfortable. “I’m Grady. Nobody’s claimed him.”
Grady. I file it without using it.
“Does he have a home?”
“He does now,” Cal says. He’s at the supply cabinet now, reading the back of an ear-wash bottle like it’s going to be on the test. “He lives at the station. We’re calling him Smoky.”
“You’re not calling him Smoky,” Grady says.
“The crew already voted.”
“The crew voted while I was driving. That doesn’t count,” Grady says.
“Democracy waits for no man, Sullivan.”