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.”
Rivera starts in on another story about a chimney cat from his probie days and Ty groans because he’s heard it already, but Cal hasn’t. Cal’s reaction alone is worth the retelling. “The cat was FINE,” Rivera says. “The chimney wasn’t.”
“What happened to the chimney?” Cal asks.
“We took it apart,” Rivera says, like it’s the dumbest question he’s ever heard.
“You TOOK APART a chimney for a CAT?” Cal says.
“Station 7 doesn’t leave anybody behind,” Rivera says. “Including cats.”
“The homeowner cried,” Ty adds. “Then the cat bit Rivera.”
“The cat was stressed,” Rivera says, with dignity.
Diaz, who treats conversations the way most people treat dental work, sets down his fork.
“We had a burnover in the Cascades.” Flat.
Even. The table goes quiet because when Diaz talks, it means something.
“Deployed shelters. Fire went over us like a freight train. Came out the other side and the first thing Navarro said was ‘My sandwich was in the truck.’”
Navarro doesn’t deny it. “It was a good sandwich.”
“See?” Derek says, pointing at the table like he’s proving a point. “This is why hotshots are insane. The mountain is on fire and they’re worried about lunch.”
“It wasn’t a mountain,” Diaz says. “It was a drainage.”
“THAT’S WORSE.”
“That’s the job,” I say.
Cal leans back in his chair, grinning. “So, Sullivan. The vet. What’s her name?”
“Dr. Hartley.”
“Her first name.”
“Didn’t ask.”
Cal stares. Ty shakes his head. Derek, across the table, looks at me like I’ve personally failed him.
“It’s Sloane,” Derek says. “Janet told me. You’re welcome.”
“Prediction,” Cal says to the table. “Six weeks.”
“There’s no prediction.”
“There’s a whiteboard,” Cal says.
I turn around. “There isn’t a whiteboard.”
Cal’s face goes wide and earnest. Lying or truth, doesn’t matter, he’s having the best week of his life. “Not confirming the whiteboard. What I will say is Derek has week three and Diaz has never, and I think Diaz is being pessimistic.”
After dinner somebody finds a football. Not a real game, just tossing it around on the grass between the station and the lot while the light goes gold. Derek overthrows everything. Cal catches everything. Ty throws spirals that look effortless, which is probably why Hanna picked him.
Navarro and Keller argue about whether a lateral counts when you’re standing still, which isn’t a real rule in any version of football, but they commit to it completely. Rivera referees from a lawn chair. Two crews. One station. It’s starting to work.
Ty finds me later, on the tailgate of the engine while the sky goes dark.
“They’re good guys,” he says. Meaning my crew. “Diaz doesn’t talk much, but when he does, the room listens. That’s worth something.”
“He likes your crew,” I say. “Won’t admit it. But he told me your hydrant hookup was—and I’m quoting—acceptable.”
Ty grins. “From Diaz, I’ll take it.”
Cal and I head to the clinic the next morning with the dog, who has been shut in the captain’s office for his own safety. Cal suggests we stop at Peak Grounds, which is less a suggestion and more Cal steering us through the door before I’ve agreed.
Micah’s behind the counter. Glasses, beard, fewer words per shift than most people use ordering breakfast.
“What does Dr. Hartley usually order?” I ask.
“Black. No sugar,” Micah says.
Black coffee. No sugar. No foam, no vanilla, no almond milk, no caramel drizzle. Every woman I’ve ever taken to coffee has ordered something with a minimum of three adjectives. Micah has to be wrong. Or Dr. Hartley is playing a long game with her coffee order, and either way, I know what I’m doing.
I order a vanilla latte.
Micah watches me order. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The look over those glasses is a complete essay on the subject of men who ask for advice and then ignore it.
Cal, behind me, says nothing. His silence is louder than most people’s commentary.
At the clinic, I set the cup on the counter in exam two. Dr. Hartley looks at it. Looks at me. Picks it up. Reads the label. Sets it down again with a politeness so complete it could end a marriage.
“Thank you,” she says.
She doesn’t touch it again. She looks at the dog, same routine, same explosion of tail and paws and total species betrayal.
She runs the exam while the vanilla latte sits on the counter going cold.
The dog presses into her. She checks the burns.
The medication’s starting to work on the dermatitis.
She mentions she can see improvement in the skin around the treated areas.
She is outstanding at discussing the dog.
“Healing well,” she says. “Come back tomorrow, Sullivan.”
In the waiting room, Cal leans toward Janet. “Wrong coffee order. Vet didn’t touch it.”
“Cal.”
“Current prediction: six weeks.” He holds up his phone. “Hanna put up a graph. She’s a Larsen—we graph things.”
I shake my head and walk past him on the way to the truck.
The call comes mid-afternoon: dry grass south of town, wind pushing it toward a fence line. Both crews roll.
My guys hit the flanks. Station 7 lays hose. Small fire, nobody’s worried, but it’s the first time both crews have worked on the same scene. Ty works the nozzle with Diaz on the line behind him. They don’t talk. Quick work. Done before the adrenaline catches up. Black ground, wet ash, steam.
“Not bad,” Diaz says on the ride back. From Diaz, that’s a standing ovation.
Cal, riding shotgun, turns around. “Hey, Sullivan. We drove past the clinic on the way out. You notice that?”
“I didn’t notice that.”
“You noticed,” Cal says.
At dinner that night, Derek announces the brush fire like a sportscaster. “Two acres. Fifteen minutes. Both crews. Historic collaboration. Also, Sullivan slowed down when we passed the vet clinic.”
“The engine slowed down,” I say. “Speed limit.”
“The engine knows,” Derek says in a spooky voice. “It’s been to that clinic every day this week. It’s forming attachments.”
Navarro, across the table, is trying not to laugh. Rivera isn’t trying at all.
Diaz and I hike the ridgeline east of town on a morning when the dew burns off too early and the wind comes from the wrong direction.
I’ve already been to the clinic: quick visit, burns still healing, Dr. Hartley still professional, dog still choosing her over me.
The routine is settling in. And being irritating.
“Fuel load’s heavy.” Diaz points ahead of us, up through beetle-kill pine, past granite where the trail quits. “Decade of drought. Beetle-kill everywhere. Wind funnels through that eastern gap and this whole slope goes up like a torch.”
“Defensible space?”
“Around town, it’s decent. The ranches south, though—” He shakes his head. “Nobody’s cleared it in years.”
I mark the map and we keep walking. The brush crackles underfoot, pine resin and dead grass on the air, the edge of something building.
Our rotation’s off, and Cal talks me into going to the Watershed. “You’ve been to the clinic every day this week,” he says. “You need a night where the only animal is Big Jim.”
The Watershed looks the same as it did the first night I walked in: wood paneling, mounted fish, the smell of spilled beer and decades of the same conversations. Derek’s behind the bar tonight, helping his dad. He pours without asking and then slides the glass.
“How’s the vet situation?” Derek asks.
“There’s no vet situation.”
“Sullivan.” Derek leans on the bar. “You go to that clinic every day. You brought her coffee and got the order wrong. You asked Micah what she drinks and then ignored the answer, which—and I mean this with all the love I can muster—is the most on-brand move you’ve ever made.”
“The dog has burns and needs medical care.”
“The dog has burns,” Derek repeats. “And you’ve got it bad. Those are two separate conditions.”