8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
REGAN
Mrs. Petersen’s basset hound has an ear infection, which I could have diagnosed from across the room because the dog has been shaking his head since he walked in and Mrs. Petersen has been narrating his symptoms since before she sat down.
“He won’t stop scratching. He scratched all night. My husband said leave him be, but I said, Robert, that dog is suffering, and Robert said, Patty, that dog is dramatic, and I said, Robert, he gets it from you.”
“Let’s have a look.” I tilt the basset’s head and check the canal. Red, waxy, classic yeast infection. “He’ll need drops. Twice a day for ten days. Keep his ears dry.”
“Ten days of drops,” Mrs. Petersen says. “Robert’s going to love that.”
“Robert will manage. If he doesn’t, call me and I’ll make a house call.”
She laughs, and the sound fills the whole room. She reaches across the exam table to pat my hand. “Doc Henley never made house calls for ear drops.”
“Doc Henley wasn’t me.”
She leaves with the drops and a smile and a promise to bring me a jar of her pickled beets, which I’m not sure I want but don’t have the heart to refuse.
This is how it works here. You treat their animals, and they bring you vegetables.
I’ve been open a week and I already have more zucchini than any single person should own.
The morning passes. A farm dog with a torn dewclaw.
A phone call from a goat farmer near the county line who thinks his nanny has mastitis and wants to know if I do goats.
I do goats. I do everything with four legs and a pulse, and some things with feathers, and one memorable time in vet school, a tortoise.
By noon, the clinic feels like mine. The coffee machine works. The exam table is clean. My diplomas are hung, finally, slightly crooked because I did it myself. The lavender air freshener is doing its best against the antiseptic. Together they smell like a spa that performs surgery. I’ll take it.
The bell above the door chimes at half-past twelve.
The cat who’s brought in is not happy to be here.
She’s a tabby, maybe eight months old, with ears like satellite dishes and a glare that could strip paint.
She’s currently wedged behind the carrier in the arms of a six-year-old boy who is explaining, with great seriousness, that her name is Duchess and she likes tuna and sleeping on his pillow and she does NOT like car rides.
“She screamed,” the boy says. “The whole way.”
“Cats do that,” I tell him. “They’re dramatic.”
“She’s not dramatic. She’s expressing her feelings.”
His father is standing by the exam room door with his arms folded and the faintest smile on his face. Noah Callahan. The quiet one from the stable yard, crouched at Birdie’s head, the one who noticed the pony’s lameness before anyone else.
“He’s been like this since we got her,” Noah says. “Full advocate. I’m just the chauffeur.”
“You’re the OWNER,” Mason corrects. “I’m the dad.”
“Cat dad,” Noah says.
“Cat dad.”
I crouch to Mason’s level. Duchess is pressed against his chest, her claws in his shirt, her ears flat. She looks at me and hisses. Mason looks at me with enormous brown eyes and doesn’t hiss but gives off a similar energy of protective suspicion.
“Duchess needs a microchip,” I tell him. “It’s a tiny thing that goes under her skin so if she ever gets lost, someone can scan her and find out she belongs to you. It doesn’t hurt much. Like a quick pinch.”
“Will she cry?”
“She might yell. Cats yell when they’re annoyed. But she’ll be fine in about two seconds.”
Mason considers this. “Can I hold her?”
“You can help me hold her. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He climbs onto the exam stool with Duchess in his lap, and I show him how to scruff her gently, one hand at the base of the neck, the other supporting her weight.
His hands are small and careful. He handles her with the instinctive steadiness of a kid who’s grown up around animals. Duchess, miracle of miracles, settles.
“She likes you,” Mason announces. “She doesn’t like most people.”
“I’m honored.”
“She doesn’t like Uncle Luke. He’s too loud.”
Noah coughs.
I prep the chip, swab the injection site, and slide the needle in while Mason holds Duchess still. She twitches once and yowls. Mason strokes her head and says, “You’re okay, Duchess. Dr. Regan is a professional.”
The inside of my cheek takes a beating. “All done. She’s officially chipped. If she ever goes on an adventure, the chip will bring her home.”
Mason picks Duchess up and holds her against his shoulder like a baby. She tolerates it with resigned dignity. He carries her to the carrier, tucks her in, and closes the door with a tenderness that makes my heart swell.
God, I miss Tyler’s kids. My brother’s twin girls are three, and I hate I won’t be able to see them as often now I’ve set up my own clinic and all that comes with it. FaceTime isn’t the same. It never is.
“She’s a good cat,” I say to Noah, washing my hands at the sink. “Healthy. Well socialized for her age. Whoever you got her from did a nice job.”
“Quinn found her,” Noah says. “Farm litter out past Rosebank. Mason wanted one for his birthday, and Quinn went full investigator. Interviewed the farmer. Checked the mother. Probably ran a background check.”
I smile. “Smart woman.”
“She is.” The way he says it carries about ten things he doesn’t add, and I like him for the restraint. Noah Callahan is quiet, but there’s a lot going on behind it.
He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, watching Mason crouch in front of the carrier and whisper to Duchess through the grate.
“Caleb mentioned you came out to see Bear,” Noah says, glancing at me.
“Yesterday. Bear’s got some gut inflammation. I’m running bloods.”
“How is he?”
“Lethargic. Off his food. But he let me examine him, which your cousin said was unusual.”
Noah nods. “Bear doesn’t trust easily. He’s Caleb’s project. Or maybe Caleb’s Bear’s project. Depends who you ask.”
I nod, not trusting that if I speak, I’ll sound like a sane adult woman.
“Caleb’s been better since Bear,” Noah says. “Quieter, but different. Like having something to take care of gave him somewhere to put the…” He pauses. Searches. “The extra.”
The extra. I know what he means. The excess of feeling that doesn’t have anywhere to go, so you put it into something you can touch: an animal, a garden, a job, a life you build from scratch in a town where nobody knows your story.
“He left the military a few years ago,” Noah says.
“But he doesn’t like to talk about it. He built the Airstream setup himself.
The workshop. Picked up mechanic work, contracting.
Keeps busy. Keeps moving.” He glances at Mason.
“We worry about him. All of us. But Caleb doesn’t make it easy to help. ”
“No,” I say. “I’d imagine he doesn’t.”
Noah looks at me. Steady. Not suspicious, just observant. The same way he watched Birdie’s gait in the stable yard, reading the thing underneath the thing.
“People who’ve been hurt do that,” he says. “Build the walls so well they forget they’re inside them.”
He says it like he’s talking about Caleb. He’s probably talking about Caleb. But it lands on me like a stone dropping into still water, and I have to turn to the counter and fiddle with a pen to keep my face from doing whatever it wants to do.
Mason stands up. “Duchess wants to go home.”
“Duchess looks pretty comfortable to me,” Noah says.
“She told me. With her eyes.”
Noah shakes his head, but can’t help smiling. This is a man who is completely undone by his kid and doesn’t mind anyone knowing it.
At the door, Mason waves goodbye with the hand that isn’t holding the carrier. “Bye, Dr. Regan. Duchess says thank you.”
“Tell Duchess she’s welcome anytime.”
They leave. The bell above the door chimes. The clinic goes quiet. Noah’s words sit in my head, turning over slowly, refusing to settle.
People who’ve been hurt build the walls so well they forget they’re inside them.
That’s not about Caleb. That’s about everyone.
That’s about me, standing in a clinic I’ve owned for a week, in a town I chose because it was far from everything I knew, building a life that doesn’t need anyone.
Competent. Professional. Warm with animals.
Warm with kids. Warm with everyone except the one person who could crack me open.
I sit down at my desk and pull up the lab portal.
Bear’s bloods should be back by tomorrow morning.
Whatever the results say, the treatment plan is clear: ongoing visits, every few days, minimum two weeks.
Me, in that clearing, with my hands on his dog, while he stands against the workshop wall with his arms folded and watches me like I’m a bomb he’s trying to decide whether to defuse or walk away from.
I can’t hand this off. Bear wouldn’t tolerate another vet even if there was another one to ask. And Caleb won’t take him anywhere.
Which means I go back. Tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.
You’re being pulled in. You know that, right?
I know.
And you’re not fighting it as hard as you should be.
I know that, too.
The clinic hums. The lavender does its best. Outside, Main Street goes gold in the late afternoon, and somewhere on a ranch at the edge of town, a dog is lying on a mat in an Airstream, waiting for me to come back.