10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
REGAN
The phone wakes me at ten past midnight.
I’m on the couch above the clinic, half-watching a rerun of something I stopped caring about two episodes ago. The screen says Caleb Callahan, and my whole body goes still.
He’s never called since that first time. Not once. I gave him my number for Bear’s treatment and he’s used it exactly twice, both times by text, both times three words or fewer.
I answer. “Hello?”
“Something’s wrong with Bear.” His voice is stripped back, no gravel, no edge. Just flat. “He collapsed about twenty minutes ago. He’s breathing, but he won’t get up. He won’t drink. His gums are white.”
I’m already moving. Phone wedged between my ear and shoulder, pulling on jeans, grabbing my emergency kit from the closet by the door. “White like pale pink, or white like paper?”
“Paper.”
“I’m coming. Keep him warm. Don’t try to force water. If he vomits, turn him on his side and keep his airway clear.”
“Okay.”
“Caleb.”
A pause.
“I’m on my way.”
The drive from the clinic to the ranch takes twelve minutes. I do it in seven, the truck’s headlights catching deer eyes at the edge of the road, my kit rattling on the passenger seat. The radio is off. My hands are steady on the wheel because they have to be. That’s the deal. You fall apart after.
The dirt track to Caleb’s clearing is rougher than I remember. I park behind the Airstream and grab my kit. He’s already outside, standing in the doorway. No shoes. Wearing a T-shirt and sweats, like he’d been asleep. His face in the porch light is something I can’t think about right now.
“He’s inside,” he says.
The Airstream is smaller than I thought a person could live in and still call it living.
A mat on the floor with a single blanket folded at one end.
A shelf with three books and a tin mug. A camp stove.
The walls are bare aluminum, catching the light from a battery-powered lantern.
Everything is squared away, every surface clean, every object in its place.
Military corners on a blanket that belongs on a cot in a barracks, not in a home.
This isn’t a home. This is a man who doesn’t think he deserves one.
Bear is on the mat, lying on his side. His breathing is shallow and fast. His belly is distended, hard to the touch. His gums, when I peel back his lip, are bloodless.
“How long since he ate?”
“He didn’t eat today. He tried this morning, but couldn’t keep it down.”
The kit opens. Stethoscope first. His bowel sounds are gone, his abdomen silent. His heart rate is elevated, compensating. I press along his belly and he whimpers, a thin, reedy sound that makes Caleb step forward.
“Easy,” I tell Bear. I tell Caleb too, without looking up. “I need you to hold his head. Talk to him. Keep him still.”
Caleb drops to his knees beside the mat. His hands go to Bear’s face, cupping the broad skull, thumbs running behind the ears. “Hey, bud. I’m here. You’re okay.”
The gentleness in his voice hits me square in the ribs. I push it down. Not now.
“I think it’s a bowel obstruction,” I say, checking Bear’s capillary refill. Too slow. Way too slow. “The inflammation’s been masking it. He’s eaten something, or the swelling’s closed off part of the intestine. I need to get fluids into him and see if I can get the blockage moving.”
“Do you need to operate?”
“Not here. Not with what I’ve got. If he doesn’t respond to treatment in the next few hours, I’ll need to get him to the clinic and open him up.” I look at Caleb. “But I want to try the conservative route first. He’s stressed enough.”
Caleb nods. His jaw is tight, his shoulders locked, his whole body rigid with the effort of holding still. But his hands on Bear’s head are soft.
The subcutaneous fluid line goes in next. Bear flinches at the needle, and Caleb’s whole body flinches with him. I administer an anti-emetic, then a smooth muscle relaxant to try to get the gut moving again. Bear’s eyes are glassy, his breathing still too fast, but he’s not getting worse. Not yet.
“Now we wait,” I say.
Caleb doesn’t move from the floor. His legs are crossed, Bear’s head in his lap, one hand still resting on the dog’s neck. The Airstream is warm with our breath, the lantern throwing soft shadows across the aluminum walls. Outside, crickets. The creek.
I check his vitals every fifteen minutes. Heart rate. Respiratory rate. Gum color. Belly palpation. Caleb watches every check without blinking.
At one point, I sit back on my heels and stretch my neck. The floor is hard. My knees ache. I’ve been crouching for over an hour.
“You can sit,” Caleb says.
There’s nowhere to sit except the mat, which is occupied by a large dog and the man holding him. I lower myself to the floor beside them, my back against the curved wall of the Airstream. My shoulder is six inches from Caleb’s.
Our shoulders aren’t touching. They might as well be. I can feel the heat coming off his arm across the inch of air between us, and my whole body has tipped its attention that way like it’s got nothing to do with me.
There’s a sick dog on this floor who might not see morning, and I’m noticing the warmth of a man’s arm. Get it together, Regan.
I keep my eyes on Bear. I count his breaths. I do not think about the last time I sat this close to Caleb Callahan in the dark.
We don’t talk for a while. Bear’s breathing evens out slightly. Still too fast, but steadier. I listen to it and count.
“He ate a sock once,” Caleb says.
I blink. “What?”
“When I first got him. He was so scared of everything, he’d grab whatever was closest and hide with it.
One of my socks. I found him behind the truck, trying to swallow it whole.
” The corner of his mouth lifts, barely.
“I had to fish it out of his throat with two fingers. He bit me. Then he licked the bite.”
“Sounds about right.”
“He slept on my chest that night. Sixty pounds of traumatized dog, right on my sternum. I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t move for eight hours.”
I look at Bear. His ear twitches in his sleep. “He knew you were safe.”
“He didn’t know anything. He was terrified.”
“That’s how trust starts, sometimes. Being terrified and finding out the person next to you doesn’t leave.”
The words are out before I can stop them. They land in the small space between us and sit there. Caleb goes very still.
I should leave it. I should let the silence do what silence does and check Bear’s gums again and pretend I said it about the dog.
But it’s one in the morning and I’m sitting on the floor of a tin box with a man I haven’t spoken to in ten years and a dog who might be dying, and I’m tired of pretending.
“Why did you leave?”
He doesn’t look at me. His hand keeps moving on Bear’s neck, steady, circular.
“Caleb.”
“You know why.”
“I don’t. I’ve never known why. One day you were there, and the next day you were gone.
No note. No call. Nothing.” My voice is even.
Steady. A surgeon’s hands with a surgeon’s voice, because if I let it crack, I won’t stop.
“I went to your house. The day after prom. The day after you told me you wanted to marry me. I waited for hours and nobody came.”
His hand stops on Bear’s neck.
“So no,” I say. “I don’t know why. I have never known why. And I would really like you to tell me.”
The silence stretches. Bear breathes. The lantern flickers.
“Because I saw what I saw,” he says. Quiet. Hard. “And I couldn’t stay after that.”
“What you saw? Caleb, what are you talking about?”
He shakes his head. Once. The shutters come down so fast I can almost hear them. Whatever door cracked open is sealed again, bolted. His face is like stone.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
I want to push. I want to grab him by the shoulders and shake until the truth falls out. But Bear shifts in his lap, a low groan, and we both look down.
“Check him,” Caleb says.
His gums first. Gum color: faintly pink. Barely. But pink. Heart rate: down eight beats from the last check. I press his belly, gently. He groans again, but the distension is softer. Less rigid.
“He’s responding,” I say. “The relaxant is working. The blockage is shifting.”
Caleb exhales. A long, slow breath, like a man who just put his rifle down.
The monitoring continues. Two a.m. Three. Bear’s vitals improve in small increments, each one I report to Caleb like field comms. His gum color returns. His heart rate settles. At three forty-five, his gut sounds come back, a low gurgling rumble, and I almost laugh with relief.
“There he is,” I say.
Bear opens his eyes and looks at Caleb. His tail thumps once against the mat.
Caleb’s hand tightens on the scruff of Bear’s neck. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
By four thirty, Bear has lifted his head and drunk water from the bowl Caleb holds for him.
I’ve adjusted his medication, written out a new protocol, given Caleb instructions he won’t need to be told twice.
Bear is sleeping now, properly sleeping, his side rising and falling in a rhythm that no longer scares me.
Dawn is coming. Gray light through the Airstream’s small window. I can see the pines outside, dark shapes against a sky that’s turning silver. The birds are starting.
We’re sitting on the floor, backs against opposite walls, Bear between us. My legs are stretched out. Caleb’s are crossed. There’s a foot of space between my boot and his knee. The coffee in the tin mug he handed me is terrible and warm, and I drink every drop.
I’m exhausted. My eyes burn. My back is stiff from five hours on a metal floor.
I look at him across the dog and the gray light. He looks like hell. Dark circles, stubble, his T-shirt wrinkled. His hand is still on Bear.
“Thank you,” he says. “For coming.”
“It’s my job.”
“You came in seven minutes.”
“I drive fast.”
His expression shifts. Not a smile. Not anything with a name. Just a fracture in the stone, there and gone.
“He’s going to be fine,” I say. “I’ll come back this evening to check on him. He needs to stay quiet today. No running, no playing. Small amounts of water, no food until I say.”
“Okay.”
I start packing my kit. My hands are shaking now, just slightly, the adrenaline draining out. That’s the deal. You fall apart after.
“Regan.”
I stop. Look at him.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Whatever he was going to say retreats behind the wall, the way everything does with him.
“Drive safe,” he says.
A nod. Then out of the Airstream into the cool September morning. The air hits my face and revives me enough to make it home without falling asleep at the wheel. The clearing is soft in the half-light. His clothes on the line. The workshop. The dirt.
A man living with nothing because he thinks he deserves nothing.
The truck door opens. Closes. I sit there for a minute before I turn the key.
Whatever you think I did, I didn’t do it.
And whatever we’ve been pretending this is, it isn’t that anymore.
The engine turns over. The dirt road stretches out. Behind me, the Airstream gets smaller in the mirror. I don’t look back. But I want to.