18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
REGAN
The drive back from the clearing takes eleven minutes. Eleven minutes of dirt road and hickory trees and my hands steady on the wheel, ten and two, like a student driver, because if I loosen my grip I’ll feel them shake and I’m not doing that right now.
I pull into the clinic lot, cut the engine, and take a minute.
Okay.
The vial of Bear’s blood is in my kit on the passenger seat.
Labeled, dated, capped. Professional. Routine.
A normal vet visit that was nothing like a normal vet visit because I walked into that workshop and found Caleb Callahan on the floor of it, soaked in sweat, hands flat on concrete, gone somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Was it the right thing to do to talk about the dog’s gums?
Thinking about it now, it almost makes me want to laugh.
Almost. But what I found in that workshop wasn’t funny.
I’ve seen this before, in animals, in the working dogs at the rehab center I rotated through in vet school.
The body locks up. The eyes go somewhere else.
You don’t crowd. You don’t touch. You wait.
I know how to wait, thankfully, because that’s what Caleb needed.
What I don’t know is what to do with the way he looked at me after. Like he’d handed me a loaded weapon and was waiting to see which direction I’d point it. Like every person he’s ever let see him that low has used it against him, and he was ready for me to do the same.
I didn’t.
And the relief on his face when he figured that out is going to keep me up tonight.
The kit goes inside with me. The clinic smells of antiseptic and kibble.
Bear’s sample gets logged, the visit notes written up.
Then I eat a granola bar standing at the counter because I skipped breakfast. Normal tasks.
Ordinary motions. My hands go under the tap twice because the first time I’m just standing at the sink staring at the faucet.
Get it together.
It’s after midnight when I call Tyler. I’ve been lying in bed for an hour, ceiling fan clicking on every third rotation, running the same loop: his face, the concrete, the water bottle, his face again. I need to say it, or it’s going to eat me.
Tyler picks up on the second ring. He always does.
“Reg.” Alert, not sleepy. Game tape, probably. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Sorry to call so late, I just…” I press the heel of my hand against my eyes. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.” He says it slowly, and I know he’s already doing math on how bad it is.
“Caleb’s here. In Wild Briar Creek. He lives here on a ranch.”
There’s a long silence, and I can picture the faces he’s pulling. I hear him shift, the creak of whatever couch he’s sitting on.
“Caleb Callahan?” he says eventually.
“Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“Since before I got here. He was here when I arrived. He’s been here the whole time.”
“And you’re telling me now.”
“I know.”
“Regan. That’s weeks.”
“I know, Ty.”
“You told me everything was fine.”
“Everything is fine.”
“You called me at midnight to talk about the guy who disappeared on you. None of that is fine.” He pauses. The thumb-tap thing he does against whatever surface is closest, working through it. “Does he talk to you?”
“Sometimes. It’s… it’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
I close my eyes. I’m not telling him about today. Not the floor, not the shaking, not any of it. That isn’t mine to tell. “We have history, and we’re in the same small town, and we keep ending up in each other’s space. That’s all.”
“That’s not all. I can hear it.”
Damn twin thing. “Tyler.”
“I remember him, Reg. I remember the morning after prom. I remember you knocked on the door and nobody answered, the look on your face when you got home, I still see it. I also remember the next three months.” His voice drops, and I hear the worry filling it.
“You cried every day. You wouldn’t eat. You stopped answering your phone.
And when you finally put yourself back together, you built a wall so high that nobody’s gotten over it in ten years. That was him. He did that.”
My throat tightens. “He was eighteen.”
“So were you.”
“People change.”
“Has he?”
I think about Caleb saying no when I asked if he wanted me to go. Caleb’s dog walking me to my truck. “Yeah,” I say. “He has. Just not in the ways I expected.”
Tyler goes quiet, and I know he’s processing. He’s always been the one who thinks before he talks, which is funny because on the field he was all instinct. “Are you falling for him?”
Yes. “I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“Ty.”
“Be careful. Please. I’m not there. I can’t be there, so I need you to be careful.”
“I’m being careful.”
“You’re not. You’re being brave, and those are two different things, and you’ve always been bad at knowing which one you’re doing.”
I don’t have a comeback for it because he’s right.
“Call me,” he says. “Not in two months. Call me when things happen. I don’t care what time.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He tells me to eat something, drink some water, and get some sleep. I tell him I will. We both know the score on that one. After he hangs up, the apartment is quiet. The fan clicks. The street is dark. I put my phone on the nightstand and lie in the silence and don’t sleep.
You’re being brave, and those are two different things.
He’s not wrong.
*
The call comes in at seven-fifteen, before my first coffee’s done.
Gary Phelps. A mare with a front leg swelling fast. He’s already tried wrapping it himself, which means he’s already made it worse, because Gary has been a cattle farmer for forty years and still handles horses like they’re large, stubborn cows.
I grab my bag, my boots, and head to the truck.
Gary’s place is at the back end of the valley, past the Callahan land, up a rutted dirt road that tries to shake the fillings out of my teeth.
The mare is in the paddock, favoring her off fore, and from twenty feet away this isn’t a wrap-and-wait.
The swelling runs from fetlock to cannon bone.
Hot. Tight. She shifts her weight every few seconds, trying to get relief.
“Morning, Doc.” Gary meets me at the fence. Sixties, sun-leather skin, a hat older than I am. “She was fine yesterday.”
“They always are.” The bag goes on the fence rail, and I duck through. “Hey, girl. Let me see.”
She lets me approach. Tense, but not panicked. My hand runs down the leg. I press along the flexor tendons. She flinches. There.
“When did she last work?” I ask.
“Brought the yearlings down two days ago. Hard ground up top.”
“Stony?”
“Some.”
Another careful press. She stamps, but holds. The differentials line up. Onset, location, palpation response. Deep digital flexor strain with secondary inflammation. I’d bet my license.
“I want to ultrasound this,” I tell him. “Portable unit’s in the truck. We’ll wrap her properly today, cold hose twice a day. I’ll leave anti-inflammatories. But if I’m seeing a tear, she’s on stall rest. Weeks. Maybe months.”
Gary looks at the mare. Looks at me. Weighing the new vet against forty years of his own way.
“Doc Henley used to give her bute and call it a day,” he says.
“Doc Henley retired.” I keep my voice even. Warm, not defensive. “I can do it his way if you want. But if there’s a tear, and she goes back on hard ground, you’ll lose her.”
He nods slowly.
The ultrasound tells the story. Partial tear, two centimeters, right in the midsection of the deep digital flexor. Not the end of the world. But another week on hard ground would’ve been.
“See that?” I turn the screen. “That dark area. That’s the damage. She’ll heal, but she needs time.”
Gary peers at the screen, then at me, then at the mare. “Hell,” he says.
The treatment plan goes on paper on the tailgate. Hosing schedule, dosing, follow-up in two weeks. He folds it into his shirt pocket and tips his hat.
“Appreciate it, Doc.”
The drive back is all open windows and warm air. The hills are that deep Tennessee green, and my hands are steady on the wheel. No shaking. No counting.
This is what I came here for. Gary Phelps and his stubborn mare and the slow earning of a farmer’s trust. The clinic with my name on the door. The town that’s becoming home for reasons that have nothing to do with Caleb Callahan and everything to do with the life I’m building in it.
I’m good at this. I’m good here.
And that’s what makes the rest of it terrifying.
Because I’m not falling by accident anymore. Falling by accident is easy. Falling by accident means you didn’t choose it, that it isn’t your fault when it goes wrong, and you can walk away and say you never meant for this to happen.
I can’t say that anymore.
Every morning I wake up in this town and don’t leave, I’m choosing it. Every time I sit on a concrete floor and wait, I’m choosing it. Every time his voice scrapes out of him like rust and I lean toward it instead of away, I’m choosing.
The truck pulls into the clinic lot. I turn off the engine and sit with my hands on the wheel. I promised Tyler I’d be careful. I’m not being careful at all.