Four

by Tia Fielding

  The first patient of the day was a lovely guinea pig called Bella, who had an eye infection. Luckily she was a calm patient, and her owner, a teenage boy, seemed to adore her. They left with instructions on how to proceed and what to watch out for.

  The phone rang in the front, and soon Athena appeared in the doorway of Padraig’s office. “Doc, that was Mr. Lee. He says it’s time.”

  Sighing, Padraig got up from his seat, squared his shoulders, and walked into the treatment room to grab his bag from its spot on the countertop. “Call me if something here needs my attention. This might take a moment.”

  Athena nodded solemnly and went back to her desk in the front of the clinic.

  Padraig pulled his coat on and went out to his car. He glanced at the morning sky and decided the clouds slowly gathering overhead would be just fine for his next stop.

  Mr. Lee was a pensioner living alone in a cabin south of town. His wife had died a decade earlier, and his children had tried to figure out how to help with his loneliness. Eight years ago, his youngest daughter had surprised him with a bunny.

  It wasn’t just any rabbit, though. It was a twenty-pound, sandy-colored Flemish Giant. In the last eight years, Padraig had seen Sir Rodger the bunny exactly three times: once for neutering, once for a cold, and once two weeks ago, when Mr. Lee had called him for a home visit.

  Sir Rodger had exceeded his life expectancy about two years ago. He was officially the oldest rabbit that size Padraig had ever seen. The bigger they were—and Sir Rodger was huge—the shorter their life spans tended to be.

  Two weeks ago, Sir Rodger had shown the effects of his old age, but he’d seemed okay enough. Sure, Mr. Lee said he’d been napping most of the time and didn’t care to groom himself anymore. He was also moving slower than before, and Padraig had concluded he had arthritis, much like his owner.

  Mr. Lee loved Sir Rodger and had told Padraig he’d call when he felt it was time to let go. Padraig hadn’t doubted the old man for a minute. Mr. Lee was the kind of pet owner who loved their pet unconditionally and only wanted the best for them, and if that was to make the toughest decision, then so be it. Padraig had immense respect for people like Mr. Lee.

  He parked his Land Rover at the cabin, right next to Mr. Lee’s old station wagon, which he hadn’t been allowed to drive in the last couple of years.

  Before he made it to the door, Mr. Lee, a small, elderly man with white hair, opened it and gave him a wobbly smile.

  “Dr. Donovan, please come in.”

  “I’d say good morning, but I doubt it’s been that good, Mr. Lee.”

  “No, no it hasn’t.” Mr. Lee walked slowly to the living room, where Sir Rodger was sprawled on the couch like he had been the last time. “He can’t get to the couch even with the ramp now.”

  Padraig hummed. The ramp had been there for the bunny to use to get to the couch without Mr. Lee having to lift him. There was another one in the bedroom too.

  “Okay, let’s check you out, Sir Rodger,” Padraig said, and knelt by the couch. He let the bunny sniff his hand and got his stethoscope out.

  Mr. Lee was right; it was time. The bunny seemed lethargic instead of just tired, and his heartbeat didn’t sound good either.

  “Okay, I agree with you. I suggest euthanasia. He’s not suffering, but I can’t guarantee that he’ll pass away peacefully if we try to let him go naturally.”

  Mr. Lee nodded solemnly. “I’ve said my goodbyes. I’d rather you help him over.”

  “Okay, that’s fine with me. Do you want to come sit with him while I do this?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Mr. Lee moved over to the couch and carefully sat next to his friend. He petted the rabbit while Padraig swiftly gave Sir Rodger a sedative shot to his thigh.

  “It should take about ten minutes for it to work. Then I’ll give him the other shot,” Padraig explained gently.

  Mr. Lee nodded and sighed deeply. “Where do you reckon you stick him with it?”

  “I have three options, really. Either use the ear vein here,” he said, pointing to it on Sir Rodger’s massive ears, “or I’ll use one in the leg.”

  “What’s the third option?”

  “That’s the gruesome one,” Padraig answered honestly. “It’s called an intracardiac stick. It means going through here and sticking it directly into his heart.” He carefully patted the bunny on the spot.

  Mr. Lee seemed to consider it for a while. “Which would you prefer? For him, I mean. If I wasn’t here?”

  “It takes time to inject the solution, so I’d probably go with the heart. More direct approach.”

  “All right. Then we go with that one. This isn’t about me—it’s about Sir Rodger, after all,” Mr. Lee said solemnly, and Padraig reached to touch the man on the arm for comfort.

  The rest of it went smoothly. The rabbit didn’t twitch like some animals would, and Padraig sent a thank-you to the universe for that, like he did each time when everything went fine. Mr. Lee looked away during the jab, concentrating on petting his beloved rabbit instead.

  Padraig took his trash into the kitchen so Mr. Lee didn’t have to. Then he helped him put the bunny into a cardboard box and carried it to the cool pantry in the kitchen to wait for when Mr. Lee’s son would come the next day to help his dad bury the animal. Padraig had offered to do it, but Mr. Lee said his children had grown to love the rabbit they’d bought him as a bit of a joke. They needed to say goodbye too.

  “Thank you for coming to do this here,” he said once Padraig took his bag and prepared to leave.

  “Of course. I’m glad I could help.” He gave the old man the hug he seemed to need, professionalism be damned.

  Padraig left Mr. Lee’s house with a heavy heart.

  Since it was lunchtime, he drove to the diner and went in, greeting the people he knew. By now, everyone in town knew him well enough to recognize when he’d had a loss just by looking at his expression. They’d always been sensitive to that, but especially so after Marcus’s death. As if the suddenly widowed gay man would somehow snap and burst into hysterics right there and then.

  Padraig had never been flamboyant, and neither had Marcus. They’d been mindful of doing what Padraig’s dad would call “flaunting it” in front of anyone after moving to Acker. Not that they’d been like that before either. They’d grown up in an era when their teens were spent by being horrified by the AIDS epidemic and what that might mean to them personally.

  That had been something they had bonded over in college. Both of them had been virgins when they’d met, because they’d been too scared of HIV even to have protected sex. They were small-town boys in the big world, and at the time when they were supposed to be experimenting sexually, they feared the unknown and the prejudice, and ended up wrapped in each other instead.

  “Here you go, Doc. Rough morning?” Leah asked as she put down his usual before topping off his coffee.

  “Yeah. Mr. Lee’s bunny,” he replied simply. Sir Rodger had been a bit of a local celebrity.

  “Oh no,” Leah said empathically. “I’ll make Stuart bake him a pie and take it over. Poor man.”

  “Yeah….”

  Leah patted his shoulder and went to serve the next customer.

  Padraig started on his lunch and sighed when he hit the usual I’m-too-sad-to-eat phase of the process. He soldiered on mechanically, eating even though he didn’t feel like it at all.

  The weather had somehow turned better in the last hour, so he looked out of the window at the small town. A car he didn’t recognize drove to the parking lot across the road, and Makai unfolded himself from the passenger’s seat. A lanky figure with dark jeans and a maroon hoodie got out of the driver’s side: Kaos—the blond hair couldn’t have been anyone else’s. The men laughed as they headed to Millers’ grocery store, and vanished through the door.

  He wondered if Kaos was going to stay in town, and if he would, what he’d do for a living. Makai had been doing more and more carpentry—repairs and furniture, and s
ome truly amazing commissioned pieces too. Mrs. Miller’s little end table with an underwater theme was incredible. She’d gotten it from her husband for her birthday and would drag anyone willing to see it into their apartment in the back of the building that housed their store.

  Makai was fitting in fine, despite the townspeople’s initial hesitance. He’d not only brought Emil Newman out of his shell again and saved little Joie from their accident, but he’d also saved Lizzie Matthews from her abusive husband. Makai was a town hero now, whether he liked it or not.

  Padraig finished his lunch and idly watched the ongoing day outside the diner. He loved this place, lonely as it could be. Sure, his sister, Mary—or Mairead as she was really called, blessed be those with Irish names—and her family lived in the area, and their dad lived with Mary too. It wasn’t that he didn’t have anyone, he just…. Padraig sighed and rubbed his face with one hand. He felt tired. Much older than his years. He should’ve been trying to do something about that, but nothing really stuck or felt… comfortable. Then again, he supposed change rarely did.

  Maybe if he opened up a little? If there was a chance to change something, maybe he should… try? Marcus would agree with that emphatically. His husband had been the happy-go-lucky one of them, the optimist, the one with a smile on his lips even when things went wrong.

  Padraig glanced at the clock and sighed. He should go back to work.

  Just as he was about to get up to pay for his meal, a beam of sunlight hit the clinic across the road, especially the empty left-hand side.

  Padraig snorted. Yeah, thanks, Marcus. I can take a hint.

  He needed to figure out how to utilize the empty clinic. There weren’t many people in town who had need for new business spaces, so he hadn’t advertised it. He’d figured if anyone needed it, they’d come ask. Part of it, and he could admit that, was the fact that seeing someone else in Marcus’s space would be weird. Even when he let himself think about the past objectively, his feelings were still conflicted about the last year or so they’d had together. He had asked Makai if he needed a space for his little business, but he assumed Makai had sensed Padraig’s unwillingness to let go of the clinic yet at that point. That had been a while ago, and the idea had had time to brew in his brain. Maybe he should ask again?

  Padraig left the diner and went to sit in his car, since he’d have to drive it across the road anyway. He called Mary first. It didn’t matter that he didn’t see eye to eye with his sister on multiple things—she was still the first person he called when he needed to talk.

  “Hey, Doc. Everything okay?” she asked, and again, Padraig always marveled at the fact that even she called him Doc. The only people who called him anything else was their dad, who called him Padraig, and her kids, who called him Uncle Doc, because it had been funny to them when they were little. Marcus had called him Paddy.

  “I miss Marcus,” he blurted out, shimmy-fidgeting in his seat and feeling choked up.

  “Oh, Doc,” she breathed, and he could hear her go sit down in her favorite leather armchair. It creaked when she made herself comfortable. “What brought this on?”

  “All the happy young people in town, I guess.”

  “You mean that new fella and the sheriff’s son, don’t you?” Her tone was hard to read, but since she had never been 100 percent comfortable with his sexuality, he could guess why. Somehow it was different for her to read gay romance novels than actually see gays in real life.

  “I suppose so,” he admitted. Then he sighed and leaned back in his seat, looking up at the upholstery of his car without really seeing anything. “I feel so old. Lonely too.” He hadn’t admitted it to her before, even though she knew.

  “You know, I think you crave change, but you don’t know what to do to get it,” Mary said thoughtfully. “Missing Marcus is one thing, and a part of you always will. If you want to feel better about yourself, you have to start with figuring out what you can change about your life.”

  Padraig hummed. He had thought so himself. He couldn’t invent a whole new personality for himself, after all, so changing his life would probably be the first step into something new.

  “Okay. I’ll give it a think. Thanks, sis.” Then, because they were her kids now that her human kids were getting older, he asked, “How are the cats?” He settled in for a few minutes of cat talk with a smile. His lunch would be a bit longer today, but maybe letting go of the reins a little where he could would be the first step he took.

  Chapter Three

  KAOS SAT at the little table in Makai and Emil’s living area. He had his sketch pad between his elbows, but he was staring out of the window. It didn’t matter that it only showed the forest, because he’d zoned out minutes ago.

  “Hey, Kaos?” Emil asked, and something about his tone suggested he might’ve asked a couple of times already. Oops.

  “Sorry, yeah?” He turned to look at Emil, who peered at him from the mostly open kitchen.

  “Coffee?” Emil lifted the pot. “Makai should come in soon, and he didn’t get much sleep last night, so….” He shrugged awkwardly and blushed a bit. Emil could be so shy. Kaos wanted to aww at him.

  “Yeah, I’ll have a mug, thanks.” He smiled at Emil, then grabbed a pen to continue with the idea he’d sat down to work on in the first fucking place.

  Emil put the coffee machine on and went to sit on the couch with the cats. He was fiddling with a camera when Kaos glanced at him.

  “You do photography?” Kaos asked, twisting his torso first to the left and then to right, just to crack his spine. He shouldn’t hunch over like that unless he was actually working, but he didn’t have a saddle chair here and the table wasn’t a good height anyway.

  Emil let out a small laugh. “I take pictures, yes.”

  “My friend Lake does too. She has a camera that looks a lot like yours.”

  “I got this from Makai and my parents for my birthday. It’s really nice. I just feel like I can’t use it yet, even though I try to as much as I can.” Emil frowned a bit.

  “I’ve seen some of your photos,” Kaos confessed. “Makai sent me some of them last week. They’re pretty great. I like your animal portraits a lot.”

  Emil blushed thoroughly. “Thanks….”

  The cats perked up, and soon the door opened and Makai stepped in. He looked around and smiled at them while kicking off his shoes by the little closet next to the door.

  “Hey, there’s coffee soon,” Emil said, then leaned back on the couch so Makai could kiss him in passing.

  They did the upside-down Spider-Man kiss thing, and Kaos felt oddly conflicted about seeing it. He didn’t necessarily want a relationship like theirs for himself, but it made him somewhat wistful anyway.

  “Let me go wash my hands,” Makai said after they separated, and he went to the bathroom to do so.

  “What are you drawing?” Emil asked, reaching out a hand to block Mouse, who tried to sniff his camera.

  “Just an idea for a tattoo I had. A regular client I have wants to start a back piece, and she told me she’ll come here if need be to get it.” Kaos huffed in half amusement, half self-deprecation.

  “Oh? I think Makai said you worked at a tattoo studio, but nothing else, really. Are you looking to start your own or something like that?”

  Kaos sighed. “I guess it would be good to have a shop here. I’m not a huge name, but I have my regulars, and word travels fast, you know. Or maybe I should find a studio somewhere and rent a station. It’s hard to tell how much business I’d have here, and starting a shop is crazy expensive. It’s illegal to tattoo anyone outside a licensed shop, so….” It didn’t leave him many options.

  “I know the licensing can be a pain in the ass.” Makai frowned.

  “Yeah, especially here in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there shouldn’t be that many people trying to get licensed, but there aren’t enough officials either, so it might take a while to get it done,” Emil said, nodding.

  “Your dad might know p
eople, though? If Kaos needs something done faster?” Makai asked.

  “Oh right, the sheriff,” Kaos remembered. “I still need to catch him in town sometime soon.”

  Emil glanced at his phone. “He should be at work for a few hours still. If you want to go while I get some groceries in a bit?”

  Kaos hadn’t thought about actually going to the sheriff’s station yet, but if he went now, he would be done with it. “Yeah, sure.”

  “He’s a good guy. Will probably give you the whole small-town sheriff schtick, but you know, he accepted Makai eventually.” Emil smirked at them both, and Makai groaned. “What?”

  “What am I, some sort of benchmark for former convicts?”

  Kaos laughed out loud and shook his head. “Damn, you’ll be a hard act to follow.”

  They had some coffee, and Kaos snacked on some fruit and chips since Emil offered him some, but he didn’t feel like eating much for whatever reason. Maybe it was the impending meeting with Sheriff Newman.

  ABOUT AN hour later, Emil parked in front of the grocery store. They got out of the truck, and Emil turned around to point to the opposite side of the street. “Okay, so you go across the street and to the left. There’s a sign, but you’ll see the building soon enough.”

  “All right.” Kaos nodded.

  Something about his body language must’ve alerted Emil, who carefully put a hand on his arm. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. I don’t know your story exactly, but I promise you, my dad believes in the law. He is all for second chances if the people have done their time and are going to stay on the straight and narrow. It’s his thing. That’s why he wasn’t sure about Makai at first, because to him, law is black and white. Or was. He knows better now.” Emil frowned, and Kaos could understand why.

  “Okay. Thanks. Will you stick around?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get groceries and then go get a shake if you take a while. Or I’ll chat with Mr. Miller if he’s working.”

  Kaos looked down at himself—Chucks, skinny jeans, and his army jacket layered over a long-sleeved charcoal T-shirt. “How do I look?”