by Parker, Ali
“You can actually say the words, ‘I’m proud of you,’ you know?” I said playfully.
He cocked his head at me. “Okay, I’m going to start expressing my emotions right about the time that you start taking more time off work. Deal?”
“Deal.”
We chatted a little about the weather and gossiped about the couple we normally saw in here every day who hadn’t turned up for a few days in a row now. Had they split? Run off with other people?
I had little to no dating life to speak of for myself, so the most excitement that I got was talking over what could have been happening with complete strangers. Sad? For sure. But it was also fun and just the distraction I needed before I jumped headfirst into the long day of work that was ahead of me.
We bid each other farewell with a hug at the door and then took off to our respective offices. I didn’t have far to walk to mine, but Reed liked to jog to his just to squeeze in his workout. I didn’t know where he got the motivation to focus on keeping in shape. The best I could manage was running around the veterinary clinic all morning and hoping that it was enough to earn the bag of chips I practically inhaled with my afternoon coffee to keep me going.
I got to the clinic just before it opened. Thank goodness Hannah was there to open up for me. She was our tech and our receptionist all in one, or at least, she had to step up to that plate after Rita, my business partner, had gone on maternity leave. Things had been nonstop hectic since she had so selfishly headed off to have her baby, but if I was being honest, that was just the way I liked it.
“Morning,” I called as I dumped my bag in the makeshift staffroom we had converted out of a small closet next to the door.
“Morning!” she called back, ever cheerful, even in the face of the packed schedule we had today. It was unusually busy for a Monday, and I could be guaranteed that I would get a few last-minute emergency calls as well, whether we liked it or not.
“Good weekend?” I asked her as I went to clean myself up and get the back room ready for our first visitor.
“What’s a weekend again?” Hannah asked, pulling a face. “I think I’ve forgotten about them since Rita left.”
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed. I had been ordering in new supplies all weekend long over microwave meals, hoping we weren’t going to run out of shit before the end of the month when all our payments rolled over. I knew I should have been taking more time to myself, but that just wasn’t how it worked in this job. And I was just fine with that.
I wouldn’t have gotten into this line of work if I had wanted to have time to myself. When Rita and I had invested in this clinic, getting it cleaned up and turned into the practice that it was today, I had managed to convince myself that this would be a chance for me to set my own hours and take a little more time away from work. But in truth, with so much more on the line, it just made it harder for me to take a break and relax.
I was constantly running around, trying to make sure that everything was running smoothly and that we were going to make enough cash to get through the next few weeks, and that all our clients were receiving the best care that they possibly could as long as they were with us. It was hard, yes, but it was what I had always wanted. It was work on my own terms, and that work came along with a huge stack of responsibility, too.
I spent most of my day covered in cat scratches and dog hair, not to mention the occasional angry peck-mark left by a bird who wasn’t too happy about having to be brought in here in the first place. And I could say with certainty that I didn’t give a damn about any of that. I loved my job. I had loved my job before I’d ever started it, when I had taken my introductory course at college and met other people who were just as passionate as me. I adored animals—always had and always would—and the thought of getting to spend my time around them all day was the best thing I could think of in the world.
It had been at college that I had met Rita, too. She had the same outlook as me, the same passion, and it made me so happy to know that there were other people out there just like me. We stayed in touch when we had graduated, as we both took on tech jobs under more experienced clinicians, but it didn’t take long until both of us were jonesing for something that was a little more by our rules.
And that was how we came to open a place of our own.
It had been a couple of years now, and it had been hard when we had first been getting off the ground. Rita had been forced to cut her honeymoon short to make it back in time to take care of our first flurry of clients. We had built up a steady stream of people who trusted us and came back to us, no matter what, and they would never know just how fucking grateful we were for their returning here. In Portland, word of mouth was so important in getting anything like this off the ground, and we relied on it in the early days.
Those were far behind us now.
I cleaned up and got myself ready for the first arrival of the day, a bird who had managed to get caught in an electric fan and break its wing in the process. It was a delicate procedure to get it all fixed up and casted, but I managed it.
After that, we had a dopey dog who had eaten a shoe and managed to upset his stomach in the process. He needed some meds to make sure that he got it all out of him in one go without too much suffering. I scratched his head as he hopped off the table, and I couldn’t help but smile when I saw his owner scooping him up into her arms on the way out. The people who came here did it because they loved their animals just as much as we cared for them.
Next came a cat with a hurt leg, then thirty minutes for lunch, and then handling all the emergency intakes of the day—the pets who had managed to get themselves into trouble one way or another in the preceding few hours. I didn’t have to take on anything too upsetting, which was a relief.
I knew I was supposed to toughen up to this stuff the more time I spent in the industry, but that had never happened. In some ways, I hoped it never would. I felt like so much of my ability to actually do this job came from wanting to stop animals suffering, and if I stopped caring about that, then what motivation would I have to keep going?
I sent Hannah home as early as I could so she could rest up, and I cleaned up and prepared for the next day as best I could. By the time I stepped onto the train to take me back to my apartment, I was yawning so widely I could barely see.
I made it up the stairs to the little studio I lived in and crashed into bed. I had some frozen meals I could throw on the stove and cook, but I didn’t want to have to move for a little while. Sometimes, I was so tired that I wondered why I did this in the first place, but then I remembered the way the owner had happily scooped up her dog when she had been walking out, and I knew just why.
It was for the animals. And the good they did in the world. That was why I did it.
No matter how grueling it got, I owed it to them to give it my all, and I was going to keep doing that as long as I still could. Things might have gotten tricky, but I was committed.
And more than anything, I was glad that I could come home from work every day, confident that I had done some good in the world.
How many people got to say that?
Chapter 3
Harry
I went to pull the car out of the driveway. For once, it looked like we were actually going to make it to school on time.
“Are you sure you have everything?” I asked Winnie again, certain that I was about to be caught up in my tracks and realize that we had forgotten something fundamental.
“Harry, look out!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. My eyes darted to the side mirror, and I saw something just behind the back wheel of the car—a little bundle of brown fluff, practically quivering in my line of vision.
“What is that?” I muttered as I climbed out of the car to go check it out. I had no idea what had managed to get so close to the car this early in the day. We lived in a gated property, so whatever it was must have slithered in between a gap in the fence.
Winnie was quick to follow me. I considered telling
her to stay where she was, but I knew that wasn’t going to fly. She was too curious, just the way her mother had been.
“Oh my gosh, it’s a dog!” she exclaimed as she got a little closer to it.
I grimaced. She was right, and the poor little thing looked like it had had a hell of a day. It was curled up around itself, shivering slightly, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for it. It looked up at me with big, brown eyes and jerked when I got close to it. I crouched down in front of it and extended my hand.
“Hey, buddy,” I murmured. “I almost ran you over. You can’t be hanging around behind my car, all right?”
I checked it for a collar, but it didn’t have one. Winnie came up and extended her hand toward it, letting it sniff her, and then she gave it a quick pet on the head.
“It’s so pretty.” She said, and I could hear a dangerous amount of want in her voice. I knew I had to get her to school, but I couldn’t just leave this thing here.
“Go inside,” I told her. “Look up vets in the area. We need to get this little guy checked out.”
She did as she was told, and I pulled a blanket from the back seat and put it around the dog. It was midsized with scrubby black fur and a greyish patch that could have passed for a beard. It was limp in my arms, apparently not much caring that I was heaving about this way and that, and I cradled it close to me, feeling protective already. It had come to us for help. The least I could do was make sure that it got it.
Winnie came running back out a few moments later and told me the address of the nearest vet’s office. It wasn’t far, and even though it would get us both running late, it was worth it to make sure that this little guy got the help that he needed.
We arrived at the vet’s a few minutes later, and Winnie followed me worriedly into the building, like she was our security escort. I couldn’t help but find it a little funny. She was taking such good care of this little creature, and she barely even knew who it was. She had that compassion in her, deep down to her core, the kind that could only come from genetics. The kind my sister had given to her.
“Hi, is there any chance we could speak to the vet on duty?” I asked the receptionist, a youngish woman with mousy brown hair, when we arrived at the desk. She glanced up at me, at the dog, and at Winnie, and nodded.
“She’s just had a cancellation, so I think you’re in luck right now,” she told me with a smile.
I sighed my relief. Thank fuck. I was so glad that this thing was going to be off my hands in just a few minutes. A moment or two later, another door opened, and in it stood one of the most stone-cold gorgeous women I had ever seen in my life.
My jaw nearly dropped as soon as I set eyes on her. I had seen plenty of hot chicks before—of course I had—but she was something else entirely. My entire body prickled from top to bottom as I took her in. She was dressed in a pair of lavender scrubs, but they didn’t do much to obscure the gorgeous shape of her curvy figure. Her long blonde hair was pulled up into a bouncy ponytail on top of her head, and a smattering of freckles on her face set off her green eyes.
“Is this the patient?” she asked as she approached us.
I nodded. “My niece here spotted him next to the back wheel of our car this morning,” I explained. “I don’t know who he is or where he came from, but we can’t keep him, and he doesn’t seem like he’s in a good state.”
“We can’t keep him?” Winnie asked, her voice wavering dangerously.
I offered her a quick smile. “We need to let him get all fixed up first, don’t we?”
I didn’t want to get her hopes up, but I knew I couldn’t just shoot them down like that.
The vet offered me a quick smile, obviously used to dealing with stuff like this. “Right, of course,” she said, and she gently eased the dog out of the blanket we had wrapped around him and carried him into the examination room. She laid him down on a small metal table, and the dog perked up a little, glancing around this way and that.
“Ah, he’s already looking a little more awake,” the vet murmured, and she glanced at Winnie and me and gestured for us to come in. “You’re allowed to step over the threshold.”
I glanced at my watch again. I knew that I had to be getting Winnie off to school, but she was already tugging on my hand so that we could get a closer look at the dog.
“I’m very happy to find this little buddy a home for you guys,” the vet explained to me. “I have contacts with shelters across the city. They’d be able to find someone who was happy to take him in for you.”
“But we can take him in,” Winnie protested, and I winced again. I wanted to tell her that we just couldn’t, but I didn’t have the heart to shut her down quite so bluntly. The vet smiled at me sympathetically.
“How about you head out and meet with one of the cats outside?” she suggested to Winnie.
Winnie jumped at the opportunity at once. The vet turned toward me again and smoothed her hand over the dog’s head. It already seemed to have calmed down just being in her presence. I supposed this was the kind of effect that she needed to have on animals, doing the job that she did.
“There are plenty of places that we can take him, and I only work with no-kill shelters,” she explained to me. “He seems in pretty good shape. We’ll keep him here overnight to make sure that there’s nothing latent, and then we can go about trying to find somewhere for him to stay, if you’re sure you don’t want to hang onto him.”
“I’m sure,” I replied, even though I wasn’t. I had never had a dog growing up, and I had always wanted one. This little guy had come scurrying into our lives like he knew we could use a little extra love, and there was a part of me that just wanted to grab him and tell him that he could stay. But there had been enough change recently as it was, and I didn’t want Winnie getting attached to a dog just for us to have to get rid of him because we couldn’t handle him down the line.
“Whatever you think is best,” she said. “You did the right thing, bringing him in. A lot of people would have just ignored him and made it someone else’s problem.”
“Yeah, I don’t think my niece would have let me get away with that,” I replied.
She laughed, tickled by the comment. “I get that,” she said. “Kids can be so much more compassionate than adults sometimes, you know?”
“I guess they can,” I said. “Though her compassion has me running late for work right about now.”
“You’ve done everything you need to do,” she told me. “You’re more than welcome to get out of here.”
“Thanks,” I replied, and she quickly handed me a card before I headed for the door.
“Call me if you find any other stray dogs hanging around under the back wheels of your car,” she suggested. “I could do with more people like you actually giving a shit about animals in this city.”
“Will do,” I promised, and she grinned at me as I headed for the door. I glanced down at the card she had given me. Raina Walters. It was a name that seemed to suit her somehow, something sweet and nature-y.
“Hey, Winnie,” I said as she hung out with some of the cats at the reception desk. “We have to get going now, okay? I have to get you to school.”
“What about the dog?” she asked hopefully.
I shook my head. “He’s better off staying here,” I replied. “These guys know what’s best for him.”
She pouted impressively, and I just shook my head at her, laughed, and took her hand to take her back out to the car. That kind of thing might work on me once in a while, but I was getting hip to the way she tried to twist my arm, and I knew that a dog wasn’t going to work out in the long run.
Still, she managed to keep up the silent treatment as we headed to school, and even as we walked into the office so I could explain to the receptionist why we were running late. She finally broke her silence when I started to talk-
“We rescued a dog!” she explained happily, a big smile on her face.
I ruffled her hair and sent her on her way. She was c
learly pleased that she had a fun story to tell her peers while she was in class today. It would make her the talk of the playground, which was just what she needed to distract herself from all of this.
I headed to work, glad that I wouldn’t have to make the same excuses. Nobody really cared what time I got into the office. Yara would be there to tell me off, of course, but only because I hadn’t been around to bring her the coffee she always had around this time. And when I told her why I had been running so late, I knew that she was going to think it was totally adorable and let it slide.
I grabbed my keys from my pocket and closed my fingers around the card that the vet had given me before I had left her office. I pulled it out and looked down at it, a smile on my face. I knew nothing was going to come of it, but so what? I was allowed to be happy that I’d gotten a beautiful woman’s number. She was sweet and hot, and she had about the best smile I had ever seen in my life.
And after the rush that this morning had already been, I figured I owed myself a little indulgence in the tiniest crush in the world.
Chapter 4
Raina
As soon as he walked out, I picked up the phone and dialed up the kennels to let them know that I would be stopping by later on.
“Just so you know, I have an older dog that I’m going to be bringing in,” I told the answering machine. “This is Raina, by the way. Raina Walters. I’ll see you later today if everything goes well.”
I hung up and went over to tend to the old, tired little dog that that guy had brought in just a few minutes before.
“Hey, boy,” I said softly, petting the rough fur on his head. “Don’t know how you managed to end up here, but you’re in good hands now, okay?”
The dog snuffled, as though acknowledging what I was saying to him and thanking me for my effort.
“You shouldn’t be thanking me,” I told him gently. “You should thank that guy who brought you in here. And if you could get him to call me, too, that would be great.”