“So ready. It’s good to be back.” I bent to give Bella a hug, then stood and kissed Kyle. “You two have a good day, too.”
They went out the back entrance and cut across the parking lot. Kyle had identified the route through woods and meadows from my office to his, and I’d signed off on the four-mile trek for Bella. I suspected part of the reason he wanted to go on foot was so he could leave his big, manly truck in the parking lot to intimidate Scott or anyone else who might have thoughts of causing trouble.
Ten minutes later, I heard Doc arrive. I gave him time to get to his office and settle in, then picked up my notebook and headed down the hall to join him. His door was open, but I knocked. He was grinning as he turned to motion me in.
“There she is.” Doc wasn’t a hugger, but he gave my shoulder a squeeze, a sign of great affection from him. “I’ve missed you, my dear. Don’t get me started on the vets who came in to substitute for you.”
“Doc,” I gave him a stern look, “you were nice to them, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t want to be.” He pulled out a plastic container and opened the lid. “I brought something special for your first day back. Dottie’s homemade brownies. She insisted on making them for you.”
I blinked back tears and covered my reaction with a smile. “Thank you,” I said, taking a brownie that Doc had made following her recipe. Doc’s wife Dottie hadn’t been able to bake anything in the past three years. That’s when her dementia had made it too dangerous for her to operate the oven or stove.
I sat down across from him at the small table he kept in his office. In the more than ten years I’d been associated with the clinic, since I’d started here as an intern like Ally was now, I’d never seen him invite anyone else to sit with him at that table. Maybe I was like the daughter he’d never had. There were definitely days I thought of him as the dad I wished I’d had, the one I’d had for nine years but then lost to my mother’s illness.
Doc and I ate our brownies and talked for fifteen minutes, the first five about the business, and the last ten about anything and everything. I didn’t share much aboutKyle or my time off, although Doc did put it together that the abused rescue dog was part of the emergency.
“You did the right thing, Cami,” he said as I stood to leave. “That poor girl needed someone to save her.”
“Thanks, Doc, but I didn’t do anything special. You would have done the same thing.”
He grabbed my hand then and squeezed it. He looked so lost for a minute, I began to worry about him. I couldn’t blame him for his moments of melancholy when every day, he watched the love of his life slip further and further away from him. But then he smiled and wished me a good day, and it was as if the dark cloud had never been there. He was whistling and puttering around his office when I left, same old Doc I’d known and loved for years.
After catching up with him, I settled in again at my desk, booted up my computer, and looked over my appointment schedule for the day. Soon more colleagues arrived. I knew they would stop by to greet me.
Mike was the first to come to my door. “Dr. V., great to have you back! Wow, you look...you look nice.”
“Thanks Mike. Are you working today?”
“No, just dropping Ally off and wanted to say hi.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me. When are you on the schedule this week?”
“That’s right, you don’t know because you didn’t make it,” he said. “That’s the first time in two years someone else did it, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“I’ll be in on Wednesday.” He lifted his hand in a wave. “See you then.”
I waved as he left.
The next voice I heard was Gina’s. “Cameeeeee!” She trotted into my office with two cups of coffee from theThirsty Horse. “Welcome back! I brought you your favorite gross mocha thingy.”
“You’re too good to me.”
She pulled me into a tight hug as if we’d been separated for months, and I hugged her right back. We were used to seeing each other nearly every day, so even though we’d had daily phone calls, we’d missed each other.
“Oh, mydog!” she said, using one of her favorite phrases. She handed me my coffee and sat down in the chair in front of my desk while I sat behind it. “What the hell is going on with you? You look amazing. You’re glowing. Literally lit up from within.”
I wrinkled my brow. “I didn’t think the Thirsty Horse served alcohol this early in the day.”
“I’m not drunk or joking or exaggerating. You’re—” She sucked in her breath. “Oh, my dog, you’re sleeping with him! That’s why you look like this.”
“I don’t look like anything, and we can discuss this very briefly later, when we’re not at work.”
She sipped her coffee and shook her head. “I don’t understand it. I know it’s been a while, but I never saw you look this great from doing the thing you don’t want to discuss at work.”
I was saved from chastising her by a knock on my open door.
