"Bring him around back."
I took them into the second exam room because the first one still smelled like Bartleby's ear ointment. Cooper was a good lab, the kind whose tail didn't know when to stop. He climbed onto the exam table on his own when I patted the surface. I did his vaccinations. I looked him over. He had a small lipoma on his left flank, which I told them was benign. His hips were a little stiff. I gave the mother the name of a joint supplement at the feed store on the highway and the dose for a lab his weight.
The boy held Cooper's collar the whole time and watched my hands.
"Are you a doctor?"
"For animals."
"For people, too?"
"No, just animals."
"My mom said you helped a kid not be drowning."
"I did."
"That's a doctor."
I rubbed the top of Cooper's head.
"That's a person who happened to be there."
He thought about that for a beat.
"My grandma says everybody's just a person who happens to be there."
"Your grandma sounds smart."
"She is."
The mother smiled at the back of his head.
I walked them to the front. The father paid in cash. The mother paused at the door with her hand on the frame.
"We'll be back in for the spring shots. You'll see us in March."
"I'll be here."
"Astrid."
"Yes."
"Welcome home."
She went out. The husband nodded at me on his way past. The girl gave me a small smile on her way out the door, the smile of a ten-year-old who'd been paying attention to everything and was not going to give any of it away yet.
The boy looked back at me from the sidewalk.
He waved.
I waved.
The bell settled.
I locked the front door at six.
The sunflowers were in the vase on the counter. The bakery bag had two slices of cinnamon bread left in it. Moose was asleep on his bed with his chin on his paws. Steve was on the filing cabinet through the open door to the back, awake and unbothered, ruling.
