Page 78 of Duty Preserved

“I don’t know what I need.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand, not realizing I had started crying. “I don’t know what this looks like from here. Alyson’s gone. Daniel’s gone. The fellowship was three people, and now it’s⁠—”

I stopped.

The realization didn’t arrive gently. It landed like a stone in my stomach.

“It’s me,” I said. “I’m the only vet.”

Donovan was quiet.

“There is no one else.” I heard myself say it, and the weight of it settled on my chest. “Every animal on this reserve. Every emergency, every treatment, every decision about what lives and what dies. That’s just me now.”

It wasn’t a complaint. I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to complain. It was the aloneness of it. The scope of what had landed in my lap because a dart didn’t hold and a lion tore my friend apart.

“I know,” he said.

“I’ve always had backup. Even when I was the one making the calls, Alyson was there. She was better than me with the big cats. She was better than me with half the predators on this reserve, and I could hand her things I wasn’t sure about and she’d handle them. I can’t hand anything to anyone now.”

He didn’t fill the silence with reassurance or tell me it would be fine. He stood there with his hand on my back and his eyes on mine. And then he asked the only question that mattered.

“What did it do to you? Hearing all of that.”

The honesty came up before I could shape it into something manageable.

“It broke my heart,” I said. “All of it. Every piece. Alyson’s face. Cole apologizing from a hospital bed. Daniel just vanishing. And underneath all of that, the part I’m ashamed of, the part I don’t want to say out loud—I’m terrified. I’m terrified I’m not enough by myself.”

He pulled me in with both arms and held me until the shaking stopped.

I stayed there longer than I needed to. His arms didn’t loosen. Mine eventually did.

The syringe was still on the counter, half drawn. The eland was still in the pen, waiting.

I crossed to the counter and reached for the vial. Donovan’s hand got there first. He picked it up and held it out to me without a word.

I took it. Drew the dosage. Ten milligrams per kilogram. My hands didn’t shake. I capped the syringe and turned toward the recovery pen.

Donovan followed. He leaned against the pen rail while I crouched beside the eland. I found the injection site and pressed the plunger. The animal flinched once, then settled. I withdrew the needle and dropped it in the sharps container on the rail.

I stayed crouching for a moment. The eland turned his head toward me, ears working.

“You’re doing fine,” I told him.

I stood. Donovan was right where he’d been. He hadn’t left me. He hadn’t checked his watch or his radio or offered to go find something useful to do somewhere else. He was just there, leaning on the rail and watching me work.

I picked up the chart and filled in the remaining lines. Temperature. Respiration. Appetite score. Medication administered, time, dosage. My pen moved through the entries the way it had a thousand times before, and beside me, Donovan stayed.

Chapter 21

Sarah

I eased out of bed in the dark. Donovan was on his side facing the wall, one arm tucked under the pillow. I found my clothes by touch and pulled them on without turning on a light. I eased the door shut behind me.

The compound was still. I walked past what had been Alyson’s and Daniel’s cabins and let myself into the vet facility before the first light broke the horizon.

The overhead fluorescents buzzed when I hit them. I pulled the whiteboard toward me, uncapped the marker. Three columns across the top, and my initials were the only ones left. I’d erased the other two the second morning and written mine across all three. Now every row was mine to fill out.

I started with the charts and worked fast. The eland’s recovery notes from yesterday needed closing. Water samples needed logging before the results degraded. Parasite slides Alyson would have prepped the night before. I prepped them myself.

The tray of empty vials was sitting at the end of the counter where I’d been collecting them for recycling. I reached past it for the sample log, caught the edge with my elbow, and the whole thing went over. Glass hit concrete and shattered. A week’s worth of empties in pieces across the floor. I slammed my palm on the counter hard enough to sting.