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"And don't worry. He's not in town. I've got him out in the woods in a little shelter."
Kate shook her head again and went to get Sadie's leash. Five minutes later, we were pulling up to Dr. Richt's clinic on Willow Street in Kate's old Chevy cavalier. We took the golden retriever into the waiting room and rung the bell that sat on the counter.
Dr. Richt's clinic consisted of a small waiting room with two metal folding chairs, a room for procedures, and a tiny office that was more like a large closet. She spent a lot of time out in the fields with the horses and cattle, so she didn't need a lot of space at her clinic.
"Hello Kate," Dr. Richt said as she opened her office door. "Did we have an appointment for today?"
"Um..." Kate looked at me.
I stared back at her, urging her to go on.
"Sadie hasn't been feeling so well, so I thought I'd stop by to see if you had a minute to look her over."
Breathing a sigh of relief, I scanned the lobby for signs of where Dr. Richt kept her medical supplies. There was a small wooden cabinet in the waiting room with two doors. I doubted that she'd keep something like penicillin so open to her clientele, so I kept looking. The door to her office was still slightly ajar behind her. Through the crack, I could see the hint of a metal cabinet with several doors. That had to be where she kept it.
"Well, I can't say no to my favorite client." Dr. Richt leaned down to scratch behind Sadie's ear.
They went to the back room to chart Sadie's weight and temperature. The door to the lobby was still open enough that I could hear Kate chattering away about various topics. Kate tended to become a chatterbox when nervous. It was another reason she had such a hard time lying.
“Sadie’s been limping on her leg lately,” Kate started. “I’m worried it’s hurting her.”
Dr. Richt sighed. “You know as well as I do that Sadie’s getting up there in age… But let’s do a checkup to see if we can ease her pain.”
Now was my chance. I pushed through to her office and went straight for the metal cabinet. Before I got there, a faded photo on her desk caught my eye. It was of a little boy with light blond hair and big blue eyes. Holding him was a woman that looked a lot like Dr. Richt, only younger. Same blond hair and nose.
I didn’t know much about Dr. Richt’s past. She came to Hanna long before I was born. I assumed the woman in the picture was her sister. If she had a little boy, she wouldn’t have been allowed to bring him to Hanna. It was another town law. Not even baby boys were allowed.
The elders of our community were concerned that the baby boys would grow up to be like the men many of them had run away from. As unfair as it sounded, you either had to give up your baby boy or leave town if you wanted to keep him.
I turned my attention back to the medicine cabinet. Inside were rows and rows of bottles and syringes. Pain killers and flea ointment. Heartworm meds and all other types of vaccines. I ran my hand along the little glass bottles until my eye caught the word I’d been searching for: penicillin.
There were five bottles of penicillin on the shelf. I pocketed one and grabbed one of the syringe packages and a needle. Hopefully this would work. If it didn't, I'd have to make the decision to either let him die or expose myself and take him to a hospital. Would a hospital even know how to treat someone like him?
I made it back into the lobby just seconds before Dr. Richt came through the door with Sadie and Kate in tow. She glanced at me, but I was studying the dog food samples she’d stacked on a small shelf near the office door. Play it cool, I told myself. Maybe she won't suspect.
"Sadie seems to be doing very well for her age," Dr. Richt said. "I'll get her some painkillers though. Those should help with the limp."
My breath caught in my lungs as Dr. Richt went to her office and opened the metal cabinet. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, shrugging at Kate's questioning look. Dr. Richt examined the contents of the cabinet. She reached in and then stopped, pulling her hand back suddenly.
Great. I'd been caught. I'd have to explain everything to Granny and there would go my college dreams.
"Maybe I'll give you some samples of a new painkiller, too," Dr. Richt called, pulling two bottles out of the cabinet and closing it.
The breath that I'd been holding began to burn, so I let it out slowly. She hadn't noticed. Now all I had to do was get back to Gabe and give him the shot. Hopefully, he wasn't already dead.
Chapter Eight
Kate trudged behind me in her dinky Puma running shoes, picking over branches and rocks like they were hot lava on the forest floor.
"I'm still not sure why you need me to come along," she complained. "What if he's loose and he hurts one of us?"
"I told you before, he's not getting out of those knots. Granny taught me how to tie those better than a navy man. He's too weak, anyway."
Kate had reluctantly agreed to accompany me to the shack with the medicines we'd stashed in our pockets. I would've liked to keep her out of it, but I might need help getting the needle into him without getting pummeled. Two facial bruises in one week would be cause for rumors.
"What does a demon look like anyway?" Kate asked. "Do they really look like us?"
I stopped walking and shrugged. "He looks like any guy off the street. Except more muscular and fit. The other demon clan have black eyes. They're easier to spot."
