Part 2
Grace did not realize she had said the ranch name out loud until Dr. Keller’s expression changed.
“You know them?” he asked.
She set the pen down because her fingers had begun to tighten around it. “Juniper came from Pine Hollow.”
The young tech looked between them, confused, but Dr. Keller understood immediately. He leaned one hand against the counter, and for the first time that morning, his caution looked less like professional distance and more like regret.
“I didn’t make the connection,” he said. “The owner who brought him in was a man named Wade Haskell. He signed the surrender and left before I called you.”
Grace looked back at Pip. Under the heat lamp, his tiny chest rose and fell too quickly. Pine Hollow could wait. Wade Haskell could wait. The past could not be allowed to take up space that belonged to a living animal.
“He’s not Juniper,” she said, though she could not tell whether she was speaking to Dr. Keller or herself.
“No,” Keller said gently. “He isn’t.”
“Then give me the papers.”
The signature took only seconds. The decision took everything that had happened before it.
Dr. Keller moved quickly once he understood that she was not leaving without Pip. He prepared formula, marked feeding amounts on a strip of tape, packed syringes and the smallest nipples they had, and showed Grace how to check temperature without trusting the warmth of the blanket. The tech brought a plastic pet carrier meant for a medium-sized dog, then folded two towels inside because even that was too large.
Pip made one weak sound when Grace lifted him. It was not quite a whinny. It was hardly more than a breath with a question at the end. She tucked him against her chest for one second before placing him in the carrier.
“I should keep him here,” Dr. Keller said.
“You don’t have overnight staff for this kind of care.”
“I can call someone.”
“And by the time you do, he’ll still be alone between checks.” Grace fastened the carrier door. “At my place, he won’t be alone.”
Dr. Keller did not argue with that. He walked her through the discharge instructions again, slower this time. Feed small amounts. Keep him warm but do not overheat him. Watch for coughing. Watch for milk from the nose. Watch for swelling, distress, silence that felt wrong. Silence, Grace knew, was often more frightening than noise.
At the side door, the sky had begun to pale over the clinic roof. Morning was arriving without permission.
Dr. Keller carried the small cooler of formula to her truck. “Call me from the road if anything changes.”
“I will.”
“I mean anything.”
She looked at him over the top of the carrier. “Aaron.”
He stopped. She rarely used his first name.
“If this goes badly, don’t let me pretend it isn’t,” she said.
His face softened then, not much, but enough. “I won’t.”
Grace placed the carrier on the passenger seat and secured it with a seat belt and two bungee cords she kept behind the seat. She tucked a heat pack under the towel, checked that it was wrapped well, and put her hand through the carrier door until Pip’s muzzle found her knuckles.
For the first ten miles, he breathed.
That became the whole world. Not the sunrise over the freeway, not the trucks around her, not the phone buzzing twice with missed calls from Emily, who had inherited her mother’s instinct for disaster. Just breath after breath, visible in the small rise of the towel.
At a gas station outside Vista, Grace pulled into a far corner of the lot for the first scheduled feeding. She warmed the bottle in a cup of hot water from the convenience store and sat sideways in the driver’s seat with the carrier door open. Pip’s eyes fluttered when she touched the nipple to his mouth.
“Come on, little man,” she murmured. “Just a taste.”
For a moment, he latched. His jaw worked clumsily, and Grace felt such fierce relief that she almost laughed. Then milk dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His tongue stopped moving.
“Pip?”
His head sagged against her palm. Grace went very still. The gas station lights hummed overhead. Somewhere behind her, a car door slammed, and a man laughed near the pumps, ordinary life continuing ten feet away from the smallest crisis she had ever held.
She touched his chest.
His breathing was still there, but shallow enough to scare her. Grace grabbed her phone with her free hand and called Dr. Keller before she had time to be brave…
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