Part 2
“Don’t pull,” Dr. Ortiz said. “If the membrane advances with the next contraction, let her work. Nate, can she hear you?”
He touched the shepherd’s shoulder and felt a tremor run through it. Her eyes opened. When the next contraction gathered, he braced the blanket behind her hind feet so she could push against something without sliding across the floor.
The membrane moved. The puppy came in one wet rush and lay still between the mother’s legs.
“Open the sac at the face,” Dr. Ortiz said. “Clear the nose and mouth. Then rub with a dry towel.”
Nate’s hands wanted speed. He made them choose care. He tore the membrane away, wiped the tiny muzzle, and rubbed the puppy along its back and sides while the mother tried to lift her head. For three seconds there was only the stove ticking and Erin breathing through the speaker.
The puppy opened its mouth and gave a sound like a rusty hinge.
Nate looked down. A dark female, hardly larger than both his hands, pulled another breath into herself. He placed her near the mother’s muzzle, and the shepherd began licking with slow, determined strokes.
“That’s one,” Erin whispered.
The second puppy arrived twenty-three minutes later with less trouble. By then the mother’s temperature had climbed, her gums had gained some color, and she had taken a little more water. She cleaned the newborn herself and drew both puppies against her belly with a foreleg.
Nate changed the wet layers beneath them in sections, rolling clean towels into place without lifting her more than necessary. He kept a legal pad by his knee and wrote down birth times, sex, color, movement, and anything Dr. Ortiz asked him to watch. The columns steadied him. The small noises on the blanket did not.
At dispatch, Erin’s supervisor moved her off the primary console and sent a relief dispatcher to cover her position. Erin took the call into a quieter office and closed the door. “The plow reached the fallen oak,” she said. “They need a county saw crew. Lena’s waiting at the roadblock with Gail Hensley from animal control.”
“Tell them not to risk the switchback until it’s clear.”
“They know how roads work.”
Nate heard the edge in her voice and let his answer go. The mother panted and nosed at the darker puppy when it strayed from the warmth. She was still conserving every movement, but none of those movements was for herself.
The third birth took longer. Dr. Ortiz had Nate check the time between hard contractions, and after thirty minutes her questions became shorter. Nate could hear a vehicle idling behind the veterinarian and the slap of sleet against its windshield.
“If she strains hard for another ten minutes with no progress, we change the plan,” Dr. Ortiz said. “The county may have to bring me up on the tracked utility rig.”
“How long would that take?”
“Longer than either of us wants. Watch her, not the clock.”
That was harder than any instruction she had given him. Nate could solve a distance, a load, a route. He could not bargain with an exhausted animal’s body. He sat with one hand open near her muzzle, close enough to be found and far enough not to crowd her.
The shepherd pushed. Her paw landed in his palm and stayed there.
On the next contraction, the third puppy appeared hind feet first. Nate described what he saw. Dr. Ortiz told him to support without pulling and to keep the puppy from slipping back while the mother worked. His shoulders cramped from holding the same position. The shepherd bore down again, teeth showing with the effort, and the puppy slid free.
It was smaller than the first two and made no sound.
Nate cleared the membrane and rubbed. Nothing. He changed towels and rubbed again, keeping the puppy’s head slightly lower as Dr. Ortiz instructed. The little chest remained flat beneath his thumb.
“Come on,” he said, the words escaping before he could measure them.
The mother tried to reach the puppy. Nate brought it closer without stopping, and her tongue passed once across its face. The puppy jerked, coughed a bead of fluid, and drew a ragged breath.
Erin made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. She covered it with a question about the time, and Nate wrote the number down without calling attention to either of them.
The fourth puppy came just before two in the morning. It was a sturdy black-and-tan male that announced itself before Nate had fully freed its face. Afterward, Dr. Ortiz had him feel the mother’s abdomen only as much as she would tolerate and watch for continued straining. Nothing suggested another puppy, but the veterinarian warned that only an examination could tell them more.
“For now, keep all five warm and let them nurse if she allows it,” she said. “The smallest may need help finding a teat. Don’t pour anything into its mouth. I’m coming the minute that road opens.”
Nate settled the third puppy against the mother, where it rooted weakly until it latched. The shepherd lowered her head around the litter. Four small bodies rose and fell against her, not in unison, but enough.
He sat back against the base of his father’s chair. The room had narrowed to a circle of lamplight, bloodstained towels in a bucket, half-filled pages on the floor, and a family that had not existed when the snow began. He was too tired to decide what he felt, so he checked the water bottles again.
“You should put dry socks on,” Erin said.
Nate looked down. Meltwater had soaked the knees of his jeans and run into one boot. “You monitoring my feet now?”
“Somebody has to. You’ve always assumed yours would carry you out.”
He could have answered that she had always assumed he wanted to be carried. Instead, he took the phone into the kitchen, changed his socks, and made coffee he forgot to drink.
The call stayed open. Erin worked with the relief dispatcher while Nate weighed the puppies one at a time in a towel sling on the kitchen scale. The smallest female was well below the others. Dr. Ortiz had him mark one rear toenail with a dab of water-based, nontoxic blue polish from the bathroom cabinet so they could identify her without keeping her away from the mother.
“I thought you threw all that stuff out,” Nate said.
“I threw out expired medicine and six boxes of tax receipts from 1998. Dad’s bathroom was not a historical site.”
“He said the same thing about your bedroom.”
For a moment, Erin laughed the way she had before their conversations became inventories. It surprised them both into silence.
Near four, the shepherd accepted a small portion of warmed food from Nate’s hand. She did not take her eyes off the front door while she ate. Each time wind pressed a branch against the cabin, her ears lifted and her body curved more tightly around the puppies.
Nate checked the lock. The porch beyond the window was empty, the amber bulb staining the snow the color of weak tea. Any tracks that had led to the dog were buried now.
“Erin, who knows this place is here?”
“Half the old volunteer rescue crew. Hunters. People who grew up on the ridge.”
“Anyone from a dog kennel?”
“Granite Run rents land on the south side of Black Pine. Why?”
Nate told her about the cut sling and the dog’s condition. Before Erin could answer, the shepherd lifted her head.
A sound had come from outside—two low notes, whistled close to the porch.
The mother tried to stand. Her hind legs failed, but she dragged herself far enough to place her body between the puppies and the door. Nate rose and moved in front of them as three careful knocks sounded against the blue wood.
“Mr. Mercer?” a young man called through the storm. His voice shook. “I left the dog here. Please—don’t let Roy Keene take her back…”
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