Part 3
Vivian tightened both hands around the paper cup.
“He wouldn’t have known where I’d gone.”
“When did you leave?”
“That spring. For my first real job in Pocatello. He disappeared right before the move.” She watched the thin steam rising from the coffee. “I kept coming home and looking. My father said he hadn’t seen him. I never knew whether to believe him.”
Flint raised his head.
“I thought maybe he’d got out. Or my dad had found him and taken him somewhere. There wasn’t a chip. There wasn’t anything.”
Owen put his phone away.
“By the time I got hurt, years had gone by. I still wondered, but then there was the hospital, and rehab, and all the things I couldn’t manage. After a while, wondering was all I could do.”
“He’s been with me three years,” Owen said. “Before that, roughly eight months of initial training. Before that, evaluation.”
She looked down at Flint. “Three deployments?”
“Three.”
“Where?”
“Mosul on the first. Southern Afghanistan on the second. The last location isn’t one I can discuss.”
“How’s he doing?”
Owen took time with the answer.
“He does what he knows. Loud, sudden noises bother him more than they used to. We’re reducing the demands on him. Teaching him that every day doesn’t have to be a workday.”
“For you, too?”
His eyes met hers.
“Apparently.”
The therapy doors opened. Linda came through carrying her coat and keys, saw the two coffees, then the dog between them.
“You’re both early.”
“Occupational problem,” Owen said.
Linda looked at Vivian. “Sleep?”
“Some.”
“Good enough to work?”
Vivian finished her coffee. “Find out.”
Her monthly evaluation with Dr. Eric Bell was scheduled for that afternoon.
She would have preferred another hour with Linda.
Bell was a capable rehabilitation physician. That made his less useful habits harder to challenge. He remembered test scores, caught medication interactions, and could identify a compensating movement from the other side of a room. He also tended to approach Vivian as though her own understanding of her condition were an emotional complication he had to manage.
The elevator took her upstairs without its usual hesitation. She waited outside his office, noting each minute on the wall clock. By the time he opened the door, he was eleven minutes behind.
“Vivian. Let’s see where we are.”
She rolled past a desk too large for the office. A plastic spine stood beside his monitor, tilted on its base. She positioned her chair where she could face him without looking up too far.
Bell read from his tablet.
“Linda reports good participation.”
“She’s also seeing better position awareness on the left. We’re using the standing frame three times a week.”
“Yes. She’s marked you as highly motivated.”
He paused over the words.
“Should she not have?” Vivian asked.
Bell set the tablet down.
“I want to make sure the goals are serving you. With an incomplete injury at this level, recovery varies considerably. Some patients make substantial gains. Others reach a point where further change is limited.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure we’ve discussed what it would mean if independent walking doesn’t become a realistic outcome.”
Vivian looked at the plastic spine. Someone had bent one of the little nerve roots out of position.
“Have my recent tests gone backward?” she asked.
“No.”
“Has Linda reported a plateau?”
“Not in those terms. I’m trying to avoid a situation where your expectations become an additional source of distress.”
“My expectation is that we keep working while the results support the work.” She turned back to him. “Please put that in my record. I know the range of possible outcomes. I want to continue the present plan.”
Bell’s mouth tightened slightly before he reached for the tablet.
“Of course.”
Vivian moved toward the door.
“I also heard about yesterday,” he said.
She stopped.
“The difficulty in the lobby. With the military dog.”
“Which difficulty?”
“We can’t have conflict interfering with treatment.”
“Then I hope somebody spoke to Brent.”
Bell watched her.
“He and two other men stood over me and questioned whether my life had any use. Flint stood between us. No barking, no contact. If that’s what you mean, I’d like to know who’s being asked to change their behavior.”
“We’re keeping an eye on it.”
“Good. Keep an eye on the men.”
She left before he could reopen the conversation.
In the elevator, she rubbed the heel of one hand with the other. Her breathing had gone shallow. She slowed it deliberately until the doors opened.
Downstairs, Owen was working through a cable exercise. Linda stood close enough to watch the angle of his shoulder, correcting him when he tried to borrow motion from his back.
Vivian took her usual place near the window and opened her book.
Flint crossed the room and stood at her side. She laid her hand on his back without looking down.
“Rough appointment?” Owen asked.
“Bell.”
“That answers it.”
“You’ve met?”
“He called Flint a clinical risk on my first day.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’d spent three deployments watching this dog make better decisions than most people. And that none of the people he’d bitten were patients in a waiting room.”
Vivian looked up.
“He didn’t love it,” Owen added.
Linda adjusted the cable. “Again. Without the speech this time.”
Owen moved through the repetition. Near the end, his face pinched, and he stopped short of the angle Linda had asked for.
“That’s your limit today,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then quit trying to negotiate it.”
Vivian watched him reset. He didn’t pretend it hadn’t hurt. He changed his footing, breathed, and began again.
“Was the last deployment the hard one?” she asked.
“Long one. Fourteen months. Two extensions.”
Linda’s hands stilled briefly on the cable attachment.
“Flint found seven explosive placements in the first four months. Cleared more entry points than I could give you a number for.” Owen let the handle return slowly. “He earned his time off.”
“The shoulder scar?”
“Earlier. Outside Lashkar Gah. A man came at me with a knife. Flint got there first.”
Vivian’s hand stopped on the dog’s back.
“He healed,” Owen said. “The muscle’s sound.”
Linda looked at Flint. “Healing doesn’t erase the experience.”
“No,” Owen said. “It doesn’t.”
The dog leaned a little harder against Vivian’s chair.
“After all of that, he still knew me.” She kept her eyes on his coat.
Owen didn’t answer immediately.
“Yes.”
She closed the book around her finger.
“The accident,” he began. “You said you were a passenger. Was—”
He stopped, grimacing for a different reason.
“You don’t have to answer that. I get used to collecting details.”
“A friend was driving. She had minor injuries.”
“Still in touch?”
Vivian looked at him.
He unwound the resistance band from his hand. “There I go again.”
“She moved to Eugene. Things got difficult afterward.”
Owen nodded and let the subject rest.
Flint put his chin on her knee. She rubbed the fold of his ear, and his eyelids lowered.
Neil came through the door carrying a sheet of paper.
“Vivian? Dr. Bell asked me to make sure you got this.”
He held it by one corner. His smile had disappeared.
She took it, noticing the clinic letterhead before she began to read.
The change was effective Monday. Her schedule would go from five visits a week to three. The stated reasons involved a plateau in progress and the need to distribute treatment resources across the patient population.
She read it again, slower.
Linda came to stand beside her. Owen lowered the band.
“What does it say?” he asked.
Vivian folded the paper along the edge of the printed paragraphs.
“They’re taking two days a week…”
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