Part 9
Vivian looked up.
Owen’s eyes stayed on Flint.
“If you want him.”
“You’re giving me your dog?”
“He was yours before he was mine.”
“That was different.”
“Yes.” Owen rubbed his palm against his knee. “And he’s different with you. I saw it the first day, before either of us knew why.”
Flint’s eyes had closed. His breathing warmed her jeans.
“You need him,” Vivian said.
Owen gave a small, uncomfortable nod.
“I do.”
“Then why?”
“Because I think he needs this, too.” He looked directly at her. “And I’m staying in Marden through at least spring. I’m not vanishing.”
Vivian kept her hands still on the dog’s head.
“We’d have to work out the practical things.”
“We can.”
“You’d be here.”
“Yes.”
He started to say something else, stopped, then tried again.
“It doesn’t feel like losing him. More like getting him where he’s been trying to go.”
Flint opened one eye at Owen’s voice, then closed it.
Vivian let out a breath.
“All right.”
Owen’s shoulders lowered slightly.
“I’m not changing his name,” she added.
“Flint?”
“He’s earned it.”
“Agreed.”
She bent over the broad head in her lap and rubbed the soft places behind both ears.
“You’re coming home,” she told him.
January brought nearly two feet of snow and several weeks when the cold did not loosen even in the afternoon.
Warren changed to a van with better traction. Vivian added spare gloves to her bag and kept a small scraper clipped where she could reach it, useful for clearing packed snow around the entrance ramp. Even with salt, the clinic required careful approaches.
Flint acquired a quilted winter vest.
Owen had ordered it without discussing it. He brought it one morning in a plain box, checked the fit around the dog’s chest, and adjusted the handle along the back.
Flint stood through the process with a long-suffering expression.
“Don’t look at me,” Vivian told him. “I didn’t buy it.”
He wore it anyway.
On the way home one afternoon, Vivian stopped for groceries. The clerk brought her order into the enclosed pickup vestibule and let Flint wait beside her there. The dog sat squarely on the entrance mat while bags passed over his head, as though supervising groceries had always been part of his work.
Vivian checked the order, thanked the clerk, and turned toward Warren’s waiting van. Flint rose at her first movement.
The formal ninety-day review took place in early February.
Quinn attended with Rusk. Linda presented the accumulated record, including the less successful days and the adjustments made for fatigue. Vivian’s sustained standing tolerance had reached four minutes with support. The right ankle response had become consistent enough to include routinely in the exercises. Her left leg’s position awareness had advanced enough for carefully supported balance work.
Quinn read the final page of Rusk’s summary and set it down.
“Bell’s assessment was wrong.”
Vivian looked at her.
“Yes,” she said.
“We’ll maintain the present intensity and formally add the balance component. I also want a six-month milestone evaluation, so we have a clear comparison as we move forward.”
“What are we comparing toward?” Vivian asked.
“Whether supported ambulation becomes appropriate. Parallel bars, bracing, staff assistance. I think it belongs among the goals now. Beginning that work around your thirteenth outpatient month is a possibility, not a commitment.”
The room went quiet.
Linda looked down at her record. Rusk checked something on the laptop, giving Vivian a few seconds without anybody studying her face.
Vivian pressed her thumb against the edge of the table.
“Put it in,” she said.
Quinn made the note.
Vivian told Owen after therapy that evening. They waited in the parking lot, a habit that had developed during the short interval before Warren came. Flint investigated the edge of the plowed snow, then returned to check on them.
“Parallel bars,” Owen repeated.
“With braces. Help. Everything. Nobody’s talking about taking a stroll down the street.”
“I heard you.”
“They think it’s worth attempting.”
He nodded.
Vivian watched a car turn out of the employee lot.
“I’m scared.”
“I’d imagine.”
“And there’s another feeling. I haven’t got a word for it.”
“You don’t need one tonight.”
She rested her hand on Flint’s back when he came alongside.
“Even if I do it, it’s just more work after that.”
“Probably.”
“And more after that.”
“Likely.”
She looked up at him. “That your plan, too?”
Owen had received two pieces of news the previous week. His shoulder had reached about seventy percent, ahead of the surgeon’s projection. And the Navy had asked him to consider a training and assessment position at a working-dog facility in Georgia.
It was not operational fieldwork. It was still work he understood.
“I’m considering it,” he said.
“Georgia’s a long way from here.”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I need sixty days.”
Vivian watched Flint nose a ridge of snow left by the plow.
“That gets you close to spring.”
“That was the idea.”
“It’s a good offer.”
“It is.”
He looked at her, waiting rather than asking her to make it easier.
She rubbed her hands together inside her gloves.
“A good offer can still be complicated.”
“I’m learning that.”
Flint returned and pressed his shoulder against her chair. Warren’s headlights appeared at the entrance.
“Sixty days,” Vivian said.
Owen nodded. “That’s what I asked for.”
Mud collected in the clinic parking lot long before the snow vanished from the ridges.
By April, the valley had begun showing green along the ditches and sunny banks, while the high slopes kept their white caps. Warren complained about washing the van, then brought it back clean the next morning anyway…
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