“I’m going with you! Shorty wants me to go!”
I take Shorty from my father’s arms and slide across to the passenger side. I hold him on my lap, cradled like a baby, as my father drapes his coat over us. Ness runs around the truck and stands on tiptoe, framed by the window glass. I lean down and kiss Shorty’s head for her. He licks my cheek weakly, trembling down to his tail.
“Mel—get her warmed up, and then meet us at Doc Samuels’s.”
Melissa nods and turns to my sister, who stomps her boot and bursts into tears.
“If you don’t warm up, we’ll be taking you to the hospital, too, honey. Shorty will be fine—we’ll meet them there. You trust your sister, don’t you?”
Nessa nods, crying in loud, gulping sobs. My father peels out as Melissa holds my sister firmly by the shoulders. I turn to look out the back window, watching her guide Nessa up the porch steps and into the house.
I remember Ness as a baby, how I had to use my own body heat to warm her during those endless nights in the camper when she cried and cried for Mama, not realizing the mama she cried for was me.
It makes me shiver inside, just thinking how lucky we were.
Now, if only Shorty can be that lucky.
We sit side by side in Doc Samuels’s waiting room, my cheeks and toes burning as they thaw. We handed Shorty over on arrival, unloading him into the doctor’s arms. Now, in a back room, Shorty rests comfortably beneath warming blankets, his wounds debrided and sewn.
Turns out that coyotes hadn’t mauled the old hound after all. It was the barbed wire that had ripped his flesh when he fought to free himself. The coyotes must’ve smelled the blood.
I shudder at the thought of what could’ve happened if my father hadn’t gotten to Shorty in time.
“He’s doing fine,” Doc Samuels says, coming out to talk to us half an hour later. “You’re lucky you found him when you did.”
Doc Samuels looks me over with interest. “You the one who saved ol’ Shorty?”
I shake my head. “My sister knew he was in trouble. It’s like they have a psychic connection or something.”
“Love is like that,” he says, his eyes flitting to my father and then back to me. “The cold kept him from losing too much blood. Most dogs with body temperatures that low wouldn’t have survived. That’s one tough dog.”
The doctor leaves us in the waiting room after pointing my father toward the full coffeepot. My father pours a cup and passes it to me, and I drink it black like he does, only caring about the way it warms my hands and my insides simultaneously.
He looks over at me every once in a while but says nothing. I can feel it in the room, though, beside the National Geographic magazines on the table, the laboring heater in the corner, the threadbare couch we sit upon. It surrounds us both, like an aura: our amazement over Jenessa’s talking.
And now it’s my turn. A promise is a promise. I turn to him, my eyes on his boots. I take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Remember you asked about Jenessa and what might’ve caused her to stop talkin’?”
It’s like I’ve revered. Like I’ve never left the woods.
He takes a sip of coffee without breaking eye contact.
“I know why,” I whisper.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me an hour, a day, a week from now, once I tell him. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Folks don’t do the right thing because it’s easy. They do it because it’s right.
“I figured as much,” he says, his tone even. “I was hoping you’d tell me when you were ready.”
He tilts his head and studies me, and in that gesture, I feel his genuine respect for our time in the Hundred Acre Wood. I let the strange feeling wash over me, enjoying it while I can.
I’m too old to act like a child. I know it now. Too old to play hide-and-seek with what’s important. It’s like the girl I’m going to be finally catches up with the girl I am, right there in Doc Samuels’s waiting room.
I owe it to that girl.
The door busts open, followed by a wave of cold air. Melissa and Jenessa stomp snow from their boots as Nessa turns to me, her eyes red and swollen.
“Where’s Shorty? Is he going to be okay?”
I go to her and hold her close, her body shaking in my arms.
I untangle myself and drop to my knees.
“Look at me,” I say, taking her tear-stained face in my hands. “Shorty’s going to be good as new. They’re keeping him warm and letting him rest after cleaning and sewing his wounds. They have him sedated.”
She looks at me blankly.
“Sedated means ‘calmed down with medicine.’ Like he’s slow and sleepy.”
Nessa laughs, squeezing me so hard, the breath escapes me. Then she runs to our father, who lifts her in his arms and spins her in a circle before sitting back down with her on his lap.
I get up and turn to Melissa, smiling shyly.
“We were thinking you two could take Shorty home. Doc Samuels said he’s ready,” I tell her.