“Hi, Paula. This is Callie and Frederick. Put us to work.” Luke picked up the bags for her. “Where do these go?”
“Just to the street,” she said, meeting their eyes with a grateful smile. “I was making a pile until I can find my trashcan or get a new one. It was blown away in the storm.”
Luke placed the bags at the street and joined Callie and Frederick as they walked toward the house, Paula leading them to the other pile of boards and wreckage. “Does all this need to be bagged up?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m just piling what will fit it into the bags. Be careful, because the wood is full of nails.” Then she stopped and looked directly at Luke. “Thank you,” she said with sincerity in her voice. “I’ll be inside working on the damaged roof. Just let yourselves in if you need anything.” She hovered briefly, still clearly in shock at their gesture, but then, once they’d gotten to work, she headed inside.
Carefully, they put what they could into the bags and piled the rest in a more orderly mound. As Paula had warned, every piece was jagged, torn, full of nails and sharp splintering wood, so they labored slowly. Luke was all business, not stopping once to make eye contact, and Callie wished, despite the task at hand, that he’d give her even one small gesture to let her know that he didn’t hate her, but it never came.
As they worked, Callie kept hearing a distant sound above the crashing of the ocean, but she couldn’t make it out until, all of a sudden, she stopped. “Do you hear that?” she said.
Luke and Frederick slowed to a halt and stood still. The static sound of the ocean filled the air.
“What do you hear?” Frederick said.
Callie tilted her head to the side, sharpening her hearing, waiting for the sound again.
Nothing.
“Maybe it was just my ears playing tricks on me,” she said, knowing for sure she’d heard something. Whatever it was, it was gone now. She leaned down to pick up a piece of wood and there it was again. “Did you hear it?”
“I did,” Luke said, looking around and walking away from where they were working. Callie followed.
Their movement seemed to jar whatever it was because the sound got more intense, a high-pitched whimper. They walked across to the next lot, which seemed empty, the owners most likely still out of town. The whimpering came again and Luke looked under one of the cars.
“It’s a dog,” he said. “It looks scared.” He leaned down as Callie peered under the vehicle. “Come here, boy,” Luke said gently, patting his thighs. The dog was some sort of Labrador mix—black with a white patch on its chest—and it didn’t move. It cried again.
“It’s hurt,” Callie said. She’d played with enough dogs growing up to tell that it couldn’t come to him. Its tail wasn’t wagging, and its head didn’t rise, but its eyes followed Luke as he walked around the car to try to figure out what to do.
“It’s okay,” she said to the dog in a soothing voice. “We’ll help you.”
Luke lay down on his back and shimmied under the car to get a better look at the dog, the whole time talking to it, telling it his next move as if it understood him. Maybe it did because it stopped whining and just lay there. Frederick dumped a couple more bags by the street before joining them.
“It’s probably starving,” Luke said from under the car. He ran his hand gently along the dog’s side. “I’ll bet he got pushed under here in the storm somehow. Or maybe he got hurt and tried to find himself some shelter.” He let the dog sniff his hand but it still didn’t move, clearly not worried by Luke at all. Luke ran his hand along the dog’s head, down each arm, and along its leg. When he got to the bottom of the dog’s leg, it yelped. “Yep. He’s hurt.”
“I’ll check with Paula to see if she knows the owners,” Frederick said.
Callie reached under the car, gently stroking the dog’s head. It tried to lift itself up to greet her but winced and lay back down. “We’ll make it all better,” she said gently and the dog took in a short huff of breath that sounded like relief. She fished around its neck for a collar but there wasn’t one.
“I think I have a first aid kit in the truck. Callie, could you get the bandages out? I’m going to try to stabilize the dog’s leg under the car before I pull him out so he isn’t in any pain. See if you can get a few of the depressor sticks out of there too so we can make a splint.”
He wriggled around and pulled his keys out of his pocket, tossing them out from under the car. Callie scooped them up and ran over to get what they needed. On the way to the car, she thought about how much things had changed, how distant Luke was with her now, and she ached to feel his playfulness again. It was painfully clear to her that she missed him. He was right there but he wasn’t at the same time, and her heart actually ached being that close to him and not seeing his smile.
She returned in a flash, and stopped alongside Frederick and Paula, who was leaning down to view the dog.
“I have no idea whose dog that is,” Paula said. “The owners next door don’t have any pets. I’ve never seen it before.”
Callie handed Luke the items he needed to bandage the dog’s leg. As he was wrapping it, the dog whimpered a bit, but allowed him to work. “It’s a big dog, but by the size of its paws, it looks like a puppy to me,” he said, gently lifting the dog’s leg to get the bandage around it. Luke was on his side, his lower half protruding from under the car.
When the dog’s leg was properly secured, Luke slid his arms underneath its body and gently drew it near him as he scooted out from under the car. The dog was clearly uncomfortable, its legs moving as if it were paddling, but its injury meant it couldn’t make it out without assistance. It tried to stand and its legs buckled under the pain. Luke caught it and sat down on the driveway with it in his lap.
“It’s a girl,” he said. “She’s probably dehydrated and hungry, and her leg’s in bad shape. It’s definitely broken. We should take her to a veterinarian.”
“You two take her,” Frederick said. “Callie can help her to remain still while you drive. I’ll stay and keep working for Paula.”
With a nod, Luke carried the dog to the car and, after Callie had climbed in, he gently set the dog on her lap. She lifted her head and it was then that Callie really got a look at her face. It was black with a white stripe between her eyes that met her white muzzle. Her chest and paws were also white, her floppy ears down as she looked up at Callie trustingly. Callie smiled at her, and her tail smacked Callie’s leg just a little.
“We’ve got you,” Callie said. “Let’s fix that leg up for you, okay?”
Another few thumps from the dog’s tail.
“She’s so sweet,” she said to Luke. “I can’t believe she’s probably been there since the storm.”
“Well, she might have collapsed there later; we don’t know. But from the look of her, she needs some care, and quickly.”
Careful not to compromise the dog’s leg, Callie cuddled her just a little more.