He wasn’t sure; capturing a specific instant like that was no more possible than locating a specific drop of water in the ocean. But the fact remained that it left Gabby to explain the situation to Kevin. Travis could remember her pained expression on the morning she knew Kevin would be arriving back in town. Gone was the certainty that had guided them the previous days; in its place was the reality of what lay ahead for her. She barely touched her breakfast; when he kissed her good-bye, she responded with only the flicker of a smile. The hours had crawled by without word, and Travis busied himself at work and made calls to find homes for the puppies, knowing it was important to her. Eventually, after work, Travis went to check on Molly. As if sensing she’d be needed later, she didn’t return to the garage after he let her out. Instead, she lay in the tall marsh grass that fronted Gabby’s property, staring toward the street as the sun sank lower in the sky.
It was well after dark when Gabby turned in the drive. He remembered the steady way she looked at him as she stepped out of the car. Without a word, she took a seat beside him on the steps. Molly wandered up and began to nuzzle her. Gabby ran her hand rhythmically through her fur.
“Hey,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Hey.” Her voice sounded drained of emotion.
“I think I found homes for all of the puppies,” he offered.
“Yeah?”
He nodded, and the two of them sat together without speaking, like two people who’d run out of things to talk about.
“I’m always going to love you,” he said, searching and failing to find adequate words to comfort her.
“I believe you,” she whispered. She looped her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s why I’m here.”
Travis had never liked hospitals. Unlike the veterinary clinic, which closed its doors around dinnertime, Carteret General Hospital struck him as the endless turning of a Ferris wheel, with patients and employees hopping on and off every minute of every day. From where he was sitting, he could see nurses bustling in and out of rooms or clustering around the station at the end of the hall. Some were frazzled while others seemed bored; the doctors were no different. On other floors, Travis knew that mothers were giving birth and the elderly were passing away, a microcosm of the world. As oppressive as he found it, Gabby had thrived working here, energized by the steady buzz of activity.
There’d been a letter in the mailbox months earlier, something from the administrator’s office announcing that the hospital planned to honor Gabby’s tenth year working at the hospital. The letter didn’t allude to anything specific that Gabby had accomplished; it was nothing more than a form letter, something no doubt sent out to a dozen other people who’d started working around the same time she had. A small plaque, the letter promised, would be hung in Gabby’s honor in one of the corridors, along with other recipients’, though as yet it hadn’t happened.
He doubted that she cared. Gabby had taken the job at the hospital not because she might one day receive a plaque, but because she’d felt she hadn’t much choice. Though she had alluded to some problems at the pediatrician’s office during their first weekend together, she hadn’t been specific. He’d let the comment pass without pressing her, but he knew even then that the problem wasn’t simply going to go away.
Eventually, she told him about it. It was the end of a long day. He’d been called out the previous night to the equestrian center, where he found an Arabian sweating and pawing the ground, its stomach tender to the touch. Classic signs of equine colic, though with a bit of luck, he didn’t think it would require surgery. Still, with the owners in their seventies, Travis wasn’t comfortable asking them to walk the horse for fifteen minutes every hour, in case the horse became more agitated or took a turn for the worse. Instead, he decided to stay with the horse himself, and though the horse gradually improved as the day rolled on into the next evening, he was exhausted by the time he left.
He arrived home, sweaty and filthy, to find Gabby crying at her kitchen table. It took a few minutes before she was able to tell him the story-how she’d had to stay late with a patient who was waiting for an ambulance for what she was fairly certain was appendicitis; by the time she was able to leave, most of the staff had gone home. The attending physician, Adrian Melton, had not. They left together, and Gabby didn’t realize that Melton was walking with her toward her car until it was too late. There, he laid a hand on her shoulder and told her that he was heading to the hospital and would update her on the patient’s condition. When she forced a smile, however, he leaned in to kiss her.
It was a clumsy effort, reminiscent of high school, and she recoiled before he could finish. He stared at her, seemingly put out. “I thought this was what you wanted,” he’d said.
At the table, Gabby shuddered. “He made it sound like it was my fault.”
“Has it happened before?”
“No, not like this. But…”
When she trailed off, Travis reached over and took her hand. “Come on,” he said. “It’s me. Talk to me.”
Her gaze remained focused on the surface of the table, but her voice was steady as she recounted the history of Melton’s behavior. By the time she finished, his face was tight with barely suppressed rage.
“I’ll fix this,” he said without waiting for a response.
It took two phone calls to find out where Adrian Melton lived. Within minutes, his car screeched to a stop in front of Melton’s house. His insistent finger on the doorbell brought the doctor to the front door. Melton barely registered his puzzlement before Travis’s fist crashed into his jaw. A woman Travis assumed was Melton’s wife materialized the same instant Melton hit the floor, and her screams echoed in the hallway.
When the police arrived at the house, Travis was arrested for the first and only time in his life. He was brought to the station, where most of the officers treated him with amused respect. Every one of them had brought their pets to the clinic and were clearly skeptical of Mrs. Melton’s claim that “some psycho has assaulted my husband!”
When Travis called his sister, Stephanie showed up looking less worried than amused. She found Travis sitting in a single cell, deep in discussion with the sheriff; as she approached, he realized they were talking about the sheriff’s cat, who seemed to have developed a rash of some sort and couldn’t stop scratching.
“Bummer,” she said.
“What?”
“And here I thought I was going to find you wearing an orange jumper.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Maybe there’s still time. What do you think, Sheriff?”
The sheriff didn’t know what to think, and a moment later, he left them alone.
“Thanks for that,” Travis said once the sheriff was gone. “He’s probably considering your suggestion.”
“Don’t blame me. I’m not the one attacking doctors on doorsteps.”
“He deserved it.”
“I’m sure he did.”
Travis smiled. “Thanks for coming.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it, Rocky. Or would you prefer I call you Apollo Creed?”
“How about you work on getting me out of here instead of trying to come up with nicknames?”
“Coming up with nicknames is more fun.”
“Maybe I should have called Dad.”
“But you didn’t. You got me. And trust me, you made the right choice. Now let me go talk to the sheriff, okay?”
Later, while Stephanie was talking to the sheriff, Adrian Melton visited Travis. He’d never met the local veterinarian and demanded to know the reason for Travis’s assault. Though he never told Gabby what he said, Adrian Melton promptly dropped the charges, despite protests from Mrs. Melton. Within a few days, Travis heard through the small-town grapevine that Dr. and Mrs. Melton were in counseling. Nonetheless, the workplace remained tense for Gabby, and a few weeks later, Dr. Furman called Gabby into the office and suggested that she consider trying to find another place to work.