Atramentum

by MJ Duncan

  She had almost lost Maeve.

  They still might lose George.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as she fought back against the mental image of her trying to comfort Maeve as they received that final, irreversible news.

  What would they do if George didn’t pull through? What would they do if she couldn’t be saved?

  Joss could not stop the small cry of anguish that escaped her as she rocked back and forth on the tile floor of the shower, terrified that the small family she had managed to find might be irrevocably torn apart forever.

  The sound of a phone ringing on the other side of the bathroom door forced her from the stall, and she hurriedly wrapped a towel around herself as she stumbled into Maeve’s room. Her phone was on the small couch where she had left it, and the brightly lit screen called her forward like a beacon. She watched Maeve as she picked it up to answer the call, and offered up a quick prayer that she stayed asleep.

  “Hello?” she answered, her voice rough from crying.

  “Ms. Perrault? This is Henry Dyson from Boulder Veterinary Hospital. I am the one overseeing George’s case.”

  Joss swallowed hard and clenched the towel to her chest as sat on the edge of the vinyl covered sofa. “Yes. How is she?”

  “She’s resting peacefully at the moment. There was not a lot we could do for her broken ribs, but we did end up having to remove half of her left lung. The trauma was just too extensive to save it.”

  “Will she be okay?” Joss whispered hoarsely.

  “It’ll be touch and go for the next twenty-four hours. She’s still in critical condition and she lost a lot of blood, but seeing as she took on a bear, I’d say she’s got enough fight in her to hopefully pull through. We’ll keep her sedated through the day to allow her body time to begin to recover, and will start weaning her from the drugs probably later this afternoon. She’s going to be in a lot of pain though, so we will keep her on a steady regimen of morphine to try to manage it all.”

  Joss sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. So…what are we looking at, here?”

  “Best-case scenario,” Dr. Dyson hedged, “and, really, this is dependent on how well she responds to the lobectomy and how affected she is by her broken ribs—she might be able to go home by Thanksgiving. But, again, it really depends on her. I won’t release her until I’m sure she’s one-hundred percent ready to go home.”

  Joss blew out the breath she was holding and nodded. “Okay. Thank you so much. My girlfriend and I will be down to check on her as soon as she’s released from the hospital up here. Do we need to call ahead, or…?”

  “No need. Mr. Green, has filled us in on the situation there, and I will put a note in George’s file that our staff is to allow you to see her whatever time you arrive.”

  “Great. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. If I don’t see you by the afternoon, I will call again then and let you know how things are going here.”

  “Thank you,” Joss repeated, knowing that she sounded like a broken record but not knowing what else she could say.

  “Of course,” Dr. Dyson said warmly before he hung up.

  Joss pulled her towel tighter around herself as she got back to her feet. She sighed as she looked at Maeve, who was sleeping far more peacefully than she knew she would personally be able to manage. Maeve’s bruised face and casted arm were stark reminders of how close she had come to losing her, and Joss bit her lip as she turned and padded back into the bathroom where she had left her clothes.

  It was going to be a long few days, she needed to get dressed so she could try to steal a few hours sleep before she had to hit the ground running again.

  Thirty-Nine

  “We just need to stop by the house real quick to get clothes and stuff for the next few days before we head down the mountain,” Joss said as she helped Maeve into the passenger’s seat just before ten the next morning.

  Maeve had woken up before dawn determined to get out of the hospital as quickly as she possibly could, and by the time Dr. Lewis came by her room at half-past six that morning, she was already dressed and sitting beside Joss on the uncomfortable, too-small sofa Joss had used as a bed the night before. To the orthopedist’s credit, she just smiled pleasantly as if she had expected to walk in and find Maeve already dressed and demanding to be discharged.

  Joss had been half-afraid that Dr. Lewis would insist on keeping Maeve a few hours longer. Not because she felt Maeve did not need to be hospitalized any longer, but because the storm clouds in Maeve’s eyes threatened World War Three if anyone dared suggest she stay longer. Thankfully, however, after perusing Maeve’s vitals from the night before and performing a quick exam, asking multiple times about Maeve’s pain levels—which Joss was pretty sure Maeve downplayed in her rush to get to George—she scribbled out a prescription for some Tylenol3 in case over-the-counter pain meds were not enough and signed off on her release.

  “We don’t need to go home. We can get whatever we need in Boulder.”

  “The house in on our way out of town, and the vet said that they’re not going to begin waking George up until later this afternoon.” Joss shook her head and pressed a gentle finger to Maeve’s lips to silence the argument she could see sitting there. “Look, it’ll take me five minutes to run inside and throw some clothes and toiletries into a bag for us, and then we’ll be on the road, okay?”

  Maeve pulled the finger from her lips and shook her head. “I need to see her.”

  “I know. I do too. But this quick stop will save us time in the end. I promise.” Maeve’s phone rang, and Joss sighed, grateful for the distraction as she closed the door and jogged around to the driver’s seat. When she climbed inside, Maeve’s phone was still ringing, and Maeve was staring at the screen. “What’s up?”

  “It’s my mom,” Maeve groaned. Her parents still had no idea what had happened.

  Joss nodded as she started the car. “You gonna answer?”

  “Yeah.” Maeve sighed and swiped her thumb over the screen a split-second before the call was kicked to voicemail. “Hey, Mom,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the headrest. Her mother must have asked what she was doing, because she said, “We’re just leaving the hospital.”

  Joss bit her lip and shifted the car into drive.

  “I’m fine,” Maeve continued. “I just broke my arm.”

  Nothing about the situation was funny, but Joss still smiled at the sound of Elizabeth Dylan screeching, “YOU WHAT? HOW?” Of course, listening to Maeve recount the events from the day before for her mother completely wiped any look of amusement from her face.

  Maeve was just finishing up her retelling of everything that had happened when Joss turned off the main road onto their driveway, and Joss reached across the console to give Maeve’s leg an affectionate squeeze as she drove past the turnoff to the cottage. While she did not envy Maeve’s situation—from the way Maeve was trying to talk her mother down, it was clear that parents really never stopped acting like, well, parents, no matter how old you were—she was glad that Elizabeth’s call gave her the opportunity to swing by the house like she wanted without having to fight with Maeve about it.

  Joss scanned the woods as she drove, looking for any sign of the bear that the rangers had been unable to track down. There was no sign of life to be found, however, causing a conflicting mix of relief and guilt to settle heavily in her stomach. Relief because she had no desire to go head-to-head with a mamma bear, and guilt because she hoped the bear and her cub would continue to evade the rangers looking for them. She knew that she should want the bear that attacked Maeve and George to be killed, but she held no malice toward the animal, whose habitat was shrinking by the hectare every year due to human encroachment. She just hoped they would all be able to stay out of each other’s way from now on.

  She turned around in the courtyard so that the front of the car was pointed toward the road and glanced at Maeve as she killed the ignition. “Two minutes,” she whispered, grab
bing the duffle with their dirty clothes from the backseat as she reached for her door.

  Maeve nodded and continued her conversation. “I don’t know when George will be released or when we’ll be home.”

  Joss shook her head as she hopped out of the car and slammed her door shut. Even though she knew that she was there to grab clothes and toiletries for the next few days so they could be near George at the veterinary hospital in Boulder, she still keenly felt the dog’s absence when she entered the house. There was no happy bark to greet her, no sound of nails clicking on the hardwood floors. Just cold, unforgiving silence.

  Joss swallowed hard and offered up a silent prayer to whoever was listening to help George make it through this. She hurried up the stairs to their bedroom and dumped their dirty clothes onto the bed to be dealt with later. She shoved a few days’ worth of clothes into the duffle before ducking into the bathroom to grab their toiletries. She zipped the bag closed as she hefted the strap over her head so that the strap cut diagonally across her chest, and then jogged back down the stairs. A quick glance through the front doors assured her that Maeve was okay as she used the end of the bannister as a fulcrum to propel her away from the door toward the mudroom. Maeve’s arm needed to stay in the sling that looked identical to the one Joss had worn a few months before, and she would need a coat that was big enough to zip over her cast.

  Once she had everything she needed, Joss headed back to the car. She turned on the front porch lights and the chandelier in the foyer before she locked up—just in case they, or Maeve’s family, arrived back at the house when it was dark—and took a deep breath as she twisted her key in the deadbolt.

  Maeve was pinching the bridge of her nose as if to ward off a headache when Joss opened the door to the backseat and tossed the bag inside, and she frowned as she slammed the door shut and climbed back behind the wheel. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” Maeve said, shaking her head. “Just…Thanksgiving stuff.”

  Joss made a small sound of understanding as she started the car. She had been so worried about Maeve and George that she had forgotten about the Dylans’ impending visit. “So, what’s the plan for next week?”

  Maeve blew out a loud breath and shrugged. “I dunno. My parents are still coming for sure—my mom is beyond pissed that I didn’t call her right away to let her know what happened—and she’s going to talk to my brothers to see what they want to do because their plane tickets are non-refundable. I told her they are more than welcome to use the house and whatever even if we’re not here, I just…”

  The uncertainty in Maeve’s tone broke Joss’ heart, and she wished there was some way she could just magically make everything okay. “She’ll be okay,” she promised.

  “Will she?” Maeve whispered, her voice cracking.

  Joss nodded, hoping that by force of will alone she could make it happen. “Yeah.”

  Maeve sighed and looked out her window as Joss turned back onto the main road. “I hope you’re right.”

  Me too, Joss thought as she reached across the center console to give Maeve’s thigh a reassuring squeeze.

  The drive down the mountain felt like it took forever when, in reality, Joss managed the four-hour trip in just under three-and-a-half hours. Even though the lunch hour had come and gone while they had been on the road, Joss knew better than to suggest they stop for food. There was no way Maeve would go for it and, truth-be-told, there was no way her stomach would be able to handle her putting anything in it until she saw George and was assured that she was okay anyway.

  Joss looked over at Maeve as she pulled to a stop in a space near the main doors to the veterinary hospital. For as sick with worry as she felt, Maeve looked like she was ready to pass out or throw up—or both—and Joss worried about her being able to make it inside on her own. “Wait for me get your door, please.” She turned off the ignition but did not otherwise move until Maeve nodded. “Thank you.”

  It was warmer in Boulder than it had been in Sky, a fact that Joss was grateful for as she hurried around the rear of the car to the passenger’s side because she knew Maeve would not want to waste time being helped into a coat. She offered Maeve her hand as she opened her door and did her best to smile reassuringly as she laced their fingers together once Maeve was standing beside her. There was an unmistakable tremble in Maeve’s hold that Joss wished she could soothe, but she knew that there was nothing she could do to help Maeve than what she was already doing. “You ready?”

  Maeve shook her head. “No.”

  Joss sighed. Me neither. “It’ll be okay. Let’s go see our girl.”

  The lobby was eerily quiet when they walked through the front door, the small room occupied by only a handful of chairs and a mid-twenty-something woman behind the front counter who looked up at them with a kind smile. She had long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, warm chocolate-colored eyes, and bright red lipstick that was more befitting a night on the town than work at a veterinary hospital, but there was something about the way she carried herself—even just sitting behind a desk—that said she knew what she was doing. “May I help you?”

  “We’re here to see George Dylan,” Maeve said, every ounce of strain she was feeling creeping into her tone.

  Joss gave her hand a squeeze as the woman typed George’s name into their system. The nametag clipped to her lightweight fleece hoodie embroidered with the veterinary hospital’s logo identified her as Ruby French, and below her name was the title Veterinary Technician.

  “I was here when she was brought in last night. I have a special fondness for big dogs, but she really is a super-sweet girl,” Ruby said as she clicked through whatever she was looking at on her screen. She nodded at whatever she saw. “Can I just see your I.D.s real fast?”

  Joss and Maeve produced their driver’s licenses and held them out for Ruby to see.

  “Thank you,” Ruby said as she got to her feet. “If you’ll follow me, she’s just back here.”

  Maeve nodded, her grip on Joss’ hand tightening as she started after Ruby. The waiting area of the hospital might have been silent, but as soon as the swinging doors to the treatment room were pushed open they ran right into a wall of sound made up of people talking, dogs whimpering, barking, and crying, and a mix of other, unidentifiable sounds of animals in distress.

  “Wow,” Joss muttered.

  Ruby turned and smiled. “George is this way,” she said, waving a hand at a narrow corridor. She caught another tech’s eye and said, “Can you tell Dyson that George has visitors?”

  “Will do,” the woman replied with a nod.

  The noise from the main treatment area faded as they made their way down the hall, making Joss suddenly aware of how loud her pulse was pounding in her ears. She felt like she might be sick at any moment, and she held her breath as she and Maeve were led through an open door.

  “These are our kennels for larger animals,” Ruby explained as she walked further into the room.

  The room was long, with a half-dozen cinderblock kennels along the right-hand side with chain link doors that looked more like miniature jail cells than actual kennels. George would not be happy about her accommodations once she woke up, but they were far better than an actual kennel would have been. George was the room’s lone occupant for the moment, and Joss blew out the breath she had been holding as she looked at the sleeping dog. George’s torso was wrapped in gauze and there was a three-inch band of yellow tape around her right front leg. She was laid out on a cot made of what looked like vinyl stretched over a PVC frame—snoring lightly and whimpering as the expansion of her chest with each breath stressed her injured ribs and lung. A plastic cone of shame hung from a hook above the bed, an accessory Joss knew for certain that George would not appreciate, and beside it hung a thin slip-leash.

  “Can we?” Maeve asked, pulling her hand from Joss’ to gesture at the door to George’s kennel.

  “Of course.” Ruby opened the door and waved them inside.

  Jos
s hung back as Maeve made her way to George’s side on unsteady legs, feeling like it was not her place to join her just yet, and bit her lip as she watched the blonde drop to her knees beside George’s cot. Tears rolled freely down Maeve’s cheeks as she whispered something and leaned in to press her lips to George’s cheek, her uninjured hand lovingly stroking George’s head. Joss was beckoned forward by an open, watery gaze, and a distinct feeling of lightheadedness settled over her as she knelt at Maeve’s side.

  They pet George’s head together, their fingers brushing against each other atop soft fur, unified in their feeling of utter helplessness. This was their child, and they could do nothing to take away the pain she was feeling. No matter how badly they might have wanted to, there was nothing they could do to make everything better.

  Joss swallowed around a lump in her throat as she glanced up at Ruby. “Will she be okay?” she asked, pleading with her eyes for good news.

  “She should be,” a vaguely familiar, masculine voice answered.

  Joss looked at the new arrival—a man with curly blond hair in navy scrubs and a white lab coat—but did not stand to greet him.

  He smiled and leaned against the open door to the kennel. “I’m Henry Dyson. I spoke to…” His voice trailed off as his eyes flickered between her and Maeve. “You,” he continued, his brow wrinkling as he looked back at Joss, “last night?

  “Yes,” Joss confirmed, nodding.

  “Okay. So you must be Maeve?” Dyson said, looking at Maeve.

  Maeve nodded. “Yes. Sorry,” she apologized as she tried to wipe the tears from her face.

  “Nothing to apologize for,” Dyson assured her with a kind smile. “Your girl there”—he nodded at George—“is doing beautifully, all things considered.”