Page 33 of Vetted for Vengeance
For the rest of the day, I feel ten feet tall. It's the scrubs. I refuse to let it be because he’s watching me.
Even if I know he is.
“Noah. Could you hold my tape measure, please?” Rhys's smooth TV narrator voice calls from the kennel room door.
I glance up from my work. I'm midway through weighing Toffee's puppies. Apparently, I'm the only one qualified for that because no one else can understand my identification markers. But I freeze, midway through putting Dug back.
Hold his tape measure?
My brain refuses to process the sentence in its innocent meaning. I know what he means, but a heat rises up my neck anyway. Toffee licks the hand holding her baby, encouraging air back into my lungs.
“Two more puppies and I'll gladly hold your…tape measure.” The last two words are a struggle, but he nods and walks off, seemingly unbothered by my reaction.
I’m such an idiot. He didn’t even react.
I weigh the last two pups, confirm all of them have put on weight, and tuck Toffee back in with a head rub.
Once everything is packed away, Rhys is gone. The practice is large, and by going through the office, it's possible to walk around in a circle. Which means I could be simply following Rhys around and never catching up.
“Hi, um…” I catch the attention of the nurse in the checked mint green tunic. I know it means she's a student like me, but these nurses all look the same. “Sorry, I am not good with names. People's names. I'm good with animal names. But I don't remember…”
She looks at me, not offering her name or any way to save myself from my pathetic ramblings. “Sorry.”
“That's okay. I'd be the same if Dr Calder asked me to hold his tape measure somewhere secret.”
There is no amusement in her voice, no red flush like the one returning to my face. She doesn't find this funny; she's jealous. I'm the new boy, coming in with no experience and outshining her. I doubt she wants to hold Rhys's tape measure, but I bet she'd love my TV spotlight.
I think I'll name her Snowy. Cold and easy to remember. I’ve only been here half a day and I’ve already made an enemy.
I turn before I let the smile escape across my lips. No wonder I can remember dogs better than people. I name them things that remind me. Toffee, for example, has brown swirls through her black patches.
I head outside via the back door and across to the barn. I doubt Rhys is keeping this a secret; Snowy is just too far down the pecking order to pick up more than whispers, but it's enough to lead me to where Rhys is waiting.
He's in some kind of power-down mode, like someone switched him off mid-thought. Just standing, waiting, staring at a red brick in the middle of the barn.
“Um, hello?” I call out nervously, reluctant to disturb him from his daydream. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Ah, Noah! Puppies okay?”
“Oh, they're doing great. I'm worried about the little one, but…”
He thrusts the end of the tape measure into my hand and guides me to the red brick. “Keep the end over the middle of the brick.”
For the next hour, I stand over a brick, turning as he measures in every direction over and over. I adjust the brick millimeters at a time until it is exactly center of the barn. But this isn't about finding dead center. I'm sure architects will do this again with something more accurate than a length of numbered tape. This is about the words. As he measures, he talks, as if I'm someone he can trust with the obsessive nature of this project.
To his staff working inside the practice, running through the cleaning routines and welfare routines, and all the rest of his lists hanging inside cupboard doors, this is just more kennels.
To me, the keeper of his chaotic urges, this is a vision. Something softer than the man himself.
I can almost hear it.
Not barking. Just quiet breathing. Warm bodies. Safe sleep. No fear.
A place away from the antiseptic smell of the practice, away from the harsh lights and constant distractions. A place where the ginger stray cat from last season could have stayed after his leg was fixed. He could have been featured for adoption when it was healed, instead of being sent to the cat rescue center while disowning its own plastered limb.
Rhys, meanwhile, talks more in this empty barn than he does in the entire practice. I realize after a while that he isn't explaining the building to me.
He's thinking aloud, as if I’m already part of the plan. Like he expects me to be here when it’s finished.
