Page 119 of Sit, Stay, Love
Her mother took away the paper napkin Sera had been diligently shredding into a million tiny pieces and touched her daughter’s chin, making their eyes meet. ‘Looks aren’t everything, Sera. Listen to your heart. Everyone told me I shouldn’t marry your father – an up-and-coming journalist with a rather different political bent from my family. But I adored him, and I just couldn’t see my life without him in it, not even for a day. You know, he was my best friend before he was my lover.’
Sera screwed up her nose.
‘Don’t be juvenile, darling. How do you think you were born, through immaculate conception? Your father and I still have a wonderful sex life.’
‘Mum!’ Sera put her fingers in her ears. ‘La-la-la.’
Her mother pulled her daughter’s hands away from her head. ‘I had to listen to your sex talk. I’m just saying, beauty is lovely, but connection is the most important thing.’
‘Okay. Got it. Can we stop talking about this now? And can you call Dad to come get us? If he hasn’t killed himself on the mower.’ She was starting to see double, and no way could she cope with two of her mother.
Sera dragged herself out of bed to do the morning chores – the remnants of a hangover that had hit around ten the night before still throbbing at her temples – and put her foot straight into a pile of cold dog vomit.
‘Oh, gross!’ she cried out, cursing prosecco and her mother as she hopped to the bathroom with her hand over her mouth, trying desperately to prevent her own vomit joining the puke puddles on the floor.
‘Buffy!’ she called, quickly rinsing her foot. But the dog didn’t come.
She rushed down the hall, her wet foot slipping on the wood, to find Buffy, lying beside the front door, panting and in obvious distress.
Sera squatted beside her. ‘Buff?’
The dog lifted her head and whined.
Two minutes later, she was in her van with Buffy wrapped in a blanket on the seat beside her.
‘Siri, call Toby.’
‘Petside Vet Clinic.’
‘Herriot, are you home? There’s something wrong with Buffy.’
She’d only just put her van into park when Toby flung the passenger-side door open, scooped Buffy into his arms and marched towards the vet surgery, his long legs crossing the carpark in only a few strides. Sera jogged behind him.
‘How long’s she been like this?’ Toby asked as he lay the dog on the examination table.
‘Since this morning. I didn’t get to sleep until really late, and I didn’t notice anything before I crashed out.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But she wasn’t in my room, which is weird. It’s not a snake bite, is it? Please tell me it’s not a snake.’
‘I’ll do the test, but I don’t think so. She’d be worse than this. Did she shit in the house?’
‘I don’t know. I just saw vomit. Lots of vomit.’ She burst into tears.
Toby took her hand. ‘Why don’t you go get a glass of water while I look at her?’ His gaze drifted up and down her body. ‘And if you want to get changed, you know where everything is.’
She glanced down to see she was only wearing boyleg undies and a tank top with Bambi on the front. A sob exploded from her throat. He engulfed her in his arms and she buried her face into his shirt, his familiar scent and warm body instantly calming her. He kissed the top of her head then rested his cheek where his lips had touched. ‘Let me check her over, and we’ll go from there.’
Sera called Carol and asked if she could swing past the shelter, feed the animals and give the dogs some exercise. ‘But please don’t clean anything up. I’ll do that when I get back.’
‘Do you know what it is?’ Carol asked.
‘She’s with Toby now.’ Sera’s voice quaked.
‘Then she’s in the best possible hands.’
Sera resisted the urge to race back to Toby and hover around him in a panic, asking him a thousand questions he probably didn’t know the answers to yet, and instead took a lightning-fast shower and pulled on a t-shirt and some drawstring shorts from the chest of drawers. As she was heading back to the surgery, her phone dinged. Carol had texted her a picture.
‘It’s not a snake bite,’ Toby said as she charged into the examination room.
She held her phone up and showed him the photo.
