Say You'll Remember Me(86)

Someone knocked on the doorframe. I looked up to see Hank shuffling in.

“Hi!” he said. “Maggie’s having me fill out some paperwork for my file. I don’t think I’ve had an employee file in, well, half a century.”

I laughed a little and stood. I hadn’t seen him since the day he came to ask for a job.

“How was California?” he asked.

“Good.”

“Better weather than here, I’ll tell you that much,” he said, taking off his jacket. “Sometimes I think I’m bonkers staying here in the winter instead of hunkering down in Florida like everyone else my age.” He hung his coat and put hands on his hips. “What you have going on today?”

“Nothing. Lethargic senior. I think he’s got Lyme disease. Two Dalmatians here for the day for vaccinations and a Lab that ate a Christmas bulb.”

“How you treating it?” he asked.

“The bulb? Just observing.”

“Take an x-ray—if the bulb is intact, make him puke it up. It’s a Lab—it’s probably intact. They don’t chew, they inhale. If it’s broken, then give him cream-soaked bread balls.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Do what?”

“They roll through the intestines, grab up all the glass. How much does he weigh?”

“Sixty-five?”

“’Bout seven or eight balls should do it. Have the owners keep an eye out for tarry stools and he’s good to go home.”

“Really…”

“Oh yeah. You won’t have any problem getting him to eat the balls either, he is a Lab.”

I scoffed.

“Thank you. I’ll try it,” I said.

He smiled at me. “Well, I better get to it,” he said, turning for the office.

One of the Dalmatians made a pitiful wailing noise from his cage. Hank stopped and nodded to the two dogs in side-by-side kennels. “Brothers?”

“Yeah.”

“Any reason why they’re not in the same cage? Diarrhea? Contagious? Aggressive?”

“No. I like to keep patients separated,” I said. “Safer.”

It’s how I had been trained.

“They’ll be happier together,” he said. “Less stressed, better outcomes. Bonded pairs suffer apart.”

I nodded slowly. Yes. Yes, they do.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to check it. Samantha. “Excuse me,” I said, answering it. “Hey, I thought you had a conference call?”

“Xavier…”

Her voice immediately put me on alert. “What happened?”

“I just got fired.”





“Slow down, tell me what happened,” I said.

She was inconsolable.

“They said they were consolidating marketing teams,” she said, hiccuping. “That they were going to stick with the Heinz staff because it’s bigger. They already changed the log-in info. They fired my assistant too. It was like a three-minute Zoom and it’s all over, four years with them like nothing!”

“Did they give you a severance?” I asked.

“Three months. And I get to pay a million dollars for COBRA to keep my health benefits. I can’t even afford it.”

I was pacing. “You’re going to be okay. You’ll find something else—”

“I don’t want something else. I want my job.” She broke down.

It took everything in me not to walk out of the clinic and go straight to the airport right then and there. But I couldn’t. I’d wiped my savings on the last visit. I just got back.

I could hear Lisa in the background. She was asking where her mom was.

“She’s at the store,” Samantha said, crying.

“Listen, you can’t be upset in front of her,” I said gently. “You’ll get her upset and it’ll make everything worse. You’re there alone, and you don’t want her having a meltdown.”

I could picture Samantha nodding.

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” I said. “You’re going to put headphones in. You’re going to take your mom and go to the backyard.”

“The backyard?” She sniffed.

“Yes. It’s nice outside there. Seventy-one, somebody told me.”

She let out a laugh-sob.

“Put Lisa in the gazebo. Make a short playlist, something calming, both earbuds in. You’re not going to look at your phone, you’re not going to check email. You’re going to look around and you’re going to see all the things you’re always too busy to see. Check the plants for fruit. Pick some flowers, feed the fish in the pond, take a leaf from the lemon tree and break it in half and smell it. Walk the whole yard. Can you do that?”

“I can’t think of songs,” she said pitifully.

“Do you want me to pick them?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll make another playlist and I’ll send you the link. Stay on the phone with me while I do it.”

When I was going through my music, Lisa asked again where her mom was. Samantha answered. A moment later Lisa asked again. Samantha answered again. And again. And again.

I could feel Samantha eroding on the other end of the line. Telling her mom the grocery store lie with a little more hysteria around the edges every time.