🔹 Part 4 – The Last Patrol
Morning broke without color. No pinks, no oranges — just the soft gray of an old sailor’s memory.
Charlie sat at the edge of his bed, boots untied, staring at the leash in his hand. Not to use it — just to feel the weight.
Scout lay on the quilt by the fire, chest rising like the tide on a windless day — slow, measured, unsure.
Charlie hadn’t slept. Instead, he’d listened. To Scout’s breathing. To the sea beyond the windows. To the silence between them.
He finally stood and moved to the kitchen. Toasted two slices of bread. One for him. One, slathered in peanut butter, for Scout.
Scout tried. Took two licks. Then let his head fall back onto his paws.
Charlie crouched, gently wiped the peanut butter off Scout’s nose.
“All right, buddy. No more food. Just peace today.”
They made their final drive to Molly’s clinic just after noon.
Charlie wrapped Scout in an old flannel shirt, the one he used to wear on patrol boats. The scent of diesel and salt still clung to it — something comforting about the familiar.
Scout didn’t whine. Didn’t lift his head.
Charlie talked the whole way, softly, like reading bedtime stories to a child who’d heard them all before.
“You remember the night we pulled those kayakers out near Seaside? You barked so hard the whole pier lit up. I think even God turned to look.”
The truck rumbled down the dirt road behind the harbor. Wind rocked the evergreens gently. Seagulls cried above.
At the clinic, Molly was waiting.
No clipboard. No gloves. Just kindness in her eyes and a soft fleece blanket draped over her arm.
They brought Scout inside.
Charlie laid him on the blanket. His hands never left the dog’s body. A thumb behind the ear. A palm over the ribs.
“I gave him a good day,” he told her.
“I know,” she said.
Charlie nodded.
“Do you want to stay?” Molly asked.
Charlie didn’t answer. He was already sliding down to sit beside Scout.
He leaned in close. Whispered something only Scout could hear.
Then he nodded once more.
Molly inserted the catheter slowly, gently. She gave Charlie time. No rush. No sterile talk.
She began the injection — and stopped halfway through when Scout opened his eyes for the last time.
He looked at Charlie.
And Charlie, who’d survived two hurricanes, a ship fire, and the loss of his wife, finally broke.
“I’m right here, son,” he choked out. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Scout’s breathing slowed. Then stilled.
And the room became the quietest place on earth.
Molly left him alone with Scout for a while.
Charlie didn’t move. He just pressed his hand against the still-warm fur, tracing the outline of the shoulder that once helped pull him from an icy inlet.
When he finally stood, he kissed the top of Scout’s head, just once.
Then he said the only goodbye he could manage.
“You were my lighthouse.”
That night, Charlie sat on the front porch with a folded American flag in his lap.
He watched the tide rise.
The house felt different without Scout’s breathing inside it. Too still. Too clean.
But Charlie didn’t cry again. He just sat. Remembering.
And when the wind picked up and brushed across the dunes, he whispered, “I know, kid. I miss you too.”