Part 9 – The Night Clinic
The wind changed at sundown.
Alicia had been driving south on Highway 70, halfway between Oroville and the orchard, when the sky took on a copper glow. Not the soft amber of evening. This was sharper. Like something scorched into the air itself.
Reggie lifted his head, sniffed once, then let out a low, urgent bark.
Smoke.
Alicia pulled over, rolled down the window, and listened.
Sirens.
Lots of them.
And then, faintly, over the ridge—flames.
The Cal Fire bulletin came in as a crackling emergency broadcast over the van’s old radio.
“Wind-pushed brush fire heading west from Cherokee Flats. Power grids may be affected. Residents advised to evacuate low-lying areas near Cottonwood Creek. Shelter locations pending.”
Alicia’s stomach dropped.
That fire was heading straight toward Honcut. Toward the orchard. Toward Vernon and Daisy.
She turned the van around so fast the tires sprayed gravel like rain.
Reggie braced himself against the dash, ears pinned back, body tense but calm.
He’d been here before.
He remembered fire.
By the time Alicia reached Bartlett Road, the power was already out.
Vernon was waiting on the porch in his wheelchair, a flashlight strapped to his wrist with duct tape. Daisy stood behind him, clutching her stuffed dog and Reggie’s training folder—the one Alicia had let her flip through like a picture book.
“We heard sirens,” Vernon said. “I figured it was bad.”
“It’s worse than bad,” Alicia replied. “But we’ve got to stay calm.”
The air was thick with smoke. Not close yet, but closing in.
She handed Vernon a wet towel for breathing, then turned to Daisy.
“Grab your backpack. We’re going to help.”
They made it to the church lot in Honcut just before the night truly fell.
The van’s headlights cut through smoke like fog on a lake. People had already gathered—cars lined up, engines running, windows rolled down halfway.
Confused faces. Frightened children. Pets stuffed into crates and pillowcases.
No lights. No officials. No shelter yet.
Alicia parked under the church’s wooden cross, clicked on her auxiliary floodlights, and flung open the side doors.
Reggie jumped out first, circling the lot.
Daisy helped set up the folding tables. Vernon passed out bottled water.
Within twenty minutes, the Night Clinic was open.
Alicia triaged an elderly woman with asthma, coughing into a T-shirt. She used a child’s nebulizer from her supply bin and propped her against the van tire.
Next, a man with a dog that had burned its paws fleeing the underbrush. Alicia wrapped them in gauze while Reggie laid his head on the pup’s belly to calm him.
Then a boy—maybe ten—with a cut across his brow from a low tree branch. His little sister had dragged him there on foot.
“You’re safe now,” Alicia said, cleaning the wound. “We’ll stay as long as we need to.”
Reggie lay nearby, alert and still, watching everything.
Hours passed
The stars vanished behind a thick curtain of smoke.
The floodlights dimmed, battery near-dead.
But Alicia kept going. A flashlight in one hand. A bottle of antiseptic in the other. Her shirt soaked with sweat and soot.
Reggie never left her side.
Daisy handed out juice boxes and wipes. Vernon told corny jokes to keep the kids from crying.
When a panicked teenager stumbled in, clutching an unconscious Chihuahua and sobbing, Alicia knelt beside them.
“Deep breaths,” she whispered. “You’re not alone.”
And then Reggie stepped forward—nose to chest, paw on the boy’s knee.
The boy gasped.
“Is he… is he a doctor dog?”
“Something like that,” Alicia said.
By 2 a.m., the fire had shifted east, away from town. A shelter had finally been opened in Live Oak, but many people chose to stay under the stars—near Alicia, near the van, near Reggie.
They called it the Night Clinic in whispers.
Like it was something sacred.
A place born of smoke and grace.
Just before dawn, Alicia stepped behind the van to breathe.
Her hands ached. Her throat burned. But she felt something she hadn’t in years.
Purpose.
The kind that sticks to your ribs.
Reggie joined her.
She sank to the ground and pulled him close.
“I didn’t think I’d be doing this again,” she whispered.
Reggie looked up, one ear twitching.
“But I think you knew.”
At sunrise, a little girl Alicia had treated earlier—six years old, barefoot, holding a worn blanket—shuffled up and handed her something.
A drawing.
Crayon on napkin.
A woman with wild hair. A dog beside her. A van glowing like a lantern.
Below it, in crooked block letters:
“Thank you, Nurse Dog Lady.”
Alicia felt her throat tighten.
She turned to Reggie.
He wagged once. Then gently rested his paw on her knee.
That day, as the sun burned through the last of the smoke and people returned to their homes, the van rolled on
Reggie in the front seat.
Daisy asleep in back.
Vernon humming an old Johnny Cash tune under his breath.
And Alicia at the wheel.
Steering not just toward the next stop, but toward something she hadn’t felt since Buchanan County General closed its doors.
A calling.