Part 10 – The Road and the Ribbon
The ribbon was red.
Satin, a little sun-faded, with curled ends that fluttered in the breeze like the last page of a good book.
Alicia stared at it in her hands.
“For Extraordinary Service — County Fair Grand Honoree: Reggie”
Hand-lettered in gold.
She smiled as Reggie sat beside her, tongue lolling, wearing the makeshift medal around his neck like it was nothing at all. Like he hadn’t rescued three lives in as many months. Like he hadn’t turned a beat-up delivery truck into a sanctuary.
He just blinked slowly at the cheering crowd and wagged his tail.
It was the Plumas-Yuba County Fair—revived after a two-year hiatus and now cobbled together with borrowed tents, local musicians, and lemonade stands manned by tired but proud eighth graders.
Someone on the fair board had heard about Alicia’s clinic. About Reggie. About the wildfire night.
They asked if she’d accept a community service ribbon.
Alicia almost said no.
But Daisy insisted.
“You have to go,” she said, drawing a crayon version of Reggie holding a giant golden trophy. “You’re famous now.”
The ceremony was short and humble.
A county official in a bolo tie gave a quick speech about neighbors and heroes. Then handed Alicia the red ribbon and patted Reggie like a nervous uncle.
Reggie didn’t mind the attention.
But Alicia—well, she couldn’t help but feel the wind shifting. Like something was coming.
And it was.
The emergency hit just after noon.
The carnival music was playing. Vernon was eating kettle corn with Daisy on a bench near the livestock pens. Alicia had just unpacked her stethoscope when a woman came sprinting toward the van, breathless and pale.
“It’s my husband,” she gasped. “He collapsed near the food court. He’s diabetic—he didn’t bring his meter.”
Alicia’s brain snapped into motion before her feet did.
Reggie was already off the van before she called his name.
They found the man sprawled in the shade of a hot dog cart, unresponsive, clammy. Alicia dropped to her knees, pulling her glucose monitor from her pocket and pricking his finger in one motion.
His blood sugar was 38.
Dangerously low.
Alicia turned to the crowd.
“Does anyone have orange juice? Or candy? Fast!”
A stranger handed her a pack of fruit chews. She tore it open and gently rubbed one between the man’s cheek and gums.
He groaned.
Reggie nudged the man’s chest. Pawed once. Sat still.
Watching.
Waiting.
Alicia administered a glucagon injection from her mobile kit.
Seconds passed.
Then—movement.
The man coughed.
Blinking. Pale. Confused.
His wife dropped to her knees beside him, sobbing.
Alicia stayed kneeling, hands trembling from the rush.
And Reggie—Reggie simply wagged his tail and leaned into the woman’s side like he’d done this a hundred times before.
Because he had.
Later, after paramedics arrived and the man was stable, the crowd clapped. Some quietly. Some with full force.
Alicia tried to fade into the background.
But someone grabbed the microphone.
An older woman in a denim vest.
“Folks,” she said, “I think we gave the ribbon to the right dog. But maybe we forgot the woman who drove him here.”
The crowd turned.
Alicia blinked, caught off guard.
Daisy climbed onto the hay bale behind her and waved.
“She’s not just a nurse,” she said, “she’s the one who makes the van go. And she made Reggie a hero again.”
Alicia didn’t remember walking to the microphone.
But she remembered what she said:
“I used to work in a hospital. I had a badge and a paycheck. Then I had neither. I thought I’d lost my purpose. But then I met a dog… who hadn’t.”
She looked down at Reggie.
“He kept showing up where people were hurting. And I started following him.”
She paused.
Smiled.
“And now we show up together.”
Applause rippled through the air like sunlight through orchard leaves.
That evening, long after the fair tents had come down, Alicia drove north toward the orchard.
The road was quiet. The van hummed low.
Daisy was asleep in back, wrapped in a quilt Vernon had stitched from old flannel shirts.
Reggie sat up front, his red ribbon still hanging loose around his neck.
Alicia reached over and scratched behind his ear.
“You ready to keep going?” she asked.
He blinked once.
Then rested his head on her leg.
They passed the sign for Rackerby, the town where Carl Jensen once slept in a Honda.
They passed Gridley, where Reggie had first appeared outside a shuttered pharmacy.
Everywhere they went, the van felt lighter. Like it had finally become what it was meant to be—not just a clinic. Not just a home.
A bridge.
Between pain and healing. Between being forgotten and being found.
When they pulled into the orchard that night, Vernon was waiting on the porch, Daisy’s drawing of Reggie and the golden trophy pinned to the wall beside him.
“Fair treat you all right?” he asked.
Alicia smiled. “We got a ribbon.”
“Looks good on him,” Vernon said.
Then added, with a chuckle, “You ever think about painting the van? Maybe in big letters—The Reggie Route.”
Alicia laughed.
She looked at the peeling white paint, the rust spots, the dented bumper.
Then at the worn stethoscope on the dashboard. The cooler. The emergency bag. The stack of drawings from Daisy now taped to the cabinets.
And Reggie.
Still sitting. Still ready.
“I think it’s perfect the way it is,” she said.
That night, before bed, Alicia added one more note to the growing journal in the glove box.
“To the next driver of this van…”
She paused.
Then wrote:
“He’ll find you before you find him. Just follow his lead.”
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The End.