📙 Part 4 – The Vet Visit
October 29th, 2022 – Danner Hollow, Missouri
Bud wasn’t getting better.
The other two bounced back fast from bad nights — a little shivering, a little stiffness, then right back to themselves.
But Bud? He barely stood now. He coughed after every drink of water, and once, when Skippy tried to climb over him playfully, Bud let out a low sound Martha didn’t like.
Not a growl. Not a whimper.
Just tired.
Martha sat on the porch that morning longer than usual. The store hadn’t seen a customer in two days, but she still swept the floor and dusted the cans like someone was coming.
Bud lay on the cushion beside the door, chest rising slow, then pausing.
Then rising again.
Each breath sounded like it was being borrowed from somewhere else.
Martha looked at him. Then at her keys. Then at the rusted Ford out back.
And something cracked.
She went inside, grabbed the leash from the peg behind the counter — the one she never threw away — and walked back out.
“Come on, old man,” she said quietly. “Let’s see if anybody still remembers how to fix a broken thing.”
The vet clinic was twenty miles east, just past the corn silos and the church with the rotting steeple.
She hadn’t been there since Duke.
The place hadn’t changed.
Same peeling wallpaper. Same glass jar of dog biscuits on the counter. Same faint smell of antiseptic and fur.
A young woman behind the desk blinked at her.
“Martha Ellison?” the girl asked, tilting her head. “It’s been a while.”
Martha nodded. “Didn’t think I’d be back.”
The girl glanced at Bud — limp in her arms, head resting on her forearm like a child.
“I’ll get Dr. Hollis,” she said gently.
Dr. Hollis came out five minutes later.
Gray hair now. A little slower than Martha remembered, but the same steady hands.
He knelt without saying much and looked Bud over — heart, lungs, gums.
When he stood, he didn’t sugarcoat.
“He’s older than you think. Maybe ten. Lungs sound rough. Could be heartworms. Could be age. Could be both.”
Martha tightened her grip on the leash.
“Can you fix him?”
Dr. Hollis didn’t smile, but his voice softened.
“I can help him feel better. There’s medicine. Might buy him time. Might not. But it won’t hurt to try.”
She stared at Bud — still and quiet on the metal table. His eyes were open, just barely. Watching her like he was already saying goodbye.
She nodded.
“Do it.”
On the ride home, she placed the towel-wrapped pill bottle on the passenger seat.
Bud lay on the floorboard at her feet.
She drove slower than usual. Avoided the potholes.
At a red light in town, a kid on a bike passed and waved.
She didn’t wave back, but she let the window down a crack.
“Some folks get old all at once,” she murmured, looking at Bud in the mirror. “Others… slow and hard.”
That night, she added a third bowl — this one for pills crushed in broth.
Skippy sniffed it. Tried to taste.
She swatted him gently with a dishrag.
“Not for you, troublemaker.”
The Bulldog — Gramps — just sat near Bud like always. Silent. Present.
And when Bud finally took a sip, Martha exhaled for the first time all day.
Before bed, she sat beside him. Hand on his back. Blanket across her legs.
The porch was quiet. The town asleep.
She looked at the stars — soft, blurred through age and porchlight — and whispered,
“I didn’t think I could do this again. Not after Duke.”
Bud shifted in his sleep. His back leg twitched once.
“But maybe some hearts don’t break. Maybe they just… bruise for a long time.”
She reached out and smoothed the fur between his ears.
“And maybe bruises heal if someone shows up again. Quiet. Gentle. And waits.”