Chapter 4: Day One

Hensley Animal Clinic sat at the end of a gravel road twenty minutes outside Cincinnati.

It had a low white building, a red barn behind it, and a sign hand-painted in green.

I arrived at seven-fifteen on my first day with a borrowed scrub top and a stomach full of nerves.

Three weeks earlier, I had cleared out my diner locker and said goodbye to Bridget at the bus station.

She had cried more than I had.

"Text me every day," she'd said. "I mean it. Every single day."

I had texted her from the bus, and from the dorm, and from the gravel lot.

Now I stood at the clinic's front desk, trying to look like someone who belonged.

"You're the Tri-State student," said the woman behind the counter, not looking up from her screen. "Ellinghaus, right?"

"Yes. I'm early."

"Good. He hates late."

"Who?"

"Dr. Hensley."

She jerked her thumb toward the hallway.

"Exam room two. He's already got a patient and he's already in a mood."

I followed the sound of a low voice and a dog's tired panting.

In exam room two, a man crouched on the floor beside an old beagle.

He was tall, with dark hair and shoulders wide enough to fill the white coat.

A pale scar ran through his left eyebrow, like a tiny road on a map.

He glanced up at me, and his eyes were a surprising, tired green.

"You're early," he said.

"I was told you like that."

"I do." He almost smiled. "Maxwell Hensley. Don't touch anything until I say."

An older man in a feed-store cap stood by the wall, twisting his hat in both hands.

The beagle lay on the steel table, his tongue lolling, his sides heaving.

"He's thirteen," the owner said. "He just gets winded now. The vet over in Hamilton told me it was age."

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Final Wish Said He Settled for Me, So Reborn, I Left from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.