Page 9 of Wild Then Wed
It wore on me in ways I didn’t know how to name when I was younger. The noise. The mess. The way you could never think straight because someone was always yelling down the hallway or fighting over a chair or trying to get your attention. My brain never liked that kind of thing. It still doesn’t, even at thirty-five years old.
I like order. Systems that make sense. Spaces that stay the way I left them. It’s not about perfection, necessarily—it’s about control. About knowing something in my day is going to hold up.
That’s why I built this place the way I did. I didn’t want just another clinic—I wanted something I could depend on. The layout, the materials, how everything fits together—it wasn’t random. I planned it down to the inch. Every drawer, every light switch, every line of sight from one room to the next. It needed to feel solid. And I didn’t want it in Summit Springs.
Bozeman’s not that far, but it’s far enough. Out here, people know me as a vet. That’s it. They don’t know about Julia. Or Violet. Or the lavender-painted room I locked up and never went back into. They don’t lower their voices when I walk in. They don’t look at me like I’m going to fall apart if someone says her name.
My mom—she gets this soft look in her eyes sometimes when I talk, like she’s holding back everything she really wants to say. My siblings change the subject when anything drifts too close to Julia or Violet. Even my niece, Nora, at five years old, reads the room better than most adults I know.
And I don’t blame them.
But I needed space from it. From them. From the version of me they all remember from almost five years ago and aren’t sure what to do with now.
So I leaned into what’s always made more sense to me anyway—animals.
I’ve always liked animals more than people. They don’t lie. They don’t pretend they’re fine when they’re not. You show up the right way, you earn their trust, and if you don’t—they let you know. There’s something about that sort of honesty that’s hard to come by.
I was eight when one of our calves got caught in barbed wire and split its leg open real bad. Everyone else panicked. I didn’t. I knelt next to it while my dad cut the wire, kept pressure on the wound with my T-shirt until the bleeding slowed. Stayed there until the vet arrived. He said I had a steady hand for a kid. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But later, when the calf made it—when I saw it get back on its feet like it hadn’t almost died right there in the dirt—I felt something I hadn’t before.
Like maybe I was good at something that mattered.
A few years later, one of our dogs—Willow—got sick. Stopped eating, lost weight fast. I told my mom something was wrong, but nobody listened. Said she was just getting old. She died two weeks later, and I still remember the way her body felt when I picked her up to bury her. I remember how the heat from her body was gone. And I remember thinking, if I’d known more, maybe I could’ve done something.
That’s when I started reading. Not books for school—books about animals. Health. Signs. Prevention. I wasn’t looking for a career back then. Just trying to make sure I never missed something like that again.
Vet school came later. After I tried a semester of engineering and hated every second of it. Walked out of a lecture one day, switched majors that afternoon, and never looked back.
It’s not that I love the science. I don’t wake up excited to run bloodwork or clip nails. I just like being the one people call when their animal’s in trouble, or when something’s wrong and they don’t know what to do.
It’s not flashy. It’s not always comfortable. In fact, it rarely is. But it matters.
The door opens with a gust of wind and the sound of boots dragging across the tile.
“Why,” Jenna says loudly, her voice half-muffled by her scarf, “do we live in a place where the air hurts your face?”
She’s wrapped in what has to be three scarves, a jacket that could pass for tactical gear, and fingerless gloves, which seems pointless. There’s an apple in her hand, half-eaten. Her hair is lavender this month, twisted up in a knot on top of her head. She’s got a silver nose ring, winged eyeliner, and despite looking like she just fought through a blizzard, she’s somehow still put together. Polished, even.
She sinks into her chair behind the desk with a dramatic groan and sets the apple down. “I need you to tell me, Sawyer. Remind me why the hell we live here.”
“Good land. Cheap beer.”
She lets out a humorless laugh and drops her forehead onto the desk. “You forgot to mention snow eight months of the year and windburn in places windburn shouldn’t reach.”
“Perks of mountain living.”
“Should’ve taken my ex up on that offer to move to Phoenix.”
“You’d melt.”
“Yeah, but at least I’d go out with a tan.”
I glance over just as she peels off her gloves. Skeleton hands on black fabric. Fitting.
“You see Mrs. Patterson again?” she asks, sitting upright and spinning her chair halfway toward me.
“Yeah. Bubbles blinked too slow this morning, so naturally she assumed the worst.”
Jenna snorts and shakes her head, pulling her tablet toward her. “That cat’s been dying for, what? Five years now?”
