Page 116 of Nice Guys Don't Kiss Like That At Christmas
“I knew enough to predict exactly where you’d end up.”Chuck’s voice chills.“You have until after Christmas to decide.Consider it my gift to you.”
The call ends, leaving me standing alone beneath the clinic awning, watching the scene across the street like I’m separated from it by more than just distance.Everything I’ve come to love about this town—the community, the simplicity, the way everyone looks out for each other—suddenly feels like something I don’t deserve to be part of.
Not when I’ll inevitably bring Chuck’s poison into it.
I force myself to wave back at Adam, but I don’t cross the street.Can’t cross the street.Not when Chuck’s words are still echoing in my head.
People read headlines, not corrections.These small towns run on reputation.Do you really want to drag this veterinarian down with you?
I retreat back into the clinic, functioning on autopilot through the rest of my shift.Take vitals.Note readings.Smile at appropriate moments.But inside, my mind is racing with visions of Chuck’s podcast destroying not just my reputation, but Adam’s too.And his dad.
All the people he helped with the second chance contracts.They could lose everything, too.
Despite my shift being over by six pm, I eat a sandwich and stay an hour more.So, by the time I make it back to our room at the B&B, Adam is in the shower.
And I'm numb.
I sit on the edge of the bed, still in my coat, staring at nothing.Blanche immediately senses my mood, pressing her massive head against my knee with a concerned whine.Dorothy, less emotionally intuitive but equally determined to help, brings me a sock she definitely stole from Adam's drawer.
"Thanks, girls," I murmur, scratching Blanche's ears."Really helpful."
But as I move back into the office and the girls follow me, Dorothy whines.And that's when I notice the carrier in the corner of the room.Someone must have set it out, probably Sally trying to be helpful during cleaning.But the moment Dorothy spots it, she freezes, her body trembling.
"It's okay," I murmur, but it's too late.Dorothy starts sprinting.
Blanche immediately shifts into a mode I've never seen before, protective, alert, her massive body positioned between the carrier and Dorothy, while LoverBoy is running around without making a noise at all.Clearly, sensing the issue unfolding.Blanche paces anxiously, herding Dorothy away from the perceived threat, her movements growing increasingly agitated.
"Blanche, easy girl—"
It has to be the carrier.I should have known, when Dorothy started acting up weeks ago about it.
It looks like a tiny crate, a mini version of the one Chuck used for Blanche, even after I told him she panicked about it, even after we knew she was fine staying at home without one.Never eating anything she's not supposed to.Never having an accident inside the house (after three weeks).He told me after how Dorothy was trying to rescue Blanche from it, or begging to be in the same crate.When I came back home and realized what happened, Blanche soiled herself and took twenty-four hours to be herself again.Dorothy never left her side.
When I told Chuck, he shrugged like it was my fault.But at least he never crated them after that.And it seems right now, it's not Blanche who's worried.It's Dorothy who's worried about Blanche.Like they're truly sisters.Best friends.Bonded.Dorothy, who brings socks as thanks or some sort of canine comfort, whines and cries not in a dramatic way but in a subdued scarier way.And it has Blanche panicking.
If I move the carrier… or close the door to the bedroom, maybe it'll help.But as soon as I move, Dorothy rushes away and Blanche runs after her toward the dresser.Where the ornament is.Last time, when she got too close, it fell.
I have to protect the ornament.
I lunge forward, my bare feet against the cold hardwood.I should have worn my thermal socks.The chill makes my toes tingle then go partially numb—the familiar pins and needles of neuropathy flaring in response to the temperature drop.It's been years since treatment, but some things never fully heal.
Dorothy and Blanche suddenly halt their charge as LoverBoy appears in the doorway, but I'm already in motion.Without full sensation in my feet, I misjudge the distance, my right foot not quite landing where I thought it would.I stumble forward, clumsy and off-balance.
I hear echoes of all those well-meaning voices from my past."If you'd just stay calm, Eve.""Your anxiety isn't helping your healing process.""Maybe if you weren't so tense all the time."As if cancer was somehow my fault.As if staying alive was only a matter of the right attitude.
The voices crescendo with Chuck's – clinical, precise, crushing."You're too emotional with patients, Eve.Too clinical with me.Too much.Not enough.If you'd try harder, we wouldn't have these problems."His voice, always there when I finally thought I was doing something right, ready to point out how spectacularly wrong I was.
I grab for the dresser to steady myself, fingers clutching the edge too hard.The furniture shifts, just slightly, but enough.My heart races as I see the ornament begin to wobble.I reach for it with my other hand, but those voices make me second-guess every movement.Too fast?Too slow?Too much?Not enough?I hesitate for a split second.Long enough time for disaster.
The delicate glass hits the hardwood with a crystalline sound that seems to reverberate through my entire body.Despite all my caution, I'm still the one who broke it.
When I pick up the pieces, my blood runs cold.It's not cracked or split.Oh no, it's shattered into a dozen jagged fragments, some no bigger than splinters.The beautiful glass heart that my grandfather crafted with his arthritic hands is now nothing but dangerous shards scattered across the floor.I carefully gather what I can, the larger pieces cutting into my palm as I collect them, leaving small smears of blood on the clear fragments.I push the carrier away so that the dog hurry back to the bedroom.And I close the door leading to the living area so that the dogs don’t get their paws on it.
I stare at my trembling hands, my throat tightening painfully.This lived through everything: my grabby hands as a toddler, my first heartbreak as a teen, my cancer diagnosis, the brutal treatments, my divorce, the move to Chicago, to Pine Creek, only to be destroyed completely now when I finally found...what?Hope?A future?After surviving everything else, it broke because of me.Not because I wasn't trying hard enough, but because I was trying too hard.
From the bathroom, Adam's voice mingles with the shower spray, singing along to the loud Christmas music without a care in the world.The contrast between his joy and my devastation feels like another crack forming inside me.
I don't want him to lose everything.Because of me.
