Chapter 9
“Brutus, off! *Los!*” Cyrus roared the Dutch release command Jarek had taught him.
The dog flinched, obeying the command by stepping back three inches, but his amber eyes stayed fixed on Jarek’s chest, his front paws shivering, a desperate, keening wail tearing out of his throat.
“Help me, Brute,” Cyrus choked out, grabbing Jarek by the heavy canvas collar of his field jacket. “Help me get him inside!”
Jarek was dead weight—six feet two inches of conditioned muscle, limp and suffocating on his own blood.
Cyrus hauled backward with every ounce of strength he possessed, his boots sliding against the hidden ice beneath the snow. Brutus immediately grabbed the cuff of Jarek’s right sleeve between his teeth, leaning back on his massive haunches, pulling in perfect synchronization with Cyrus.
Together, man and dog dragged Jarek Miller through the blinding drift, over the threshold, and slammed the heavy clinic door shut against the screaming storm.
***
The quiet of the clinic was deafening after the roar of the blizzard.
The warm air in the surgical prep room smelled of disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, and now, the sharp, overwhelming copper stench of fresh blood.
Cyrus hauled Jarek onto the rubber floor mat beside the hydraulic surgery table.
Jarek’s head rolled to the side, another gush of dark, clot-heavy blood spilling from the corner of his lips onto the gray rubber. His breathing was a horrific, bubbling gurgle—a tension pneumothorax or massive bronchial rupture. His pulse at the carotid was thready, leaping at over one hundred and forty beats per minute.
“Hang on, damn you,” Cyrus sobbed, his hands slick with Jarek’s blood. “You don’t get to kiss me like that and die in my floor. You hear me, Jarek? You don’t get to leave!”
Cyrus lunged toward the stainless-steel instrument cart, snatching a pair of heavy German trauma shears and his Littmann cardiology stethoscope.
He dropped back to his knees beside Jarek’s limp body.
Brutus was right there. The dog had wedged his entire front torso over Jarek’s hips, his wet nose shoving hard against Jarek’s ribs, whining that same high, reedy SOS. The dog’s amber eyes flicked to Cyrus’s hands, then down to Jarek’s coat, nudging Jarek’s breast pocket with frantic, violent thrusts of his snout.
“I’m helping him, boy! Move!” Cyrus yelled, his voice cracking with pure terror.
Cyrus shoved the blunt tip of the trauma shears into the collar of Jarek’s soaked field jacket.
With three savage cuts, Cyrus sheared through the heavy waxed canvas, slicing straight down the center line. He cut through the wet wool chore coat underneath, then ripped open the gray waffle-knit henley, exposing Jarek’s bare, shivering chest to the bright fluorescent lights of the prep room.
What Cyrus saw made his breath stop dead in his throat.
Jarek’s chest was not the chest of a healthy thirty-eight-year-old veteran.
His left pectoral was severely wasted, the muscle sunken and atrophied beneath the skin. Along the left ribcage, tracing the curve of the sixth intercostal space, was a jagged, eight-inch surgical scar—a radical thoracotomy scar that looked barely six months healed. Surrounding the scar were the telltale, faint purple crosshairs of targeted radiation therapy tattoos, permanently inked into the pale skin.
Cyrus’s hands began to shake with an uncontrollable, violent tremor.
*Radiation tattoos. Thoracic entry.*
“No,” Cyrus whispered, his medical knowledge screaming through the fog of shock. “No, no, Jarek...”
As Cyrus pulled the sheared layers of heavy canvas and wool away to place the stethoscope against Jarek’s struggling ribs, the heavy left interior pocket of the field coat fell open.
A thick, legal-sized packet—sealed inside a heavy, transparent waterproof military zip-pouch—slipped out from against Jarek’s ribs and landed with a wet slap against the bloody rubber floor.
Brutus didn't whine.
The Malinois stepped forward, lowered his head, and pressed the tip of his nose directly onto the clear plastic envelope. Then, the dog slowly raised his head.
His deep amber eyes locked straight onto Cyrus’s face with a heavy, piercing, almost human intelligence—an unblinking, agonized stare that felt like an indictment and a plea all at once.
Cyrus’s fingers were coated in Jarek’s warm blood as he reached down and picked up the pouch.
Inside was a folded, multi-page Department of Veterans Affairs medical dossier.
Cyrus pulled the damp papers out, his hands trembling so violently he nearly tore the cardstock. He clicked his diagnostic penlight on, the narrow beam of white light cutting across the first page.
Stamped across the header in bold, permanent red ink were words that struck Cyrus like a physical blow to the sternum:
**DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS MEDICAL CENTER — SPOKANE ONCOLOGY DIVISION** **CLASSIFICATION: PALLIATIVE MEDICAL DISCHARGE** **PRIMARY DIAGNOSIS: ADVANCED THORACIC NEUROENDOCRINE CARCINOMA (STAGE IV - UNRESECTABLE)** **PROGNOSIS: RAPID TERMINAL DECLINE — PALLIATIVE HOSPICE PROTOCOL ONLY** **ESTIMATED SURVIVAL: 3–6 MONTHS**
Cyrus couldn't breathe. The prep room tilted on its axis, the hum of the fluorescent tubes turning into a high, deafening shriek in his ears.
Every phantom visit.
Every invented limp.
The questions about the six-foot fence.
The questions about the generator, the woodstove, the deed to the farmhouse.
The sealed custody agreement naming Cyrus as the sole guardian.
*He was never courting me,* the realization tore through Cyrus’s mind like shrapnel, shredding every tender memory of the past four months into bloody ribbons. *He wasn't falling in love. He was dying. He was auditioning me to take his dog before he died alone in the snow.*
Cyrus looked down at Jarek’s pale, slack face—at the dark blood still bubbling against his chapped lips, at the mouth that had kissed him with such desperate, starving passion in the generator shed barely twenty minutes ago.
Then, Cyrus looked at Brutus.
The retired combat dog was sitting completely upright beside Jarek’s bleeding head. His black-masked face was steady, his tail motionless against the floor. The dog wasn't checking Jarek’s chest anymore.
Brutus was looking directly into Cyrus’s eyes, holding Cyrus’s shattered gaze with an intensity so profound, so deliberate, that the breath died in Cyrus’s throat.
The dog didn't look confused. He looked like a sentry who had finally completed an impossible mission—his eyes steady, sorrowful, and demanding, fixing Cyrus to the spot as if speaking straight into his soul:
*Now do you see?* *Now do you see what I brought you to fix?*
