"He's been practicing being alive," Claire said, and hated how soft she sounded.
Isaiah stood. Tonight's scrubs were the same navy. The blue-tubed stethoscope. A tiredness around his eyes that midnight had hidden better. "Come on back. We'll do vitals, go over the vaccine schedule, and talk about what 'normal dramatic puppy' looks like so the next Cheerio doesn't send you into cardiac events."
"Please never say Cheerio in a medical tone again."
"I'll put it in the chart as 'food debris' forever," he promised, and the almost-smile returned.
In the exam room he was all competence. Weight. Heart. Lungs. Temperature. He explained core vaccines like a person who respected both science and the fact that owners heard science through fear. He showed Claire how to check Nash's paws without turning it into a wrestling match. When Nash nipped playfully at the treat bag, Isaiah redirected with a calm that made Claire want to take notes on how to be a person.
"You're good at this," she said, then immediately wanted to swallow the sentence.
Isaiah glanced up. "At vaccines?"
"At making it feel less like I'm failing a class I didn't know I enrolled in."
He considered that. "New puppy ownership is a class with pop quizzes at 2 a.m. and no syllabus. You're doing better than you think. The cereal night wasn't failure. It was information plus adrenaline."
Claire scratched Nash's shoulder. "My roommate says I have a crush on the concept of being reassured."
"Your roommate sounds dangerous."
"She is." Claire hesitated. The fluorescent light hummed. "Is it weird that I scheduled here instead of a regular clinic?"
Isaiah's hands stilled on the chart tablet for half a second—long enough for Claire to see the boundary rise behind his eyes, not cold, just real. "It's not weird to want continuity after a scare. It is... something I have to be careful with." He met her gaze. "I can be your vet for this visit. I can't be—anything else—while you're on my board. Hospital policy, and also my own. I don't date clients. Not casually. Not as a cute story. It gets messy for the animal fast."
The honesty landed clean. Claire felt her face heat, but not with the same shame as the cereal. This was adult heat: the flush of being taken seriously enough to be refused carefully.
"I wasn't—" she started, then stopped, because she had been, a little. "Okay. Thank you for saying it without making me feel like a joke."
"You're not a joke." Isaiah's voice softened without losing the line. "For what it's worth, the judgment comment the other night was... warmer than my usual discharge script. I'm human. I'm also on shift until eleven, and Gwen will murder me with a stylus if I linger."
Claire laughed, small. "Gwen sounds like my Priya."
"Gwen is everyone's Priya, but with access to controlled substances and the schedule."
He printed a vaccine calendar, highlighted dates, and wrote his work email for medical questions only, saying the last three words with a half-apologetic clarity that somehow made Claire respect him more. At the door of the exam room, Nash strained toward Isaiah again. Isaiah offered two fingers for a goodbye lick and did not make a speech about excellent judgment.