Claire almost wished he had.
Almost.
The week after the follow-up, Claire tried to live like a person with a normal nervous system.
She went to work. She drafted a feature about a donor who had funded a scholarship and wanted the article to use the word "humble" seven times. She took Nash to a puppy class in a church basement that smelled like coffee and wet concrete. The instructor, a patient woman named Delia, taught sit and wait and the sacred art of not losing your mind when another puppy existed. Nash excelled at charm and failed at impulse control, which Delia said was developmentally appropriate and which Claire experienced as a personal mirror.
At night Claire lay on the rug and let Nash chew a rubber toy while she stared at the ceiling and thought about boundaries as a form of kindness. Isaiah had drawn a line. The line made him more attractive, which was rude of the line. Claire told Priya this. Priya said, "Attraction to ethics is how you know you're healing from the playlist man."
"Please."
"I'm serious. Ethan thought boundaries were a suggestion box."
On Wednesday, Harbor Night's patient portal pinged: a reminder for Nash's next vaccine window, plus a note that Dr. Voss would be on a stretch of overnights and daytime scheduling should go through the partner clinic if preferred. Claire read it twice. It felt like a door politely closing and also like someone leaving a porch light on.
She booked the partner clinic for the next shot. She told herself this was maturity.
She also, two evenings later, stood in the cereal aisle of the grocery store for an unreasonable amount of time, staring at Cheerios as if they might apologize. A toddler in the next cart screamed about cookies. Claire flinched, then laughed under her breath, then bought rice cereal instead like a coward.
Saturday morning, rain returned—steady, untheatrical. Claire took Nash to the park near the river where the paths stayed wide and the dogs practiced being public. She had a coffee in one hand and a treat pouch at her hip and the green sweater again because the green sweater had become, against her will, a confidence garment.
Isaiah Voss was there.
Not in scrubs. In a black rain jacket, dark jeans, running shoes with white soles that echoed the clinic pair without being them. He had a paper cup and the posture of a man who had just gotten off a shift and refused to go straight home to the kind of silence that turned into rumination. A black lab mix trotted at his side on a worn leash—older, calm, with a gray muzzle and the patience of a creature who had seen Isaiah through years.
They saw each other across the wet grass in the same moment. Claire's stomach did a foolish drop. Nash, sensing narrative, launched into a full-body hello that tangled the leash around Claire's knees.
Isaiah's mouth opened, closed, then settled into a careful smile. He lifted his cup in a half-salute. "Of all the cereal-free parks."
Claire untangled herself, face hot in the cool air. "I swear I'm not stalking the concept of you."
"I believe you. This is my post-overnight decompression loop. And this is Birdie." He rested a hand on the lab mix's head. "She belongs to my sister on paper. She belongs to whoever has the couch on weekends."
Birdie sniffed Nash with elder stateswoman dignity. Nash vibrated. Claire managed a sit command that worked on the third try.
"Off shift," Isaiah said, as if answering a question she hadn't asked. "Which means I'm a person in a park, not your vet in this exact minute. Still." He glanced at Nash's harness tag, then at Claire. "I should ask—how is he?"