“Mine is working.” He urged her back into the apartment and by the time she’d closed the door he already had his phone in his hand. “Do you have the number of your vet?”
She was on her knees next to Valentine. “It’s in my phone, and my phone is dead—”
“Tell me the name.”
She tried to concentrate. To focus. Her mind was blank. “It’s the same one Fliss uses. She recommended them.”
He dialed. “Fliss? I need the number of your vet.” His voice was clipped. There were no traces of his usual light banter. “No—it’s Valentine.” There was a pause. “Yeah, that’s right… Not right now, but if we need you I’ll call.” He ended the call and dialed another number. While he waited for them to answer, he looked at Molly. “Grab a jacket, and your keys.”
She kept her hand on Valentine’s head. “I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Molly.” His tone was firm, cutting through her panic. “Jacket and keys.”
She stood up, following orders on automatic, awful scenarios raining down on her. In the background she could hear Daniel talking to the vet.
By the time he finished the call, she was almost hyperventilating.
“What if he—” She couldn’t even say the word. “I don’t want to lose him.”
“You’re not going to lose him. That isn’t going to happen.” Daniel dropped to his haunches next to Valentine and put his hand on the dog’s head. Valentine barely stirred. “They’re sending the animal ambulance. They’re on their way.”
“How do we get him to the ambulance?” She couldn’t remember where she’d put her keys. In her purse? On the table? She couldn’t think. They had to get Valentine to the vet, fast. But what if they couldn’t do anything?
“Keys,” Daniel said gently. “They’re on the kitchen counter.”
She found them and dropped them in her pocket, her fingers shaky and useless. “I can lift him, but I don’t think I can carry him down the stairs. He’s too heavy for me.”
“I can carry him, but I don’t want to hurt him so get me a large towel. Something I can wrap around him.”
He had taken control and she was glad about that because she wasn’t capable of focusing on what needed to be done. The only thing in her mind was what she’d do if she lost Valentine. He was her best friend.
She looked at Daniel properly for the first time since he’d walked into her apartment and realized he must have come straight from the office. “You can’t carry my dog. You’re wearing a suit—”
“Molly,” he said, his voice patient, “grab me a towel. And watch out for the ambulance.”
She found a towel and helped Daniel wrap it around Valentine. Then he scooped him up, talking to him the whole time, about how he’d soon be feeling better, about how he’d be back in the park playing with Brutus in no time.
Molly hoped he was right.
She followed him out of the apartment, watching anxiously as Daniel carried Valentine carefully down the stairs.
“Call my sisters and ask them again if there is any possibility he could have eaten something in the park when he was with them. The vet said it would be useful to know. My phone is in my pocket.”
“It didn’t happen with them, it happened with me.” Her stomach gave a sickening lurch. “I took him for a quick walk somewhere different this morning.”
“Somewhere different?”
“Not our usual place.”
Our usual place. It sounded intimate, as if they’d been meeting in the park for months, not weeks.
She waited for him to ask why she’d taken Valentine to a different place, but he didn’t. Probably because he already knew the answer to that one.
She’d been avoiding him.
“And he could he have eaten something then?”
She thought about how distracted she’d been. “Yes,” she said miserably. “I don’t know that part of the park very well. He could have found something.”