10
A cold, crisp week went by, and Tucker spent every day at Avery’s house, working on the clinic—aside from a brief stint in the town’s urgent care one afternoon to make sure he was all right. Or, at least, he tried to work on the clinic. When the storm lifted, it set them all free—Shanna back to school, Avery back to making house calls all over town, and Tucker doing his best to make progress. Avery wasn’t always available to give her input, which meant he had to track her down and drag it out of her.
“Just keep it simple,” she kept saying, over and over. “Simple as you can.” Every time he asked her about a hardware-store run or a detail in the clinic, she tensed up, her shoulders rising and her face getting red. It wasn’t pleasant for either of them, so he kept to the list as much as possible.
Tucker was sad to admit it, but Old Doc Oates should have retired years ago, or at least sprung for some updated equipment for the clinic. He’d let the repairs go, for the most part. Tucker got his brothers to help with some of the broken pipes—thank god the water had been turned off in anticipation of renovations—and he’d called in a favor with a local electrician to get a new electrical panel installed and some of the wiring redone so he could finish the drywall and mud before painting.
He opened the door of the panel and surveyed the wiring, remembering how steamed Avery had been when she’d found out he paid for it. Now he presented her with each and every invoice, even though he hated how it made her clench her teeth when she thought he wasn’t looking. Avery obviously didn’t know she was cringing so outwardly at the sight of the bills.
Today, another problem had reared its head.
Her X-ray machine.
Avery had found him in the bathroom repairing some cracks in the walls.
“I can’t get the X-ray machine to work.”
He’d heard the panic in her voice and quickly set down his tools. “Do you need help?”
Avery had shaken her head. “It’s done. Dead. I even called the company to make sure. It won’t turn on, and I need it. I have to buy a new one.” Her face flushed. “How am I supposed to run the business if I can’t even take X-rays? It’s non-negotiable.” Avery bit her lip, and he wanted to fold her into his arms and hold her tight until she felt better. But the tension that took up all the extra air in the room kept him from doing it.
She’d gone out on a house call, and Tucker had found himself in front of the new electrical box.
He took out his cell phone and dialed Liam.
“You rang?” Liam chuckled on the other end of the line.
“You know people, don’t you? From all your time on the circuit. I’m sure you met tons of people every night, shaking hands after you were done riding.”
“You’ve got that right. What kind of person do you need?”
“I want to know if you know a person who owns a…” Tucker opened the door and closed it again, thinking. “Some kind of medical distributor. I need a veterinary X-ray machine.”
Liam whistled. “That’s a tall order, buddy. How do you expect me to come up with that?”
“I don’t want you to buy it. I want you to find it.” A plan was slowly forming in Tucker’s mind. “You gotta know a place. Right? Or a person who knows a place.”
“Let me call you back.”
Tucker wandered back out to the main room and started working on some trim. Of all the repairs and upkeep, it seemed Doc had cared least about things like the trim. Chunks had been taken out, and it was badly in need of paint, and Tucker had decided that it would be better just to replace it. They’d end up replacing it eventually anyway. The first step was to pull out the old trim, which had been put on decades before and stretched around every room in the office. All of it would have to come up. He’d have to destroy a little bit to make it better. It was always risky to do this—to knock something down and build anew—but it would be better in the long run. He was still working on it an hour later when Liam called back. Tucker picked up the phone with hope singing in his veins.
“You got good news for me?”
“I did some research, and I found a wholesale warehouse near Colorado Springs.” Liam read off some details about the place. “You can get a good deal on an office machine, like you mentioned, and a handheld that Avery can take with her when she goes on mobile calls. The lady over there was telling me that the set had been returned by a vet who’d gone out of business.”
“Wow, Liam. People just like to tell you things, don’t they?”
Liam laughed, but when he spoke again, his voice was solemn. “I just have good phone manners, that’s all. Anyway, they want to move the equipment quickly, so you’ll have to make a decision. And they want the entire payment up front.”
Tucker swallowed hard. “What’s the entire payment?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Jeez.”
“I know. It’s a real chunk of change. But from what the lady was telling me, and from what the Internet says, it would be a steal—and it’s practically new equipment. Avery would be set for a long time. I’m sure she’d see that.”
From the way Avery had reacted whenever he talked about the cost of the clinic renovations, Tucker was sure that she would not see that. And he was almost sure that she did not have twenty thousand dollars to cover the cost of the machine, even if it was
