He Missed My Emergency To Deliver Her Dog’s Puppies Chapter 10

He Missed My Emergency To Deliver Her Dog’s Puppies Chapter 10

By the time the divorce settlement landed in my account, I was already stationed in a war zone.

Brenda wasn’t wrong. It was dangerous.

I’d seen footage online. Everyone had.

But being there was something else entirely.

People here lived second to second. Any moment could take their homes. Their lives.

Or the people they loved most.

All I could do was my job. Get the truth out past the media blackouts. Make sure the world heard these people. Make sure someone, somewhere, paid attention.

Some days that meant helping carry the wounded.

Other days, it meant sitting with the orphans. Kids who had never known anything but war, who had never seen the outside world. I’d tell them what was out there.

Stay alive, I told them. As long as you’re breathing, there’s still a way out.

Maybe it was because death was so close. But the people here held on to life harder than anyone I’d ever met.

No matter how bad it got, they fought to make each day count.

Their resilience seeped into me. The grief I carried, the wounds I thought would never close, began to ease, slowly, in the face of so much larger suffering.

Then one day, a colleague told me someone was outside asking for me.

I already knew.

I pushed through the tent flap and there he was.

Julian. Standing there with a suitcase, looking at me like I was the only thing left in the world.

Our outpost was remote. Middle of nowhere.

I had no idea how he’d found it.

The man who couldn’t touch a doorknob without sanitizing it. Who always looked like he’d stepped out of a catalog.

Now his clothes were caked in dust. His hair was singed at the ends, his jaw rough with stubble.

The coat that had once fit him perfectly hung loose on his frame.

When he saw me, his whole body sagged with relief. Then his face lit up with raw, desperate joy.

He reached for my hand. Stopped himself.

“Clara. You’re alive. Thank God, you’re alive.”

“They told me there’d been a bombing yesterday. That people died. I was out of my mind…”

“I know everything now. The baby. Your parents. I was a monster, Clara. I failed you. Please come back with me. It’s too dangerous here.”

I looked at him. Felt nothing.

“We’re divorced, Julian. Who are you to ask me to go anywhere?”

“And what makes you think I’d throw away my career a second time to go back to taking care of you?”

“I love what I do now. For the first time in years, my life means something beyond what some man thinks of me. I’m not going with you. Go home.”

He dropped his gaze.

“I know. I know what you gave up.”

“I never loved her. I just… when I looked at her, I saw who you used to be. That fire you had. I was chasing a version of you that I destroyed. I know how stupid that sounds.”

I laughed. It came out sharp and hollow.

“Chasing what I used to be. So you did remember. You knew exactly who I was before you buried me. You locked me down in the name of love and family, and you watched that fire go out.”

“I never regretted choosing you. Not once. But when I found what you wrote on that envelope—I’d clear every obstacle for your dream—that’s when I understood. You knew how to protect someone’s dream. You chose to protect hers and crush mine. And you slept fine at night.”

“Stop making excuses. You wanted it all, a wife at home and a woman on the side, and you got people killed. My baby is gone. My parents are gone. There is nothing you can say that will ever make that okay.

“One piece of advice. It drops below freezing here at night, and there’s no spare bed for you. If you don’t want to freeze to death, turn around and go home. And stay away from me.”

I turned and walked back into the tent without looking at him again.

Through the canvas, I could hear him crying.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Clara. I know that. I just… I want to try to make something right.”

He didn’t leave.

He set up his own tent and stayed. Worked as a field medic, treating the wounded.

He never came to me. Never tried to talk. But every morning when I stepped out, there was a thermos sitting by the tent flap.

Packed with hot food. Every single day.

I never touched it. Gave it away every time.

We existed like that. Side by side and a thousand miles apart.

Then came the day I was photographing a little girl.

The sky tore open with a sound I’ll never forget.

“Clara!”

Something hit me from the side and sent me flying.

The blast roared through my skull. Something warm dripped onto my neck. One drop. Then another.

Julian died.

He’d shoved me out of the way. The shrapnel took him instead.

Underneath him, the little girl. Untouched.

I didn’t know what I felt. I still don’t.

Three years later, the station sent someone to take over my post.

I’d worked my way up to deputy bureau chief.

Before I left, I visited Julian’s grave. I placed a paper daisy in front of the headstone.

“There aren’t many flowers out here. The little girl you saved made this for you. She wanted you to have it. Thank you for saving her.”

“I can’t forgive you for the baby. Or for my parents. Some things can never be undone. But as for what you owed me, we’re even now. You paid it. We don’t owe each other anything anymore.”

“I’m leaving now. Goodbye, Julian.”

—The End—