PART 7 — The Sickness She Carried
The first time Button didn’t stand when Jeremy called, Cliff thought she was just tired.
The second time, she stumbled.
By the third, she wouldn’t eat.
It started with little things. Button slept longer during the day. Her tail wagged slower. She didn’t follow Jeremy from room to room like she used to. Cliff noticed the slight tremble in her back legs, the way she braced herself before sitting down. She was still gentle, still alert—but something inside her was dimming.
Rachel Flint took her to the vet on a Tuesday.
By Thursday, the diagnosis came back.
Lymphoma. Stage III.
Slow but steady. Treatable, but not curable.
Jeremy sat on the floor beside her, his small hands gripping her fur tighter than ever.
Rachel tried to explain it to him in words she thought a child could hold.
“She’s sick,” she said softly. “Not in a way we can fix. But we can help her feel better, for a little while.”
Jeremy didn’t cry. He didn’t speak.
He just laid down beside Button and didn’t move.
Cliff found out during his shift.
Rachel cornered him near the cafeteria loading dock. She was pale and shaking, like she hadn’t slept in days.
“I can’t do this alone,” she said. “He needs someone who’s been through this.”
Cliff looked at her. The way she was gripping the sleeves of her coat. The rawness behind her voice.
He nodded.
“I’ll talk to him.”
That night, Jeremy and Cliff sat on the back steps behind the gym, Button’s head resting on the boy’s lap. The sky above them was clear and black, full of brittle stars that looked close enough to touch but would never come down.
Cliff cleared his throat.
“First dog I ever loved was a mutt named Rusty,” he said. “Mean little thing. Bit my cousin and chewed through two fences. But he’d lie across my chest at night like I was the only thing in the world worth protecting.”
Jeremy didn’t respond.
“I lost him when I was fifteen. Thought the world would end.”
He looked down at Button.
“Then I met her. And somehow, she made me think maybe it hadn’t ended after all.”
Jeremy’s voice was barely a whisper.
“She’s not dying.”
Cliff nodded slowly. “Not today.”
Jeremy’s eyes filled. “But soon?”
Cliff hesitated. Then said the only honest thing he could.
“I don’t know when. But yeah… it’s coming.”
The boy looked away.
Cliff took the bell from his belt. Unclipped it. Held it out in his hand.
“You know why I wore this all those years?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“So she’d know it was me,” Cliff said. “So she wouldn’t be afraid.”
He pressed the bell into Jeremy’s palm.
“Now it’s yours.”
The next morning, Button followed Jeremy through the front doors of the school, her pace slower, but her eyes bright.
The bell jingled from the boy’s belt loop.
Students paused. Teachers watched.
Cliff stood near the mop closet and nodded once.
Jeremy nodded back.
The quiet didn’t last long.
Just before noon, a man showed up at the front desk.
Tall, lean, dark-skinned with sharp gray eyes and a slow limp in his left leg.
Said his name was Tobias Greer.
Said he’d come to find Cliff Rowley.
The office buzzed him in.
Cliff was in the hallway when he saw the man.
They stared at each other a moment.
Then Tobias said, “You still got that damn bell?”
Cliff’s lips twitched. “Kid’s wearing it now.”
Tobias chuckled. “Figures.”
They clasped hands. A quiet, weathered shake.
Two men with the same ghosts.
Over bad coffee in the breakroom, Tobias filled in the blanks.
“I stayed in the program two more years after you left,” he said. “Heard about Sally—‘Button,’ I guess now. She got placed twice. Didn’t stick. They thought she was burnt out. Said she didn’t bond anymore.”
Cliff looked down.
“She did,” he said. “Just not with them.”
Tobias raised an eyebrow. “With you?”
Cliff nodded once.
Tobias leaned back. “You always did get the broken ones to listen.”
Cliff smiled faintly. “Takes one to know one.”
As Tobias left, he paused near the front steps where Jeremy and Button were sitting, reading a book together. Jeremy looked up briefly, then back down. Button didn’t stir.
“She’s not got much time, does she?” Tobias asked.
“No.”
Tobias shook his head. “Sometimes they come into our lives to teach us how to leave. And sometimes… to teach us how to stay.”
Cliff didn’t answer.
He just watched the boy stroke the dog’s ears, slow and soft, like it was the only language he needed to speak.
