The Last Call

The phone started ringing at 2:47 AM, that shrill electronic trill that never brought good news. Sarah stared at the ceiling, counting the rings—four, five, six—before her hand moved on automatic. The extension cord she'd draped across the bedroom floor caught her ankle, sending her stumbling against the doorframe.

"Sarah?" Mark's voice cracked through the static of the long-distance cable connection. "It's Bruno. He's gone."

"Gone?" The word hung in the air like smoke. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Put down tonight. Cancer. They found it last week, but... it was everywhere."

Sarah sank to the floor, her back against the cold wall. Bruno—the golden retriever who'd greeted her every day for twelve years, who'd slept beside her through divorce and layoffs and those long, dark Decembers after her mother died. Her dog. Her friend.

"I didn't want to tell you," Mark continued, "but you'd have killed me if you found out later. You said your goodbyes last month, but..."

But she hadn't. She'd visited, hugged Bruno's massive frame, buried her face in his fur, but she hadn't stayed. She'd had a flight to catch, a merger to finalize, some urgent business that now seemed ludicrously unimportant.

"I'm coming up," she said, already reaching for her overnight bag.

"Sarah, it's three in the morning—"

"I'm running to the car right now. Don't argue with me."

The drive took four hours. The sky was just beginning to lighten when she pulled into Mark's driveway, her sedan crunching over the gravel. The morning air bit at her exposed neck, but she barely felt it. Mark was waiting on the porch, coffee mug in hand, looking older than his thirty-five years.

They buried Bruno under the old oak tree where he'd spent countless afternoons napping. The ground was still frozen from the previous night's frost, making the work slow and difficult. Mark dug while Sarah held the cardboard box, her fingers tracing the word "Bruno" she'd written on the lid in permanent marker three years ago, when he'd still been a puppy and she'd foolishly thought he'd live forever.

Afterward, they sat on the porch sharing the coffee. The sun rose properly now, painting the sky in shades of rose and gold that felt like some cosmic joke.

"You know," Mark said softly, "he waited for you. Every day at four, like clockwork. Even after you moved to the city."

Sarah felt something break inside her chest, something that had been held together by denial and distance. "I should have visited more."

"We all should have done a lot of things."

They sat in silence as the morning wore on, two friends bound by grief and the realization that some chances, once missed, never come back around. The coffee went cold in their hands, and somewhere in the distance, a neighbor's dog began to bark—a sound that would never come from this yard again.