The Dogs Outside

“Sometimes love means staying close—other times it means being dragged outside with the dogs while the person you’d die for screams behind canvas.”

Glenda's exclamation cut through the thick air the moment we crested the rise and came into view of the camp. Her voice, sharp and threaded with alarm, carried further than I wanted, but it was the urgency in her tone that sank its claws into me.

"Oh my God!" she cried, eyes locked on the half-collapsed frame of canvas and poles that leaned awkwardly in the dirt. "He's not trapped under there, is he!?"

The words hit me like a fist to the sternum, a sudden flare of panic that made my chest seize. For one dizzying second, I actually imagined it—Jamie's fragile body buried beneath splintered poles, his last breath stolen not by fever but by structural failure, by my own negligence in leaving him here without proper shelter, without protection.

The image was grotesque and absurd, born of exhaustion and the paranoid catastrophising that had become my default setting. But it clung to me all the same, that flash of horror, before reason caught up and reminded me which tent was which. My jaw tightened, teeth grinding, as my gaze snapped to Paul.

His laugh—light, careless—was like sandpaper dragged across raw skin. He thought this was amusing. My brother, standing there with mirth bleeding through, when Jamie lay weak and possibly dying only metres away. The incongruence of it made my blood rise, made me want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he understood that nothing about this situation was funny.

I shot him a glare so sharp it could have drawn blood. If looks could silence, I would have stripped the laugh straight from his throat.

"Oh, no. He's in the fully built tent," Paul explained, still half-smiling as he gestured towards the intact shelter. His words soothed Glenda but did little to calm the storm inside me.

"Thank God," she murmured, her shoulders dipping as she exhaled relief, her focus already shifting to the task ahead.

"That one is just my attempt to put a tent up by myself," Paul added, throwing in a note of self-deprecation as if that excused the interruption, the mockery.

"Oh, I see," Glenda responded, her tone clipped, her eyes already narrowing towards the place where Jamie waited.

I had no patience for further detours. Urgency spurred me forward, every step driven by the drumbeat of fear hammering through me. We'd wasted enough time already—the bank, the groceries, the careful orchestration of Glenda's recruitment. Every minute had been necessary, every task unavoidable, and yet the accumulated weight of all those minutes now pressed against me with accusatory force. What if we were too late? What if, whilst I'd been counting out cash and signing for deliveries, Jamie had slipped past the point of saving?

Reaching the tent, I seized the front flap, pulling it back with more force than finesse, holding it wide so Glenda and Paul could enter.

The moment the flap lifted, the dim interior greeted us—a space thick with the scent of earth and damp fabric and something else, something faintly sour that I recognised as the smell of sickness. Shadows stretched long across the groundsheet, the afternoon light filtering through canvas that had never been designed for this kind of purpose. The air was heavy, stifling, almost oppressive, as though it absorbed the anxiety pouring from me and reflected it back in kind.

My chest tightened, the gravity of what we were about to face pressing down with full force. Somewhere in that dimness, Jamie lay waiting, and the thought twisted me inside out: the man who had hurt me more deeply than anyone else, and yet the man I could never stop fighting for.

"Jamie?" My voice slipped into the dimness of the tent, gentle and uncertain, as though afraid that even the syllables might disturb him too harshly. It was a soft intrusion into the hush that pressed against us, the kind of silence that feels alive with its own dread.

No answer. Only the ragged sound of our breaths, three against one, all pulled tight by the weight of anticipation. My pulse thudded in my ears, louder than it should have been, as though my body already knew what my mind resisted.

Then my eyes found him.

Jamie lay on the mattress, his frame slack. The blanket had been drawn to his waist with a kind of careful reverence—Paul's work, probably, an attempt to preserve some dignity whilst Jamie sweated through his fever. The arrangement exposed the torso I had once traced with tenderness, had pressed my lips against in moments of intimacy that now felt like they belonged to a different lifetime.

Now, that same body was marred by a swollen welt, angry and infected, the skin discoloured in shades of red and purple that spoke of things going wrong beneath the surface. It was more than an injury—it was a brutal emblem of his fragility, of how easily a body could be undone in this place where we had no hospitals, no antibiotics, no safety net of any kind.

The sight hit me like a blade. My chest seized, as though all the air had been stolen at once. He looked so small, so diminished, so unlike the man who had once stood beside me with laughter on his lips and defiance in his eyes. The pang was sharp and merciless.

For a fleeting instant, it didn't matter what he had done to me, what betrayal had shattered us—he was Jamie, mine, and he was suffering. The anger I'd been nursing, the hurt that had made me shove him in the desert, the bitter satisfaction I'd felt when he fell—all of it receded like a tide pulling back from the shore, leaving only the raw bedrock of love beneath.

Glenda moved with no hesitation, her years of practice igniting like a spark. She dropped to her knees beside him, her hands steady, her gaze narrowed with clinical focus. She was all purpose, no panic, yet the tightness in her voice betrayed the weight of what she saw.

"He's not good. Not good at all," she said, the words blunt and grave, each syllable landing like a hammer blow. Her eyes scanned Jamie's chest with a rapidity born of experience, cataloguing the signs of fever, infection, weakness.

I'd known it would be bad. I'd braced myself for bad. But hearing it spoken aloud, confirmed by a professional who had seen countless patients in countless conditions—that made it real in a way my own fears hadn't.

"What happened here?" she demanded, her question fired directly at me.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came. My throat constricted, the answer caught in some internal stranglehold. A hundred words jostled for space, but all of them dissolved into silence.

How could I explain? That Jamie had been burned by a hot coal—but that wasn't the real problem? That the wound had seemed to be healing until I'd pushed him, until my anger had overtaken my judgment, until the fall had torn everything open again? That the infection spreading through his chest was as much my fault as anyone's?

To admit aloud what had happened felt too much like surrender, too much like a confession of guilt I wasn't ready to face.

Paul's voice filled the void, steady, as though he sensed the paralysis gripping me. "A hot coal struck him in the middle of the night," he said simply, the brevity of the explanation shielding the chaos of how it had unfolded.

Relief flooded me, fragile and bittersweet. I caught his eye and gave the smallest nod, gratitude weaving itself into the complicated tangle of my feelings. I was thankful, yes, but I hated that I needed rescuing from words I should have been able to speak myself. Hated that Paul was covering for me, smoothing over the jagged edges of a story that had far more teeth than he was revealing.

Glenda's gaze flickered between Paul and Jamie, her brow creasing as she tried to reconcile the strangeness of it. A hot coal in the middle of the night—it sounded almost biblical, some Old Testament punishment visited upon a sinner in the darkness. Her expression was caught between disbelief and alarm, as though she wanted to ask more but knew time was slipping through her fingers.

"It's a long story," Paul added, his tone carrying the weight of all the things better left unsaid for now.

"Later, then," Glenda replied, her voice firm, her attention snapping back to Jamie with resolute focus. Whatever questions she had would wait. The present demanded her entirely.

Inside me, the storm raged unchecked. My emotions collided like tectonic plates grinding against each other—fear, regret, love, anger, all tangled and indistinguishable. My gaze clung to Jamie's pale, sweat-sheened skin, to the shallow rise and fall of his chest, to the way his eyelids flickered with dreams or delirium.

I couldn't look away. Couldn't stop cataloguing every detail of his suffering, as though by witnessing it I could somehow share the burden, somehow absorb some of his pain into my own body.

Until I could no longer bear it.

I turned away, and in that turning, a single tear betrayed me, slipping free and carving a line down my cheek.

It was silent, unseen by most, but it spoke louder than words. No matter what hurt he had inflicted on me, no matter how deep the fracture in our trust, the thought of losing him hollowed me out. He was the axis around which my heart still turned, even broken.

Regret gnawed at me, sharp as broken glass. The memory of my earlier thoughts—those cruel, unspoken wishes that he might simply slip away, that death might solve the problem of what to do about his betrayal—rose up to condemn me. I hated myself for them. That wasn't me. That wasn't who I was.

I wish I could take them back.

I am not a man who lets the person he loves die.

The silent chastisement coiled deep within, a vow to myself. Jamie's betrayal had wounded me, yes, but it had not erased my core. Compassion still burned at my centre, and it demanded action now, not bitterness.

"I need a cloth," Glenda's request jolted me back into the present, her voice clean and commanding. For a heartbeat I froze, disoriented, torn between my racing emotions and the stark practicality of her demand.

My eyes snapped to Paul, wide, imploring, as though he might somehow conjure what we lacked. Inside, my mind reeled, screaming silent panic. We don't have cloths. We don't have bandages, disinfectant, gauze—nothing.

The reality hit me with brutal force: for all the risks I had taken to bring her here, we had no means to equip her. What use was a doctor without tools? The thought clawed at me, merciless, dragging guilt in its wake. I'd been so focused on getting Glenda through the Portal, so consumed with the logistics of recruitment and secrecy, that I hadn't thought to gather medical supplies first.

Shelving. I'd brought shelving. Boxes of metal brackets and wooden boards for sheds that didn't exist yet, whilst Jamie lay here without so much as a sterile bandage.

Jamie lay there slipping further into fever, and I had failed even to prepare for this most basic need.

And yet, before that failure could swallow me whole, Paul moved. His hand came down on my shoulder—a simple gesture, but one that steadied me more than I cared to admit. His voice was low, grounding, resolute. "I got this."

I turned just in time to see him digging into his bag, his expression set with quiet determination. From its depths he pulled a fresh t-shirt, folded neatly, its cotton still carrying the faint scent of sun and soap. It was a makeshift solution, humble and inadequate, yet there was something deeply sincere in the offering.

"It's clean. It's all we have," Paul said, holding it out with a mix of apology and resolve. For once, his pragmatism did not irritate me—it humbled me. He was doing what I could not, bridging the gap between need and nothingness.

Glenda took in the gesture, her brow furrowing, her eyes swinging toward me. "Seriously?" The single word carried disbelief, tinged with the incredulity of a professional who had spent her life surrounded by sterile packs and shelves of supplies.

Her gaze locked with mine, searching, testing. For a moment, the weight of her scrutiny pressed down, demanding that I justify how unprepared we were. My shoulders sagged, helpless. All I could offer was truth.

I shrugged, my voice breaking soft and low. "I'm sorry, Glenda."

The apology lingered in the air, fragile but sincere. It was not just for her, but for Jamie, for Paul, for all of us forced to scrape survival out of nothing. My heart felt leaden with the knowledge of how little I had brought them, how easily all of this could unravel.

Yet when Glenda took the t-shirt, folding it swiftly into utility, I felt something stir in me that cut through the despair. It wasn't only her competence—it was the quiet compassion that underpinned it. She hadn't balked or berated; she had accepted, adapted, carried on.

Watching her kneel beside Jamie, her hands steady despite the absurdity of the tools she had been given, moved me more than I expected.

It was humbling, even beautiful, in its way. This woman had stepped into our chaos, met it head-on, and bent herself to its limits without complaint. In that dim tent, the flickering half-light playing over her tired yet resolute face, I saw more than a doctor. I saw someone willing to fight for life, even here, even now, even with nothing.

And though paranoia always shadowed me, whispering its warnings about trust and vulnerability and the dangers of depending on anyone, in that moment I let myself feel something simpler, purer: gratitude.

In the thick, stagnant air of the tent, the weight of tension was suffocating. It clung to every surface, seeped into my pores, pressed heavy into my lungs until breathing itself felt like labour. Even the faint rustle of canvas seemed loud in that space, every sound amplified against the silence of fear.

Glenda leaned close over Jamie, her hands moving with confidence, her expression narrowed into clinical focus. Though her movements were detached, professional, there was no mistaking the compassion that underpinned them. Her fingers ghosted across his swollen chest, tracing the angry rise of flesh with a touch so gentle it made my own heart ache.

For a moment, I couldn't reconcile the tenderness of her hand with the brutal severity of what she was examining. The wound looked worse in this light—the swelling more pronounced, the discolouration spreading like a stain across his skin.

"He has severe swelling in the upper left of the small gap between his pectoral muscles," she announced, her tone calm but firm, her brow furrowing as she studied the damage. "I need to relieve some of the pressure."

My pulse surged, hammering against my ribs with renewed intensity. To hear it phrased so plainly was to be reminded that this wasn't just a wound—it was something dangerous, invasive, something that might steal him from me if left unchecked.

Relief of pressure. That meant cutting. That meant pain. That meant Jamie screaming whilst someone sliced into his infected flesh with whatever improvised tools we could muster.

"Okay," Paul and I answered together, the word escaping us as one, a strange and unintentional harmony of readiness. It bound us for a fleeting instant, our voices joined in desperate consent.

Glenda's eyes flicked between us, sharp, unyielding. "Someone will need to hold him," she instructed, the undercurrent of urgency cutting through her composure. "And take those dogs outside."

The words jolted through me, colliding with instinct. I felt the pull immediately—an unshakeable need to be the one who stayed, who anchored Jamie through the pain, who whispered reassurance into his ear whilst the necessity of treatment cut into him.

It wasn't just duty. It was love. Raw, aching, and unbidden. The need to prove that despite everything—despite the betrayal, despite the anger, despite the shove in the desert—I was still here. Still his. Still willing to hold his hand through the worst of it.

But Paul was faster. His movement was decisive, blocking the space between me and Jamie, his stance carrying a finality that left no room for negotiation. His palm pressed against my chest, steady but immovable, and his voice came with a kind of authority I could not overrule.

"I think you better take the dogs," he said, and the tone brooked no argument.

I froze, every muscle taut with resistance. My gut twisted violently, churning with frustration that tasted bitter in my mouth. To leave Jamie in this moment felt like betrayal, like abandonment, and yet the choice was wrenched from me before I could speak.

Part of me understood. The dogs were already agitated, sensing the tension in the air, and Duke had that protective streak that could make him dangerous when someone he loved was in distress. If Glenda needed to work on Jamie without interruption, without a frantic Shih Tzu trying to defend his daddy from the scary woman with the knife...

But understanding didn't make it easier. I acquiesced, because I had no other option. Still, each step away from Jamie felt like a tearing inside me, like something vital being ripped from its moorings.

With a heavy heart, I gathered Duke and Henri into my arms. Their small, warm bodies wriggled with instinctive unease, their soft fur pressing into my chest, alive with trust I hardly deserved. They were family, my shadows, the companions who had been with me through everything—but in that moment they were weight. Weight that dragged me from Jamie's side.

Stepping out into the open air, I released them gently to the ground. Their paws hit the dust, stirring tiny clouds that swirled in the late afternoon breeze. They looked up at me, their dark eyes wide with confusion, tails uncertain whether to wag or tuck. They couldn't understand why they'd been exiled from the tent, why the rhythm of our little pack had been broken.

Their trust was absolute, unshaken, and it pierced me deeper than I expected. These dogs who had crossed dimensions with us, who had been caught in the Portal accident that had started so much of this chaos—they deserved better than my distracted attention, my barely-contained panic.

I couldn't meet their gaze. My attention pulled instead to the thin veil of canvas behind me, that fragile barrier separating me from the man I loved. My ears strained, desperate, clinging to every faint sound that might escape the tent: the murmur of Glenda's voice, the creak of fabric shifting, perhaps even Jamie's pained breathing.

Each muffled sound seemed to scrape against my nerves. I stood outside, powerless, my body trembling with the contradiction of love and exclusion. Every fibre of me longed to be inside, holding him, proving that despite everything I would not leave him to suffer alone.

Glenda's voice filtered through the canvas, low but commanding, every syllable sharp enough to cut through the thickness of the air. "Hold his shoulders down," she instructed, the tone carrying the weight of a decision that could not be postponed. Even muffled, it was saturated with authority, with urgency.

My stomach clenched. It was starting.

Beneath me, Duke spun in restless circles, his small body betraying agitation that matched the unrest tearing through my chest. He yapped in bursts, sharp and unsettled, whilst Henri—usually the quiet one, the more placid of the pair—gave a rare, high-pitched cry, as though the tent itself had passed its fear into him.

The air was full of it now, animal and human distress tangled into one symphony of dread.

"Duke, sit!" I demanded, my voice cracking at the edge, the desperation bleeding through despite my attempt at control. But he wouldn't. He couldn't. He was me—restless, afraid, unable to obey even his own instincts. Unable to sit still whilst something terrible happened just metres away, hidden behind canvas that might as well have been a fortress wall.

Driven by a need to soothe him, and perhaps myself, I lowered to the dust, the ground soft and shifting beneath my knees. I wrapped my arms around Duke's trembling frame, pulling him against my chest as though I could absorb his panic and exchange it for calm.

His heartbeat hammered against my palm, frantic and unrelenting, matching the rhythm of my own racing pulse.

"Daddy will be okay," I whispered into the warmth of his fur, though the words wavered, fragile, almost unbelieving. The reassurance was for me as much as him, a mantra to hold onto as the world inside the tent threatened to come apart.

Then came the sound.

A scream—Jamie's—ripped through the canvas. It wasn't merely loud; it was raw, visceral, soaked in agony so profound it hollowed the air around it. The noise lanced through me with the force of something physical, tearing past all my defences, obliterating the thin veneer of calm I had managed to cling to.

I knew that voice. Knew it in laughter and in whispered endearments and in the soft sighs of contentment after lovemaking. To hear it twisted into such pain—

Duke jerked violently at the sound, wriggling free of my hold, his bark shrill and accusing as if aimed at the invisible force hurting Jamie. Henri, stirred by his brother's alarm, added his own chorus, their cries puncturing the air with frantic urgency.

The dogs' reaction struck me like a warning bell, amplifying the panic already surging inside. The scream replayed in my head, looping endlessly, louder than thought, louder than reason.

"Jamie!" The word erupted from me, torn straight from the core of fear, love, and desperation. My body moved before my mind caught up, throwing itself toward the tent, every nerve fired into reckless urgency.

My hands seized the zipper, fingers trembling, clumsy with panic. The teeth of the metal clinked together, each scrape unbearably loud against the silence that had fallen in the wake of Jamie's cry. The sound grated, mocking my urgency, as if the tent itself were resisting me, slowing me down when I needed to move faster, faster, faster—

In a whirlwind of motion, I forced myself through the tent's entrance, my body propelled by pure adrenaline and something deeper—an instinctual need to be at Jamie's side. Every fibre of me screamed against the idea of standing idle whilst he suffered. I had to be there, to see, to hold, to anchor him through the storm. Anything less felt like betrayal.

But the chaos inside collided with me at once.

"Stay out!" Glenda's voice cracked like a whip, sharp, unyielding, cutting straight through my desperation. The command landed squarely, her authority wrapping around the moment like iron bands.

Her words barely had time to settle before Duke surged forward, a blur of fur and determination. His small frame trembled with intensity, his growl low and uncharacteristically fierce. He was all instinct now—no longer the pampered lapdog, but a guardian, driven by a loyalty so fierce it startled me.

In him I saw myself, that same refusal to stand back whilst Jamie cried out in pain. That same desperate need to do something, anything, even if it only made things worse.

"Get them the fuck out!" Glenda's voice escalated, raw with urgency. The edge in her tone wasn't annoyance; it was sincerity, a desperate insistence that she needed focus, space, control. For a moment, her words pinned me in place, heavy with undeniable truth: my presence, my panic, my dogs—all of it threatened Jamie's survival.

The weight of that realisation hollowed me out. My heart ached with the unfairness of it—I wanted nothing more than to hold Jamie's hand, to tell him he wasn't alone, to prove through presence what words could never convey—but the cruel paradox was clear. To stay was to endanger him.

With a heaviness that nearly broke me, I lunged for Duke. My hands wrapped firmly around his writhing body, dragging him back toward the flap. The canvas brushed against my arm, coarse and unyielding, its scrape a constant reminder of the barrier between me and the man I loved.

Then came another scream—Jamie's. This one was guttural, torn straight from some primal place of suffering. The sound pierced me so completely that my own voice cracked in reply, escaping before I could stop it.

"Duke!" I shouted, though the plea carried far more than a command to the dog. It was layered with fear, grief, the desperate hope that somehow both he and I could protect Jamie from agony neither of us could touch.

Duke twisted violently in my grip, desperate to return, and for a breathless second he slipped free. His tiny body bolted toward Glenda, teeth flashing, his growl sharpened into a snarl. I saw disaster unfolding—a second more and he would have torn into the delicate work she was doing, disrupting the surgery, perhaps causing more damage than the infection itself.

Adrenaline flared, lending me speed. My arm shot out, intercepting him at the last possible moment. His teeth grazed the fabric of Glenda's shoes, scraping against the rubber sole, close enough to conjure a vision of chaos that almost was. My fingers closed around his middle, yanking him back into the cage of my arms before he could leap higher, before he could undo everything with one misplaced act of devotion.

Pinned against my chest, Duke squirmed and barked, his tiny heart hammering against mine. I held him tighter, every muscle straining, determined to contain the storm he embodied—even as I fought the same storm inside myself.

The world outside the tent faded into irrelevance, as though the sky, and even the air itself had withdrawn, leaving only the fragile sounds from within. My steps carried me back in retreat, Duke pressed tight against me, the weight of the moment crushing down until my knees buckled.

I sank heavily, the ground rising up to meet me, the dust clinging cool against my skin. It grounded me, but only barely, a poor substitute for the grounding I longed to give Jamie.

Duke squirmed once, then stilled, his small body trembling as his frantic growls softened into an uncertain whine. I pressed him closer, my arms tight around him, needing his warmth as much as he needed mine. His heartbeat thudded against my ribs, frantic, mirroring my own, the rhythm of two creatures caught in the same cage of fear.

"It's okay," I whispered, my voice cracking on the lie. The words slipped out for him, but the echo rang hollow, circling back into my own ears as though mocking me. I wasn't sure who I was trying to comfort anymore.

The tears came quietly at first, hot lines carving their way down my cheeks, an admission I could no longer suppress. They carried no sound, only the bitter sting of helplessness and dread. I let them fall, unhidden, because there was no one here to see except Duke and Henri—and they, loyal to their cores, asked no questions, demanded no explanations.

From the tent came Jamie's cries, piercing, unrelenting. Each one landed inside me like a blade, vibrating through my bones, shaking me until my body trembled in time with his suffering. My hands clutched tighter at Duke's fur, my arms curling inward as though I could shield us both from a world intent on breaking everything I loved.

I swayed without thinking, rocking him against my chest in the same rhythm I had once used to soothe Jamie through fevers long past, through nightmares and panic attacks and all the dark moments our years together had accumulated. The motion was instinctive, almost primal, a desperate search for some pattern, some anchor, to counter the chaos devouring me.

Henri pressed against my leg, his own small body seeking comfort, and I reached down with one hand to touch his head, to include him in this huddle of terrified creatures waiting for news from behind the canvas wall.

"Please be okay. Please be okay," I murmured, the words spilling into the dust. Over and over, the mantra looped, fragile but insistent, the only thing keeping me from collapsing entirely. They were not just words—they were prayer, bargain, plea, all bound together in a voice that cracked with the weight of everything I couldn't control.

The screaming had stopped. I didn't know if that was good or bad—if it meant Glenda had finished, or if it meant something worse. The silence stretched, each second an eternity of not knowing.

I stayed where I was, kneeling in the dust with dogs pressed against me, tears drying on my cheeks, waiting for the tent flap to open. Waiting for news that would either shatter me or save me.

Waiting, as I always seemed to be waiting, for fate to reveal what it had decided to do with my heart.