The paramedics arrived, and soon the woman, whom they learned was named Margaret, was being lifted onto a stretcher.
The next day, Daniel called the hospital. Margaret was stable. But when he heard her full name, he froze. Their house—the little blue one they had purchased last year—used to belong to a family with the same last name.
That night, Daniel pulled out the old real estate folder they’d received at closing. Inside were maintenance records, letters from the previous owner’s estate, and, buried among them, an old utility bill. The name on it? Margaret.
Daniel woke Jake in the middle of the night. “Jake, come look at this,” he said, holding the paper with trembling hands.
Jake’s eyes widened as he read. “That’s… impossible,” he whispered. “The odds of this…”
The following day, they called the hospital again. The nurse greeted them warmly. “Margaret keeps asking for you,” she said. “She wants to thank the men with the dog.”
When they visited her, Margaret was frail but alert. As soon as Buddy saw her, he leapt onto her bed, tail wagging. Margaret’s eyes filled with tears as she stroked him. Then she spoke words that left Daniel and Jake stunned:
“I raised this dog,” she said.
Margaret explained how her previous dog, Max, had been her world after her husband passed away. When she got sick and had to go into the hospital two years ago, Max ran away, and she never found him—until now. Buddy, they realized, was Max.
They listened to her stories about the house, the backyard apple tree, the kitchen where she had baked bread every Sunday.
Each visit deepened the connection, and Buddy’s presence seemed to bring her a profound peace.
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