by A J Rivers
"Or call the hotline and speak with one of the nurses," he replies. "It's going to be tender for a little while. You might have trouble lifting heavy objects, and your full range of motion might be compromised until it heals. You're going to want to keep exercising it, so you don't end up overworking the other or possibly reducing the strength in your injured arm.”
“Thank you, doctor,” I tell him. “I appreciate it.”
“Any time,” he nods.
I give him a look as I climb out of bed. “You know that's really not the best phrase to use when your job is stitching people back up and preventing them from dying of infections.”
He thinks about that for a second. “Duly noted.” With a wave, he walks out of the room and closes the door behind him.
I've been holding out on one outfit Dean brought me for this particular occasion, and I smile as I slip into it. Finally, I feel like a regular person again. Not like a patient, with people walking on eggshells around me. But a real person. It only takes me a couple of more minutes to gather everything, brush my teeth, and walk out of my room.
“You sure do whine a lot,” Dean comments as soon as I step into the hallway.
“I do not whine,” I protest, heading for the elevator. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you. You didn't drive yourself to the hospital, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Well, thank you.”
“You do whine,” he says.
“I do not,” I repeat, pushing the elevator button
“At the very least, you are a terrible patient.”
“I don't like being in the hospital. I feel all cooped up and can't do anything,” I say. “And people always treat me as if I’m some fragile little baby bird. I’m fine.”
“Two days, Emma. You were in the hospital for two days. I was in longer when I ate that gas station sushi.”
"Why would you eat gas station sushi?" I ask.
"The point is, it might have done you some good to actually take the doctor's advice and chill out a little bit while you were here. You’ve got the rest of us out here. We've got your back,” he says.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “I'm just really bad at hospitals. I don’t have a lot of great memories revolving around hospitals.”
“Martin is dead. He can't put you in a morgue drawer again. And even if somebody tried, I would be there to get you out again,” Dean says.
“That's very sweet of you,” I tell him.
“What are cousins for, if not to rescue you from near-death experiences?”
“Picnics and barbecues?” I offer. “Awkward Christmas pictures? Complaining about other relatives at Thanksgiving?”
“Good options,” he grins. “We’ll try all of them out. But for now, where am I taking you?”
“Have you and Xavier been staying at his house?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he says. “And you should see this thing. It's insane. It's like Inspector Gadget designed it in cooperation with Martha Stewart.”
“So, there's a kitchen?”
“Yes, Emma, there's a kitchen.”
“Good. Let's go there,” I say.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Not that I don't appreciate the smell of cinnamon rolls,” Dean starts, “but why are you making them right after getting out of the hospital?”
“I don't care why she's making them; they're delicious,” Xavier says, unraveling another one from my last batch into his mouth.
The thought flashes through my mind, and I wonder what the cinnamon rolls would say about him. It makes me smile to myself. I might have been around Xavier too much, but I can't say I hate the way he's changed my thoughts. Most of the time.
“Some of them are for Sam,” I say. “I was supposed to make them for him before I left home, but I didn't. And he's coming here today, so I want to have them waiting for him. Unfortunately, the hotel I have been calling home does not have an oven. So, thank you, Xavier, for lending me yours.”
He grins through a mouthful of cinnamon, dough, and cream cheese frosting.
“I think it’s enjoying it. It's been a long time since anything was baked in here. And I never made cinnamon rolls.”
“Well, it's rising to the occasion beautifully,” I smile.
“Why are you still in the hotel?” Dean asks. “You have plenty of money. You could just rent a house for as long as you're going to be here in Harlan.”
Just the suggestion makes me swallow hard and shake my head, but I can't come up with the exact words to answer him.
“Because this isn't where she wants her home to be,” Xavier says.
“What?” Dean asks.
“Your surroundings become your identity. They are your reality. You can always hope for something different or dream that you're somewhere else. But you are where you are. There's never a guarantee you'll be anywhere else. If Emma rented a house here, that would be like saying this was her home now. That this is where she belongs. She can't do that. This isn't where she wants to tie her soul,” Xavier says.
He hands me the now empty tray, and I start another batch of rolls in the silence his words left in their wake.
I'm standing in the middle of the hotel room with a plate piled high with cinnamon rolls when Sam comes in two hours later. He looks at them, takes the plate out of my hands to set aside on the desk, then scoops me into his arms and holds me close.
By lunch the next day, the cinnamon rolls are gone, and so is any of the relaxation I might have gotten from my stay in the hospital. Sam went out to grab us something to eat, and when he comes back, I'm sitting at the desk with my elbows propped on it, my fingers clenched in my hair as I stare at the papers in front of me. Dean is flat on his face on one of the beds, and Xavier is draped sideways across the other, his head hanging upside down from the side.
“Well, this looks like an optimistic and energetic bunch,” Sam remarks, coming in carrying a bag full of white styrofoam containers from the sandwich shop down the street.
“We still can't find him,” I tell him.
Sam sets the bag on the table and shrugs out of his jacket, draping it on the chair.
“Jennings?” he asks.
“Yes.” I say releasing my hair and dropping my head back for a second, then turning to look at him. “We have talked to everybody we can think of. Travel agents. The other judges. I just got off the phone with his brother. Who is even more unpleasant than Sterling is, if you can believe it. And we are nowhere. Nobody knows where he is, and nobody thinks it's important for us to know where he is. It was as if Ron was finding joy in not being able to give us any information.”
“Or choosing not to,” Dean adds, his voice muffled by the bedspread.
I hold my hand up to underscore his point.
“Alright, everybody up,” Sam says. “Did any of you hear from Detective White today?”
“No,” I say.
“No,” Dean says.
“I never hear from Detective White,” Xavier says.
“Did any of you hear from Creagan today?”
“No,” I say.
“No,” Dean says.
“I also never hear from Creagan,” Xavier says. “Emma,” he grabs the bedspread beside him to give him leverage that he can pull his head up and look at me. “I need a cell phone.”
“Yes, you do,” I say. “We'll add that to the list.”
“For today, that list is taking a half-day,” Sam says.
“What do you mean?” I frown.
“We're going to eat lunch, then we’re going to go do something fun,” he says. “No more moping or investigating.”
“There's too much to do,” I say.
“Which is exactly why we are going to do something fun.”
“You do realize that kind of sounds counterintuitive, right?” I point out.
“Look, everything that needs to be done will still need to be done when you get back.”
“Not sounding too optimistic right at this m
oment,” I say.
“The point is, you've been pushing yourself into the ground. You're working too hard, and it's going to catch up with you. I know you, Emma. I know you better than anybody. And you work at your fastest and strongest and best when you haven't put yourself through a blender.”
“I think that probably applies to everybody,” Xavier points out, his head upside down again.
“See?”
“No,” Sam says. “Emma, listen to me. I know this is important to you. It's gotten under your skin, and it's driving you crazy. But remember, we’ve had talks about this. I need you to take a step back. Just for a little bit. This is all you can see right now, and I need you to see something else.”
He was asking me to see him. My conversation with my father rises up into my chest, tightens my throat, and makes my eyes burn. I try to breathe, but the air won't move. All I can do is nod.
“What did you get for lunch?” I ask him
A smile comes to his lips, and he picks up the bag. Sam distributes the sandwiches and bags of chips he got, and we position ourselves around the room to eat.
“What did you have in mind for the fun thing of the afternoon?” Dean asks.
“Well, I was thinking we could go to the pumpkin patch,” Sam says. “It's something Emma always used to love when she was younger.”
Our eyes meet, and I smile, for a second, only seeing him.
Just getting to the pumpkin patch already makes me feel more relaxed. It brings back memories from my childhood. I used to spend hours choosing the perfect pumpkins to sit on the porch. As teenagers, Sam and I would pick a day to go together. It was a perfect excuse to walk through the rows of vines holding hands and stealing kisses in the autumn chill.
The parking area in front of the pumpkin patch butts up against a row of stacked hay bales that supports a hand-painted wooden arch over the entryway. We walk through it into a large area filled with already picked pumpkins and gourds on display. Xavier immediately goes over to a section of the pumpkins displayed on risers, surrounded by smaller hay bales, and begins examining them.
Sam watches him for a few seconds.
“How are the pumpkins feeling today, Xavier?” he calls over.
Xavier glances over his shoulder at him, then back at the pumpkins. He runs his hand over one of them.
“Pretty smooth,” he says. Then runs his hand over a decorative, ridge-covered one beside him. “Except for this one. This one's pretty bumpy.”
Sam looks at me, and I laugh as he shakes his head. “I'm never going to get him. Never. As soon as I think I am on the right track... I'm just not going to get it.”
I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. “You try. That's all that matters. Come on, let's get a hayride.”
For the next two hours, I don't think about anything but the guys, the gorgeous weather, and the pumpkins. I won't let myself. It feels too good to see Dean and Xavier bonding as they climb through the vines together in search of the perfect, untouched pumpkin. Or to turn around and already be in Sam's arms, my face able to nuzzle right in the crook of his neck so I can smell his aftershave and feel his heartbeat.
When we've collected an impressive assortment of pumpkins and stacked them by the road to be picked up with the hayride, I realize Dean and Xavier haven't come back from their last excursion.
“Do you know where they went?” I ask Sam.
“Last I saw them, they were headed off into the far corner, determined they were going to find the Great Pumpkin,” he chuckles.
“Descriptor or gourd deity?” I ask.
"I think, descriptor?" he offers. "I don't think this place is sincere enough for anything else. The one back home is much better."
I nod and make an acknowledging sound. Sherwood was always my favorite pumpkin patch. Over the years, I would go to ones all over, always moving from state to state. But none of them ever measured up to Sherwood.
Cupping my hand over my eyes, I look out over the field, trying to see them. The rumble of the tractor pulling the hay wagon gets louder in the distance, and a cloud of dust puffs up. I grab my phone to call Dean, but the reception won't grab hold.
The tractor stops in front of us, and the handful of other people browsing the field climb on. I walk up to the side of the tractor to talk to the driver.
"We have a couple of stragglers," I tell him. "These are our pumpkins right here. Do you mind coming back for us?"
"No problem," he says. "Load up the pumpkins, and I'll bring them to the front to wait for you."
"Thank you," I say. "I appreciate it."
I lean down to grab one of the biggest pumpkins, and pain tears through my arm. The pumpkin drops back down to the ground as I pull my hand away from it, pressing my palm to my bandage and hissing.
"You alright?" Sam asks.
"I'm fine," I say. "Just sore."
"You didn't tear out any of your stitches, did you?" he asks.
"No. It's fine."
"Good. Let me get the big ones. You get the others."
We manage to pile everything into the corner of the wagon, and the driver pulls off. Sam and I turn back around to look out over the field, then venture out to look for Dean and Xavier.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“There they are,” I point, after another twenty minutes of looking for Dean and Xavier.
“What are they doing?” Sam asks.
“I don't know. Looks like they’re looking at something. Dean! Xavier!”
They turn toward the sound of my voice and wave at me.
“Come over here!” Xavier says. “Look what we found.”
Sam and I exchange glances. There's something slightly disconcerting about that coming out of Xavier’s mouth. He doesn't seem upset, so at least there's that. Sam takes my hand, and we make our way through the tangled, matted vines in this all-but forgotten section of the patch. This must be where they pick the pumpkins that go to the displays at the front of the patch near the parking area.
With the exception of a few mangled remnants that either got too ripe on the vine and had to be left behind or otherwise met their end, this section of the patch is devoid of the bright orange pumpkins dotting the rest of the field. Sam's foot gets stuck under some of the knotted vines, and he tries to use me to catch his balance.
There's a touch-and-go moment when we could either get back to our feet or end up stumbling over each other onto the ground. Dean and Xavier wait while we negotiate with gravity, but we eventually come out still standing. When we get to them, Dean gestures toward a small wooden sign sticking up out of the ground beside a narrow, dark path leading into the woods.
"Haunted trail," he reads in a theatrical voice, adding a couple of ghostly sound effects for good measure.
"What is it?" I ask.
"A haunted trail," Xavier says.
"Thank you."
"I'm assuming it's part of their Halloween attractions," Dean says. "We got turned around while we were in the patch and were trying to find our way back out."
"No stars," Xavier says.
Dean gestures toward him and nods. "But we figured the patch couldn't go on forever."
"Both for logical permanence of space reasons and because we could see the trees," Xavier adds.
"So, we headed this way thinking we'd probably find a path leading back up to the front of the patch."
"But we got stuck," Xavier says.
"But we found this," Dean says, holding his hands up dramatically to display the sign.
"Well, it is a path,” Sam observes. “So you were in the right general sphere.”
“Let's go down it,” Xavier says. “I want to see what's down there.”
“Can we just remember for a second what happened last time we decided to go through something haunted?” I ask.
“Come on, Emma,” Dean says. “It's the middle of the afternoon. Bright daylight. I doubt anybody is even down there. It would just be interesting to see the sets. Remember, we're doing ‘fun Hal
loween’.”
He does another gesture with his hands, sweeping them in circles to either side of his face like a magician talking about an illusion. I glance over at Sam. He makes the same gesture, and I know I'm outnumbered.
"Alright," I relent. "But if there is a reaper down there with a scythe and he takes out my other arm, I am going to be pissed.”
I want to be joking, and part of me is, but there's another part of me that is glad my gun is tucked securely in my holster, and my knife is concealed under my shirt. That's Sam's doing. My gun is always enough to make me feel confident, but it's not enough for him.
Somebody can take your gun, he always tells me. Somebody can kick it out of your hand. Have something else. That's how I ended up with a specialized bra designed to hold a small knife against my rib cage. In all honesty, it sounded absolutely ridiculous when I first heard about it. But, to comfort Sam, I bought it. It was meant to be like the pumpkins up at the front of the patch, a display piece. But then I thought about it some more and realized it wasn’t that terrible an idea for somebody in my line of work.
I haven’t had reason to use it yet, but I’m glad it's there.
We start down the path, and it's not long before I'm confident Dean was right in his assessment. The path is wider once we get past the entrance into the trees. The deep ruts under our feet tell me this is actually used for a haunted hayride rather than a walking path.
To either side of the path, Halloween decorations and gory props create tableaus of various horrific scenes. They aren't as convincing in the daylight. Rubber and paint are pretty harmless when the sun is pouring down on them. But darkness and strobe lights can make almost anything seem scary. Throw in the sound of a chainsaw, and rubber and paint get disturbing real fast.
“Jeez,” Dean remarks as we walk past a dilapidated cabin with what looks like a half-man half-pig butcher sitting on the front porch cradling a meat cleaver and human head. “This looks like we're strolling through Hannibal Lecter's Viewfinder.”
“What's a Viewfinder?” Sam asks.
“You know,” Dean says. “From when we were kids. That red thing. It looks like binoculars, and it has those little white circles in it. You hold it up to your face and click the orange tab, and it shows you pictures.”
