by Drake, Laura
She couldn’t breathe, though in the hushed silence, she could hear herself panting. The world tilted and this time, stayed canted. She cocked her head to right her perspective and wiped cold sweat from her upper lip.
“Katya, C-collar and supports.” Doc’s tinny voice ricocheted inside her head.
Her stomach heaved. I’m going to throw up. Right here in front of God and everyone. She swallowed bile and bent, reaching for the cervical blocks. From the end of a long telescope, she saw her hands moving. The periphery of her vision darkened, closing to a small tunnel. Her stomach heaved again.
The light at the end of the tunnel winked out.
Cam saw her go down. Katya’s body spun in a boneless, almost graceful pirouette.
Doc Cody saw it too. His head pivoted between his two patients. Cam climbed over the back of the open chute. “Tuck, you get her, I’ll help Doc.” His voice rang out in the hushed arena.
Tuck didn’t have a bum knee. He vaulted easily from the chute and ran to Katya.
Cam wanted to go to her. He wanted to cradle her in his arms, lift her, and carry her back to the treatment room, away from the thousands of prying eyes. He could hardly drag his feet or his attention away from where she lay crumpled in the dirt like an abandoned doll, her face paler than milk.
But Doc Cody would look to him, as the senior rider on the tour, for help in an emergency.
No matter what Cam wanted, the rider had to come first.
He jogged over, pushing into the circle around the downed kid.
He and Doc Cody got Buster’s spine stabilized, and eased him onto the stretcher with the help of the bullfighters. Buster was no help, he was out cold.
Weird to see all this looking down, instead of up from the dirt. He was much more familiar with the latter perspective.
Tuck carried Katya’s limp body ahead of them and all Cam could do was follow, loyalties torn like a lightning-split tree, his hands full of stretcher handles.
In the treatment room, Doc Cody ordered Tuck to lay Katya on one treatment table, and he and Cam laid the stretcher on the other. “Buster? Buster, can you hear me?” Doc shone a penlight in his eye.
Cam took a step toward the table where Katya lay.
Dusty hovered between the two, stepping one way, then the other.
Doc glanced up. “Dusty, quit dithering. One professional per patient. You help Katya.” He focused again on the prone body before him. “Stay with me, Cam, I’m going to need you.”
A bark from this unflappable man told Cam everything he didn’t want to know about Buster’s status.
Doc ran a hand over the teen’s skull, then down his limbs. “His shoulder’s dislocated. Let’s take care of that while he’s out.” He tore apart the Velcro that restrained the rider’s arms. He grasped Buster’s hand at a ninety-degree angle, as if he were going to shake hands with him. “Cam, hold his chest so he doesn’t move.”
The kid was lucky not to be awake for this part. The last time Cam’s shoulder had popped out, he’d been all too aware of the agony. He leaned his weight on Buster’s chest.
Doc grasped Buster’s elbow with his other hand, and lifted.
Pop!
Cam winced. Buster didn’t.
“That’s that.” Doc reattached the Velcro, to hold the arm in place.
A uniformed EMT stuck his head in the door. “You want transport?”
Doc didn’t look up, just continued his assessment, lifting the gauze on Buster’s forehead. “We’d better. He’s not coming around.”
The man entered, pulling a rolling collapsible gurney, another attendant on the other end.
“Cam, help shift him, will you?”
Cam helped the second attendant move Buster, while the other EMT stood poised to take notes.
Doc fired off, “He’s concussed. I don’t feel any skull or facial fractures, but that’s for an X-ray to determine. I’ve reduced a left shoulder dislocation. There’s swelling at the distal humerus, but if it’s fractured, it’s not displaced.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and held it out to Cam.
Cam glanced to Katya’s pale, slack face, then back. He gave Doc a small shake of his head. Doc Cody handed his phone to Tucker. “The Deacons’ number is on speed dial. Call them, and tell them that they’re transporting him to…”
The EMT looked up from his clipboard. “Baylor Med Center. I think we’ve got everything we need, Doc.”
“I have to see to my other patient then I’ll meet you at the ER.”
The bystander cowboys cleared the way, letting the gurney through. Tucker walked into the locker room to make the call.
Cam stepped to the table where Katya lay, but aware of his audience, didn’t hover. Gone was the tough soldier. She looked like an olive-skinned Sleeping Beauty, her curly black hair framing her face, making it seem paler by comparison.
Dusty had covered her in a blanket. When he laid a wet washcloth on her forehead, she stirred.
CHAPTER
15
Katya opened her eyes to see Dusty standing over her. “Wha—” Her brain processed data like an inchworm. One tiny bit. After. Another. He moved, and the light he’d blocked lasered in, careening around her skull in flashing, throbbing strobes. “What happened?”
“You passed out in the arena.” Dusty swiped the blessedly cool cloth over her face.
The arena! She tried to sit up, but Dusty pushed her shoulder down. “Just relax.”
“Buster. How is he?”
Doc Cody’s face appeared over her. “He’s on his way to the hospital. From what I’ve seen, he should recover.”
She remembered blood, in red hair. A handmade stuffed rabbit. Clots of crimson, spattered on concrete, thousands of miles from here. You failed him.
Again.
She moaned.
Doc Cody shone a penlight in her eyes.
The memory flashed again with the light, of the last time someone shone it in her eyes. Her last fail in Kandahar.
He has no choice but to fire you after this.
“Are you dizzy?”
“Not now.” Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she feared. After all, she’d thought she was going to be fired before. Maybe she was overreacting.
Doc checked her vitals, his face carefully closed, as if she were a stranger. She felt it in his impersonal touch, how he avoided her eyes. So much for overreacting. You’ll be on the street in an hour.
“Are you in pain anywhere?”
“No. Doc. Listen to me. This was different than last time.”
His jaw tightened. Gray eyes darkened in anger. “This has happened before?”
That was the exact wrong thing to say. In her peripheral vision, too-interested riders hung on every word.
None of that mattered now, because if she didn’t find an explanation, she’d never see any of them after today.
Think, Katya! She wasn’t lying to save her job. This was different. Something…
Her brain felt like a weak watch battery, running down. She analyzed her own symptoms, comparing them to diagnoses, discarding them. Too slow!
Doc Cody pulled the stethoscope from his ears, folded it, and handed it to Dusty. “You seem to be all right now. I’ll call you later. I have to leave.”
His distracted expression told her he was already gone.
When she tried to sit up, Dusty held her. She slapped at his hands. “Let me go, goddamn it.”
At Doc’s nod, Dusty released her.
The room spun when she sat up, but she didn’t have time for that. “Doc, I’m telling you, there was something wrong. This wasn’t like Kandahar.”
He turned away and snatched his jacket from the back of a chair.
“Doc.”
He swung back, his eyes flinty.
“Please. I need this job.” She put a hand to her temple. Something hovered just at the edge of her torpid brain. Not even a thought yet, more an amorphous shape of a thought.
Kintala, Katya. Grand’s calm, soft-as-co
tton voice touched her mind. Balance.
Tumblers clicked with the combination that released her thought. The answer lay before her.
“It’s hypoglycemia.” Her fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “I know it is. I haven’t eaten since…” She stumbled over the memory of dinner with Cam. She shoved it aside. She’d lose that chance, too, if she didn’t keep this job. “Last night. It’s late afternoon now, right? I felt light-headed, like I was inches off the ground, nauseated and dizzy at the same time. Doc, it’s low blood sugar. All the symptoms fit.”
Doc Cody shook his head. The planes of his face softened, from anger to regret.
For whatever good that would do. “Please. Just test me. I know the mg/dl will be low.”
“I don’t have the equipment to check. We’ll get you some juice, just in case.”
“Does anyone here have a testing kit?” She looked at each cowboy, one by one.
They darted embarrassed glances at each other.
Her stomach, which had been hovering near her lungs, flipped like a weightless astronaut. The world tilted again.
Silence.
“Please?” She hated that she sounded like a scared little girl, but in two minutes, that wouldn’t matter either.
Her shoulders slumped. Dammit, she knew she was right, but if she couldn’t—
“I have one.” The sweetest gruff voice she’d ever heard came from behind her. She hadn’t even realized Cam was in the room.
“Hang on.” Cam strode past her, his profile hard. No, deadly.
The riders parted, leaving a corridor to his locker.
Not able to see his face, she watched the riders’ solemn and twitchy, no one looked at Cam directly, but their body language told her he was the focus of their attention.
Crrrshh! The sound of a flimsy metal door slamming echoed in the silent room.
When Cam walked back, red-faced and looking like he wanted to stomp something, the knot of riders broke up and headed for the locker room, mumbling in quiet undertones.
Cam handed the leather-clad palm-sized kit to Doc Cody.
“Cam.”
He turned her way, but his eyes were on the kit in Doc’s hands.
“Thank you.”
He grunted, and waited.
Her brain spun, trying to process the nuances of emotion floating in the room. She didn’t even feel it when Dusty poked her finger. Her only focus on the meter in Doc’s hand.
He touched the test strip to the crimson bubble on the side of her finger.
His eyes widened. “Dusty, I know you have a candy bar stashed around here somewhere. Give it to this woman, or we’re going to need another ambulance.”
Dusty walked off.
Cam spun on his heel and walked to the locker room.
Doc clasped her shoulders, lowering her to the table. “You rest. When you get some sugar in you, you’ll feel better. I’ve got to get to the hospital.” He frowned at her. “I’ll see you in Charlotte, next weekend.”
She blew out her caught breath. “Yes, sir.”
Dusty’s face appeared above her again.
“Dusty, you be sure she tests normal before you let her up, hear?” He walked to the door.
“You bet, Doc.” He handed her a finger of a Kit Kat.
She took a bite and chewed.
I’m not in the clear, but at least I still have a job.
Thanks to a cowboy sweeter than the chocolate melting on her tongue. She would need to understand the tension that had run between the cowboys like static. Her head felt like a shaken snow globe.
Dusty handed her a bottle of water. She wasn’t thirsty, but took it anyway. “What’s wrong with all of them?” She tipped the bottle toward the locker room.
Dusty leaned his palms on the edge of the table, and spoke low. “They’re cowboys.”
That part, she knew. “So?”
He sighed. “They have to appear to be bulletproof. Thanks to the test kit, they now know he’s not. You know what kind of injuries they sustain. Have you ever seen one of them show it?”
She remembered Cam’s tight jaw, when she knew his knee was hurting. How he avoided pain meds. “But diabetes is genetic!”
“To a cowboy, it is weakness.” Dusty shook his head. “You can’t reason with a belief system. Cam is a two-time champion, so—”
“So he’s got nothing to prove. Everyone knows how tough he is.”
Dusty handed her another piece of Kit Kat. “It doesn’t have to make sense. It just is.”
But an unwanted sliver of her understood, even as she denied it. She’d been a soldier—macho she got.
She knew in Cam’s mind, he’d just sacrificed himself for her.
Cam didn’t stop. He grabbed his crap from his locker and stomped out, chaps flapping, spurs clinking. He realized when he slammed out into the parking lot in full regalia he might as well have pasted a sign on his back, “Ask me for my autograph.” Because every fan still in the parking lot wanted one.
It wasn’t in his nature to enjoy being singled out, but his mother would snatch him bald if she ever heard of him being rude. Even so, it took every bit of his self-control to smile for photos and scribble his name on the programs.
He finally made it to his rental car to escape, but had to stop to unbuckle his spurs; he couldn’t drive with them on.
When the hell are you going to learn to stop trying to rescue women, Cahill?
He tossed the spurs to the passenger floorboard, slammed the door, and fired the engine. How much damage had he just done to his reputation in that locker room?
Reputation, bull. You’d need a career to have a reputation. And the four events remaining in the season did not make a career.
“Okay, my legacy then.” Out loud, it sounded arrogant. But he wasn’t, dammit. He’d sacrificed his body the past fifteen years to get himself to the top and stay there. To have his disease put a black mark on that made him want to pound something. He peeled out of the parking lot and drove. It didn’t matter where.
And for what? What was it about big-eyed women, with their bottom lip wobbling, that made him jump into the deep end to save them?
The last time he’d done that, he’d ended up hitched to a female as mean as a she-bear protecting cubs.
Except that Candi had lied about having a cub in the oven. But he’d been so frantic, seeing her bedraggled and dripping mascara, it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask for a pregnancy test. He’d done the honorable thing, and married her.
When she told him, tearfully (oh yes, tears were involved), he’d stayed, figuring time would work things out. He didn’t make vows lightly.
His snort sounded loud in the closed-in car. And after all that, Candi divorced him. Her sights were set on more elusive prey. He signed the papers when he realized that they were caught in a marriage of mistaken identity; she’d thought she married a star, Cool Hand Cahill, and he’d thought he married a simple country girl, not a social climber.
That experience swore him off damsels in distress. Right up to today.
His cell phone blared the notes of “Dirt Road Anthem.” He ignored it.
When it rang again, he hit the speaker button, just to make it stop. “What?”
Tucker’s voice sounded tinny. “Hey, Hoss. Wanna grab a beer?”
“No.”
“We could just hit a dive where no one would—”
“Thanks, Oprah, but I think I’ve done enough soul-baring for one day.”
“Cam, you know that no one in that room is gonna say a word outside it, right? What happens in the locker room—”
“Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Tuck. Gotta go.” He hit End.
Two minutes later, when the phone went off again, he was pulling into the parking lot of the hotel. He snatched it up. “Goddamit, Tuck, I told you. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Katya’s low voice hit him in the chest.
Dusty showed her the meter after her second blood sugar tes
t. “See? I’m fine, Dusty. You can stop hovering now.” Katya slid off the table.
“I have a Three Musketeers in here somewhere.” Dusty dug in his backpack.
“I’ve had a Kit Kat and a Payday already. I’m going to tip into insulin shock if I eat more candy.” She laid a hand on his arm until he stopped digging and looked at her. “Thank you, Dusty. You’re a good guy.”
His blush seeped into his sparse hairline. “I’m just glad Cam had that blood test kit. If not…”
“Yeah, I know. I owe him a bunch.” She patted his arm. “Now, let’s get this stuff packed up.”
He shook his head. “You’re not doing any of this.” He raised a hand. “Don’t even argue. Doc put me in charge of your care, and I’m telling you to get out of here.” He flapped his hands in shooing motions. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Should I call a cab?”
She backed away. “No. I’m fine. Thank you, Dusty, for being there for me.”
“It’s what friends do. Go.”
She tossed her oils and lotions into her camo backpack and headed for her rental car, thankful for a moment to think. After today, she had a lot to think about. Her brain simmered in a marinade of an acidic funk that she could almost taste. She pushed open the door to the stadium parking lot. The wind almost pulled it from her hands and whipped her hair wild around her face.
Yes, she’d had low blood sugar. Yes, she still had a job.
But as hard as today had been, she was no further ahead. In fact, she’d actually fallen back several notches on her progress timeline. And Doc Cody would now be watching her closely.
Time. Days were passing like windows on a speeding passenger train, while she stood, rooted to the platform. Her army family hadn’t been reassigned, but they seemed farther away with every week that passed.
Halfway across the almost empty parking lot, it occurred to her. If her unit wasn’t moving, and she was getting farther away, that only left—
Pictures popped into her mind. Of her and Bree dancing to country songs. Of her laughing, chatting up the cowboys in line for a massage. Of Cam, his blue eyes sparking in candlelight, gazing at her as if she held the answer to world peace. Him leaning down, lips hovering over hers, and the wanting, deep in her chest, rising to meet them.
