by Amelia Adams
They laughed. “Sorry,” the first one replied. “I’m Tiffani, Adam’s wife, and this is Melissa, Benjamin’s wife, and this is Natalie, Caleb’s wife.”
“And we’re your welcoming committee,” Natalie chimed in. “We brought candy and popcorn and movies—”
“But we didn’t bring Seven Brides because I’m sure we’ve all seen it a dozen times by now,” Melissa interjected.
“And we’re going to ask you zillions of questions and make you feel like one of us,” Natalie finished up.
Claire smiled. She’d just finished cleaning the kitchen after her first full day and she’d been looking forward to a long shower and then bed, but this sounded more fun. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The three women came in and basically took over her small living room. They spread treats all over the coffee table, handed her a stack of DVDs and nodded their approval when she chose Bringing Up Baby, then told her to change into some sweats or pajamas because jeans just wouldn’t do.
“So, we’re not going to pretend with you,” Tiffani said after Claire had changed into her Donald Duck pajamas and plopped down on the couch. “We know you came from the foster care system and had a rough time, so you don’t even need to worry about telling us about it. We only know just that very little bit—just enough so we don’t say really dumb things and embarrass ourselves.”
“Because we might otherwise,” Melissa added. “It’s easy to be too nosey when you’re first getting to know someone.”
“Daniel told you that?” Claire asked. That was kind of a dumb question—he was the only one she’d really opened up to. But she still felt the need to clarify.
“Yeah. He saw us walking over here and came out to make sure we didn’t put our feet in our mouths. He said you deserved your privacy.”
“Huh. I don’t know whether to be annoyed with him or thankful for him,” Claire said.
“He’s a McClain. You should be both,” Natalie said, and they all laughed.
“Anyway, we’re here to get to know who you are, not what your past is,” Tiffani went on. “I’ve heard amazing stories about your cooking and I’m kind of jealous because I haven’t gotten to try it.”
“You can all come over for lunch tomorrow, if you want,” Claire said. “The men will be gone again, and I’ll whip up something just for us.”
“You will? Oh, holy cow, I’m totally there,” Natalie said. “Well, I’ll have to get my assistant to run the shop, but if I can bring her a doggie bag, I bet she’ll say yes.”
“Sure. Not a problem,” Claire replied. It felt good to see these women be so excited over something she did. It was like she could offer them something in exchange for the friendship they were offering with both hands. She didn’t know how to be that vulnerable and sincere, but she knew how to cook, and that was a good start on this thing called relationships.
“So. About you and Daniel,” Natalie said when they paused the movie to make popcorn.
“Um, what about me and Daniel?” Claire asked. Was there a her and Daniel? What kind of rumor was floating around the ranch about the two of them?
“Well, I just noticed that he came over for lunch today, and I might have mentioned it,” Melissa said.
“Yes, he came over for lunch. He said he wanted to apologize for being a total jerk to me yesterday, and so he did, and it was nice. He even groveled a little bit.”
“He did? Oh, I love it when a man grovels,” Tiffani said. “They look like puppies. And they still don’t have any idea what they did wrong, but they’re trying so hard to make up for it anyway.”
The other two women nodded. Claire thought that sounded a little cynical, maybe, but she wasn’t married, so what did she know? “At any rate, that’s really all.”
“Well, in case you’re curious, he’s an awesome guy,” Melissa said. “He’s smart and funny, and he’s really caring—except you said he was a jerk. What did he do?”
“It was kind of crazy. He shook my hand and then sort of recoiled, like I was disgusting in some way. When he apologized, he said he’d been preoccupied by one of the boys, but his reaction was definitely to me.”
The three women exchanged glances.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Tiffani replied. “That’s just really weird.”
“Yeah, it is,” Natalie agreed. “He’s not usually that way at all.”
“He gets really wrapped up in his work,” Melissa added. “I’d be willing to bet that he was just worried about one of the boys.”
“I don’t know what it was, but we had fun today, so I’ve mostly forgiven him. Mostly,” Claire said with a smile. “Popcorn’s getting cold.”
Everyone grabbed a bowl and they started the movie up again, but Claire’s mind wouldn’t stop stirring up that conversation. Just what were these three women thinking when they looked at each other like that? She felt like she was being initiated into a club that she had no idea even existed, and she wasn’t going to like whatever the hazing ritual was going to be.
***
“Hey, dude. How are you feeling today?” Daniel paused in the doorway of Hunter’s room, wearing his doctor’s scrubs for the day instead of his ranch get-up.
“I’m okay. I think I don’t want to eat for a little while—whenever I eat, I have to run to the bathroom.”
“Hmm.” Another piece to add to the puzzle. Daniel would talk to a few of his colleagues while he was at the hospital that day and see if any of them had an idea. “I don’t see anything wrong with sticking to juice and broth today, if you think those sound good.”
“Yeah, let’s try that. Do you think I’ll be okay to go back tomorrow?”
Daniel reeled in mock surprise. “What? A teenage boy who wants to go to school? Is the world coming to an end?”
“It’s just . . . they’ll ask where I was, and I don’t like being different.”
“Ah. I see. Well, I can’t promise anything, but let’s see how today goes and think about sending you back tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
Daniel headed down the hall and found that Lillian had just arrived, her arms full of boxes. He grabbed the one on top and set it on the sofa in the living room. “Did you raid Santa’s workshop on your way here?”
“No, but not too far off. You know how much I love Christmas.”
“I do. I definitely do.” Daniel supposed he should be grateful they were named after a movie and not seven of the eight reindeer. “Hey, is Dad around this morning?”
“Sure is. He’s not heading into Bagley for a couple of hours yet.”
“Thanks. And thanks for hanging out today, Mom. I’ll see you later.” Daniel grabbed his jacket and headed outside, veering toward the main house instead of the parking lot. He had a little time before he had to be at the hospital, and he really needed to speak with his father.
Peter was putting the final touches on a shopping list when Daniel entered the kitchen. He looked up as Daniel pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.
“Dad, remember how I told you that I think I’m losing my mind? I’m pretty sure of it now.”
Peter set down his pen and gave Daniel his full attention. “What’s going on?”
Daniel told his father about sensing the color blue in Hunter’s stomach the night before.
“Blue? Like, navy or cobalt or . . .”
“Primary blue. Your basic blue. I don’t know what’s going on, Dad. I’ve never sensed a color in someone’s body before, but it was just there, kind of like an aura. Glowing, sort of.”
Peter leaned back and looked at him in astonishment. “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he said at last. “I honestly don’t know what to tell you.”
Daniel fisted his hands. “I wish our ancestors had written all this down for us, like a manual so we’d know what to do with these crazy gifts,” he said. “How can we use them properly if we aren’t even sure what they do and how they work? So much experimenting . . . it fee
ls like so much wasted time.”
“I don’t know about that,” Peter said slowly. “Yes, it would be nice to have a manual, some sort of guidebook to follow, but is the experimenting really a waste of time? How much have you learned about yourself while you’ve been learning about your gifts?”
Daniel chuckled ruefully. “You know, I might resent your insight if it wasn’t the exact reason why I came to talk to you. I can see what you’re saying—because we’ve come to know ourselves so much better, that means we can use our gifts better.”
“Exactly.”
“But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Are you looking for easy, son? If you are, you’re living on the wrong ranch.”
“Yeah, I understand that. And it’s not that I want easy—I just wish I understood it better.”
“So keep experimenting. You’re on your way to the hospital, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a short shift today.”
“Perfect opportunity to test this out. Look for colors in your patients today.”
Daniel thought about that. “See if I can find another patient with blue, and see if their symptoms match Hunter’s?”
Peter nodded. “And speaking of insight, you pieced that together a lot quicker than I did. I was just curious to see if other people even had color. I hadn’t thought about looking for specific commonalities.”
“Aw, you’re just saying that to make me feel smarter.” Daniel stood up from the table and grabbed a banana from the center. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll let you know if I find anything out.”
“Please do. This is quite interesting. And please keep us updated on Hunter.”
“I will. If nothing else, I think I’ll take him in for a series of blood tests on Friday.”
“Good idea. Let me know how we can help.”
“Okay, Dad. See you later.”
Chapter Ten
When Daniel got to the hospital, he was curious to see if he could pick up on colors in the other patients. If he could, that would be a new level of diagnosis—that is, if he could figure out how to use it. Patience, he reminded himself. Nothing about the gifts had ever been quick or easy. They had each taken focus to master. He couldn’t expect to zoom through this without the same kind of dedication.
He was helping a little boy with a broken arm when he noticed a color for the first time that day. Red. He closed his eyes briefly, looking with his inner eyes, and sure enough—there it was. A red aura right around the site of the break.
“We’re going to take an x-ray and see what’s going on in there for sure,” he told the boy’s mother. “It’s definitely a break, but I don’t want to set it without having a sneak peek at it first.”
She nodded, and the nurse wheeled the boy down to radiology. When the films came back, it only confirmed what Daniel already knew.
“This is what we call an oblique fracture,” he said, indicating the break with the tip of his pen. “See how the break is on a diagonal? We’ll be able to fix it with a cast, no need for surgery. He’ll just need to keep from bumping it for a while.” He turned to his small patient. “What do you think, Jaxon? Can you stop jumping on the bed for a while?”
“I’m never gonna jump on the bed again,” the boy said, his face serious. “It hurts too much.”
“I think that’s a good idea.” Daniel gave him a kind smile. “Now, my nurse is really good at putting on casts, but I kind of like to do it myself because I’m picky. So choose out a color. What’s it going to be?”
The boy went with neon green, and Daniel set to work.
First, he made a show of manipulating the bone with his fingers. That was completely unnecessary—the fracture was simple and stable, the ends touching. He just needed to cover what he was really doing.
He pulled in a deep breath and focused on the bone. He could see it in his mind’s eye, and he asked it to bond back together. Then he eased the pain and suffering the boy was feeling. His arm ached for a few minutes when he was done, but it wasn’t like touching Nick or Claire had been, and that was a relief.
Next he applied the plaster bandages. He’d healed the bone completely and could have left off the cast, but he’d have no way of explaining that to the mother or to the chief of staff, especially with the x-ray films showing a fracture as plain as day. So he put on the cast, used neon green for the top layer, and told Jaxon to come back in a few weeks to have it checked.
The whole time he’d worked, he’d studied that reddish glow. It disappeared after he healed the bone. It seemed to be acting as a beacon to point out the source of the problem. That was really cool, but why red in particular?
He picked up on several other colors during his shift. Yellow, which turned out to be early symptoms of liver disease. He couldn’t heal that, but he was able to refer the patient for treatment. Dark pink, which turned out to be a sprain. That was simple to heal, and he wrapped it up for stability before sending the patient on her way. Curious that a sprain was dark pink and a break was red. Like, the more intense the color, the more severe the injury? He’d have to look for more evidence of that.
Then he encountered black, and along with the black, he found cancer. His patient was a forty-five-year-old man with pain in his pancreas. There was nothing Daniel could do with his gift, so he sent the man for testing, pretending that he needed to wait for the results before he’d know what to do next. In truth, he knew there was very little that could be done. The entire pancreas was riddled with disease. Daniel was surprised it had taken the man this long to seek treatment, and now he didn’t think any treatment in the world could help him.
When he finished his shift, he hung his lab coat in his locker and closed the door, the sound of metal on metal familiar. Then he sat on the bench and stared at the wall, not seeing anything, but needing a place to be for a minute.
Yellow for liver. That made sense because the liver produces bile and bile is yellow. Jaundice, which is caused by the liver, is yellow. He could remember that.
Dark pink was a sprain, red was a break. The darker the color, the more severe the situation—with black being cancer.
Was every life-threatening situation going to be black, or was black specifically for cancer? Would a lesser cancer, such as a melanoma on the skin, be black, or just those that would eventually take the patient’s life?
So many questions. He rubbed his eyes, exhausted. He still couldn’t heal everything—that hadn’t changed at all. What had changed was the speed with which he could diagnose, and he believed his findings were more accurate. Only time would tell if that proved to be true, but the possibilities were certainly exciting.
Now it was time to go home and find his bed. He hoped his mother wouldn’t mind sticking around another hour—he was always worn out after so much healing, but this had taken things to a whole different level, and that meant a whole different level of tired.
***
Benjamin and Caleb invited Ephraim to bring their six boys over for dinner and to play games that night, so Daniel was free to sleep as long as he wanted. It was seven o’clock before he finally woke up—he’d napped for five hours.
He sat up on the edge of his bed and yawned, blinking and feeling confused. It had been a long time since he’d taken a nap like that, and he was disoriented. The boys would be gone another hour, and the house was quiet. The house was almost never quiet when he was home—if he was there, it’s because the boys were there. He had too much to do around the farm to hang out in an empty house.
It was weird, not hearing voices or footsteps.
He got up and washed his face, then heard his phone chime while his hands were still wet. He grabbed a towel and dried them, then checked his messages.
Want dinner? I can bring over some stuff from the bunkhouse.
He grinned. I’d love that.
I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes? He looked down at what he was wearing. He hadn’t changed at all when he got home, and he
was a mess.
He pulled off his scrubs and put on some clean jeans and a T-shirt, then brushed through his hair. That was probably as good as it was going to get, considering he had raccoon eyes left over from his nap.
When he heard a soft tap on the door, he went down the hall and found Claire on the porch, holding a box. “Let me get that,” he said, lifting it out of her arms. “Come on in.”
She entered the house and looked around appreciatively. “So this is where two bachelors and six boys live,” she said. “I expected it to be more trashed somehow.”
“The boys help keep it clean as part of their chores, and my mom was here today, so I imagine she did a bunch of stuff too.” She’d left a note saying that Hunter felt well enough to go with the boys over to Benjamin and Caleb’s, and that had been a relief. “Believe me, we can be as messy as anyone.”
“I trust you.” She followed him into the kitchen, where he set the box on the table. “I brought some chili and corn bread, green salad, and some raspberry pie,” she said as she took each item out. “I need to reheat the chili, but the rest is ready to go.”
“It sounds great. Thanks for thinking of me.”
She shrugged. “Well, I saw all the boys walking over to a different cabin, and I guess I got snoopy and had to find out what was going on. Are you always so tired after a day at the hospital?”
“No. This one was just rough—liver disease and cancer. Stuff like that always takes a toll.” He hated hiding the truth from her. Someday, he’d be able to tell her everything. He couldn’t wait—he wondered if she sensed he was holding back from her.
“Your pots?” she asked, and he directed her to the right cupboard. Then he got busy setting the table. That didn’t take long when it was just the two of them.
Hmm. Maybe he’d go all out this time. He rummaged through the cupboards until he found a taper candle and put it in the center of the table.
“All fancy, huh?” she asked with a smile, turning from the stove to see what he’d done.
“If you use your imagination. There should be at least a couple of candles, but I could only find one, and I think that one’s from our emergency preparedness stash. You know, if the power goes out.”
