“He thought I might be pregnant when he asked me to marry him,” Cammie confessed. “His father abandoned him, and he doesn’t want to be anything like his father, so he married me in case I was carrying his child. He loves what he thought was growing in me. He doesn’t love me.”
“Cammie.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’ll see, Kenz. He’ll ask for a divorce.”
“I don’t think he will.”
“He will…or I will. I don’t want him with me because he feels obligated.”
Kenzie stared at her for a tense moment before rising from the bed and straightening the hem of her shirt. “You’re tired, and understandably so. Your emotions are all over the place. I’m going to let you rest, but I’ll be here tomorrow morning, all right?”
Cammie nodded, knowing her friend wanted her to be happy with the man of her dreams, like she was happy with hers, but she was too tired to keep hoping for something that wasn’t going to be. It was going to take all her energy to focus on getting healthy so she could move on...without Lucky.
****
“Good ride, Masters!”
Lucky nodded his head in the direction of the latest cowboy to congratulate him on staying atop Crazy Eights for the required eight seconds, but didn’t stop to chat. He had one goal in mind and that was to grab his winnings and soak his tired, aching body in the tub of whatever crappy motel he saw first off the highway.
“Hey, Hoss,” he greeted an old buddy as he neared. “Thanks for holding my stuff.”
“No prob,” the wiry man said as he handed over his keys and cell phone. “Good ride, man.”
“Thanks,” Lucky murmured, powering on the cell for the first time that day as he continued heading toward the office for his payout. Just as he noticed several bubbles on his screen indicating missed calls from Chance, the cell vibrated in his hand. His brother’s mug popped up on the screen. He answered on the second vibration.
“It’s about damn time you answered the phone!”
He held the cell away from his ear for a second while his brother barked out the reprimand. “Damn, Chance, you know I’m a little busy,” he griped, replacing the phone to his ear.
“Yeah, well, your wife has been a little sick. She’s in the hospital.”
He froze, suddenly feeling as if his heart had plummeted to his stomach. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t breathe.
“Lucky? You still there?”
He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Yeah, yeah…I’m here.” He ran a hand down his face, cursing himself for not being there. Cursing fate for allowing Cammie to get bad enough to be admitted into the hospital before he could win some sizable money. “What happened?”
“She was at work when she passed out yesterday. Flo called an ambulance. Kenzie and I saw her this afternoon. She’s pretty pale, pretty weak looking. Doc Hollis has scheduled her to be transferred to a hospital in Denver where she’ll be treated by a specialist.”
Lucky swallowed hard, thinking about how high her hospital bills were going to run. Would they stop treating her if they couldn’t pay in full? “I’ll send my winnings home tonight. The purse tomorrow night should be better.”
“What the hell, Luck?” Chance barked into the phone. “Bring your ass home!”
“Cammie’s hospital bill isn’t going to be small, Chance. She needs this money.”
“She needs you. Dammit, Lucky, Doc Hollis says she needs a kidney transplant.”
The phone fell out of Lucky’s hand and hit the ground. The back of the case snapped off as it cracked against the pavement.
As if on autopilot, Lucky scooped up the parts of his phone, snapping the back of the case on. Lucky thumbed the power button on the phone as he found his spot in the line for payout, relieved to see it still worked, and called his brother back.
“Did you hang up on me?” Chance asked, obviously pissed.
“Dropped the phone,” he quickly explained. “Call Doc Hollis. I’m giving Cam my kidney.”
“You have to be a match,” Chance advised, the anger now dissipated. “Get back here and you can get tested with me and Kenz tomorrow morning.”
Lucky swallowed hard, emotion clogging his throat. “Thanks, bro. Not many people would offer up a kidney.”
“Hey, she’s family now. We take care of our own. Drive safe, but get your ass back here by morning. She’s asking for you.”
Lucky closed his eyes, damning himself for being the pathetic loser Cam agreed to marry. She deserved so much better. “I’ll be there.”
After getting his payout, he half-walked, half-ran out of the arena to his truck and floored the gas, determined to get back to Colorado as quickly as possible. He wanted to get tested in Cook County before Cam was shipped over to Denver.
A few miles out, Lucky hit the winding rural roads he had to get past before he could jump on the highway. His eyes burned, water coating them as he strained to see ahead of him on the poorly lit roads. He should have taken a cat nap before heading out, made up for the hours he hadn’t slept the night before, but there wasn’t time. Cam needed him.
“Dammit!” he bellowed as raindrops sprinkled on his windshield seconds before the sky opened up with the mighty roar of thunder. “Just what the hell I need.”
Lightning lit the sky as he continued maneuvering the truck around the twisting bends of the narrow roads. “I guess I should be thankful for the light,” he muttered, struggling to see in the darkness as his windshield wipers fought to clear the heavy rain and his headlights did the best they could do.
A dark shape suddenly jumped out in front of the truck as he wound it around a tricky curve.
“Shit!” Lucky hit the brake, figuring the dark mass to be a big enough deer to total his truck. He continued cursing as his truck careened to the side of the road, broke through the railing, and barreled down the hill.
****
“He’s not coming.”
“Yes he is,” Chance assured the pale woman resting in the hospital bed. He barely managed to keep the anger out of his tone. He’d been calling his younger brother all morning, trying to get a fix on where he was and when he’d be arriving.
“It’s noon,” Cammie said, moisture coating her eyes. “You told him I was being moved to Denver today. That he’d have to be here by morning if he wanted to get tested with you two.”
He looked at Kenzie for help, but his wife just looked away. Not before he saw the disappointment in her eyes. It sucker-punched him in the gut. Cammie was her best friend. Now his wife was forced to watch her best friend suffer the absence of the person she needed most during her time of need, and that person was his own brother.
“It’s fine.” The distraught woman sank down into the pillows. “We all knew this wouldn’t last.”
He turned back toward her. “What? He’s late is all. He’ll be here.”
“I won’t,” she replied before pressing the button for the nurse. “I’m telling them I’m ready to go. I’m not waiting on Lucky any longer.”
The finality in her tone spoke volumes. Cammie was done.
He swallowed hard as he stepped out of the room. His heart beat rapidly as he made his way to the waiting area, the closest place in the hospital where cell phones were allowed, and punched the button that would connect him to Lucky. Cammie was the best thing to happen to his brother, whether either of them knew it or not, and losing her would destroy the stubborn cowboy. And that was one mess he didn’t think he’d be able to help clean up.
“Answer the damn phone,” he growled as it continued to ring. “Dammit, Lucky, you’re going to lose your wife. Answer the phone!”
Chapter Fifteen
“I’ve got great news for you,” Dr. Brown announced, a smile adorning his mustached face as he stepped into the hospital room. “We’ve got a kidney for you.”
Cammie’s jaw dropped open as she turned from the doctor to look at Kenzie and Chance. Both of them shrugged.
“Don’t look at us,�
� Kenzie said. “We weren’t matches.”
“Then how…” Cammie swiveled her head back around to the doctor standing on the side of the hospital bed opposite her friends. “No way did I get a match off the regular donor list this soon. There’s too many people ahead of me.”
Dr. Brown nodded. “That’s correct. This was a private donation with the organ designated just for you.”
Cammie and her friends looked at each other again, eyebrows raised in curiosity, before she turned back to the doctor. “Well?” she prompted after realizing he wasn’t going to volunteer the information the three of them were dying to know. “Who gave me the kidney?”
“Like I said, it was a private donor.”
“You won’t tell me the name?”
“I was asked not to.” Dr. Brown clapped his hands, rubbed his palms together. “But the point is, a donor came forward that was a match, and we now have a kidney for you. We’d like to do the transplant this Friday morning.”
“So soon?” Kenzie asked. “She doesn’t need to…prepare for it or something?”
“She’s ready. The dialysis we’ve had her on since entering the hospital has kept her stable,” Dr. Brown answered, before turning toward her. “You will be on immunosuppressive medication for the rest of your life, to help keep the new kidney from being rejected, but you will no longer need the dialysis. We can schedule for a later date if you’d like, but you’re looking at a recovery time of at least a week so the sooner we do the surgery…”
“Friday is fine,” Cammie agreed, not needing any time to think about it. She’d already been in the hospital for a week. The sooner she got the transplant, surely the sooner her body would recuperate enough for her to go home.
Home—where all she had for company would be the walls around her and the silence filling the space between them.
The doctor nodded his head at her, then at Chance and Kenzie, before leaving.
“Could the donor be Lucky?” Kenzie asked, echoing Cammie’s initial thought.
“I still haven’t heard from him,” Chance responded, his gaze on the floor.
Cammie noted that he always looked anywhere but at her when speaking of Lucky, the runaway husband no one had heard from since she’d been hospitalized.
“It had to be someone from town,” she thought out loud. “You know how the gossip blazes through Cook County. Someone knew I needed a kidney, so they got checked, but didn’t want anyone asking them anything so they opted to stay anonymous.”
Chance and Kenzie looked at each other for a moment before nodding in agreement.
“Y’all need to head out of here before it gets late,” Cammie suggested, to remind the pair they’d been about to leave before the doctor had given them the news. “You have a nice drive back to town.”
“I hate to leave you here,” Kenzie said for the second time that night as she again hugged her.
“Like I said, I can actually sleep when you’re not hovering over me like a mother hen.” She winked, making sure her friend knew she was joking, and truly did appreciate her concern.
“Fine, but I will be here Friday morning bright and early to wait through that surgery.” Kenzie smiled. “I’m so glad they found a donor. If I knew who it was, I’d kiss him. Or her.”
“You better mean on the cheek,” Chance said gruffly as he took Kenzie by the elbow and herded her toward the door, earning a playful jab to the chest in response.
He paused just at the door. “If I hear anything from him, I’ll tell you immediately,” he said.
Cammie nodded, throat too clogged to speak. She waited until he was out the door before she allowed the tears to fall.
****
“Good morning, Lucky,” the nurse said cheerily as she stepped across his room and opened the blinds, allowing sunshine to spill across the sheet covering his broken body. She was a petite, mocha-skinned lady, but had the fierceness of an Amazon when she felt it necessary.
Her dark brows knit together as she frowned at him from where she hovered at his bedside. “A good morning to call your family. You hear me talking to you, Lucky Penny Masters?” she asked.
Lucky growled, hating his middle name, and the nurse for using it. “Trust me, my family is better without me.”
“It’s better they keep wondering what happened to you? It’s better you don’t have the support of your family right now?”
He looked down at his cast covered leg and grunted. He’d been unconscious for three days after the accident, missing the chance to see Cammie before she’d been moved to Denver. He didn’t even have the balls to call and explain, knowing she must hate him, and he damn sure didn’t want to go home to her empty-handed. With a broken leg and a head injury, he’d be more nuisance than help to her.
“I don’t need anyone’s help. As for my family, my brother has a good wife to take care of him, and he’ll take care of mine. He’s a far better help to her than I am.”
“I wouldn’t say that. That deal you made with the devil sure helped her out a great deal. Just got the news. The kidney is a match.”
Lucky’s throat clogged as his spirit soared. The kidney was a match. He thanked God for the painkillers that had made him spill all to the nurse his first conscious night in the hospital. Without her help, he’d never have contacted the bastard who was going to save Cammie’s life. “I guess I finally did one thing right.”
“More than that, I’m sure.” The nurse adjusted the IV tube in his arm before pulling up a chair and settling in. “Why are you so hard on yourself? So convinced your family is better off without you?”
“Are you moonlighting as my therapist now, Tisha? Nursing not paying enough?”
The small woman stared him down with stern eyes that shone with determination, and Lucky knew she could hold that pose for however long it took to get an answer, even if it took days.
“Do you harass all your patients this way?”
“Only the stubborn fools.”
Lucky grinned at that, unable to dislike the woman’s candor.
“I’m a screw-up, have always been a screw-up. I try to help people, but I never seem able to. People get hurt bad because of it.”
Tisha angled her head to the side, interest piqued. “How so?”
“My mother was an addict. Addicted to drugs and bums. She had me while trying to land a man who would support her, but all she got out of that deal was screwed. Royally. I should have been her meal ticket, her lucky penny.” He swallowed down the sour bile that always rose to his throat when he was reminded of the origin of his stupid name. “I was a failure. The man who fathered me never gave her a dime. I ended up costing her money instead of bringing it in.”
“It’s not a child’s job to provide an income. It works the other way,” Tisha advised softly.
“Not in our household. I tried to earn her favor. I’ve been working on ranches since I was twelve years old, working on cars, competing in rodeos, risking my neck to give her the money she wanted. I tried to take care of her.”
“What happened?”
“She spent the money I gave her on drugs for her and her worthless boyfriends. No matter what I did, it was never enough. She had no interest in being my mother. I wasn’t good enough for her to give up the drugs and the loser men. I could never get through to her, to show her how life would have been better for her if she’d just quit using and quit seeking attention in the wrong place.”
“She was a grown woman,” Tisha said, “with a mind of her own. You can’t blame yourself for her decisions or actions.”
“I could have done something. I could have gotten her help, but I just kept giving her money.” Lucky breathed in deep. “I was just giving her a way to buy more drugs. Maybe if I’d tried harder, I could have gotten her to stop. I could have gotten her to love my brother and me and just…be happy. If I hadn’t given up and left her the night she overdosed, maybe she’d still be here and getting herself clean.”
“That’s a big maybe.” Tisha re
sted her hand on the bandage covering Lucky’s wrist. “We all have our struggles. Nobody can help us get through what is our own battle. Your mother dying of an overdose had nothing to do with you.”
“She wasn’t the only woman I failed to save.”
Tisha sat back in the chair, clasping her hands together in her lap. “Who else needed saving?”
“Her name was Sylvia Case.” Lucky breathed in deep, ignoring the tightness it caused in his chest that came whenever he forced himself to recall that night. “I thought she was just some woman passing through town, looking for a one-night stand like so many countless others.”
“But she wasn’t?”
“No, and she wasn’t some random woman. I definitely wasn’t a random guy.” Lucky shook his head, winced at the pain, and stopped the movement. “She’d seen me on some rodeo show on ESPN. She was a serious bucklebunny, and according to her sister, she’d developed an obsession with me after her fiancé ditched her. She came all the way from California to Colorado to find me, thinking we’d fall in love and I’d marry her.”
“Sounds like she had some major issues.”
“Yeah, but…if I wasn’t the kind of guy I am, I wouldn’t have been in that bar the night she rolled in. I wouldn’t have been such an easy pick-up for her. I would have seen that something was off. Instead, I just saw an easy lay and took what she offered. If I had any moral fiber to my being, I wouldn’t have taken that girl back to the motel, and I wouldn’t have found her dead in the bathtub, bathing in her own damn blood all because she realized too late I wouldn’t marry her.”
“Your mama named you right, boy, because you are damned lucky you got that broken leg right now.”
Frowning, Lucky angled his head to see the nurse better. “Huh?”
“If you weren’t already all broken, I’d slap the stupid out of you.” Tisha stood up and planted her hands on her curvy hips. “If you didn’t have any moral fiber, you wouldn’t be thinking about your mama now and you damn sure wouldn’t be thinking about some crazy floozy that you had nothing but one meaningless night with. You wouldn’t give a damn about either of them.” She leaned in closer. “But I will tell you this. You have too many blessings to be lying up in here throwing a pity party. Every day in this hospital I see women lose their children before they even get to hold them, I see people lose the love of their life to cancer, and I see people in here who would love to have someone send them flowers or a damn card, but they don’t get anything. You have a life ahead of you, honey, and you have family. Your mama was a crack ho and you banged a psychopath. Get the hell over it and call your family. God didn’t let you survive that wreck just for you to give up on life.”
Cook County Cowboys Page 21
