She felt better being connected to him.
“If something happens to me,” she managed to whisper, “will you take care of Lara?”
“Of course,” he said, too quick and certain. She knew he didn’t understand all that she was asking of him, but she was suddenly too tired to continue. The hospital would have something to revive her. She’d talk to Jake then. In the meantime, the only one she had the energy to converse with was God.
Lord, she began wordlessly. You know my need. Be with me tonight.
Chapter Eleven
Thanks to a call from his mother to Mrs. Hargrove, the hospital was expecting Cat when Jake brought her in. His mother hadn’t known who to call, but she knew her friend would. Jake parked in front of the main door and two men in white uniforms rushed out with a gurney. They pulled it close to the passenger door and had Cat out of the cab and were strapping her onto the gurney when Jake got around to the other side. They were ready to head back inside and Jake ran to press the door open for them.
Fluorescent lights filled the inside of the building with a white glare. Jake could hear the wheels of the gurney as the staff took Cat down the left hallway. He started in that direction when someone called him back.
“You need to fill out the forms first, sir,” a woman from behind a counter said.
“Just let me see that she’s settled.”
“She’ll be back out in the waiting room in a heartbeat if she doesn’t have any forms,” the woman said. “Trust me. You don’t want that.”
Jake turned around and walked over. “I thought Mrs. Hargrove called.”
“She did.”
“Is it about payment, then?” He pulled out his credit card and laid it on the counter. “This will cover it.”
He had a high limit. Very high.
“We also need her name,” the woman said, without touching the card. “No one told us that.”
“Cat— I mean, Cathy Barker.”
The woman wrote that down. “Address?”
“Minneapolis,” Jake said.
The woman looked up from the form and arched her eyebrow. “Minneapolis is a big place. Can you be more specific?”
“I don’t know the address,” Jake admitted in defeat.
The woman thought for a moment. “So you’re not married? To each other, I mean.”
“No.” He snapped out the words and then took a deep breath. “But we should be.”
He looked sideways at the woman, embarrassed he’d revealed that much. “I mean—well—just put Dry Creek down for her address. The Stone Ranch.”
The woman smiled. “Mrs. Hargrove told me about your family.”
“Then you know I’m good for the charges,” Jake said in relief.
“I don’t know about that. She never said anything about you boys all having money. I mean, I know your brother Wade won lots of rodeo prize money over the years. I’ve seen his picture in the paper. But aren’t you the gambler?”
“I’m very good at what I do even if I don’t have my picture in the paper.”
The woman studied him skeptically.
He picked up his credit card and handed it to her. “Go ahead and put a hold on this for fifty thousand dollars. That should be enough for tonight, won’t it? We can settle up in the morning.”
The woman took the card and gave him one last look. “You could be bluffing. That’s what gamblers do.”
“Just run the card.” He heard his teeth grinding.
The woman smiled. “You should get married, you know. Feeling the way you do.”
Jake told himself only a fool took advice on his love life from someone he didn’t even know. “I asked her once and she didn’t talk to me for almost five years.”
“Well,” the woman said. “Have you tried flowers?”
“She likes lilacs,” he admitted.
“So hang around for a couple of months. We’ll have lilacs all around the hospital by then. You can pick her a few.”
Jake saw a flash of headlights drive by the front entrance going toward the parking lot. “That will be my brother, Wade. He’ll vouch for me. So, can I just go see how she is?”
The woman studied him some more and then she picked up the phone. “I have a visitor for the woman you just brought in. Where should he go?”
She hung up the phone. “One of the orderlies will come and get you in a minute. Just wait over there by the door.”
She pointed to the end of the hall where Cat had been taken.
By the time he got to the meeting place, one of the men who’d wheeled Cat inside was there.
“You can see her in a few minutes,” he said. “The emergency room staff is still doing an assessment and getting her stabilized.”
“But she’s okay?”
“I can’t really say,” the man began stiffly and loosened up. “But we have a real good team in emergency tonight. They’ll know something soon. In the meantime, you can wait in this room here.”
The man swung a door open and led Jake into a small waiting room. There were a dozen chairs lined against the walls and a television in a corner. A table on one side held some magazines.
“I’ll come get you the minute we’re done,” the orderly said and then turned to leave.
Jake sat down. “Could you send word out to my brother that I’m back here? He’ll be coming through the main door with his fiancée any minute. Name’s Wade Stone.”
“The rodeo star?” the orderly looked back to ask, sudden interest in his voice.
“That’s the one.” Jake stood up again. He knew an opening when he saw one. “If you bring me some news about the woman you just brought in, I could get you an autograph from him.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“All I need is an authorization to give you information,” the orderly said as he turned completely around and held out his hand to Jake. “Proof that you’re her husband. A driver’s license will do.”
“Oh.”
“Ah.” The orderly pulled his hand back. “Sorry. Hospital rules, you know. You can be a visitor, but I can’t release any information unless you’re related. Privacy violation. She might not want you to know something.”
The man left and Jake eased back down in the chair. When had hospitals become so concerned with who was married to who? He might understand it in the maternity ward, but this was the regular emergency room. Weren’t they just supposed to worry about healing people here?
The door opened then and Wade rushed in with his fiancée, Amy, at his side.
Jake stood up.
Amy, her blond hair clipped back, was as fresh faced and beautiful as he remembered from his boyhood. She used to hang out with him and Wade whenever they let her. He’d been a little put out when Wade told him they were engaged. He’d never noticed any romance blooming between the two of them when they were kids. Maybe he didn’t know as much about women and romance as a man should.
“We got here as fast as we could,” Amy said as she hurried over and gave him a hug. “I feel terrible now that I didn’t come over earlier and say hello. And now your friend is in the hospital.”
Amy released him and Wade stepped up.
“What do the doctors say? How is she?” his brother asked as he reached over and gave Jake a pat on the shoulder.
“They won’t tell me anything because I’m not married to her.”
“Oh.” His brother grimaced.
“You’d think it would count for something that we had a baby together,” Jake muttered, forgetting where he was and who he was talking to.
“What?” Wade asked in amazement. “I thought you said she wasn’t pregnant.”
“Not now,” Jak
e said, realizing he had given away too much not to tell all of it. “It’s Lara.”
“Lara! Sweet Lara!” his brother echoed in delight as he thumped Jake on the back again. “She’s your daughter!”
Jake nodded, a grin on his face. “And Cat will be upset with me for saying anything. She hasn’t told Lara yet.”
“We’re going to have another party!” Wade insisted. “And don’t worry. The nurse at the desk said she thinks Cat will be just fine.”
“Did she say anything more?” Jake asked eagerly. “What’s wrong with her, anyway?”
“Well, she only saw Cat briefly when they brought her in, but she said they usually call for backup by now if anything serious is wrong.”
Just then Jake heard a flurry of activity out in the hall and he headed for the noise. That sounded like backup to him. He needed to get some answers.
Cat felt better since they’d started giving her oxygen. She was lying on a hospital bed with green curtains drawn all around her. Her clothes were on the table at the foot of the bed and she had a cotton gown tied around her with tiny blue squares on it. She was hooked up to more machines than she’d ever seen in her life. But, at least, she didn’t feel as if she was going to faint any longer. She even smelled the odor of sharply scented cleaning products so she knew she was in a well-kept facility.
The doctor pulled the curtains back and stepped inside. “I reached your doctor in Minneapolis. He explained everything. And he said to tell you that you shouldn’t be running around the country. Your heart needs to be in better shape for surgery.”
The man was pleasantly rumpled and balding. He scowled a little as he talked, though. “And I happen to agree with him. I said it would be another day at the earliest before we can start transporting you to Minneapolis for the surgery.”
“I thought I had more time,” she said. “I guess I should change my airline tickets now, though. My daughter and I are scheduled to fly back out of Las Vegas, but we will have to leave from somewhere else.”
The doctor grabbed the chart that hung on the end of her hospital bed and lifted it up to make some notes.
“Billings is the closest airport from here,” he said when he finished. “There should be a direct flight in from Minneapolis most days.”
She nodded. Last-minute changes like that usually meant higher charges. Fortunately, she had some savings.
He hesitated. “I don’t think flying in a commercial airplane will be the answer, though. You wouldn’t be able to stay on your oxygen, and any change in cabin pressure is hard on hearts.”
“Maybe I could rent a car.”
“Absolutely not. You’re likely to pass out at any time. You shouldn’t be driving.”
They were both silent for a minute. Muffled footsteps went by the bed, but no one looked in. There were snippets of conversations all around them. Cat wondered how much other misery there was in this place tonight.
“Your doctor there said you were worried about establishing a guardian for your daughter before you had the surgery.”
“Yes.”
The man looked tired. “Well, I can understand you making the trip out here, then. It’s just that it couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
“It was the only time.” She felt suddenly chilled and moved the sheet higher up around her chin.
His eyes filled with sympathy. “And have you been successful in finding someone?”
“Not as much as I had hoped.”
“Ah.”
She felt a tear start to form and she reached up to wipe it away. “Her father will support her financially, but he doesn’t want to be a hands-on kind of parent. Maybe he’ll send her to a school or something.”
The desolation was clear in her voice, but she didn’t have the strength to hide it.
“Ah,” the doctor said again.
“That’s better than foster care, isn’t it?”
He glanced down for a moment before looking back up and, by the time he did, his smile was forced. “Well, we’re going to have to put that worry aside for the time being. You should avoid any stress in the next day or so. Your heart needs to rest the best it can.”
“I didn’t mean to make it worse,” Cat whispered. “Did I? Make it much worse?”
She was confessing and hoping for redemption at the same time.
The doctor hesitated, but at least his gaze was steady. “It’s always a delicate surgery. If you rest, you might almost have as good of a chance of pulling through as you had a week ago.”
“Sixty percent still?”
“I don’t want you to worry. The percentage doctors give is just our way of warning people to be careful.”
“How much has it gone down?”
He didn’t answer at first and then he spoke. “A few points. That’s why we want to build you up before you go back.”
“I’ll do everything you tell me to do,” Cat pledged. She had gotten Lara this far; she wanted to stay beside her the whole way. If she did that, she wouldn’t need to worry about what Jake would do if he became the sole guardian.
The doctor glanced over at the machines that were monitoring her. “Everything looks like it should.” He smiled as he looked down. “Get some sleep if you can. The orderlies will be by before too long to take you to a regular room.”
He pulled the curtains shut again as he left and Cat felt her eyes close.
Dear Lord, she began and didn’t even know how to pray so she just ended it with, Have mercy on me, Dear Lord.
She did not know how long she had lain there, trying to sleep, when she heard a movement. She thought it was just a nurse checking her vitals so she didn’t open her eyes.
“Cat.”
She barely heard the whisper, it was so soft. She knew the voice, though, and looked up. Jake was standing at the foot of the bed, looking as out of place as she had ever seen him. Maybe it was the intense look in his eyes. He usually had a confident attitude, but he looked thoroughly subdued. The light was low in the curtained area and his face was halfway in shadows.
“Are you okay?” he whispered. “They won’t tell me anything.”
“I’m just supposed to rest,” she assured him. “I need to have heart surgery.” She saw his body jerk at that news, but she kept on talking. “I’ve needed to have it for some time now. Apparently, I was born with a defect in my heart. It didn’t bother me much until recently, although it’s been around.”
“When you fainted at the home?”
She nodded. “They didn’t know what the problem was, but yes.”
“I should have made you go to a doctor back then.”
“You’re not God,” she snapped at him then. “You don’t have to fix everything.”
He was surprised and she was tired.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and continued, “I’ll need to go back to Minneapolis pretty soon so my doctor there can do surgery to fix it.”
She was too weary to explain more about everything. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about you being God.”
“Well, I’m not, you know,” he said softly.
She smiled at that, and when she looked up at him, she knew that was what he’d intended her to do.
It was silent for a moment and she heard the sound of him walking around to the side of her bed. He wore his boots, but he stepped lightly.
Jake reached out and caressed her cheek. “We’re going to do everything we need to make that surgery a success.”
Jake moved his hand from her face and curled it around her fingers. He took a breath as he did so, and it was as though he commanded her to breathe, too.
“We’re going to make it,” he said, and then he inhaled again.
Cat felt herself breathe with him.
>
Without loosening the bond between their hands, Jake looked over his shoulder and pulled the chair along the wall close. Then he settled himself in it.
“I need to be the one to tell Lara who you are,” Cat whispered. “She won’t believe anyone else.”
Jake nodded. “I’ll have someone bring her in.”
They sat there together, not talking. They were breathing together. Jake would periodically move up and gently brush her hair back with his other hand and once he stroked the inside of her palm.
“First thing in the morning,” Cat finally roused enough to say. “I need to be sure and tell her.”
Jake’s breath caught and she looked at him. She decided it must be growing darker in the room. She thought she saw a tear run down his cheek, but that couldn’t be right. Jake didn’t cry.
“Promise me,” she whispered anyway. “Don’t let anything happen until I tell Lara.”
He nodded. “I promise. Hush, now. Everything will be fine.”
And he took another deep breath and she followed him.
“Tell me a story,” she murmured after a while, “from when you were a boy.”
“The crops were late one year,” he started. “The spring wheat not rising much higher than the tops of those old boots I was wearing. But I was out trying to cut down on the grasshoppers day after day. We knew they’d eat more than we’d harvest if we didn’t do something. They were all over the place, jumping and eating their fill. It was Wade that came up with the idea of sprinkling pepper on them. He’d heard it worked on some kind of a bug. He couldn’t remember which one, but we figured it was worth trying. So we hauled out every pepper shaker we could find in the kitchen and threw the stuff all around.”
“What happened with the pepper? Did it kill the grasshoppers?”
He smiled. “Turned out they liked their wheat with pepper and just kept eating. All that happened was that mom was spitting mad at us. We didn’t have any pepper on our fried eggs for a month. I never did find out what kind of bug doesn’t like pepper.”
“You boys, you worked hard.”
Jake nodded and reached up to smooth the hair away from her face.
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