The Luxury of Being Stubborn (The Stubborn Series Book 4)

by Jeanne Arnold

  “Bring her home before she hitches a ride with a lonely trucker. She wants you to include her in whatever girl games you got planned.”

  “Tell Judson. He’s her father,” I said as I stepped over his arm. He grabbed my ankle and stopped me from opening the door. “Caleb, I have plans to meet Molly here. You remember her? She’s got a baby and he looks like you.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Why didn’t you tell Gabe about Deliah?”

  He held up his phone and made a face. “I tried. Don’t you people use phones?” He stretched his legs and crossed his bare feet at his ankles. “Molly’s inside. Tell her we’re hitting the road to find Mona Deliah.”

  “Why didn’t you say she was here?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Eli was asleep in his baby swing with his head tipped to the side. A fan was pointed in his direction. Molly held the remote control in front of the television. She was drowning in one of Caleb’s paramedic T-shirts with the word Williston printed across the back.

  “Have you seen this?” she asked as she turned up the volume. The report showed footage of Mr. Halden being interviewed at a well site in a hard hat.

  “HalRem Oilfield Services and oil revolutionary, Lieutenant Colonel Joel Halden, is partnering with the country’s leading storage and pipeline facility to create the newest mega-merger in Big Oil,” said the reporter.

  Caleb walked in and stood behind us. The baby woke up and yawned. “The lieutenant’s going for world domination by way of oil hoarding. Store low, sell high.”

  “Lane used to talk about this. He said there was an industry growing in the Cushing oil hub,” Molly shared. She had been paying more thought to oil talk than I ever had.

  “You guys are speaking another language,” I said. “What’s an oil hub?”

  “Cushing, Oklahoma—the pipeline crossroads of the world,” she answered.

  “Tank farms for miles. You should see the aerial view,” Caleb added. “White buttons everywhere.”

  I stood up and faced them with my jaw protruding from my face. “This is in Oklahoma? Could that be where Judson took Gabe?”

  “Doubt it. There’s nothing for him there.”

  “You just said there’s a tank farm.”

  Caleb stared at Eli but kept talking to me. “It’s not a place you choose to visit. There’s hardly a town. Only business owners would go there.”

  “Then why would Judson take Gabe to Oklahoma?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t. It’s not his thing,” he said. “Now what about the runaway rabbit? Are you coming with me?”

  Caleb grabbed his HalRem cap off the back of the couch, looked at Molly for a fleeting second, and walked out the kitchen door.

  I pulled open the door and yelled, “I’m driving!”

  Caleb was sitting in the driver’s seat of my Jeep holding his hand out the window. “Toss me the keys.”

  I reluctantly slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. “Did she spend the night with you?”

  He gave me a quick glance but didn’t answer.

  “I get it. You don’t want to admit you love her.”

  “Legs, now how is it you know it all at eighteen?” he replied as he backed out into the road.

  “People settle down at your age. It’s not unheard of.”

  He grunted and turned the radio volume up. “Don’t hold your breath.”

  I stuck my elbow out the window and watched the highway turn into a needle point as we headed out of town. We followed a line of trucks in the direction of Meggie’s farmhouse.

  “It’s so hot. This can’t be normal here. Last summer wasn’t like this.”

  “Feels like Texas followed us here.”

  “Caleb, look. There she is.” I spotted Deliah sitting on the side of the road. She was wearing a backpack. We were a mile away from the farmhouse.

  “Get in before I drive away,” he said when he pulled up to her. She didn’t look up from her phone.

  “Deliah!” I shouted. “Come with us. We’re going to have a girl’s day out.”

  “He’s not a girl,” she said but continued to play with her phone.

  “Caleb’s not invited,” I yelled.

  Caleb opened his door. I grabbed his arm to tell him to stop. “Let her come on her own. Don’t be mean.”

  “Then y’all go have a little chat and stop hollerin’ over me.”

  “Deliah, come on.”

  I was surprised when she stood up and brushed off her shorts. As she started toward the Jeep, Caleb hit the gas and took off with his door open. Then he stomped the brakes hard and it shut.

  “Caleb!” I shouted and smacked his leg. “Stop it!”

  “Get in,” he called out the window.

  “Bite me!” she yelled and trudged off through the tall grass.

  “Look what you’ve done,” I said.

  He continued to tail her at a slow pace. “Get in,” he repeated and reached behind the seat to push open the door.

  Deliah didn’t turn around. She marched faster. “I’m not getting in unless you cut the engine and show me the keys.”

  “I won’t drive away,” he promised. “Swear to god.”

  “Prove it.” She kept walking. The Jeep sustained a snail’s pace.

  “Get in or I’m taking off.”

  “See ya,” she said.

  The Jeep stopped, and Caleb held his hands in the air. “Damn you’re stubborn.”

  She grabbed the door and got inside as fast as she could. Caleb hit the gas and drove off.

  “What are you doing out here in this heat?” I asked.

  “I was going to see someone.”

  “Don’t you know you gotta stick your thumb up not down?” Caleb teased.

  “Shut up,” she grumbled.

  “We’re going to pick up lunch and then hang out with Molly,” I said.

  When we arrived at Albertsons grocery store, I took my keys from Caleb and gave Deliah the simple task of finding peanut butter and jelly. Caleb led her into the store with his hands on her shoulders as if they made up. I took off for the bakery section. It took me less than two minutes to fill my basket with everything else we needed.

  “Heads up. You’re next,” Caleb said.

  Deliah gripped the sides of the shopping cart and giggled. Caleb was running her down the main aisle. She had his hat on her head, and she looked just like Gabe with her hair tucked up inside.

  “Aren’t you a little old for that?”

  “Yep,” she answered as they zipped by.

  “I meant him.”

  Caleb stopped the shopping cart short of careening into a display of travel mugs with pump jacks silkscreened on them. The cart tipped over, and Deliah tumbled out. My heart lodged in my throat as I watched her heel tap the cardboard base of the display just enough to cause an avalanche. Three hundred thermal cups scattered onto the floor and rolled away in every direction.

  “Oops,” she said as Caleb grabbed his hat and her elbow and pulled her toward the automatic doors.

  I dropped my gaze to study the ground, and my sunglasses slipped out of my hair.

  A stock boy came loping across the front of the store to see what happened. “That took me three days to build!”

  I stared at him with a straight face. “I think you might be exaggerating.”

  Caleb waved at me between advertisements in the front window. Deliah was hunched over laughing. They were quite a pair, always hot and cold, and so far off in ages.

  About a dozen curious customers gathered around the display to gawk and snicker at the mess. I turned for the register and bumped my basket into a man with a beard. He was wearing a HalRem cap and holding my sunglasses.

  “You dropped these,” he said.

  I took the glasses while the stock boy fussed at my feet.

  After I paid for my groceries and escaped the crime scene, I found Caleb standing at the driver’s door of my Jeep, absorbed in conversation on his phone. Deliah was in t
he backseat smirking.

  “You’re such a child,” I scolded as I tried to open the door.

  Caleb lifted the rim of his hat and winked. “Takes one to know one.”

  I tossed the food through the back window beside Deliah, lifted my sunglasses out of my hair, and squinted.

  I watched the man with the beard and the HalRem hat climb into his pickup truck and stare at me through his windshield.

  “Do you know that guy? I’ve seen him somewhere,” I asked Caleb.

  He spun around but didn’t look up. Perspiration dribbled down his temples.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Can you please move? I want to get back to Molly.”

  Caleb’s features pinched. He put his phone in his pocket and opened the door into my hip. “Gimme your keys right now.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said. “What happened?”

  “That was a buddy of mine from work. He’s a medical dispatcher. They just picked somebody up at the ranch. He thinks it’s Gabe.”

  I slapped my hand on Caleb’s chest and tried to speak. I hadn’t been away from Gabe for more than an hour.

  He reached into my pocket and snagged my keychain. “Get in,” he said and guided me around the front of the Jeep.

  None of us said a word as Caleb drove as fast as he could to the hospital. Deliah sat in the backseat and bit her fingernails. I had my door open before Caleb stopped at the emergency entrance. I dashed to the automatic doors so fast I almost ran into them before they opened. Deliah jumped out after me, and Caleb drove away to find a parking spot.

  “Gabe Halden. Gabriel Halden. Is he here?” I said breathlessly to the woman at the desk inside the lobby. “Gabriel Judson Halden.”

  She took her time removing her glasses and pulled her attention from her computer screen. She rubbed her eye as if she didn’t know who I was talking about. I wanted to scream.

  “He got picked up by an ambulance. He was at the old Remington Ranch. Do you know where he is? Is he okay?”

  She raised her arm in slow motion and then pointed toward the sliding doors. As I turned my head, two paramedics pushed a patient through the entrance. The transport stretcher was lifted so high I couldn’t see who it was. When they rounded the corner, my heart sunk like an anchor to the bottom of the sea.

  “Gabe? Oh no. What happened?”

  He had his eyes closed and a bag of ice under both armpits, on his chest, and on his forehead. There was an IV in his hand. His T-shirt was cut down the middle and tucked behind him. His face was red, and the sheet under him was soaked.

  “What’s this for? Please tell me,” I pleaded with the female EMT as I held onto Gabe’s arm with the IV. “Why is he covered in ice?”

  “Who are you?” the paramedic asked. “We only allow two family members back here.”

  Deliah grabbed my hand and hung at my side. “I’m his sister,” she told the woman.

  “They’re both sisters,” Caleb said at my back. He set his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. Regardless of the air-conditioned lobby, beads of perspiration covered my neck and face.

  “You’re back again,” the receptionist at the desk said to Caleb from behind us.

  He crooked his long neck. “Not for work.” Then he turned to the female paramedic who was checking an identification bracelet on Gabe’s wrist. “Y’all need to let these girls through the magic door. This here’s Joel Halden’s son. Lieutenant Colonel Joel Halden.”

  “Excuse me—and you are?” she asked.

  “You must be new,” he said as her partner returned from giving information to a man who was wearing scrubs and a stethoscope inside another sliding door. The male paramedic grinned at Caleb and greeted us with a friendly smile.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded in a tremulous voice I couldn’t control. “The sheet is soaked. Was he in the water?”

  “It was a heat emergency. Exertional heatstroke,” said the male paramedic. “Man, I thought I recognized a Halden right away.”

  I narrowed my gaze on Caleb and waited for him to explain.

  “He passed out while digging. Travis called 911,” he said. “They poured ice on him to cool him down.”

  “Travis saved him?” Deliah said with wonder in her voice.

  “Gabe?” I whispered. “Gabe, it’s me. Can you hear me? We’re all here with you.”

  “He’s been unresponsive for about twenty minutes,” the man told me.

  Caleb shook hands with the EMT before he left. “Thanks, y’all did a good thing getting him here.”

  I set my hand on Gabe’s throat. “His heart is jumping out of his chest!”

  “Fix him!” Deliah cried. “He’s my only brother.”

  “That’s not true.” Caleb wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “He’ll be fine.”

  “He doesn’t look fine,” I said as I became queasy.

  “Y’all need to give him some time. They’re pumping him with fluids and bringing down his temperature. His resting heart rate is elevated. Watch that screen. It should drop.”

  The doctor stepped up to the gurney and set his laptop next to Gabe’s leg. “Twenty-year-old male with no prior or underlying health issues. According to the first responder’s notes, he collapsed after severe exertion. I’ll hold off on ordering a CT scan and see if he responds to the fluids. I suspect dehydration and this god-awful heat is the culprit. This states he was in and out of consciousness when they arrived. Are you all family?”

  “Sister one and sister two,” Caleb waved a finger over our heads.

  “Can he hear me?” I asked as I held Gabe’s arm in a grip so tight I would probably leave a welt. I wanted to climb onto the stretcher and shake him awake.

  “Most likely. We’ll bring him back here, get him comfortable, and lower his internal temperature. The receptionist will need to take some information from you, and then you can sit with him while he rests.”

  “He’ll be okay, legs. Cross my heart. They’re going to replenish his electrolytes. He’s been pushing hard out there. The heat was too much.”

  “We should tell Joel. What about Judson?” I asked in a panic.

  An ambulance siren sounded outside the building. The sliding doors opened and a handful of uniformed people shuffled in.

  “Forty-year-old male struck by a crane!” shouted an EMT who was covered in blood.

  Caleb sighed. “I’ll call the lieutenant. He can call in for a private room.”

  The woman behind us waved a medical folder in the air. “Miss? Can I ask you a few questions so I can process him in?”

  “Legs, go ahead. Me and Mona Deliah will stay with him.”

  I kissed Gabe’s shoulder and then turned around to rest my hand on the desk. I thought I was going to fall over. My extremities were turning to jelly. I could hardly process that Gabe was unconscious on a gurney in the hospital.

  “Do you have his insurance card?” the woman asked over the roar of commotion following the crane accident.

  Caleb heard the woman and walked back. “He’s still under HalRem coverage, but it’s not an issue. The bill will get paid.”

  I provided Gabe’s name, address, and birthdate.

  “Does he have any known allergies?”

  “No.”

  She stared at her screen and typed. “Does he take any prescriptions?”

  “None,” I answered impatiently. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

  “Has he been hospitalized in the past three months?”

  “No.”

  “Has he had surgery in the last year?”

  “No.” Unless she considered Caleb stitching his stab wound on a pool table a surgery.

  She paused and appeared to be searching for something on her screen. “What is his height?”

  I glanced back over my shoulders and watched a nurse pull off Gabe’s boots. He was getting too far away from me. He was already through the second security door. My chest tightened and squeezed tears into my head. An ocean pooled in my eyes, and I tried to fig
ht it back.

  “He’s like six foot two. Are we done?”

  “You betcha.” She grabbed a paper from her printer and ignored the intoxicated man shouting profanities as he was wheeled by on a stretcher. “I need you to sign here and fill out these two pages for his emergency contacts. You can give this to the nurse when you finish.”

  I took the clipboard and walked through the door as it opened. I caught up to Gabe just as they wheeled his stretcher to a bed and pulled a curtain. I had been in the exact spot among twenty or so other patients when I sprained my ankle last summer. The emergency room was just as busy back then.

  The nurse and an orderly slid Gabe onto the bed and replaced his ice packs. The nurse removed what was left of his T-shirt and opted to leave him shirtless instead of putting him in a hospital gown. He was breathing hard. His chest was jumping.

  “The doctor ordered a fan. It should be here in a few minutes,” said the nurse. She was an older woman who had a calming voice and a dark tan. “We’re doing everything to bring down his internal temperature. I’ve seen his condition a lot this summer in the oil field workers.”

  “Why is he not shivering?” I asked. I didn’t feel like explaining that he wasn’t an oil worker.

  “He can’t sweat,” Caleb said. “He can’t cool himself.”

  “I need to cut these off. I hope Mr. Halden isn’t partial to fashion,” she told me as she held a scissor to the hem of Gabe’s jeans.

  Caleb stepped out from behind the curtain, and I stayed put while she sliced the jeans up his long leg and left him in his boxers. It pained me to watch Gabe looking vulnerable. I just wanted to hold onto him and kiss him.

  “How long until he wakes up?” I asked the nurse as she draped new bags of ice over each of his thighs and one over his groin.

  “It could be some time, honey. Heatstroke is serious. Some people become delirious. Some people sleep all day. If he says anything funny, don’t hold it against him. We need to make sure his kidneys are working so we’d like him to wake up in the next hour. Keep talking to him.”

  Caleb popped his head around the curtain. “Me and Mona Deliah are going to the cafeteria to make some calls. Let out a holler if anything changes. You okay here?”