Protector

by Diana Palmer

  Hayes looked up at the ceiling. “Crackers and milk!” he muttered.

  “You’ll be all right,” Coltrain assured him. “But for the next couple of weeks, you need to keep that arm immobilized and not lift anything heavier than a tissue. I’ll have my receptionist get you an appointment with Dr. Steele and also with the physiotherapist here in the hospital.”

  “When can I go home?”

  Coltrain stared at him. “Not for several more days. And even then, you can’t go home and stay by yourself. You’ll need someone with you for at least a couple of weeks, to make sure you don’t overdo and have a relapse.”

  “A nursemaid? Me?” Hayes frowned. “I was out of the hospital in three or four days the last two times...”

  “You had a flesh wound the last time, and the one before that you were only about twenty-seven years old. You’re thirty-four now, Hayes. It takes longer to recover, the older you get.”

  Hayes felt worse than ever. “I can’t go home right away.”

  “That’s right. You’re going to be extremely limited in what you can do for the next few weeks. You won’t be able to lift much while the damage heals and you’ll find even ordinary movement will aggravate the wound and cause pain. You’re going to need physical therapy three times a week...”

  “No!”

  “Yes, unless you want to be a one-armed man!” Coltrain said shortly. “Do you want to lose the use of your left arm?”

  Hayes glared at him.

  Coltrain glared right back.

  Hayes backed down. He sank back onto the pillow. His blond-streaked brown hair was disheveled and needed washing. He felt dingy. His dark eyes were bloodshot and had dark circles around them. His lean face was drawn from pain.

  “I could get somebody to stay with me,” he said after a minute.

  “Name somebody.”

  “Mrs. Mallard. She comes to take care of the house three days a week anyway.”

  “Mrs. Mallard’s sister had a heart attack. She’s gone to Dallas. I’ll bet she phoned to tell you, but you never check your telephone messages at home,” Coltrain said with some amusement.

  Hayes was disconcerted. “She’s a good woman. I hope her sister does well.” He pursed his lips. “Well, there’s Miss Bailey,” he began, naming a local woman who made her living from staying with recuperating patients. She was a retired practical nurse.

  “Miss Bailey is terrified of reptiles,” he pointed out.

  “Blanche Mallory,” he suggested, naming another elderly lady who sat with patients.

  “Terrified of reptiles.”

  “Damn!”

  “I even asked old Mrs. Brewer for you,” Coltrain said heavily. “She said she wasn’t staying in any house with a dinosaur.”

  “Andy’s an iguana. He’s a vegetarian. He doesn’t eat people!”

  “There’s a young lady you dated once who might dispute that,” Coltrain said with a smile and twinkling eyes.

  “It was self-defense. She tried to hit him with a lamp,” Hayes muttered.

  “I recall treating her for a sprained ankle, at your expense,” the other man returned.

  Hayes sighed. “Okay. Maybe one of my deputies could be persuaded,” he relented.

  “Nope. I asked them, too.”

  He glowered at Coltrain. “They like me.”

  “Yes, they do,” he agreed. “But they’re all married with young families. Well, Zack Tallman isn’t, but he’s not staying with you, either. He says he needs to be able to concentrate while he’s working on your case. He doesn’t like cartoon movies,” he added, tongue-in-cheek.

  “Animation bigot,” Hayes muttered.

  “Of course, there’s MacCreedy...”

  “No. Never! Don’t even speak his name, he might turn up here!” Hayes said with real feeling.

  “He’s your cousin and he likes you.”

  “Very distant cousin, and we’re not talking about him.”

  “Okay. Suit yourself.”

  “So I’m going to be stuck here until I get well?” Hayes asked miserably.

  “Afraid we don’t have space to keep you,” Coltrain replied. “Not to mention the size of the hospital bill you’d be facing, and the county isn’t likely to want to pick it up.”

  Hayes scowled. “I could pick it up myself,” Hayes said curtly. “I may not look like it, but I’m fairly well-to-do. I work in law enforcement because I want to, not because I have to.” He paused. “What’s going on with finding out who shot me?” he asked suddenly. “Have they come up with anything?”

  “Your chief deputy is on the case, along with Yancy, your investigator. They found a shell casing.”

  “Nice work,” Hayes commented.

  “It was. Yancy used a laser pointer, extrapolated from where you were sitting and the angle of the wound, and traced it to the edge of the pasture, under a mesquite tree. He found footprints, a full metal jacketed shell from an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a cigarette butt.”

  “I’ll promote him.”

  Coltrain chuckled.

  “I’ll call Cash Grier. Nobody knows more about sniping than the police chief. He used to do it for a living.”

  “Good idea,” Coltrain added.

  “Look, I can’t stay here and I can’t go home, so what am I going to do?” Hayes asked miserably.

  “You won’t like the only solution I could come up with.”

  “If it gets me out of the hospital, I’ll love it. Tell me,” Hayes promised.

  Coltrain stood and backed up a step. “Minette Raynor says you can stay with them until you’re healed.”

  “Never!” Hayes burst out. “I’d live in a hollow log with a rattler, sooner than do that! Why would she even volunteer in the first place? She knows I hate her guts!”

  “She felt sorry for you when Lou mentioned we couldn’t find anybody who was willing to stay in your house,” Coltrain replied. Lou was short for Louise, his wife, who was also a doctor.

  “Sorry for me. Huh!” he scoffed.

  “Her little brother and sister like you.”

  He shifted. “I like them, too. They’re nice kids. We have candy to give away at the sheriff’s office on Halloween. She always brings them by.”

  “It’s up to you, of course,” Coltrain continued. “But you’re going to have a lot of trouble getting me to sign a release form if you try to go home. You’ll end up back here in two days, from overdoing, I guarantee it.”

  Hayes hated the idea. He hated Minette. But he hated the hospital more. Minette’s great-aunt Sarah lived with her. He figured Sarah would be looking after him, especially since Minette was at the newspaper office all day every day. And at night he could go to bed early. Very early. It wasn’t a great solution, but he could live with it if he had to.

  “I guess I could stand it for a little while,” he said finally.

  Coltrain beamed. “Good man. I’m proud of you for putting aside your prejudices.”

  “They aren’t put away. They’re just suppressed.”

  The other man shrugged.

  “When can I leave?” Hayes asked.

  “If you’re good, and you continue to improve, maybe Friday.”

  “Friday.” Hayes brightened a little. “Okay. I’ll be good.”

  * * *

  He was. Sort of. He complained for the rest of the week about being awakened to have a bath, because it wasn’t a real bath. He complained because the television set in his room didn’t work properly and he couldn’t get the History Channel and the International History Channel, which appealed to the military historian in him. He didn’t like the cartoon channel because it didn’t carry the cartoon movies he was partial to. He complained about having gelatin with every meal and the tiniest cup of ice cream he’d ever seen in his life for dessert.

  “I hate hospital food,” he complained to Coltrain.

  “We’re getting in a French chef next week,” the doctor said wryly.

  “Right, and I’m going to be named King of
England the following one.”

  Coltrain sighed. He looked at the chart. “Well, the way you’re improving, I plan to release you in the morning. Minette’s coming to get you, bring you back to her place and then go on her way to the office.”

  His heart soared. “I can get out?”

  Coltrain nodded. “You can get out. And Minette and her great-aunt are wonderful cooks. You won’t have cause for complaint over there.”

  Hayes hesitated and avoided the doctor’s eyes. “I guess it was a kindness on Minette’s part to have me stay with her. Especially knowing how I feel about her.”

  Coltrain moved a little closer to the bed. “Hayes, she never had anything to do with Bobby, except that an older girl at her school was friendly with her and dated Bobby. But she wasn’t in their circle of friends, you see? Besides that, she’s one of the few people I know who never even tried marijuana. She has nothing to do with drugs.”

  “Her family...” Hayes began hotly.

  Coltrain held up a hand. “We’ve never spoken of that, and we shouldn’t, even now. Minette doesn’t know. You promised your father that you’d never tell her. You have to keep that promise.”

  Hayes took a steadying breath. “It’s hard.”

  “Life is hard. Get used to it,” Coltrain told him.

  “I’m doing that. This is my third gunshot wound,” Hayes pointed out.

  Coltrain cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You know, that’s either damned bad luck or a death wish on your part.”

  “I don’t have a death wish!”

  “You walk headfirst into dangerous situations, without any thought of letting your men help.”

  “They all have families. Young families.”

  “Zack doesn’t. But if it worries you, hire some more single deputies,” Coltrain said curtly. “Some men with guts and independent thinking who know the ropes and can calculate the risk.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing,” he huffed. “The last deputy I hired was from up in San Antonio. He commutes. We don’t have a big employment pool here. Most of the young men move to the city to find work, and law enforcement is notoriously low-paying, considering where we are. If it was my only source of income, I’d be hard-pressed to pay the bills, even on my salary.”

  “I know all that.”

  “The family men needed jobs desperately,” he added quietly. “This economy is the worst I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

  “Tell me about it. Even physicians are feeling the bite. And it’s bad for our patients, many of whom won’t come in for early treatment because they don’t have insurance to pay for it. So they wait until conditions are life-threatening. It breaks my heart.”

  “Too true.” Hayes leaned back on the pillows. “Thanks for letting me out.”

  Coltrain shrugged. “What are friends for?” He looked at the chart. “I’m giving you prescriptions to carry with you, and I’ve made an appointment with the physical therapist who’s in a group that practices here. You’ll need to go three times a week. Don’t argue,” he said when Hayes started to protest. “If you want to ever be able to use that arm again, you’ll do what I say.”

  Hayes glared at him. After a minute he sighed. “All right.”

  “It’s not so bad. You’ll learn how to exercise the arm, and they’ll do heat treatments. Those feel good.”

  Hayes shrugged, wincing at the brief pain.

  “Isn’t that drip working?” Coltrain put down the clipboard and fiddled with the drip. “It’s clogged.” He called a nurse and indicated the drip. She grimaced and quickly fixed it.

  “Sorry, Doctor,” she said quietly. “I should have checked it earlier. It’s just, we’re so busy and there are so few of us...”

  “Budget cuts,” Coltrain nodded, sighing. “Just be more careful,” he said gently.

  She smiled faintly. “Yes, sir.”

  She left and Coltrain shook his head. “We have our own staffing problems, as you can see. I’ll have that drip removed later and we’ll give you a patch for the pain meds.”

  “Modern technology,” Carson chuckled.

  “Yes. Some of the new stuff is amazing. I spend an hour on the internet every once in a while researching the new techniques they’re experimenting with. I wish I was twenty years younger, so that I could be learning this stuff at medical school. What a future physicians can look forward to now!”

  “I’ve read about some of it. You’re right. It is amazing.” He was feeling suddenly sleepy.

  “Get some rest,” Coltrain said. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

  Hayes nodded. “Thanks, Copper,” he said, using Coltrain’s nickname.

  “My pleasure.”

  Seconds later, he was asleep.

  * * *

  The next morning, everything was suddenly bustling. The nurses got him bathed, if you could call a tub bath bathed, and ready to check out by eleven o’clock.

  Coltrain came by with the prescriptions and releases. “Now if you have any trouble, any trouble at all, you call me. I don’t care what time it is. Any redness, inflammation, that sort of thing.”

  Hayes nodded. “Red streaks running up my arm...” he teased.

  Coltrain made a face. “Gangrene isn’t likely.”

  “Well, you never know,” Hayes chuckled.

  “I’m glad to see you feeling better.”

  “Thanks for helping to get me that way.”

  “That’s my job,” Coltrain replied with a smile. He glanced toward the door. “Come on in,” he said.

  Minette Raynor came into the room. She was tall and willowy, with a curtain of pale gold hair that fell almost to her waist in back, neatly combed and clean. Her eyes were almost black and she had freckles just across the bridge of her nose. Hayes recalled that her mother had been redheaded. Perhaps the freckles were inherited. She had pert little breasts and long, elegant fingers. Didn’t she play piano at church? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been in a church in a very long time.

  “I’m here to drive you home,” Minette told Hayes quietly. She didn’t smile.

  Hayes nodded and looked uncomfortable.

  “We’ll get him dressed and a nurse will bring him down to the front door in a wheelchair.”

  “I can walk,” Hayes snapped.

  “It’s hospital policy,” Coltrain shot back. “You’ll do it.”

  Hayes glowered at him, but he didn’t speak.

  Minette didn’t speak, either, but she was thinking about the next couple of weeks with pure anguish. She’d felt sorry for Hayes. He had nobody, really, not even cousins who would have taken care of him. There was MacCreedy, but that would be a total disaster. His sweet Mrs. Mallard, who did his housework three days a week, was out of town because her sister was ill. So Minette had offered him room and board until he was healed up.

  She was having second thoughts. He looked at her with angry dark eyes that wished her anywhere but here.

  “I’ll just wait outside,” Minette said after a minute, one hand on her purse.

  “He won’t be long,” Coltrain promised.

  She left and went down to the waiting room.

  “This is a bad idea,” Hayes gritted as he started to get out of bed and had to hesitate because his head was swimming.

  “Don’t fall.” Coltrain helped him up. “You can stay another day or two...”

  “I’m fine,” Hayes muttered. “Just fine.”

  Coltrain sighed. “All right. If you’re sure.”

  Hayes wasn’t sure, but he wanted out of the hospital. Even Minette Raynor’s company was preferable to another day of gelatin and forced baths.

  He got into the clothes he’d been wearing when he was shot, grimacing at the blood on the shoulder of his shirt.

  “I should have had somebody get fresh clothing for you. Zack Tallman would have brought it over if we’d asked,” Coltrain said apologetically.

  “It’s no big deal. I’ll ask Zack to get them for me,” Hayes said, hesitating. “I g
uess Minette’s afraid of reptiles, too?”

  “I’ve never asked,” Coltrain replied.

  Hayes sighed. “He’s like a lizardly cow,” he said irritably. “Everybody’s scared of him because of the way he looks, but he’s a vegetarian. He wouldn’t eat meat.”

  “He looks scary,” Coltrain reminded him.

  “I suppose so. Me and my dinosaur.” That tickled Hayes, and he laughed. “Right. Me and my dinosaur.”

  * * *

  Once he was dressed, a nurse came in with a wheelchair. Hayes got into it with rare docility and she put his few possessions in his lap, explaining the prescriptions and the care instruction sheets she handed him on the way out the door.

  “Don’t forget, physical therapy on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” she added. “It’s very important.”

  “Important.” Hayes nodded. He was already plotting ways to get out of it. But he didn’t tell her that.

  * * *

  Minette was waiting at the door with her big SUV. It was black with lots of chrome and the wood on the dash was a bright yellow. The seats were tan. It had a CD player and an iPod attachment and automatic everything. There was an entertainment system built in so that the kids could watch DVDs in the backseat. In fact, it was very much like Hayes’s personal car, a new Lincoln. He drove a big pickup truck to work. The Lincoln was for his rare nights out in San Antonio at the opera or the ballet. He’d been missing those because of work pressure. Maybe he’d get to see The Nutcracker next month, at least. It was almost Thanksgiving already.

  He noticed the signature trademark on the steering wheel and chuckled. The SUV was a Lincoln. No wonder the dash instruments looked so familiar.

  He was strapped in, grimacing because the seat belt hurt.

  “Sorry,” Minette said gently, fumbling with the belt to make it less confining.

  “It’s all right,” Hayes said through his teeth.

  She closed the door, got in under the wheel and pulled out of the hospital parking lot. Hayes was tense at first. He didn’t like being a passenger. But Minette was a good driver. She got him home quickly to the big beautiful white Victorian house that had belonged to her family for three generations. It was surrounded by fenced pastures and a horse grazed, a palomino, all by itself.

  “You’ve got a palomino,” he mused. “I have several of my own.”