Rodeo Rancher

by Lauren Wood

  Judson wanted to follow her outside of the weight room, but to do that would admit something that he didn’t want to. He had seen the light, but maybe it was more of a darkness that was seeping into his very soul. She was corrupting his thoughts and his feelings that he was getting angry. He began to pound his fist against the tile like that of a mad man possessed by a demon. It brought to mind the way that his father treated his mother. She was always doing his bidding and there were times that she didn’t look at all happy about it. He was very young at the time and he didn’t know any better. He began to emulate his father in ways that he probably shouldn’t.

  He needed to get her out of his head and the best way to do that was to get the necessary sleep. He was a big believer that 8 hours was never enough, but he was also a sucker for a pretty face. He envisioned what it would be like to be with that redheaded vixen with no morals and suddenly the face of Samantha came flooding in over top of those naughty thoughts.

  He finally turned off the shower, feeling that adrenaline rush from the cold water pulsing through his veins. The unfortunate side effect of shrinkage was very evident by his cock that was acting like a turtle shying away from the public eye. He had lived with that appendage swinging down between his legs all of his life, but he still could not understand the mechanism of how it all worked. Certain fantasies could bring about an erection, but even a brief graze by a female hand on his pants could bring about that same condition. There was no telling what would make him salute and raise the flag in the presence of the female form.

  He toweled himself dry and tossed it into a nearby bucket in the corner. He walked unashamed back into the weight room. There was something different, like a foreboding sense that surrounded him like a personal aura. He couldn’t understand what it meant, but he was prone to getting these kinds of feelings from time to time growing up. The one that he remembered vividly was how his father had died for 1 minute during a heart attack. He had lived, but he had changed his attitude and was now mostly a family dedicated man. Judson thought that he was weak and that maybe having that heart attack had broken the man into a shell of his former self.

  He slipped into a pair of track pants that were black and had white stripes down the side with buttons that could easily expose his more private region in a quick flick of his wrist. He had had the pleasure of showing women what they were missing. He saw the look on their faces and some had even taken him up on his offer about going back to his place for a little bit of something on the side.

  He put on that black sweater and then picked up his gym bag and made his way over to the door leading to the hallway. He had his hand on the handle, when he realized that he had forgotten his fan mail. He went back to retrieve it, stashing it into his bag for further perusal in the cold light of day.

  He opened the door and there was a certain weight behind it that didn’t make any sense. He almost stepped on Samantha, as she was lying in a pool of her own blood. At first, he was shocked by this latest display. Thankfully, that shock wore off and he was able to pull himself out of it without much difficulty. “I need you to hold on, Samantha. I’m calling for an ambulance.” He saw her holding onto her stomach. She was possibly trying to use some pressure to stop the bleeding from getting any worse.

  Samantha could sense that somebody was there and that she wasn’t alone. She opened her eyes to see a sight that surprised her. There was a moment that she thought that she had gone to heaven, but the face of the concerned Judson was more of reality than something of an ethereal nature. “I can’t…breathe.” It was the only thing that she could say. All the energy had been drained away from her and she couldn’t even hold onto the wound.

  “This is Judson Nielsen and I have an emergency at the college coliseum. I need an ambulance. She’s breathing, but it’s erratic and it appears that she has been stabbed with something. I don’t know if it goes all the way in and through to the other side. I do see a streak of blood going down the door. I’ll try to put pressure on it, but do hurry.” He hung up and then knelt on the floor beside Samantha with the care and compassion of a man that really did want to get to know her better.

  “Don’t…leave me… I’m scared.” This was not the position that she wanted to find herself in, but it wasn’t like she had much of a choice. She remembered the black clad man. He had purposely hidden his features from being seen after the attack. Even the cameras wouldn’t be able to capture the likeness of the attacker. He had kept his head down low and he used the darkened parking lot, as his only form of escape. The figure could have been man or woman, but she had to believe that a man had gotten the best of her. The pain of his hand pressing down on the wound had almost made her pass out. She knew that the possibility of waking up again was slim to none. She could almost feel that clammy hand of death on her shoulder and she had no intention of giving in to the blackness. “I know that I’m dying, but it gives me comfort to see that he has more than just himself to worry about. He could’ve easily left me here, but I see now that I have vastly underestimated him. I don’t know who did this, but if I survive, I plan to make them pay.”

  “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do…for god’s sake somebody tell me what to do.” Judson was panicking and even though he could hear the operator from 911 on the other end of his phone, he really couldn’t understand what was being said. To him, it was this mumbled garbled bunch of nonsense, but maybe that was the shock of seeing Samantha in this way. It had caused him to lose a part of his conscious mind. “I have my hands pressed up against it. I think the blood is slowing down. I can’t tell, if I am doing any good or not. You need to get here and I think… I think that she’s dying.” He was worried. For the first time in his life, he was concerned for somebody other than himself.

  “Let’s…you and I do this together, Judson. Keep talking to me and maybe that will be enough to keep me from knocking on heaven’s doors. I’m grateful that you were here. Without you, I think that I would’ve been a goner.” Her voice cracked and there was a trickle of blood coming out from her lips. The pain had turned into this numbing sensation. It was like somebody had poured cold water onto her stomach. It had to be the shock, but she wasn’t going to give in to the need for sleep at the moment. “I need you…to talk about something. I don’t care…what it is.” She was waiting with bated breath, but he was too far gone to give her anything to hang onto.

  Judson saw her head slumping forward and her eyes beginning to droop a little heavier than normal. He didn’t want her to die, but he really had nothing of any kind of training in first aid. This was his first emergency and he hoped to god that it would be the last one that he would ever have to deal with on his own. “I was an only child and let’s just say that I was given practically anything I wanted within reason. My parents overcompensated for their own shortcomings. They made sure that I was taken care of financially. My father was not a very nice man and I see now that mother only put up with him for the sake of the child, which of course was me. I thought that he was my hero, but I think I see now that he was only a hero in my eyes.” This was the first time that he had admitted anything of the sort. He didn’t like opening up that Pandora’s Box. He had denied himself the right to know the truth, even though he already knew it deep down inside.

  “It must’ve been…hard on you for being some kind of pawn in their games. I doubt…that your mother was very nice to your father. There was probably a lot of cold moments in your house. You probably didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time. Did they…did they…even sleep in the same room together?” She had a coughing jag, but she was trying to stop herself from coughing up a lung. “This is the real Judson and maybe I should have gotten injured a long time ago. This is a refreshing look at the man that thinks he’s better than everybody else. He hides his insecurities with bravado and sexual conquests to make him feel better about his own childhood. I’m glad that I was able to get him to open up, but I certainly didn’t want to do it in this way.”


  “I never thought of it before, but they do tend to sleep in different bedrooms. They told me that it was because my father snored, but now I think that there was another underlying reason. They barely ever talk and when they did it was mostly a shouting match to see who was going to come out on top. He was always telling her what she couldn’t do and she was damned and determined to make him regret saying a damn thing. I look back and I don’t think that my mother was ever happy. I regret that I might have started to emulate the way that my father spoke to her on occasion. I guess what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree is true. We learn from what we see and I don’t think that I was given the right way to treat women.” He was convincing himself that he was only telling her what she wanted to hear. It was a good way to keep her talking, but underneath he suspected that there was something to everything that was being said.

  She could barely hear the drone of the sirens in the distance. It had to be that the ambulance was close by and hopefully they would get there before it was too late. “I have to thank you for letting me see who you really are without the constant need to puff out your chest. I think that after everything is said and done that I still would like to come back and speak to you on violence in sports. I want to get your own unbiased opinion without the caustic behavior that makes me want to slap you upside your head.” She was talking in a whisper and feeling like her limbs had turned into concrete. “I don’t want to die, but I’m not afraid anymore. There’s a sense of calm and maybe this is acceptance raising its ugly head. I want to live and I have, so much more that I want to accomplish. I have barely scratched the surface of my profession and it seems wrong somehow that I will have to let somebody else take my place.”

  Judson heard the sirens getting louder. There was the slamming of the door and the emergence of the paramedics coming down the hall. They were moving at a rate of speed that seemed of some urgency. The look on their faces told him that Samantha was not even close to being out of the woods. “Let me take over here, young man. You’ve done everything that you can. You need to let the professionals take care of things.” The paramedic could see that Judson was trying to deal with something and maybe this woman really did mean something to him “You have to let me do my job. Take a step back and we’ll take a look at you after we’re done with her.” James Garfield had no relation to the man in history. He was always ribbed about his name, but for now his expertise was what people were looking for.

  Samantha looked up at her savior and then her eyes fluttered and rolled into the back of her head. She began to convulse and went into some sort of fit that reminded the paramedic of some epileptic seizure. His partner held her down, while she was administered with an adrenalin shot to make her heart pump with a renewed rejuvenation. “I don’t know if their lifesaving measure is going to work on me or not. I guess I should be thankful that I met Judson and was able to make him see that his life was predicated on something that wasn’t true. I’m sure that a therapist would’ve been able to do the same for him, but maybe not in the same way.”

  Judson stood nearby watching them work and seeing the distress on their faces from how hard they had to work to try and stabilize her condition. “She just went into cardiac arrest. Give me the paddles and charge it to half power.” They ripped open her shirt, cutting it down the middle and leaving her exposed to the elements. Her bra was the only thing that was keeping them from seeing her nubile young body. Her chest was not rising with each breath and the adrenaline shot was only a temporary measure. “Let’s get these things connected.” It would’ve been better had they been in the hospital, but this portable unit was going to have to suffice for what they had in mind.

  “Are you sure that we shouldn’t just call it, James? She’s turning blue and I don’t think that it’s going to be long before she leaves this mortal coil.” Stanley was a new cadet watching James work was like seeing a window into his future. James was working diligently and each time that her body was jolted by the electricity, he stayed close to find out if it was working. Stanley put his hand on James shoulder and then saw James looked up with a sense of dread on his face. The drone of the constant beep told the tale of woe

  “Time of death…”

  Samantha heard that she was being declared dead and then suddenly her eyes shot open. That surprised not only the paramedics, but also the distraught Judson looking on. She had promised herself that she wasn’t going to leave, at least not, until she found out the truth of why somebody had attacked her with no provocation whatsoever.

  “It doesn’t look like she’s going to give up the fight that easily. What we have here is somebody that has declared herself to be a survivor. I thought that we lost her, but it appears that this one has not yet begun to fight. I don’t know who she is, but I hope that she can give death something to think about.” They found that she was stabilized, but she was unconscious, which was probably a good thing for her to rest. “It looks like the knife went all the way in and out the other side. I’m kind of amazed that it didn’t cut through any vital organs. We need to get her to the hospital immediately. Call ahead and make sure that the ER resident is on hand for delivery.”

  “Think you… Thank you… Thank you.” Judson was looking up into the ceiling and crossing his hands over his chest to indicate to god that his prayers had been answered. He made himself believe that he would do the same thing for anybody. He had built himself up to be the hero in this story, even though the paramedics were the ones that had done most of the work. He didn’t realize that he was the one that was there for her.

  Chapter 2

  Judson stayed with her all night, holding her hand and making sure that she was warm after the exploratory surgery to repair the damage that had been done by the attack. He had called his parents and told them what had happened and they told him to stay by her side. It didn’t matter to him. He would’ve done it anyway. He watched her sleep like an angel and then he laid his head on her stomach, as a form of solidarity.

  A couple of hours later and Samantha roused from her slumber to see that Judson had not left her side. She saw the figure of a police officer by her door, but she had no idea why they were there. It came to her in a burst of memory the way that she had been attacked and left for dead. “I don’t know exactly what happened and why I was the target. I don’t like hospitals and the sooner that I get out of here, the better off everybody will be. I’m just going to become a nuisance and a pain in the ass. I remember how it was when I went to get my tonsils out. They were pushing me out the door after the second day because of my attitude. I was worried about catching something and not leaving here under my own free will. My grandmother went in for a common surgery that had turned out to have complications in the operating room.”

  Samantha sat up and looked at the prone form of Judson lying on top of her. She actually had to smile at the bit of drool that was falling from his mouth and onto the sheet. He looked peaceful, but underneath it all he was still that callous kid that thought that the world owed him something. The universe had a funny sense of humor and why it decided that she had to get stabbed was beyond her.

  The door opened and that same police officer in a crisp blue uniform had stuck his head in to give a noncommittal smile. He indicated with his hand that he needed some kind of statement, but it could wait, until such time that she didn’t have the company of a male companion. She motioned for him to come closer and took the pad and the pen out of him grip. She told him without saying anything that she was going to write down her recollections to the best of her ability. He backed away holding onto his hip and moving back into position at the front of the door, as some sort of shield against anything else that was going to try to harm her.

  It was still fresh in her mind and she scribbled madly, until she had five pages that were pretty much saying the same thing on the first page. She was trying to be, as detailed as possible, using her journalism training to come to the rescue. “I know how important it is to get thes
e things down, while they are still fresh in the mind. I have seen my fair share of police dramas to know that the first 24 hours is the most important to finding the attacker. Then again, maybe that’s when somebody is kidnapped. I suppose it really doesn’t matter and as long as I make my statement quickly, I can try to put this past me.”

  Judson started to wake, as the door closed and he looked up to see that Samantha was awake and writing something on a note pad. He was about to interject his own thoughts, but the exhaustion of the night had crept up on him. His eyes felt heavy and then they closed with no more fanfare than a flutter of his lids.

  An hour later and he felt somebody shaking him awake and then he looked to see that the staff had now come to change her dressing. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is not for the faint of heart and I really don’t want to clean up after you, if you know what I mean.” Nurses Able was vividly aware that something like this took a strong stomach and most people just didn’t have it in them. There were only a few cases that surprised her, but this young man showed that he probably wasn’t going to be able to take the sight of the wound being exposed. “We won’t be more than a minute. You can stand outside in the hallway with police officer. They have some more questions for you anyway.” In his exhausted state, he saw that Samantha was looking at him, but he didn’t have the strength to utter a single word.

  Walking on shaky legs, he opened the door to the hallway to be accosted by two detectives that were waiting patiently to talk to the patient. The door got caught on a piece of fabric from the curtain surrounding her cubicle. This made it easy to hear everything that was being said between the officers and Judson.

  “I’m afraid that we have some distressing news. We’ve gone over the details of what you said and what Miss Maxwell said and we believe that she was purposely attacked. Do you know of any enemies that she might have that would want to do her harm? Is there more to your story than you have been straight with us about? I hate to put you on the spot, but this is important. We’ve gone over the scene with a fine tooth comb and the attacker did not leave any prints or even the weapon behind to indicate that this was the spur of the moment. We believe that it was a calculated attack and that somebody was purposely trying to hurt her. We also found your letters and let’s just say that they were a bit disturbing to say the least.”