Brenda Minton - The Rancher Takes a Bride

He reached for Oregon’s hand and squeezed it. “She’s going to be okay.”

“I know. I know.” Oregon wiped away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. “She was talking. That’s a good sign. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, always a good sign.”

Anger suddenly flashed in her eyes. Funny, he’d thought they were hazel; now he realized they were the warmest shade of gray possible. “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, Duke. You were a medic. I want your opinion.”

“A medic, not a doctor. And kids aren’t exactly my area of expertise.”

“Duke, please.”

He slowed for a stoplight. “Only a mile to the hospital.”

“What are you trying to hide?”

“I’m not hiding anything. I’m just trying to decide the best answer because I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“Tell me she’s going to be okay,” she sobbed.

Yeah, that’s exactly what he was avoiding. “I think she had broken bones and possibly some internal injuries. I’m going by my own assessment and the paramedics’ conversation as they loaded her in the ambulance.”

Oregon nodded, the conversation ending in nervous silence. Joe patted Oregon’s leg and said that he knew one thing with certainty; that God would take care of Lilly. Duke didn’t say that he’d seen a lot of prayers go unanswered during his time in Afghanistan.

“Here we are.” He pulled his truck into the hospital parking lot and found a space close to the emergency room. He exited and then waited for Oregon.

Something happened in that moment as he watched and waited for her to get out. It was like the past crashing into the future, and he didn’t know what it meant. It was a flashback of laughing with a dark-haired girl who had just won her first cash prize on a barrel horse she’d trained herself. With a shake of his head he cleared the memory.

Sitting in his truck, Oregon visibly pulled herself together before she stepped out. The wind whipped her hair and wrapped her prairie skirt around her legs. Joe waited for them on the other side. The three of them walked toward the emergency room entrance. As they got closer, Oregon’s steps slowed, faltering. Duke took her hand and looked down at her. Her eyes met his and it seemed familiar.

He shook it off. The memory wasn’t real.

But the pain in her eyes was. He squeezed her hand. “She’ll be okay.”

“I’m taking your word for that.” Her voice trembled on the words.

Duke led her through the automatic doors to a desk, where a receptionist smiled up at them. Joe stood on her other side, his hand on her back.

“We’re here with Lilly Jeffries, brought in by ambulance from Martin’s Crossing,” Duke told the woman who had already started searching her computer.

“Are you parents or legal guardians?” the receptionist asked, barely looking up at them.

“I’m her mother,” Oregon replied.

“She’s being examined right now.” The woman behind the desk pushed paperwork on a clipboard across the counter. “If you could fill this out.”

“I want to see my daughter.” Oregon’s voice didn’t shake. She looked at the woman, her eyes fierce, the way a mother’s eyes should be.

Not that Duke had any real experience with mothers. His own had skipped out on them right before his tenth birthday. They hadn’t seen her since the day she hopped in her car and took off.

Oregon wasn’t that kind of mom.

The receptionist nodded, and her features softened. “Green ward, room C. Take the paperwork with you.”

“Thank you.”

Duke reached for her hand, a strangely familiar gesture. He’d ignored this woman for the past year. He’d been busy with his diner. She’d been busy getting her own business off the ground. She hadn’t seemed to want more from him than an occasional take-out meal. Come to think of it, she’d rarely stepped foot in the diner. She’d always sent Lilly to get their food.

Why was he thinking about this now, as she walked next to him, her hand tightly gripping his? Joe walked on her other side, quiet, staid. The older man had settled in a few months back and seemed content to stay awhile in Martin’s Crossing.

They reached the room with the open glass door. Inside, a doctor stood next to Lilly, his smile easy, his gestures not those of a man in the middle of an emergency. He waved them inside.

“You must be Mom. We’ve been asking for you. After we settled on the fact that it isn’t Saturday, and she wasn’t on her way to school when the bus hit her.” The doctor smiled down at his patient. “We’re going to do a CT scan of that head, and then we’ll do some X-rays.”

The doctor motioned Oregon out of the room and followed close behind her. Duke went with her. Joe stayed with Lilly, who grimaced in pain as she told him something they couldn’t hear after the doctor slid that glass door closed.

“You’re her dad?” the doctor asked. Duke shook his head.

“No. I just drove her mom up here.” He glanced down at the woman next to him, her lower lip between her teeth, her worried gaze on the girl inside that room.

“You can stay,” she whispered, still not looking at him.

The doctor looked from Oregon to Duke, gave a curt nod and continued. “We’re going to run some tests. She has some abdominal tenderness. I’m sure we’ve got a fracture in her left leg. We’ll know more after X-rays.”

“She’ll be okay?” Oregon finally looked away from her daughter and made eye contact with the doctor.

“She’ll be fine. She’s not going to be happy when she realizes what a cast will do to her summer activities, but hopefully we can have her back on two good legs very soon.”

“Can I go back in now?”

Sliding the door back open, the doctor said, “You have a few minutes, then you can wait in here for us while we run the tests.”

She nodded as she walked away, leaving Duke with the strangest feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched the less than animated form of Lilly on that hospital bed. Joe stepped out of the room to join him.

“She’ll be okay.” Joe said it like he was comforting Duke.

“Of course she will. Her mom is here now.”

Joe gave him a puzzled look and shook his head. “You going in there?”

No, he wasn’t. He had done his part. He’d been shaken to his core when he’d seen that car speeding down the street, seen her freeze in her tracks as the sedan screeched to a stop too late. It could have been worse, he’d told himself. Much worse.

He shook his head, not wanting to replay it in his mind again. What he needed was...a cup of coffee. He made his excuses and headed down the hall. Joe started to follow.

Duke put his hand out to stop the older man from tagging along, giving advice he didn’t want or need. “Give me a minute alone.”

“She’s okay, Duke.”

“I know that.”

He knew she was okay. He didn’t know if he was, though. He’d nearly put the nightmares to rest in the last year or so. He’d been almost back to normal. But now faces were flashing through his memory. Names he’d almost forgotten were surfacing. A man didn’t forget those young men, their names, their stories.

He put his dollar in the vending machine and raised his hand, ready to pound his fist against the glass front, but then he stopped himself. His chest ached, and each breath had to work its way from lungs that seemed to be closing up.

A hand touched his back, small and gentle. He didn’t turn. He knew that it was Oregon. He inhaled her presence, the soft scent of wildflowers.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded, slowing his breaths, feeling his heart return to normal. Yeah, he was fine.

“We have to talk,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear.