Page 67 of Roaring Fork Wrangler

“Don’t you want to know what I asked?”

“Uh, sure.”

“I asked if you could see him.”

I put my hand over my mouth. “Can I?”

“Yes, sweetheart. In fact, Beau said he’d leave now, pick you and Sam up, and bring you back here.”

When I returned to the kitchen to tell her, she was on the phone. “Beau’s on his way here,” she said, covering the mic.

“My dad told me.”

She said something else to him, then ended the call. “Beau said to warn you that Cord looks pretty rough.”

“As long as he’s alive, I can handle it.”

Sam,Cord’s brother Buck, and I took turns sitting by Cord’s bedside for the next week. The doctors encouraged us to talk to him while we were there. I knew Sam read him Miss Cena’s journals. I had no idea what his brother might have said. For me, I struggled. Cord was in a coma, being kept alive by machines and medicines, and even the doctors had said they weren’t sure there was much hope for functional survival.

On the eighth day, I stood to excuse myself when the same doctor came in to check on Cord’s progress like he did at least once a day.

“You’re okay. I’ll only be a minute.” He held up a light and pulled one of Cord’s eyelids open. He did the same thing twice more.

“What is it?” I asked when I saw him smile.

“His eyes are tracking.”

“What does that mean?”

“Brain function.”

He left, but came back a few minutes later, saying he’d scheduled several tests and that Cord would be out of his room for at least two hours, maybe longer. He also suggested I go home and get some much-needed rest.

“We won’t have any concrete results until tomorrow, anyway,” he added.

It didn’t matter whether I slept or not; I still looked haggard, and I didn’t care. Each day, I’d leave the hospital, drive home, and fall asleep, sometimes without changing out of my clothes.

I would’ve preferred to stay at the cottage, just to feel closer to Cord, but Buck had been staying there since he’d arrived in town.

One thing I didn’t do was drive. Either Gray, my parents, Beau, or Decker were always waiting to take me home and bring me back. Tonight was no different.

“Juni, honey?”I rolled over, not realizing I’d drifted off, when my mom stuck her head in my bedroom door. “Sam is trying to reach you.”

I felt around on the bed for my phone and saw I’d missed two texts and two calls from her. My heart sank,knowing Cord had to have taken a turn for the worse if she was trying so hard to reach me.

“Hey,” I said when she picked up.

“Juni! Have you heard?” She sounded happy.

“I haven’t.”

“Every test, every scan shows brain activity. He’s going to make it, Juni. I know he is. They even removed the breathing tube, and he’s doing it on his own.”

I’d had so many dreams where Cord came out of the coma and was fine that I had a hard time believing this wasn’t one of them.

“Hurry up and get here!”

“On my way,” I said, still expecting that, at any time, I’d wake up.

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