Page 88 of Tacos & Toboggans
“Major, you should be home in bed where it’s comfortable.”
“Not without you, it’s not,” he said. “Not when I know you’re in this bed because of me. I can suffer for a few hours for what I did to you.”
“You didn’t do anything to me. An idiot with a knife put me here, along with my own stupidity for going back there alone.”
“They got the idiot with the knife,” Major said, lowering the foot of the recliner the nurses must have brought in for him. He came to stand by my bed. “Take my hand and let me pull you forward. I should check your bandage.”
He held his hand out. I looked at it for a moment, trying to decide if I could touch him without anguish filling my soul. That was when my soul reminded me that not touching him would have that effect. He needed me as much as I needed him. I slipped my hand into his, and the breath he released told me I’d made the right decision in meeting him with understanding.
“On the count of three, blow out,” he said, so I nodded, and he pulled me onto my left side. Fire licked at the wound, but surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. He inspected the bandage with his penlight and then helped me back onto the pillow, which took a bit of the pressure off the side where I lay. “It hasn’t bled through the bandage, which is great news.”
Once he tucked the penlight back in his pocket, he pulled a smaller chair over to my bedside and took my hand again. He was content to hold it and rub his thumb across the back, but I wanted answers.
“Who was he?” I asked, as though that answer should have followed his earlier statement.
“It’s the middle of the night. Close your eyes and get some sleep. I’ll fend off the nurses.”
“Major,” I said, the word a simple warning to the man before me.
With a sigh, he tossed his head side to side as though he were a prizefighter entering the ring. “It was Luke West. It turns out his rap sheet was much longer than armed robbery. His juvenile record was littered with violent offenses, but it was locked, so no one knew. When he was convicted of the armed robbery charge, he was also accused of multiple violent attacks.”
“Accused but not convicted?”
“Plea deal,” he said, his jaw ticking as he ground his teeth together. “But he served his time, and they had to grant him parole. Unfortunately, it didn’t take him long to go back to his violent tendencies.”
“Gabe said he was long gone. Why was he out at the tree farm?”
“No, what Gabe said was that he couldn’t find him in town, not that he wasn’t still in the area. There’s no way to scour all the farm acreage around here. It’s winter, and the assumption was that he’d be in a big city where he could find shelter. That was an assumption they shouldn’t have made. His tracks led to an abandoned cabin on county land. They found him inside, bleeding out. Guess he didn’t want to go back to the clink for attempted murder.”
“Did he…” I didn’t need to finish the sentence when he shook his head.
“He survived but is in a hospital in Saginaw. They found a manifesto that outlined his past crimes and the future crimes he had planned to commit. This time, there will be no plea deals, which is a small comfort when the woman I love is lying in a hospital bed.”
“I’m glad it was me,” I said without thinking. “Imagine if it had been a guest or one of our younger workers.” A shudder went through me as he gripped my hand in both of his like a lifeline.
“I don’t want to imagine any of that. I don’t want to think about the terror that filled me when Loretta called or when the ambulance doors swung open, and you were lying there as white as the sheet covering you. The deals I made with God inthose moments will be impossible to keep, but I’ll sure as hell try, if they keep you safe from here on out.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Major. We all face the consequences of our decisions, whether good or bad. I made a bad decision by going out there upset, angry, and in violation of the rules. Now I live with the consequences. I could have decided to go to Ivy’s, the diner, or somewhere else, but I chose not to. That’s not on you.”
“It is, though,” he reminded me. “You were upset because of me and not thinking clearly. You can’t tell me you would have broken the rules a second time if you hadn’t been searching for a quiet place to think and clear your head.”
“A second time?” I asked, and he smirked.
“Cameron told me we broke the rules going out there that first day, but he let it go since we were together, and he knew you were showing me the tree.”
“Busted,” I said, giggling carefully. “In my defense, it hadn’t snowed yet, so the ‘if snow, don’t go’ rule didn’t apply.”
His snort of laughter brought a smile to my face. “I think I’ll let Cameron argue this one with you when he shows up tomorrow. Go back to sleep, you’re so tired.”
“I’m not,” I promised. “The anesthesia wore off much faster this time, and the pain is well controlled.”
“Probably because I remembered what you said about the anesthesia causing problems last time, so the anesthesiologist prepared for it. Since I scrubbed in and barked orders like I was still in the army, we got the surgery done in record time. You weren’t under as long.”
“Now that I can picture,” I said with a shake of my head. “You’ve seen far more of my insides than I think is normal between a couple.”
“Maybe, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I wasn’t going into that operating room even if everyone told me to stand down. My specialty may be bones, but I’ve done plenty of general surgery in my day.”
“Just maybe not on the woman you love?” she asked, and I tipped my head to the side.
