Page 12 of Talulah's Back in Town

“I have a doctor coming,” she informed him.

“Who needs a doctor?”

“Youdo. You have a concussion, remember?”

“Oh.” He seemed to mull that over for several seconds. Then he said, “Is that why my head hurts?”

“Your head hurts because you hit it on the ceiling in the basement.”

“Right. And I hit my head because...” Lines formed on his forehead as he struggled to remember. Then his expression cleared. “You were naked!”

Talulah winced. “Notcompletelynaked.”

“Almost naked,” he insisted. “God, you’re beautiful.”

“Do we have to talk about thisagain?”

His teeth flashed in a roguish grin. “It certainly helps keep me awake...”

She rolled her eyes. “If that’s what it’s going to take, okay. But you’d better not be bringing that up again and again on purpose.”

“Are you really worried about me?” he asked in surprise.

“No,” she said, but with the way she was clinging to his hand, she was pretty sure he knew it was a lie.

Talulah paced at the foot of the bed while Dr. Gregor took Brant’s blood pressure, listened to his heart and checked the dilation of his pupils with a penlight. Since Brant had asked her the same questions over and over, despite the number of times she’d answered him, she knew something was wrong with his brain and hoped he was going to be okay. She also hoped he had the presence of mind not to mentionwhyhe hit his head. He liked talking about it, but that was more information than she wanted circulating in Coyote Canyon.

So far, Brant had let her handle the conversation with the doctor, except when Dr. Gregor posed a direct question to him.

“Brant, can you tell me what month it is?” the doctor asked.

Brant took a moment to reflect on it. Then he said, “June?”

The doctor glanced at Talulah; it was August 11.

“What do you think?” she murmured as he put his instruments away.

“He’s got a concussion, all right,” he replied. “But from what I can tell it’s a mild one. His pupils are reacting as they should, and the cut on his forehead isn’t deep. I’m guessing he’ll be fine tomorrow, but you’ll have to watch him during the night.”

“How do I do that?” she asked. “Do I need to keep him awake?”

“No. They’ve proven there’s no benefit to that. He can sleep, but if he gets nauseous, acts uncoordinated or throws up, take him to the hospital right away.”

The prospect of a middle-of-the-night trek to the emergency room because his brain was bleeding or swelling was more than a little daunting. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. “Before you got here, he was saying he’d been on the roof of a barn in the hot sun,” she said. “Could he also have heatstroke?”

“It’s possible. But his temperature, pulse and breathing are normal, so I think it’s a plain old concussion. Just keep a cool cloth on his forehead and make sure he gets plenty of liquids. He should be okay.”

A gentle breeze was coming through the windows. That, together with the shade provided by the box elder trees now that the sun had migrated into the west, was bringing down the temperature. But it was still too hot for comfort in the small, cramped room. “Should I take him home, where it’s got to be cooler?”

The doctor frowned as he looked over at Brant, who’d already drifted off to sleep. Then he checked his watch. “There’s no guarantee he has air-conditioning. A lot of people in this area don’t. And I doubt it’d be worth waking him, not when it’s already starting to cool off here. Once the sun goes down, it’ll be temperate enough.”

Getting both Brant and his truck home would mean she’d have to involve someone else, and she preferred not to do that, anyway. Jane was the person she’d call if she needed help, but her childhood friend was with her cousins at Glacier National Park until Tuesday night. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you. How much do I owe you for coming out?”

“There’s no charge,” he said. “It wasn’t a far drive, and my exam only took a few minutes.”

“Are you sure? I feel I owe you something—”

He lifted his hand to stop her when she reached for her purse, which was sitting on the dresser. “No, please. I want to do this in memory of your great aunt—for all the times she accompanied me when I sang. And she used to bring us pickled beets whenever she canned them. The least I can do to repay her kindness is be of some service to you.”

---