Love in the Rockies Read online

  Kneeling on the seat, Teri rested her chin on the headrest. “How much does it hurt?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing I can’t handle.” Lifting his hand he touched her temple. “But how are you?”

  “I’m perfect.”

  “You certainly are,” he murmured, brushing a strand of hair off her cheek. “But I will feel better when the doctors reassure me your health is as perfect as the rest of you.”

  Her heart swelled with love for him. “I was so scared.” She swallowed the giant lump that rose at the thought of losing him. “I thought…I thought.”

  “Shhh,” he said with a warm smile. “You can’t get rid of me so. I told you I’d never leave you.”

  A rattle announced the return of their neighbor accompanied by an orderly pushing a wheelchair. In moments, the scrub-clad man had Roy strapped into the seat and was wheeling him toward the emergency room. This time Teri waited for Ronnie to assist her from the car—she didn’t want to worry her husband with another ungraceful fall that could result in worse injury. If Roy’s ankle was broken, she’d need to be in good shape to take care of him. Still, she moved as quickly as possible, dragging on Ronnie’s arm, almost losing her footing twice on patches of ice she hadn’t seen—but he managed to avoid.

  The doors opened for the chair and she managed to scoot inside behind it, into a chaotic whirl of activity. Every seat in the waiting room was filled and half a dozen other people lined the walls. A crowd four deep lined the nurse’s desk, waiving clipboards and bandaged arms to get her attention. It looked like Armageddon.

  “How many accidents have there been tonight?” she wondered aloud.

  “Four,” the orderly replied. “At least four we are handling.” He wheeled Roy up to the general vicinity of the desk and stepped back. “The nurse will get you started on paperwork when it’s your turn. It might be a while; just be patient. I’m needed in the back, if you’ll be okay, sir?”

  “Fine,” Roy responded, settling back in the chair. As the young man disappeared through a swinging door, the dull roar of sound and moving equipment emerged. “I guess we’ll be here all night.”

  Teri shook her head. “Ron, we can’t keep you here. Please go home to Kirsten and the kids.”

  Their neighbor chuckled. “And leave you stranded? I don’t think so. I’ll step outside the door and let Kirsten know what’s going on and be right back. It doesn’t make sense for me to go all the way home. I’d just have to come back for you anyway and I don’t want to make the trip twice.”

  “What a good neighbor,” Teri said. “That wouldn’t have happened in the City.”

  “It might have.” Roy took her hand and pulled her toward him. “If we’d been better neighbors ourselves.”

  “True—although I never saw a sign of kindness in our building, I heard of others who had better experiences. Some of the people at the office had very good friends they lived near.”

  Roy tugged her toward his lap. “There aren’t any other seats, and I don’t like you standing after your injury.”

  Injury! “I just scraped my head. I’m fine!” But with the adrenalin surge from finding him wearing off, she became aware of a dull ache in her lower back and a sting coming from her forearm. “Well, maybe a little banged up.” She sat on his lap—good leg only—and settled in for the duration. “I hope it won’t take all night.”

  But two hours later, then three, they still sat there. People came and went, and she listened to their low murmurs as they emerged from the treatment rooms beyond, bandaged and going home or on gurneys or wheelchairs headed for the elevator to be admitted. The crowd had never thinned, between another accident or two, slip-and-fall patients, a man with chest pains after attempting to shovel his front walk—who then slipped and fell—and all the families, friends and emergency personnel, so she alternated between resting a hip on the arm of his chair and pacing from the door to the nurse’s desk. Sitting on even his good leg had been too much for him after a little while.

  She worried Roy’s ankle needed something. His explanation for being out on the highway made sense only to someone else new to Colorado weather. Hopefully in a few years they’d be as good at judging when to drive and when to stay home…and how to drive in snowstorms as Ronnie. “Shouldn’t we be applying heat, or cold, or something?” Despite the others’ arrival before them and their perhaps greater need, she couldn’t let him stay there forever, untreated. They’d filled out their paperwork an eon ago. “I’m going to be firm.”

  He smiled at her, but tight lines around his mouth showed his pain and her resolve firmed. “Go ahead, babe. I’d kill for just about anything to make this damned throbbing stop.” He never swore. But she was prepared to.

  Teri strode back to the desk and leaned back and forth trying to make herself known. “Hello…hey!”

  The harried woman behind the counter glanced from her computer screen and her eyes widened. “Mrs. Simms…” An unpleasant thought occurred to Teri, confirmed when the nurse stood and moved around the corner. “It’s your turn now. Orderly? Please bring Mr. Simms back to treatment room two.

  She got right in the woman’s face. “You forgot us, didn’t you?” Fists clenching at her sides, she struggled not to wrap her hands around the woman’s skinny neck and shake her until she paid for all the pain she’d put Roy through. “How long ago should my husband have seen a doctor?”

  “Teri.” Roy’s voice sounded very far away.

  “Mrs. Simms, we didn’t—that is not exactly…” The nurse flushed and her eyes darted from left to right. “We can see your husband right now.”

  “But what about an hour ago? Two?” Heat flooded her chest and up her neck to her face. “My husband was in a car accident. He sat in a ditch, in the cold, with an injured leg and who knows what else, for a long time. He might have a concussion—he fell, too. Why did you leave him so long?”

  * * * * *

  Roy rolled as close as he could get to where Teri stood in the middle of a group of patients and families, who had formed a loose circle around his wife and the hospital employee. Her voice rose higher with each word she spoke to the woman, and he recognized the signs of a breakdown. She’d lost the tight control of her former dragon lady days as they’d made their new life in Corbin’s Bend and seemed to be reforming into a new person. One whose emotions lay closer to the surface.

  One he much preferred, and so did her clients and the co-workers at the other end of her telecommute. As she let go, she became a more efficient employee, doing her job in eight hours a day—okay sometimes ten—but along the route of change, he’d seen some signs of the little girl who missed her twin. And sometimes the smallest things made her angrier than they should. Her husband in pain and—at least in her eyes—neglected? He had to stop her before mayhem ensued.

  Standing on his good leg, he held onto the back of the wheelchair and shoved it forward into the crowd. Not unsurprisingly, he ran over a few toes but the people between him and his wife stepped back and he was able to hop-step close enough to get between Teri and the woman she looked likely to rip limb from limb.

  “Teri.”

  She froze, the words she’d been about to say clamped inside, and her eyes dropped to his. Lip trembling, she took a shuddering breath and he watched her stuff the anger and fear back into somewhere within her body and mind.

  When they got home, he’d have to deal with this, help her let it out. But, for the moment, he took control of the situation without comment on her reaction. “Teri, did the nurse say it was my turn?” He limped around and sank back into the flexible seat. “I could really use a painkiller.”

  “Roy…I…” She squared her shoulders and shoved a woman with a Band-Aid on her forehead out of the way. “Sorry, it’s my husband’s turn.”

  The nurse took her cue and led the way back into the warren of cubicles that made up the emergency department of the small facility. “Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Simms. The doctor will see you both in a moment.”

>   She left them in the hands of another nurse, a tall young man who the desk nurse probably assumed would be able to take her down, should it become necessary. Teri helped Roy out of his clothes and into the gown the nurse—Nurse Bradley, his nametag indicated— handed her, hovering while he assisted Roy to sit on the examining table and took his temperature and blood pressure. She remained dressed, insisting her little scrape could wait, but allowed Nurse Bradley to take her vitals.

  When they were alone again, assured the doctor would be right in, she sat on the chair by the table and rested her head on his thigh—on the uninjured leg. He stroked her hair back from her forehead, marveling at the soft loveliness even after an afternoon and evening like theirs. Silky red-gold that hung halfway down her back. She hadn’t had it cut since their move. He should get her to take a spa day. She spent so much time taking care of him and Ben and the house and learning to cook and doing her job, she didn’t spoil herself at all. But he could insist. HoH had its benefits, as well as responsibilities.

  Some of her emotional issues seemed to stem from learning to let go. He hadn’t realized quite how tightly wound she’d been until recently, when the unwind had begun. When had they had fun in the City? Business dinners, parties at clients’ and co-workers’ homes, even their rare weekend away at separate conferences and seminars.

  They’d never even taken a vacation…

  “I guess the cruise is off.” Her sigh was half sob.

  Oh shit.

  With all the chaos, their Valentine’s Day cruise had escaped his mind.

  “I really blew that for us, I guess,” he said and dropped a kiss on her hair just as she jerked her head up. “Oww.”

  “Oh, honey.” Teri’s expression was stricken. “I hurt you even more!” She jumped to her feet and headed for the curtain separating them from the other patients. Very little privacy in the ER.. “I’m going to find the doctor.”

  The curtain jerked back and a petite woman in a white lab coat entered, accompanied by Nurse Bradley, who towered over her by a foot or more. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Simms. I’m Doctor Franceaux, and I am here.”

  Teri had the grace to flush, and Roy suppressed a chuckle. “Doctor.” He nodded in greeting, adjusting his leg to a more comfortable position, only to send throbs back up to his thigh. Maybe he really had broken something or, worse, suffered tendon damage. He didn’t know much about medicine, but a colleague had been laid up for some time after a tendon injury on the golf course.

  “I understand you’ve had quite a wait.” She consulted a tablet held in one hand. “So, who would like to be first?”

  “My hu—” Teri began, but he interrupted her.

  “It’s fine, Doctor. We’re glad you are here now. Please see to my wife first; she has a head injury—my leg can wait.”

  Teri shot him a glare and he returned a level gaze. His HoH look and she, thank heavens, didn’t argue with him. He’d never intended to have his own needs taken care of before hers.

  Nurse Bradley leaned close to her and murmured something, and the doctor nodded. “Sounds good. Why don’t I take just a quick look at that leg and then we can get you off to x-ray while I treat your wife. We can kill two birds with one stone.”

  Teri released a sigh and he declined to protest. She would be much happier this way. And she’d been so good about not arguing with him, when he knew she’d wanted to, badly. Teri was as fierce as a mama bear with he and Ben but they’d made an agreement and his word was law. Under most circumstances. They were still refining their domestic agreement.

  But easing her heart and worries offered the best solution for everyone. Resting back on his elbows, he clenched his jaw while the doctor prodded his ankle and the nurse typed the notes into the tablet she’d passed him at some point. In less than five minutes he was back in the wheelchair and on his way to x-ray.

  Teri blew him a kiss before the Doctor Franceaux yanked the curtain closed again and their voices faded as Nurse Bradley wheeled him away. He glanced over his shoulder when Teri’s voice lifted, but the nurse rested a hand on his shoulder and patted reassuringly.

  “Doctor Franceaux will take great care of them both, Mr. Simms. No worries.”

  He settled back in the chair and then jerked to look behind him again.

  “Both?”

  Chapter Seven

  Teri reached up to push her hair back, but the doctor stayed her hand.

  “I have a few questions for you, Mrs. Simms, before we begin the examination.” Doctor Franceaux retrieved the tablet from where Nurse Bradley had left it on the side table and fished a stylus from her jacket pocket. “Have you taken a pregnancy test yet?” She tapped on the screen while Teri gaped.

  “No…why would I?”

  “When you filled out the paperwork, you noted your last menstrual period began on December twenty-eighth. You’re a little bit late.”

  She stared.

  “And if we decide to do any tests, like an x-ray of your skull, we need to know if you’re pregnant first. Have you taken a test yet?”

  “I don’t need an x-ray. I just…

  Another nurse came in and handed the doctor a small plastic cup with a lid, which she passed to Teri, along with a sheet of instructions. “I gather you haven’t taken one. And you didn’t list any form of birth control on the medications list, so unless you are using condoms?”—Teri shook her head—“Then, as a healthy married woman with a normal sex life…?”

  Teri’s flush must have answered the question because the doctor and nurse both grinned at her, and she followed the nurse to the restroom across the hall and stood inside, hand on the light switch, head spinning. Her other hand tightened on the plastic cup. Since her periods were always irregular, unless she was on the pill, she hadn’t thought much about being late. Hadn’t, in fact, noticed. But what if she was pregnant? What if her falls had injured the baby? What if her headstrong behavior had killed it?

  She remembered landing on her behind on the ice, driving breath out of her and the second, face first tumble. Why hadn’t she listened when Ronnie asked her to wait a moment—why did it always have to be her way?

  She flipped the light on and unzipped her pants. Following the instructions, Teri washed her hands thoroughly, so as not to contaminate the test, held the lid in the same hand as sheet of paper then squatted over the porcelain bowl. “Initiate a stream first,” she read aloud. “Okay.” Then she was supposed to get the cup under the “stream” and obtain a “clean sample.” Cursing, calf muscles cramping, she maneuvered it under the flow, careful not to get a drop on her hand.

  The bathroom door handle jiggled and her hand jerked a bit to the side, sending her thumb into the stream. Ewww. “Someone’s in here!” she squawked fighting the urge to drop the cup and get to the sink as fast as possible.

  “Sorry,” the jiggler called through the door. “I’ll wait.

  Oh, sure. “I might be a while.” She shifted her feet, trying not to fall onto the toilet seat that—no matter how clean it appeared—crawled with layers and layers of terrifying germs.

  “Hurry, I can’t wait long.”

  Oh my God. If it’s this hard to take the test, how do women survive an actual pregnancy? Kirsten would die laughing when she told her this story, and—maybe, five or ten years from now—she’d laugh, too.

  Managing to transfer the lid and instruction sheet into the same hand as the vessel of urine, she completed the job. She set the instruction sheet on the sink and the cup on top of it, where it wouldn’t pick up any hospital sink germs.

  Protecting a cup of pee from germs. Nice.

  Washing her hands with a triple squirt of antibacterial soap, she allowed herself a moment of triumph at her accomplishment. She used the paper towel she’d dried her hands with to flick the light off then, remembering someone waited outside, she flipped it on again and opened the door.

  Whoever it had been had disappeared—no doubt found somewhere else to handle their hurry. Glancing at the lit bathr
oom, she shrugged. Someone else would have to save energy.

  “Mrs. Simms?” The nurse appeared from around the corner. “I’ll take that from you if you’d like to return to the cubicle. Doctor will come see you as soon as the lab has the results.”

  “I hope I did everything right. I tried to follow the instructions to the letter.”

  The nurse nodded. “Good because if any contamination occurred, you’ll have to do it again.”

  Teri backed away. “Not a chance. If it is contaminated we’ll have to wait a few months and see what happens. I can’t do that again.”

  A grin creased the older woman’s face. “Spoken like a true first timer. How long have you and your husband been trying for a baby.”

  Trying? “We planned to start trying on a Valentine’s Day cruise of the Caribbean—but we won’t be going now. I went off the pill a couple of months ago, but I thought it took a little time before…”

  “Sometimes it does, but not always. Well, I don’t want to get your hopes up, but you may have already taken care of business even without an ocean voyage.” She started off down the hallway, humming. Even after what had to have been a brutal shift, she seemed so happy and relaxed.

  Teri slipped back into the cubicle and slumped into the chair she’d occupied before. She couldn’t ever remember being so exhausted and now with Roy being taken care of, she didn’t have to do anything but wait. Aches and pains began to surface. Her seat hurt worse than after the most severe punishment spankings Roy ever administered and her legs and arms were sore.

  Her head stung, which made her think she’d only scraped it, but Roy wouldn’t be happy until the doctor confirmed she hadn’t sustained a concussion or something. And fighting him would result in more spanking. She smiled at the thought. Maybe with whatever was in that box.

  The box had fled her thoughts since she’d learned Roy was missing. Would he show her even if they weren’t going on their trip? She tried to picture what might be in it. Another paddle? The box was odd sized for that. Not a wooden spoon either. No, nothing with a handle.