when she palmed away a tear. “We’re strangers to you. Why should you feel obligated to take care of us?”
Ryan suddenly felt hard pressed not to strangle the woman. Moving as cautiously as his brother Cal might with an unbroken colt, he eased around the bed and sat on its edge, leaning over so she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “Let’s get one thing clear, right now. Obligation doesn’t have a blamed thing to do with this. Like it or not, you and your daughter are now my patients, because I took an oath a long time ago that won’t allow me to see the situation any other way. Got that?” She hitched one shoulder, her mouth quirked. “Good. At least we got that settled.” He leaned over, grabbed a clipboard and blank chart off the nightstand. “So let’s make it official. Full name?”
“Madelyn Mae Kincaid.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Is that the truth?”
She blew out a breath. “You can check my driver’s license if you don’t believe me. Which is in my coat pocket with my change purse.”
So she was a few years older than he’d thought. Still awfully damn young to be a mother three times over, though.
“Address?”
Her resultant silence gave him no choice but to look over. She was frowning down at the baby. “Maddie?”
After a moment, she met his gaze. “I guess I don’t have one, just at the moment. Well, unless you count the Double Arrow.”
The Double Arrow. His brother Hank’s place. Wasn’t the Hilton—hell, it wasn’t even a Motel 6—but she’d been safe there, at least. However, even cheap motels ate up money at a good clip. Money he suspected she didn’t have. “Where were you before?”
“Arkansas. Little Rock.” She made a face. “We moved there from Fayetteville after Noah was born…” Something in her expression led Ryan to believe there was more, but then she said, “I came here to find my husband’s great-uncle. Maybe you know him? Ned McAllister?”
“Ned? You’re kidding? He’s kin to you?”
“Like I said, by marriage. I…we’ve never actually met.” Then she paled even more, if that was possible. “Oh, no…he didn’t die or anything, did he?”
Ryan let out a soft laugh. “Ned? I imagine that old buzzard’ll outlive me. But his bones aren’t as strong as they used to be. Broke his hip last week, so he’s in the hospital over in Claremore. Which is where he’ll be for some time, at least until he’s finished up his physical therapy.”
“Oh!” With that one word, Ryan could see Maddie’s last shred of hope vaporize. She looked down at the baby, her hand trembling when she stroked the infant’s cheek. “He never had a phone—well, I suppose you know that—and all I had was a P.O. box for an address. I knew I was taking a chance, just coming on out here like this, but there was absolutely nobody else….”
Pride and panic were a helluva combination, weren’t they?
The baby had fallen asleep. Ryan leaned over and gently removed her from Maddie’s arms, making sure to keep the infant well swaddled in the double receiving blankets Ivy had brought, even though the heat had taken the chill off the house by now. She was diapered, too—Ryan always kept packages of disposables in his office to accommodate his littler patients. And their sometimes forgetful mothers.
He sure did have a soft spot for the babies, he admitted to himself as he smiled at little Amy Rose, giving Mama a chance to regain control. Shoot, giving himself a chance to quash a feeling akin to hitting a patch of black ice.
Lucky thing for him he was real good at steering out of the skids.
“I’ve got some clothes for her, back at the motel,” Maddie said on a shaky breath. He glanced over at her, imagining how ticked she’d be if she had any idea how worn out she looked, lying there against the pillows. “I guess I kinda forgot them, once the pains hit.”
Ryan felt one side of his mouth lift. “Understandable.”
Maddie stayed quiet for a moment, her attention fixed on the baby, then let out a sigh. “Before you ask…my husband’s dead.”
Somehow, he wasn’t surprised. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I, but not for the usual reasons.”
He couldn’t quite decide if that was regret or anger flickering at the edges of her words. Maybe a bit of both.
“He leave you broke?”
Her laugh was humorless. And her lack of verbal response told him this was not a topic currently open for discussion.
What kind of man left his wife and children this bad off?
If Maddie Kincaid had started having babies at nineteen, it was highly doubtful she had much in the way of education or skills. What she did have was three little kids. And more courage than most men he knew. But here she was, in a strange town, the only person she knew in it medically incarcerated for the foreseeable future. And even so, what on earth good would Ned McCallister do her? Not only was the ornery old man the least likely candidate to take on a woman with three small children, but there was no way Maddie and her kids could live in that shack of his.
What they had here was a crisis situation, no doubt about it. And Ryan had the sinking feeling that somehow, he had been the one appointed to handle said crisis.
From the kitchen emanated the aroma of pancakes and coffee, Ivy’s commanding voice chattering to the children. A few hardy birds, oblivious to the fact that summer was over, chirped and twittered outside the window as the sun burned off what was left of the storm. Needing to move, to be doing something, Ryan laid the baby down in the bassinet he’d retrieved from his office before the delivery. There had to be an answer here. One that wouldn’t make his head hurt.
“Your folks still around?”
After a moment, she said, “I already told you. There’s nobody.”
Don’t get overly involved with your patients. How many times had Ryan’s instructors drummed those words into his head? But if he didn’t believe healing was less about procedures and medicines and biological function, and more about giving a damn about the human beings who put themselves in his care, then those pieces of paper up on his wall in the other room meant squat.
Of course, not many people understood that, any more than they understood that personal sacrifice came with the territory.
Nor did Ryan understand quite what was happening here. Yes, he cared about his patients. All of them. Even old Miss Hightower, whose contrariness Ryan had long since attributed to a simple fear of growing old, of being alone. But this was different. Something about this one struck a personal chord way down deep, way past the day-to-day caring he dispensed, along with the occasional antibiotic and common sense advice, to his other patients.
It had been a long, long time since anything had shaken him up the way this situation was threatening to. He didn’t know what he was going to do about it—about Maddie—but he sure as hell knew he didn’t like it, not one little bit.
He
