CHAPTER NINE
A HAND TOUCHED his shoulder, a gentle shake at first, then rougher. “Luke, you’re dreaming—wake up!”
He gave a last shuddering gasp and opened his eyes, still seeing the great bulk of the bull hurtling toward him, the dirt slamming up toward his face. He rubbed his eyes with both hands, trying to erase the images.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m awake.”
The hand shifted from his shoulder to his wrist as Betsy Fulton, his favorite night nurse at Hill Country Rehab, stepped from behind him to the side of his bed. Smart gal—he’d been known to strike out in the nightmare’s grip, and from the hips up he was still quick and strong as a mountain lion.
Nights were always bad. All his life, Luke Cameron had worked hard and played harder, able to sleep like a healthy animal. Now he dreaded the hours after the bustle died down in the unit and he dawdled over dessert and coffee—decaf only after 4:00 p.m.—as long as anyone would hang around to gab. Eventually the night staff would chase him to his room, citing the benefits of a normal sleep-wake cycle. Alone in his bed, he fought off sleep with its dreams of running and leaping, laughing with his fellow bullfighters in the face of danger, only to wake pinned to his bed by the weight of his useless legs.
“Damn sirens,” he said, wiping the sweat of terror from his face with a shaking hand. They didn’t freak him out in the daytime, but the banshee wail of any emergency vehicle grabbed him by the throat in his sleep.
He’d been transported by ambulance twice before during his career as a rodeo bullfighter, but he’d been out cold both times, coming to in the ER or the recovery room following surgery. This go-round, he’d been awake and aware every second—the grittiness of arena dirt between his teeth and the explosion of pain in his lower spine, trying to drag himself to safety using his elbows and then Doc Barnett’s voice asking if he could move his legs. Followed by the howl of the siren as the ambulance rushed him to the nearest trauma center.
Betsy sponged his face with a cool cloth. “I thought you might need company—a fire truck just went by. I guess you won’t be hearing sirens much when you get home.”
“Not hardly,” he said. “We’re the last spread on a dead-end road. Somebody gets hurt, we load ’em up and haul them to meet the paramedics. My dad had a heart attack a while back with a blizzard blowing in. My stepmom drove him an hour to the hospital with the roads closing down behind her. He probably wouldn’t have made it if she’d waited for help to reach them.”
Betsy flipped his pillow and filled his cup with ice water from the carafe on his nightstand. “I bet you’ll be glad to get back to the wide-open spaces.”
“You’re right about that, darlin’.” He could have gone from the hospital in Oklahoma City to a rehab facility closer to his family, but the trip from Oklahoma halfway across Texas to Austin, still immobilized in a body cast, had been grueling enough. Hill Country Rehab was Doc Barnett’s home base. Every athlete involved in professional bull riding, cowboy or bullfighter, trusted Doc to deliver the best possible result.
Luke wasn’t at all sure he was ready to leave. Here was security and a hand to hold in the night when the nightmares struck. He would hate showing that kind of weakness to his family except maybe to his father’s wife, Shelby, who rarely put a foot wrong
