A nurse brought one immediately, and Keegan gently lowered Carrie into it.
“What have we got?” the nurse asked, tenderly probing the wound on Carrie’s head.
“Car accident. Besides the obvious, I suspect a broken leg.”
The nurse wheeled Carrie into a smaller room where a staff member asked her a number of questions about medications, the level of her pain. She took Carrie’s blood pressure and pulse before someone with a clipboard came in and asked for Carrie’s insurance card. Thank goodness she had her purse, and thank goodness the card didn’t show her Ohio address. If there was any way to avoid alerting her father about this trouble, she wanted to do it. She and Dr. Martin Foster had had so many arguments over Carrie’s health, her asthma, her stubborn resistance to listen to reason about being out in nature for her job, she figured this incident might make her dad chain her to Dancing Falls forever. But seeing her family at Christmas had prompted her to set out in this weather despite facing a certain argument with her dad. She’d thought he’d mellow once he realized she had arrived safely. But now...
“Your vitals are good,” the nurse said. “But we’re going to do a CT scan of the head and take an X-ray of the leg. Both tests will just take a few minutes.” Turning to Keegan, whose presence had become surprisingly comforting to Carrie’s peace of mind, she said, “You can wait in the lobby.”
For the first time since Carrie had met him, he seemed indecisive. Stay or go? What would he do? He had no obligation to stay, but for some reason, Carrie wanted him to. “It’s just a quick X-ray,” she said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d wait.”
He shrugged. “Sure. I can wait as long as it doesn’t take too long.”
A half hour later, Carrie was wheeled into an emergency cubicle. A nurse went to get Keegan, and they were told the doctor would be in shortly with the test results.
When the doctor arrived, he stood next to Carrie. “Well, young lady, you were lucky this time. This could have been much worse. As long as I’ve lived in the snowbelt, I’ve seen foolish people try to drive in our crazy weather and come in here with all sorts of...”
“Doctor, I know I shouldn’t have been driving,” Carrie said, trying not to resent the doctor’s parental tone. “What did the X-ray of my leg show?”
“You have a simple fracture. We’re going to put a soft cast and a boot on it. Should be okay in a month or so.”
“A month? I can drive, can’t I?” Carrie asked.
“Drive? Heavens, no. You fractured your right leg. You won’t be driving until you can do it without a cast or boot. Unless you want to get in another accident and maybe take someone else out with you this time.”
She was going to be stuck here for a month? Where would she stay? Would she have to call her father after all? Could she expect someone from her crew in Michigan to come after her? They were operating on limited man power through the holidays.
“You can come into my office in a week, and I’ll x-ray your leg again,” the doctor said, handing her a business card. “Right now a nurse will bandage your head and apply the cast. You do have a slight concussion, which means someone will have to watch you through the night.” He focused on Keegan. “You can do that?”
His eyes widened. “Me? I don’t know...”
“Yes, he can,” Carrie said. “I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t leave the hospital without a responsible party to drive you home and take care of you.” He stared at Keegan. “You’re a relative?”
Keegan started to speak, but Carrie interrupted. “Yes, yes, he is. This man is my husband.”
“WHY IN THE name of everything that makes any sense at all did you tell that doctor I am your husband?”
Thank goodness Keegan had kept quiet while the nurse bandaged Carrie’s head and provided her with pain meds to get her through the next few days. Now, as they were leaving the hospital parking lot, Keegan’s patience had obviously reached its limits.
“I certainly couldn’t monitor my concussion symptoms by myself, now could I? I needed a husband at that moment, and you were the only candidate.” She waited for him to say something. He merely continued seething. “I could have said you are my father. Would that have made you happier?”
“What you could have said is that I’m nobody to you, that I don’t even know you. You could have avoided a blatant lie somehow.”
“And what would that have done for me? They weren’t going to let me leave the hospital. And even if they did, I would have been on my own in a town I don’t know, in a snowstorm, without a car, with a broken leg and again...a concussion...”
“You’re darn lucky the doctor didn’t ask my name. He’d have noticed that our last names are not the same.”
“I thought of that,” she said. “I had an answer ready.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure you did. I’m starting to feel like you rammed your car into a pole, and I’m the one dealing with the consequences.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic? Besides, you can hardly say that you don’t know me. We’ve been together for—” she glanced at her watch “—almost four hours now. I feel like I know you as well as I know most...” She couldn’t come up with a word.
“Strangers?”
“We’re not strangers. You saved my life.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. And anyway, if I had it to do over again...”
“You’re saying you wouldn’t help me again? For heaven’s sake, Keegan, I could have frozen to death.”
He didn’t say anything. Maybe he was thinking that was a very real possibility.
“If it makes you feel any better, I would do the same for you.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “You’d pull me from a wrecked car, take me to a hospital in a blinding snowstorm and sit with me for three hours?”
“Of course. I don’t know about getting you out of the car, but the rest I would do.” She leaned forward, grateful that the pain injection had started working, and it no longer hurt to move. She could clearly see into Keegan’s face. “I hate to suggest this and give you any ideas, but unless you come up with a place to dump me, I’d say you’re more or less stuck with me for tonight at least.”
“I’d say you put it just about right.”
“I could go to a motel, but I need someone to watch me. Do you have family, a wife, perhaps? She could check on me.”
“I don’t have a wife. I live alone, which makes this whole situation even worse.”
She might have preferred hearing that a motherly Mrs. Breen would be present, but she’d make this work. For some reason
