“Aw, can’t we stay longer?” Drew had ventured to the other side of the aisle, where he’d started fondling the silky ears of a cocker. “Please?”
“I’ve got to get to the hospital.” Abby fingered the shoulder strap of her purse before meeting the woman’s eyes. “How much time?”
“Time? Oh, you mean for Belle.” The attendant lifted a page on the clipboard fastened to the front of the run. Her expression turned sympathetic. “Tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
“If I paid…” Abby hesitated, then plunged ahead despite the warning bells in her head. “Like a deposit, or something. Would that save her for a while?”
“We can’t do layaways, ma’am. The manager says its strictly cash and carry.”
“You can’t hold her? For just a while?”
“People walk out and forget to come back, leaving us wondering what to do.” The woman held out her hands, palms up. “We’ve had animals in limbo for months that way. Our budget is so tight we just can’t afford it.”
This clearly was not meant to be. Abby didn’t have a home herself, much less one for the sad creature staring up at her. There’d be vet bills—maybe huge ones. And the pager at her hip was buzzing again, so she had to leave now.
“How much does adoption cost?” Abby said as she herded the boys toward the door.
“Eighty, with spay, worming and shots. But, ma’am—”
“What if I pay that, plus her daily board until I can take her? I’d give you my phone number and come back every day to check on her. Deal?” Abby spied Lily studying a canary in the Small Pets room and motioned for her. “But right now, I’ve got an emergency at the hospital and I’ve got to leave.”
The woman frowned. “A rushed decision isn’t always a good one. Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll make sure she’s still here. Okay?”
“Perfect.” Abby handed her a business card, then followed the kids out the front door. “I’ll be back!”
“THE DOCTOR will be here in just a moment, Mr. Matthews,” murmured the ER nurse as she took his vitals.
Ethan winced and looked away when she lifted the edge of the blood-soaked bandage on his forearm. Keifer’s voice filtered down the hallway from the receptionist’s desk, where the woman had promised to keep an eye on him. “Where’s my dad? I want to see my dad!”
An indistinct voice responded and his son quieted, but Ethan knew this ordeal had to be terrifying for him.
Hell, the boy’s mother had just dropped him off last night for the summer, and at this very moment she was flying out of the country. And then on his very first morning here, the poor kid had seen his dad nearly lose an arm in the power-take-off mechanism of a grain auger.
The stuff of nightmares, surely, and the irony was almost as painful as Ethan’s injury.
He’d wanted the next three months to be a wonderful adventure. He only saw his son for part of each summer and on alternating holidays.
From the lobby area, Ethan heard kids arguing over something. He frowned, remembering the icy blonde who’d walked into the hospital just ahead of him with her three children.
She’d breezed through the lobby with an offhand, “Keep an eye on these three, Beth!” And then she’d disappeared down the hall.
Some people, like his ex-wife and that presumptuous blonde, certainly showed little interest in motherhood, far as he could tell.
A woman in a white lab coat with a stethoscope draped around her neck hurried into the room. “I’m Dr. Jill Edwards,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “I hear you had an argument with an auger.”
“It won. The painkiller is really starting to kick in, though.” Ethan rested his head against the paper-covered pillow on the gurney and regretted every moment of this day as Dr. Reynolds carefully unwrapped his haphazard bandaging.
She sucked in a sharp breath. “This is beyond the scope of a hospital this size, Mr. Matthews.”
Startled, he looked up at her as she gently cleansed the edges of the wounds and then firmly wrapped the arm again with clean bandaging. She nodded to a nurse, who quickly shoved an IV stand next to the other side of the bed and opened a package of IV supplies.
He winced when she placed the IV needle in his arm. “It’s only a few lacerations, right? You can sew them up?”
Dr. Edwards shook her head. “It’s more involved than that. You’ve lost a lot of blood and you stand a good chance of losing function of your hand—or worse—if this isn’t done right. I’m referring you to an excellent surgeon in Green Bay.”
Ethan closed his eyes as the deadline he had to meet and the activities he’d planned for Keifer all went up in smoke. “That isn’t necessary. Hell, last year I needed thirty stitches when a bull took after me. Doc Olson stitched it up in his office and it healed good as new.”
“The tendons and nerves are involved, and the wound is badly contaminated.” The doctor nodded curtly to the nurse, who moved to an intercom on the wall and instructed someone to make arrangements for transport and admission to a hospital in Green Bay. “You need this taken care of as soon as possible.”
“I…can’t do it.”
“Mr. Matthews—”
“No. I have my son with me for the summer. I don’t have relatives here, and there’s no one else to take care of him.”
Removing her gloves, Dr. Reynolds murmured something to the nurse, then she turned back to him and lifted the rail on his gurney. “We’re going to find someone to help you out, so don’t worry.”
“If…if I do go, that would just be an outpatient deal, right? Back here today?”
“Maybe. And perhaps you could come here for follow-up care.”
“Follow-up?”
“If you should need IV antibiotics and dressing changes.” She looked over her shoulder. “Ah, here you go. I need to check on someone else, but I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Someone slipped into the exam room just out of Ethan’s visual range and spoke quietly to the doctor, then moved to his bedside.
It was the blonde who’d, like the Queen of England, so casually dumped her kids on the overworked receptionist. “I’m Abby Cahill, the director of nursing. I understand there’s a problem?”
He was starting to feel woozy, now that the pain meds were hitting his system, but he wasn’t too out of it to catch her patronizing tone. “I just need to take care of this here and get home. In fact, I could probably just leave right now.” He started to sit up, but she gently pushed him back down. “If I keep it bandaged—”
“Mr. Matthews!” She blew out an exasperated sigh. “I really don’t believe you’re thinking clearly right now. Do you realize how serious this
