The look Caleb gave his dad was amused and tender. “Let me put this up and wash my hands.”
* * *
Caleb hated this. Hated the fear, hated the disease, hated seeing Pops’s blood flowing out of his body and into a machine.
Somehow Pops put on a happy face and chatted up Kristen as if she hadn’t been gone for six or seven years. Caleb felt like a voyeur as he listened in on the conversation, snatching up bits of personal information about the girl he’d never forgotten.
That she was a registered nurse with advanced training didn’t surprise him. He’d known she went off to some big college in Colorado on a scholarship. She was smart, classy, a sweet-natured girl who was nice to everyone. Like him. Even though he’d been a troubled foster kid nobody but Pops wanted, she’d acted as if he was every bit as good as her preppy friends.
Then she’d left Refuge for college and stayed away, a surprise, given her great family. She and her family had always been close. A normal family, like the one he’d never had. He’d envied her and her brothers for that. Probably one of the reasons he’d hung around her house so often. That and his mad crush on Kristen.
“Watch both wounds for signs of infection,” she was saying.
Caleb tuned in, loving the sound of her voice. Educated, but not haughty about it. He liked watching her mouth move, too. She had a soft, kissable mouth, as he well remembered. That kiss had haunted him. Haunted him still.
“What are the signs?” he managed to ask when his brain settled back down.
“I’ll leave you a list but, in general, call me if you notice anything unusual around either site. Or if he runs a fever.” She pointed to the place where two tubes entered Pops’s forearm. “The fistula takes a while to heal.”
He nodded, knowing he was in over his head but trying to appear halfway intelligent. “The doc told us. Pops has the chest catheter for now. Until the fistula heals.”
The wound in his dad’s forearm gave him the creeps. The idea that a thick vessel would develop under Pops’s skin like a gopher tunnel was one he didn’t like to think about. But if it kept Pops alive, Caleb didn’t care if it was as big as the Holland Tunnel.
“Healing could take several months,” she said.
Months of watching Pops suffer, watching him deteriorate daily. Yesterday he’d been too weak and short of breath to saddle a horse.
Caleb squeezed the bridge of his nose, wishing he could turn back the clock. For months, maybe longer, Pops had been sick and hadn’t known it. And even when the symptoms hit, he’d ignored them too long. The cowboy way. Suck it up, be tough, keep going.
Kristen went through a few more instructions, using big words and then dumbing them down for him and Pops. Caleb’s head hurt from information overload.
Eventually, Pops waved them away. “You two go somewhere else so I can catch a nap.”
Kristen patted his shoulder. “I can’t go far. Maybe the living room. I’ll tiptoe in occasionally to check your monitors. You get that two-hour snooze.”
Pops gave her a grin and a wink. If Caleb didn’t know better, he’d say the old man was flirting.
He turned and went back to the living room to finish feeding the calf, aware that Kristen followed. At Caleb’s entrance, Ripley whopped his tail against the rug.
Caleb dropped a hand to the black-and-white head. “Hey, Rip, looking after the baby?”
“Rip?” Kristen approached with caution, standing behind Caleb’s shoulder, close enough to brush his arm. “As in he’ll rip my throat out?”
He was so aware of her, his skin tingled. “As in Ripley, which sounds too grand for a working cow dog. Rip for short.”
“Won’t he hurt the calf?”
“Nope. He’ll protect her.”
To prove as much, Ripley began licking the calf’s still-damp forehead. Gently, Caleb eased him aside and urged the calf onto her wobbly legs to recommence the feeding regimen.
Rip curled into a circle at Caleb’s feet to watch.
“What happened to his mama?” Kristen settled on the couch almost close enough to touch, an electronic tablet on her lap.
“Calf’s a her. A heifer.” As if the calf knew they were speaking about her, she gave the bottle several hard head butts. “Feisty girl to be so little, but her size may have saved her life. She had a leg turned back and under. Couldn’t deliver. Cow died.”
“Poor little orphan.”
The term caused a burn in the pit of Caleb’s stomach. He’d been a social orphan, not a biological one, but either way, he’d been without a parent. Like this calf. “I’ll take care of her.”
Like Pops had done for him. Like Caleb tried to do with the group of boys he mentored.
“Will she survive?”
“Hopefully. This colostrum will help. Sometimes I don’t find the calves quick enough.”
“Colostrum is important in humans, too.”
“I guess you’d know about that. For cattle, we’ve got about six hours before the gut will no longer absorb these essential nutrients, so the quicker I get this in her, the better.”
“You must have to know a lot to care for cattle.”
Nothing like what a college-educated nurse had to know to care for people. “We do what we can. If that means letting a calf sleep in my living room, I’m willing.”
“You were always a kind person.”
The comment caught him off guard. “I was?”
“Remember that kid in high school with the speech impediment?”
“Jimmy Starks.” He hadn’t thought about the poor stuttering kid in years.
“You punched Trent White for tormenting him.”
Caleb snorted. “And got suspended.”
“You shouldn’t have. Trent was a bully before bullying was a thing.”
“Bullying was always a thing, Kristen.” She’d just been too popular to be the object. Right side of the tracks, good Christian family with a respected mother and a successful father, smart and pretty Kristen had it all.
If Caleb hadn’t learned to hit first and apologize later, he’d have been more tormented than poor Jimmy. Foster boy, dummy, loser, who’s your daddy? Those were only a few of the remarks he’d endured. They’d made him feel as worthless as used tissue. As a result, he’d hated school. And his grades had shown it.
Kristen tapped the iPad a few more times and then went to check on Pops. Her boot cast thudded on the wooden floor, warning
