Mystic Cowboy(71)

Madeline was pretty sure everyone knew she and Rebel were sleeping together now. Tara started greeting him by saying, “Hiya, Rebel. Madeline’s in the back,” or in the closet, or with a patient. Clarence seemed to wink a lot more when Rebel was around, and Tammy was prone to quiet giggling when Rebel would make Madeline blush—which he continued to do with alarming frequency. But no one, not even Nobody, said anything. The medicine man sleeping with the doctor was just another day on the rez, apparently.

The clinic wasn’t perfect either, but it kept going. She began to get used to Nobody Bodine just appearing and disappearing at closing time, and he picked up on how she liked things arranged pretty quickly. One corner of the desk at a time, Tammy got the files organized, and then took the initiative to work up some new patient forms. Madeline cut Jesse’s cast off while Tara held one hand and Nelly the other. She delivered four babies, only one of which was premature and showed signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. More people came through with flu-like symptoms, although she still had no lab results to prove Rebel right or wrong. Some people paid some bills. It was just enough. And Rebel still showed up at unexpected times to translate or drive someone home.

A few times, Rebel came for her in the middle of the afternoon. Someone was sick, too sick to even be carried in. She’d never considered house calls a part of her professional world, but wasn’t that what she’d done for Albert? Plus, it made her look at Rebel in a new light. When he took her to see someone who was sick—dehydrated, weak, bloody diarrhea—she realized more and more that he wasn’t trying to practice medicine, and he wasn’t trying to kill people. And what’s more, he trusted her. When she couldn’t get a frail old man to respond to the anti-diarrhea meds she now kept stocked in huge quantities, and he died in spite of her best efforts, Rebel was waiting on her porch that night. They sat in the recliner for a long time, discussing their different versions of heaven as the sun set on another day. He didn’t even reprimand her when she got a little teary, but instead kissed her tears away. The next day, he brought in another new patient with the same symptoms. He had faith in her. She was beginning to realize that the feeling was mutual.

Maybe it was ridiculous, but she started to think of them as a team. The yin and yang of the White Sandy Clinic and Hospital, she thought with a smile as she hooked up another IV one day. He was good at the bedside manner thing, the caring and understanding thing, and the translating thing. He literally spoke the language. And she was good at the medicine. She knew what to expect now, what her patients could realistically be expected to afford and, beyond that, do. She began to understand on a fundamental level what Rebel and Nobody had meant by a good death. She began to understand what Rebel meant when he talked about being right with the world.

She began to understand what it meant to be a Lakota. As much as an outsider could, anyway.

July had long since turned into August when Rebel woke her up with a hard shake one Thursday morning. Immediately, Madeline knew something was wrong. Instead of wet hair, a pink towel and languid laziness, he was already dressed, and he was moving so fast he was almost a blur of agitation. “What’s happened?”

His eyes snapped up, and she saw his terror. “Are you okay?”

She was not the one having a panic attack right now, but she doubted he would see the humor in that. “Yes, fine.” She looked at him more closely. His pupils were dilated and he was breathing so fast that he was almost hyperventilating.

“What’s wrong?” she asked more carefully.

He began pacing, the heels of his boots hitting the wood floorboards so hard she was afraid he was going to take the whole house down. “I—I don’t know. Something. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what.”

“What did you see?” She’d only seen him go into a trance once since the night of Albert’s party, and all he would tell her when he snapped out of it a few minutes later was that Jesse really would have gray hair, which made him laugh and laugh. But this was different. This was no laughing matter.

“It was the same thing—the same thing I saw before you came here. The horse was sick, the people—” He shuddered, almost as pale as she was. “The people were all dead. And you—” He stopped—really stopped. He didn’t even blink as he stared at her with wild eyes.

Her blood went ice cold in her veins. “What about me?”

“You—I think it’s you, but I don’t see you, just footprints in the snow—you tried to save them again, and it was too late. They were all dead.” He spun on the balls of his feet and grabbed her by the shoulders. His hands were downright chilly. “It’s not like these things happen in repeats. This means something. Something’s wrong.”