He smiled and lifted a single finger in lieu of a wave. She grinned and squeezed his big toe. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Dizzy at all? Breathing okay?” She glanced at the output screen on the IV.
“You’re not on duty,” he told her, but it came out in a croak. His lips were cracked, she noticed, and his complexion was a little sallow. He looked older, too. And not just older, but old.
Living in Cheyenne, it was too easy to picture him younger, as though he never aged. Had he been this thin at Christmas? Rowan couldn’t recall. He seemed frail now. His beard had gone salt and pepper, and there were fine wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. His skin was papery. How much of that was dehydration? And how much was years’ worth of sun and wind damage from working outside?
Rowan didn’t want to think about her dad getting old.
“I let the sheep out,” she told him, checking his IV line to keep herself busy.
He sighed and leaned back into the pillow. “Thanks, Rowan. Sorry you had to mess with it. When I get home, I’ll get back on track. No worries.”
He tried to push himself up and failed the first few times.
Rowan’s hands itched to help him, but she knew better than to offer. He wouldn’t like the idea that he needed anyone’s assistance. He licked his lips, grimaced, then reached for the water cup that sat on the small rolling stand by the bedside.
Rowan held her breath again as she watched him out of the corner of her eye.
His hand flopped uselessly, as though he had been sapped of all his strength.
Finally, her worry over his condition won out over her reluctance to make him feel dependent. He was dependent, after all, and they would both have to get used to that. She let the IV line fall and reached for the cup. She filled it for him and handed it over. She could tell by the clouded expression on his face that he was unhappy about it.
He was proud, she thought. And so incredibly stubborn. No doctors, no ambulances. Rowan supposed watching Mom waste away in a hospital bed just like this one hadn’t helped his opinion of the place. Part of her couldn’t blame him for lying in his own bed at home, trying to convince himself he was just overworked.
“I don’t think they’re going to release you before the end of next week,” she told him. “At the earliest.”
He scowled and shifted in his bed. “Guess I can call Wilbur Hines,” he mused, “to feed the flock.”
“I’ll do it,” Rowan told him while rubbing his hand gently. “It’s okay.”
He looked up at her doubtfully. “Well…” he said slowly. “You have your job.”
She forced a smile to her lips. “I have some vacation time saved up.” It was kind of true. She had a few days. Certainly not two weeks’ worth. She’d have to call Sandy and arrange a leave of absence, though her pocketbook would take a huge hit.
He took another sip of water, but it must have gone down wrong, because he started coughing, and a look of pure agony flashed across his face.
“Hang on!” Rowan cried, snatching the cup away and tossing it into the garbage can. She reached for the small, heart-shaped pillow on the bedside table. She pressed it to his chest firmly. “Grab it,” she ordered in her nurse’s voice.
He wrapped his arms around it and held it to his chest. It took a full five minutes for the fit to subside. By then he looked like he was on the verge of passing out from sheer exhaustion. How he thought he could run a sheep farm like this was unbelievable to Rowan.
Then again, Rowan told herself lies all the time, just to keep going.
Visiting hours ended, and though Rowan could probably use her credentials and convince the duty nurse to let her stay, she wanted to check on Willow and actually tuck her in tonight.
She kissed her dad on the forehead and pulled up his blanket. “Get as much sleep as you can.”
He grunted, and that told her how likely he thought that was.
She smiled, though, grateful that he was still the tough-as-nails rancher that she’d known all her life. “Try anyway,” she said in her nurse’s voice.
That voice always made him smile for some reason.
She turned out the lights and slipped out the door making it all the way down the hall, to the elevator, and into her car before tears almost came. She fought them back, using every ounce of strength she had left and kept her eyes proudly dry as she got behind the wheel.
Outside the city, though, her mind wandered a bit, with memories of Mom in the hospital, of the first time she’d come back to the house knowing Mom was dead. Autopilot took Rowan, not to the highway but to Hardee Road instead, the back way to the Archer farm.
When she realized where she was, her foot came off the gas. She fought the urge to double back and get back on I-89. She’d lose so much time, though, and Willow might be asleep before she got back if she did that. She soldiered on, biting her lip all the way. Her foot—her damnable foot—slowed again once she came around Slayter’s Curve.
There it was, the high wooden arches that proclaimed it to be the entrance to the Snake River Ranch. She could just make out the Big House, the barn, and the bunkhouse down the long, winding drive through the valley.
She’d driven this way so many times in high school, visiting Court, making out in the barn, sometimes in the grassy field near the house. He’d taken her virginity in his beat-up Ford, on prom night, and she cried when the stain ruined her dress. It wasn’t really the stain, it was that there was no one to talk to about it, no one to ask questions about what she was supposed to do.
Emma was about a minute older than Rowan (two years actually) and barely knew anything about sex herself. Court and Rowan had bonded over the fact that they’d both lost their mothers to breast cancer. And he held her in his truck, awkwardly, that night when she pretended to be upset over some blood.
They’d stayed together through graduation, though he flirted some. She’d ignored it and told herself he’d settle down soon. Then he’d taken off, joined the rodeo circuit. She’d ignored it, telling herself he’d be back eventually. And besides, she had nursing school to get through.
But he’d been in Cheyenne for the Frontier Days, and she’d been on break from school. She’d driven there, alone, to surprise him, surprising them both when she found him in bed with two women in his travel trailer. She’d stormed off. He hadn’t bothered to follow her.
That had been the end…and a beginning…all rolled into one. Court had disappeared from her life just as Willow had, surprisingly, come into it.
She felt something different now, as her tires rolled past. Not longing but loathing. She never wanted to see Court Barlow again, that was for damn sure. She hit the gas, anger renewed, and nearly lost control of the front end as it slipped in the slush. She righted the wheel and rocketed past the ranch, steady on toward home, where it was safer.
*
Willow and Emma were baking cookies in the kitchen. It was a pleasant enough sight, but it did nothing to help Rowan’s dark mood. She excused herself and headed outside, where she walked the fence line with Kinka, plucking at the wire until she came to the gate and remembered that it was broken. She located the tool box in the shed, hauled it out, and rooted around inside for some wire cutters.
The last of the late-day sun’s warmth lingered, so she took off her gloves to work. The manual labor was supposed to be good for her nerves, but it was just giving her more time to think. About medical bills, the mortgage on the farm, and what they could get for the place if they sold it.
The very idea of it was like a punch in the gut, though. Her family had lived here since her great-grandfather had built the house. And assuming she could get Dad to sell—hell, assuming she’d even agree to sell—where would he live? In town? He’d hate it! Where would Rowan live, if he needed more care? How long could Emma chip in before her job required her back?
Nursing paid more than ranching, by far. Their apartment in Cheyenne wasn’t much, but that was the point. Rowan had been able to save a little each month, even while paying off nursing school. Her meager savings wasn’t enough to keep this place going, though.
As she looked up at the house, she couldn’t imagine it belonging to someone else.
Her hand slipped, and she felt a sharp pain on her palm. Blood welled in the cut. That was all she could take, it seemed. Tears dripped onto her hand, her sleeve, the ground. Her ground. Her land. Her family’s land. The sobs came in a burst and she pressed her uninjured hand to her mouth to hold them back.
It must not have worked, because Willow appeared beside her, bundled into her winter coat that was one size too small. “It’s okay, Mama,” she said, tugging at Rowan’s sleeve. “I’ll get you a Band-Aid. It’s okay.”
Emma put her arm around Rowan’s shoulders and pulled her into the warm house, where the wood stove was burning in the corner and the cookies were cooling. Rowan only cried harder.
At the kitchen table, Emma patted Rowan’s palm with a wet paper towel and tried to apply a bandage while the skin was still damp.
“You have to wait,” Rowan declared miserably.
Emma shot her a look. “Nurses make the worst patients.”
“That’s doctors,” Rowan replied.
Both women fell silent. That was another thing Rowan avoided, tried not to think about. She could have gone to med school. She’d had the grades for it. But there was no money. In the beginning, Rowan had told herself she’d pursue nursing first, then maybe go to night school when she could afford it. Then Willow came. And doctoring went. It was easier not to dwell on it, just like Dad with his heating bills, his throbbing left arm, or the lump in his wife’s breast.