In addition to his medicine-man responsibilities, he’d gone over Madeline’s Jeep—inside and out—with bleach and a scrub brush. He suspected she owed someone a new shower curtain because they sure as hell weren’t getting that one back. He’d burned it in the trash barrel, along with the steady supply of contaminated medical waste. He was probably single-handedly jacking up the pollution rate for the rez, but Madeline had been explicit, and he trusted her when she said to burn everything.
All in all, it had been one hell of a day.
It wasn’t like Jesse hadn’t also been pulling his weight. Both hospital beds had two kids lying toe-to-toe in them. Madeline didn’t want to put the little ones on the floor if she could help it, and Jesse took it upon himself to keep the kids as clean and as calm as he could. As he sponged down kid after kid, he told the old stories that Albert had raised him and Rebel on, of Iktomi and Manstin, turtles and bears. He held hands when an IV had to be moved or a shot given, and he didn’t complain once about being puked on. Albert would have been proud. Rebel sure was.
Still, someone had to be the driver. He headed into the clinic to delegate. “Jesse, Madeline says Tara and Tammy and Terry can call go home. Can you take them?”
Jesse looked at Nelly, who was sleeping fitfully. “She stays?”
Nelly was still hooked up to two IVs, although Madeline had taken her off the oxygen. “For now. I’ll keep an eye on her, okay? It won’t take long, but we’ve got to get some of these people out of here.”
For a second, Jesse looked like he normally did, pouty and whining and angling for the easy way out of everything. But then he squared his shoulders, his eyes gleaming with a new purpose. “As long as no one dies on me...”
Rebel couldn’t help but chuckle. “I don’t think Madeline would send them home if she thought they were going to do that.”
Jesse leaned over and kissed Nelly’s forehead through his mask. Rebel never thought he’d see the day—Jesse being a real father to his daughter.
The situation seemed to have stabilized. Madeline began discharging patients with a fervor that struck Rebel as religious. Everyone went home with a four-week supply of antibiotics, explicit orders to finish all four weeks and some Imodium.
Finally, they were down to four kids and two elders still on IVs, which meant that for the first time in a long time, everyone was either on an exam table or a bed. Jesse had returned from one of his runs with bags of chips, candy bars and soda from the Quik-E Mart and handed them out like he was Santa. Nobody was making another pass of the place, using his mop as a crutch. The man was a night owl to begin with, but even he was slowing down.
By comparison, they were the ones in good shape. Madeline was…well, Rebel wouldn’t say collapsed at Tara’s desk, but she was damn close. Her gloved hands were propping up her masked face, but even with all that, her head was only four inches off the desk. She looked like a zombie in a lab coat.
“You should go home.” Rebel crouched down next to her, wanting to put his arm around her shoulders and hold her until she was safely off to dreamland. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the best course of action right now. Zombies were unpredictable, and he sure as hell didn’t want his head bitten off. Not to mention they both needed a bath in the worst sort of way.
Her head didn’t move, but her eyes found the clock on the wall. He followed them and saw that it was eight. The sun had just about finished setting outside. “That was a bone-crushing twenty hours of triage.” She sounded like she’d been crushed, all right. Flatter than a pancake.
“Go home, Madeline,” he said more gently. He couldn’t help it. He inched closer to her. “Get some sleep.”
This time, her head did move. With what looked like a hell of a lot of effort, she swung it around and fixed him with a look that was pure stubbornness. “Clarence first.”
“You,” he said more insistently. She couldn’t be serious—but everything about her said she was.
“No,” she replied just as insistently. “I’m staying until the lab calls. I have to know if we did the right thing.”
Rebel felt like she’d slapped him. Because of her, not a single person had died today. Not even Nelly. How could she think she’d been wrong? He caught the frustrated shout before it got out. She was jumping to conclusions again. But this time, he wasn’t going to let her go. “You did the right thing.” His arm twitched, like it wanted to grab hold of her all by itself. He fought to keep it still. “All you.”
The stubbornness melted into something else as her eyes crinkled. Damn it, this mask thing was seriously impeding his ability to read her, but he thought she was smiling.
“I couldn’t have done it without you, Rebel.”
“We make a good team, don’t we?”
The crinkles disappeared into an unreadable blankness. “I was under the impression that we didn’t do anything anymore.”
He swallowed. He didn’t want to beg—and he really didn’t want to beg in the middle of the clinic, the smell of bleach and sage and barf still strong in the air—but he would if he had to. “That’s not the impression I was operating under.”
She blinked, her eyelids moving at two different speeds. Damn it, this was not the time to be having this conversation, not when she was dead on her feet and they still had kids hooked up to IVs. Here he was, trying not to be a jerk, and he was still screwing it up.
He waited for some sort of reaction from her for a minute, but got nothing else but a few more off-kilter blinks. “Come on,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling her to hers. “I’ll take you home.”
Unexpectedly, she jerked her arm out of his hand and spun back to the beds. “Clarence,” she said in that boss-of-the-world voice she’d been using all day. “If you go home, will you sleep?”
“Hell, yeah,” was the muffled reply as Clarence lumbered in from the stock room with an armful of clean sheets.
“Go home, get cleaned up and get some sleep. I want you back here at eight tomorrow morning.”
Rebel caught her arm again. “Madeline, what are you doing?”
“I told you,” she snapped, sounding victorious. “I’m not leaving until I get those results. Clarence?”
The big man’s head rolled in their direction. “Yeah?”
Madeline turned to Rebel. He thought she was smiling again. “Take Rebel with you. Make sure he gets a shower too. I don’t want to see either of you here for twelve hours. Do I make myself clear?”
Painfully. Rebel was tempted to growl at her, but he should have known. What Madeline needed was to get some rest, but Dr. Mitchell had overruled that basic need without missing a beat. Second nature. “I’m coming back for you.”
Her eyes flashed, and in spite of the insanely long day, he felt a spark of heat from her. “Not until eight, you aren’t. And if you show up before then, I’ll—” Rebel fought the grin. She was too tired to even make a proper threat.
“Don’t hurt yourself.” He stepped around her and, nodding his head for Nobody to follow, went to talk with Jesse. “She’s ordering me out.”
Jesse managed to raise his eyebrows, but gravity was too much for him. By the time he said, “This a reoccurring habit?” his eyebrows were already back where they’d started.
Rebel managed a good-enough glare. Actually, now that he thought about it, he was beat. A hot shower and a flat surface—he thought Clarence even had a couch—sounded mighty nice right about now. “I want you two to stay here with her. Sleep in shifts, let her get as much shut-eye as possible. I’ll be at Clarence’s. I don’t care what she says—something goes south, you call us quick. Got it?”
“No one gets past me,” Nobody said, and despite all those bone-crushing hours, he still managed to pull off a damned convincing menace.
“And that’s how I want it.” Rebel shook both men’s gloved hands. “Take care of them.”
“Rebel.” Jesse fixed him with a pretty convincing stare of his own. Not bad for a little twerp. “You can count on us.”
“Yo, Rebel! Get the lead out!” Clarence was already out the door.
Rebel stopped by the desk on his way out. He wanted to kiss her, even if that meant just pressing his masked lips to her masked cheek. But he didn’t even get that chance. Ice-blue eyes rimmed in red looked up at him.
“Jesse and Nobody will keep an eye on things. Try to get some sleep, Madeline.”
“Go.” It was an order.
“I’m going.”
But I’m coming back, he thought.
I’m coming back for you.
“Can’t this hunk of junk go any faster?”
“And good morning to you too, sunshine,” Clarence said, not even bothering to take it personally as he fiddled with the radio. “She’s not going anywhere. Keep your pants on.”
They both knew which she Clarence meant. Rebel forcibly snapped his mouth shut and waited for the big man to put the pedal to the metal.
Finally, the truck picked up speed. Shit, Rebel thought. Blue Eye would leave them in the dust. They weren’t going to make it by eight, and to Rebel, each minute after that was a shot through the heart.
Madeline. He had to get to Madeline. He’d never seen her less pretty than when she’d kicked him out of the clinic last night—shower cap, red eyes, exhaustion rolling off of her in waves—but even then, she’d been a beautiful angel of mercy. She hadn’t just tried to stop the sickness, she’d succeeded. She’d stopped the whatever-it-was dead in its tracks. Even if he hadn’t been in love with her, he would have been brimming with the kind of gratitude that can only be earned the hard way. He owed her everything—including that apology. And now she needed him, and he needed to be there for her.
“Can I ask you a question?” he heard himself ask as he mused on his angel of mercy.
“Hoo boy,” Clarence said under his breath. “What?”
“Do you like her? Madeline, that is?”
“Sure. I like paychecks.”
“Not like that.” Maybe he needed a little more sleep, because he wasn’t doing a bang-up job of saying what he wanted to say. “Do you like her?”
Clarence shot him a look out of the corner of his eye that said, watch it. “Yeah. I like her. Not like you do, though.”
Rebel rolled his eyes.
“Why do you ask?”
Rebel pressed on. “She’s a good doctor? You like working with her?”
“Yes, okay? She’s a damn good doctor—or did you blink out last night?”
“You wouldn’t mind working with her on a more permanent basis?”
The silence filled the truck’s cab as the miles squeaked past. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Yeah.” Permanent. Permanent like a house with a porch. Permanent like a wedding. Permanent like forever.
He’d tried forever once before, but if he was really honest with himself—and there was no time like the present—he’d known then that it wasn’t forever forever. This was different. This really could be his forever—if she didn’t order him out. Again.
“We could do a lot worse than her—and we have. But I doubt we could do a whole hell of a lot better,” Clarence finally said. He sounded almost like he was lost in thought. “You think she’ll go for it?”
The clinic crested over the hill. Jesse’s truck was still out front next to her Jeep, and he could see both Blue Eye and Nobody’s horse off in the distance. Two other cars filled out the lot. From a distance, it looked like a normal Monday.
Normal for the rez, anyway. “I don’t know,” he replied in all honesty.
“Well, if she don’t, try not to piss her off so much that she bails. She’s supposed to stay for another year and a half.”
The vote of confidence was underwhelming, but then Clarence had busted in on them when Madeline had jumped right off the cliff on conclusions. The fact Clarence hadn’t already punched his lights out was probably as good as it was going to get. “I’ll do what I can.”
The truck pulled to a stop. Even though he’d been itching to get here, he sat for just a second, bracing himself for whatever version of doctor-lover-zombie was waiting for him. Knowing her, she’d refused to sleep much, if at all. She wouldn’t have wanted to miss anything, or she wouldn’t have trusted Nobody and Jesse.
He was betting it all on zombie. Big time.
Four people were sitting in the waiting room, looking miserable but not deathly. Madeline was sitting at Tara’s desk.
Sitting, he quickly corrected himself, was too strong a word. She was slumped over, nose-to-nose with the desk in a way that didn’t look like she’d moved a lot recently.
“Madeline?” He got no response, not that time or the next three times he said it, not even the last time, when he nearly shouted it in her ear.
Nobody sidled up next to him and nodded to the waiting people.
“How long?” Rebel asked.
“Ten minutes. I, uh, told them they had to wait.” He looked down at Madeline, and Rebel was surprised to see real concern in his eyes.
Rebel nodded. Clarence could handle the new people. “Good thinking.” He looked back to Madeline.
Nobody’s head ducked. He actually looked embarrassed. The man must be exhausted, Rebel thought. He never looked embarrassed, especially during daylight hours when someone might actually see him.
“She wouldn’t sleep. She just sat there, staring at the phone,” said Nobody.
That was an apology, Rebel realized. And staring was an overstatement. She was sleeping with her eyes open. “It’s okay. I’m gonna take her home and put her to bed. Can you get home okay? Do you need a ride?”
Nobody’s shoulders stiffened. “I can stay.”
“You’ve been here for thirty-two hours. So have Madeline and Jesse.” Speaking of, where was Jesse? Rebel stepped out of the waiting room and found Jesse in a relocated waiting-room chair, looking like a Slinky gone haywire. He had one hand on Nelly’s arm, the other on a different kid’s arm, and his legs looked like jelly left out in the sun too long.
“Jesse,” Rebel said as he nudged jelly legs with his boot. “Wake up. Go home.” And then, feeling a whole hell of a lot like boss of the world, he added, “Take Nobody with you. Both of you get a shower and some sleep. Or else.”
Jesse started, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “Huh? Oh. Rebel.”
“Go home,” he said again, pulling Jesse to his feet. “Clarence is here. We’ll keep an eye on Nelly.”
“Oh. Yeah. Home.” Jesse slapped his face twice and shook out some of the cobwebs. “Uh, Nobody, you coming?”
Nobody managed to look inconvenienced, which was enough to make Jesse pale. Jesse didn’t know Nobody, after all. When it had been them against the world for the last thirty-two hours, that had been one thing. But in the light of day, Nobody was still more or less an unknown.
Rebel shot Nobody the strictest look he had, which turned out to be enough.
“Thank you kindly,” Nobody said as he slipped out the door ahead of Jesse.
Two down, Rebel thought with a mental sigh. One to go.
As he crossed the room, the phone rang. The sound froze him in his tracks for a second, but when the phone rang again and Madeline made no movement to answer it, Rebel found his feet and ran to pick it up.
“Clinic, this is Jonathan,” he said, hoping and praying that this was the lab. If the lab called, he could take her home. Everything would be okay.
At the sound of his white name, he swore everyone in the clinic turned and stared—even Clarence. But if it was the lab, he didn’t want to scare anyone off with Rebel.
“Uh, yeah, this is Open Diagnostics,” a high-pitched male voice cut through the static. “I’m calling for a Madeline Mitchell.”
“Dr. Mitchell is with a patient,” he lied. He’d heard Tara say it enough. “She is expecting your call and told me to take a message. If she has any questions, she’ll call back.”
“Can’t you get her? You’re talking to Leon Flagg here. I head the lab.”
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Oh, Leon! Madeline’s fake giggle floated back to him. His hand clenched in a fist as if it thought it could punch the asshole out over the telephone line. “I’m sorry,” he replied, amazed at how smooth and un-homicidal he managed to sound. “She’s performing a procedure...” Yeah, sure. If you called slack-jawed staring a procedure.
“Yeah, yeah. Well, you tell her that what she’s got there is a nasty little double infection there, campy and E. Coli. You tell her that I’ve never seen concentrations so high. Where the hell did she get that sample?” Suddenly the high-pitched voice dropped a notch or two. Leon was impressed. “Because levels like that of those two things together would kill a man inside a day, no question.”
“E. Coli? Campy?” He didn’t know what the hell it was, but he wrote it down anyway. At least he’d heard of E. coli. Then he looked at Madeline.
Instead of the zombie, she was staring at him, her bloodshot eyes wide with recognition. So he didn’t know what campy was. She did, and that was all that mattered.
“You know, campy. Campylobacter jejune?” Leon sighed. “Can I talk to someone who knows what they’re doing?”
He tried to phonetically spell campylobacter, just in case Madeline wouldn’t remember this conversation when she woke up. “I’m sorry, sir, but everyone is helping with the procedure.” Leon snorted as a new thought occurred to Rebel. Madeline had made him call Tim last night, and Tim was the law around here. She’d been treating the campy outbreak like it was a crime scene—but the hard proof was with Leon. “Will the lab be sending out a full report?”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a bunch. We’ll finish it up and have it in the mail by the end of the week.”
That was probably as good as it was going to get—unless someone started offering sexual favors. Rebel shuddered at the thought. “Is there anything else I should pass along to Dr. Mitchell?”
The pause was too long. “Well, I would love to meet the doctor herself. Do you know if she’ll be coming to Baltimore anytime soon? Maybe with her sister?”
Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 Page 23