by Dianne Drake
“Kimi, I’ve got an emergency and I need DocChay to go with me. But Sheriff Emil’s here to take you to his house, and I’ll bet his wife, Sandy, can fix you something even better than plain old grilled cheese.”
Kimi was agreeable, and within seconds she was sitting in the front seat of the police car, lights and siren on purely for her amusement, while Joanna was sitting next to Chay, who was driving simply because he could get them there faster.
“Donna Rousseau?” he asked as they pulled away from the clinic.
“How did you know?”
“I could see it in your eyes, how sad they were when you looked at Kimimela.”
She picked up the radio Emil had left with her and punched a button. “This is Joanna Killian, over.” It scared her that Chay was so perceptive, scared her to her very core, because if he could see the depth of her emotions for Kimi, maybe could he also see the depth of her developing feelings for him.
“Joanna, this is Ben Blue Jacket, and I’m sure glad to hear your voice, over.”
At times like these she would have traded a year’s salary for a cellphone that worked. Unfortunately, they didn’t transmit out here. She had one, for all the good it did her, but most of the time her connection was through a land line, and sometimes a radio like this one. “Describe Donna’s injuries, over.”
“She’s crushed under her car, Doc. It turned over and she was thrown out, but it landed on her, over.”
“Is she conscious?” She waited for Ben’s response.
“Say over,” Chay prompted.
“Over,” she repeated, numbly.
“She is, and she says she’s not feeling a thing. She wants to know if we could take the car off her so she can get on home to Kimi. But it’s down hard on her, Doc. Almost like it’s buried half of her in the ground, over.”
“Vitals, over?”
“Blood pressure’s down, heart rate’s way up and her breathing is rapid, over.”
“Do you keep any oxygen in your patrol car, Ben? Over.”
“Sure do, over.”
“Get her on some oxygen, and sit tight. We’re about ten minutes out. Over. Oh, and, Ben, radio me back if there are any changes at all. Over.”
“Shock,” Chay said.
It took Joanna a minute to find her voice. If the full weight of the car had crushed Donna and she wasn’t feeling anything…No, she wasn’t going to buy into the worst-case scenario as she hadn’t seen the full extent of the accident. Maybe none of the car had touched Donna at all.
Or maybe all of it had and Donna just didn’t know she was dead.
The scene was congested with workers from the ranch when they arrived, and Joanna asked Ben to get rid of everybody. She didn’t want Donna going through this with an audience.
“It’s serious,” Chay said before Joanna even found her way over to the injured woman. “Everything from mid-chest down. She’s pinned and happy and drunk, but once we pull the car off she’s going to bleed internally and—”
“Options,” Joanna snapped. “What are our options? I don’t have a MAST suit.” MAST—military antishock trousers—were slipped onto a patient in the hope that the pressurized device would increase blood flow to the vital organs, especially the brain and heart, when the patient was suffering a major internal bleed. It was a stopgap measure, often controversial, because it was hard to get on, harder to get off, and it could cause almost as much shock to the system as the initial injury. But in instances such as this, it could work.
Except Joanna didn’t have one.
“Wouldn’t do any good if you did. Optimum time to keep her in it would be twenty minutes, give or take. And right now that car’s acting as the MAST. Once we remove it, if we’re not prepared to operate immediately…”
“She’ll hemorrhage internally and die.” Like the flood-gates opening. The car was keeping them shut in a sense, but once opened there was no shutting them again. “So what do we do?” Joanna choked, fighting to keep a grip on her emotions. This was always the hardest part—not being able to do what she was supposed to.
“Make her comfortable, get the chopper here just in case we’re wrong, and hope that we are.” He reached out and took Joanna’s hand. “And do this for her until whatever happens happens.”
“Dear God, Chay. I know what it’s like to lose your mother at Kimi’s age.” As much as her heart was breaking for Donna, it was breaking even more for Kimi. And there was nothing Joanna could do to fix it. “Look, you go back to Donna and I’ll go talk to Ben Blue Jacket. And don’t tell her she’s going to die. That might be the coward’s way out, but maybe something will happen.” Something good, but probably not.
Joanna procrastinated her way over to Donna several minutes later and found Chay sitting with her, holding her hand. How could he do that? she wondered. Sit there so calmly, like it was a first date and they were at a movie? He was such a good doctor, and her heart hurt so badly watching him wait with Donna. Somehow she needed to find the strength for this.
“Donna,” Joanna whispered, bending down next to her. Chay was on the other side, his eyes shut. “We have a helicopter on the way for you, and once it’s here, we’ll get the car off. Are you in much pain?”
“Chayton found my power animal. I’ve always wondered if I had one and sometimes I was afraid to ask, because maybe I didn’t deserve one. But Chayton says it’s the horse, that he can feel the spirit of the horse in me, that it’s strong.”
Joanna looked over at Chay, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Tell me about the horse, Donna.” She knew about power animals. Everyone was supposed to have a particular animal, which she thought of as similar to a guardian angel—a protector spirit that helped in daily life and in spiritual search. Power animals were supposed to reflect one’s inner self and represent the qualities people needed. They were important in the Sioux spiritual practices and she liked what they represented. Somehow she always thought that if she were to have one, it would be a deer. In Sioux tradition, people whose power animal was a deer were often described as being swift and alert. They were also intuitive, sometimes with well-developed, even extra-sensory perception. Their thoughts seem to race ahead, and often they seemed not to be listening. Like Chay was right now. The deer’s medicine was gentleness in word, thought and touch, and the ability to listen, the grace and appreciation for the beauty of balance, understanding what was necessary for survival, power of gratitude and giving, the ability to sacrifice for the higher good. That was the power animal, or guardian spirit, she would have chosen for herself. But she thought it was really the power animal that had chosen Chay.
Donna drew in a deep, shuddering breath. She was beginning to wind down, Joanna saw.
“Chayton says if you have the power of the horse in your spirit, it’s difficult to control. I guess you could say that’s the way I’ve lived my life—not under control. But he says I have loyalty and devotion, and I do, DocJo. I love Kimimela, and I’ve always been devoted to her. I have…” Her voice trailed off.
“And you have the touch of gypsy in your soul,” Chay continued for her. “The horse’s medicine brings you the freedom to run where you want.” He finally looked at Joanna as he spoke the next words to Donna. “A horse will carry you to your freedom, Donna.”
Joanna shut her eyes to hold back the tears.
“Chayton,” Donna whispered. “Mic’ikte.” I killed myself.
“No, you have freed yourself. Wakhan Thánka nici um.” The Great Spirit will go with you and guide you.
“And Kimimela?”
“Chéye shni yo.” Don’t cry. “Wash’ake.” She is strong.
Chay held Donna’s hand until she died thirty minutes later, and Joanna was thankful Kimimela’s mother had suffered no pain. More than that, she was thankful that Chay had found it within himself to guide Donna Rousseau in the way she should go.
He was indeed the deer.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS early morning and she needed to open up the clinic here in Rising Sun
as well as get up to Claremont to make up for the missed appointments from…when was it? Only yesterday? Or perhaps the day before? It was all beginning to run together now—the days, the hours, the minutes. So much had happened between getting Leonard to the hospital, and Donna’s accident. And now she needed to split herself in half just to catch up. Which meant someone was going to be slighted no matter how she worked it out.
There was also Kimi to consider. Chay wasn’t saying anything about what had happened to her mother yet, but he was taking it to heart much more than she had expected him to. Especially since he tried so hard to stay detached.
He’d gone to Billings after Donna had died, to tell his mother firsthand. News like that, on top of her worry over her husband, shouldn’t be delivered by phone. Joanna knew she probably should have gone with him, but somebody had to stay back and get the next day started, which was what she was trying to do right now. Fix some coffee, prop her eyes open and greet the patients lining up on the sidewalk outside the clinic.
“Good morning, Mrs Ninon,” Joanna said as the first of about a dozen marched through her door. Laurette Ninon, a bit of a hypochondriac, didn’t wander too far away from medical services when they were available. Joanna was trying to wean her off, limit her to one visit a week. Of course, these were extenuating circumstances, the aftermath of Donna Rosseau’s tragedy. And Laurette had been Donna’s friend.
“I’m so nervous I don’t know what to do with myself, DocJo,” Laurette said, sniffling into a tissue. “I’m thinking that Hank and I should do the right thing by Kimimela and take her in like a daughter. That’s what Donna would want, I think. But Hank’s gone more now, as Leonard’s in the hospital. He’s trying to take over some of the responsibility at the ranch, which means I’m home alone much more, and since I already have three children…”
Laurette was struggling to keep in the sobs. In fact, there was a dark pall over everyone waiting to see Joanna this morning, and she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with it so many times. After Jack Whirlwind’s death last month, she’d prayed she wouldn’t have to go through it again for a long, long time. And here it was all over again. The people of Rising Sun, and on the whole of the Hawk reservation, were tight-knit. They cared. They pitched in to help one another. They shared lives. And there would be many who, like Laurette, needed consolation.
“I have some sample tranquilizers,” Joanna said to Laurette. Truth was, Laurette needed tender loving care more than medication, but there simply wasn’t time for TLC, so a low-dose pill was the best she could do. She handed Laurette a sample packet of Valium, 2.5 milligrams, a child’s dose really. Then a paper cup of water to wash down the pill. It wasn’t much, but she was hoping for some placebo effect to kick in. “Now, go home, take the day off, rest. And call your mother to come over and watch the kids. Doctor’s orders.”
It was more of a patch job than a real fix, but Laurette took it to heart and thanked her with a wonderful pot of fresh vegetable stew and five one-dollar bills. And that was pretty much how the first half of Joanna’s day went. Patch jobs for the most part. A few minor ailments, and so much grieving.
“My dad’s beginning to come round,” Chay announced as he strolled into the clinic. It was mid-afternoon and the last of Joanna’s patients had finally gone. At the moment she was trying to catch up on paperwork, the one part of her job she really hated. “Doctor says he’s responding to verbal stimuli, but he’s not totally cognizant of everything around him. My mother thinks he understands everything, though, and I’m going to have to go with what she thinks.”
Joanna glanced up from her laptop to look at him. He was tired, too. And still so handsome. That night in Fishback Creek seemed so long ago now she was beginning to question if she’d really been with him or had merely dreamed it. How could so much have happened in such a short time? she asked herself. In the moments when she’d lain in his arms afterward, she’d thought about the next time with him, wondering when? Not if. But now she wondered if, and she wasn’t holding out much hope for it. There were so many other things to come between them, and he would leave soon. “They want to move him to a rehab facility in a few days, Chay, and the best I can do is get him into a place there in Billings.” The best she could do, but not nearly good enough.
“My mother wants to bring him home and care for him.” Chay pulled up a chair and sat down across from Joanna. “She thinks she and Macawi can take care of whatever he needs.”
“I don’t want to be blunt about this, Chay, but your mother has watched him being sick for a long time and didn’t do anything about it. She didn’t even mention it to me, not that I could have done anything. But maybe I could have. Who knows? So I’m not sure, when the time comes for your dad to leave the hospital, if coming home is the best thing. Right away, anyway. Maybe later…”
She looked at the blur of words and figures on her computer screen. Where there were financial subsidies from the government, such as the ones her clinic received, there were always financial reports to file. But she wasn’t in the mood. “Have you gone over to see Kimi yet? I talked to Sandy earlier and they haven’t told her about Donna. She and Emil thought maybe you should be the one, since you’re who she came looking for.”
“Yeah, and she’ll form some sort of attachment to me, then what?” He stretched back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. “It was hard enough sitting with Donna.”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you what a wonderful thing you did out there, holding her hand, staying with her, helping her through it.”
“And then she died,” he snapped. “Yeah. Wonderful job. And now Kimimela’s an orphan. Damn wonderful.”
“What’s your power animal, Chay?”
He didn’t even look at her. Instead, he dropped his head backward against the wall and shut his eyes. “Don’t have one. And don’t start on me about what you heard out there with Donna. It was what she needed. That’s all. I couldn’t save her life, so that’s all I had to give her. And don’t go getting any crazy idea that I’m having a change of heart, because I’m not. I’m a doctor, a surgeon, and I was taking care of a patient the only way I knew how.”
“And that’s the point, Chay. You knew how.” Joanna pushed away from her desk and stood. “Somebody needs to talk to Kimi. Why don’t you go get some sleep and I’ll go over to the Chamberlains’ and tell Kimi what happened to her mother? By now I’m sure she knows something’s wrong.”
Chay drew in a ragged breath and let it out slowly. “How about we both go?” He stood up, then pulled her into his arms. “Normally when I ask a girl to go to bed with me it’s for things other than sleep, but maybe after we talk to Kimimela we could come back here, take a nice, relaxing bath together then crawl into bed.” He brushed a light kiss across her lips. “And take a nap.”
“Just what I was about to suggest.”
Chay was simply too tired to figure out his feelings for Joanna right now but, damn it, something was stirring up in him, and it went far beyond what they’d found for themselves at Fishback Creek. The sex had been great, and hopefully what happened wouldn’t be a one-night stand for them. But something else was going on, something he couldn’t make sense of yet. In the midst of everything else, his ability to think straight had vanished, and when it came to Joanna Killian, he really needed some straight thinking before he tried to sort out what he was feeling for her. Otherwise he’d merely tumble into her arms right then and never, ever leave.
But that wasn’t the real Chayton Ducheneaux thinking that. Couldn’t be. So it must be the delirium, the exhaustion, the emotional whirling that was sucking away his normal responses. Because in the low points—and pretty much everything that had happened since he’d come home, except meeting Joanna, had been a low point—he saw himself in love with her.
Even now, walking with his arm around her shoulder and hers around his waist as they went to see Kimimela, it felt like love. And this love certainly did not feel like anything he’d ever f
elt before. He knew lust, fondness and infatuation. But this was none of those. Meaning, in terms of his life, he couldn’t define it. Or perhaps he was afraid to. It was all a big blur to him at the moment, and right now he had to concentrate on Kimimela and nothing, or no one else. He, not Joanna, was the one who would soon break her little heart into pieces.
“I’ve never had to do this,” he said. “Telling a child her mother has died. How do you find the words?” he asked as they stepped up onto the Chamberlains’ wooden steps. “How do you tell someone that her life has just changed for ever?”
“With your heart, Chay. And with whatever else it was you found inside yourself to help Donna.” She reached up and gave him a tender kiss on the cheek, than sat down in a faded white wicker chair on the porch. “You’re the one she needs.”
And Joanna was the one he needed.
Chay saw Kimimela’s eager face at the window and braced himself for the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
Joanna heard Chay’s words, heard Kimi’s muffled cries turn to sobs, and she bit her lip to hold back her own sobs. She knew the pain, knew the anguish that would follow for many years. Even now she sometimes cried for her own mother, and it was a deep hole in her soul that would never quite be put to rest. Right now she ached for both of them in there, Chay and Kimi, and there was so little she could do to ease their pain.
“Kimimela and I are going for a cherry cola,” Chay said a little while later. Kimi was clinging to his left hand, still struggled against sobs. Chay held out his right hand for Joanna. “We need you to come with us.”
A few minutes later, three dimes by the side of the cash register, the three of them sat in one of the booths near the front window. Kimi wasn’t much interested in her drink. She went through the pretense of taking a few sips, but each time she did so her bottom lip gave way to a big tremble and the tears started flowing. And each time that happened she cuddled even harder into Chay. In some ways she was lucky having someone to cuddle into. When Joanna’s mother had died, her father had cuddled into a bottle of whiskey and Joanna had been left to herself.