“The ambulance will be here in ten minutes,” Harry announced. “Should we ride her back to the stable?”
“I think we’d better wait here,” Bailey said, sounding tense.
Emma was lying on the grass with her eyes closed, and they fluttered open from time to time. When the ambulance arrived ten minutes later, it was a Jeep with two paramedics in it, who hopped out with a stretcher to put Emma on, and she started to cry when she saw it. It had bad memories for her too.
They lay her on the backseat of the Jeep, and Whitney rode with her, sitting on the floor of the car while Bailey rode ahead back to the stables, and Harry led Whitney’s horse home.
Emma sat up and threw up as soon as they got to the stables, which Bailey and Whitney both knew meant she had a concussion, and the Jeep drove Emma and Whitney to the hospital while Bailey followed in their car, feeling like a monster for suggesting they go riding in the first place. He had apologized to Whitney about a dozen times before they took off for the hospital.
He met them in the emergency room and demanded to see the neurologist on call for a head injury.
“We don’t know if it’s a head injury yet, sir,” the nurse snapped at him, and he replied just as quickly.
“I’m a neurologist, and I know. She’s got a concussion, and a previous head injury. We need a CT scan, an MRI, and EEG stat,” he leveled at her, and she looked startled and picked up the phone, and then turned to Bailey again.
“The doctor will be here in an hour. He’s in Truckee.” Bailey resisted the urge to scream at her, and went to find Whitney and Emma in the exam room where they’d put them. Emma had just thrown up again, and Whitney looked as pale as she did, and barely spoke to him, as she nodded and sat down after they cleaned Emma up. She was looking very pale, and lying with her eyes closed, and Bailey stood next to her talking to her. He was telling Emma that he didn’t want her to go to sleep, and kept a running banter going with her, to keep her focused and engaged. And finally, over an hour later, the doctor walked in, looking faintly annoyed.
“What’s the big excitement here? I hear this young lady fell off a horse.” She nodded and then winced at the pain in her head, and Bailey asked to speak to him outside for a moment. They walked out together, and Bailey gave him the rapid version of the past year, her car accident a year before, and weeks in a coma, due to brain trauma as a result, and recent recovery.
“I understand your concern,” he said seriously, “let’s have a look at her together.” Bailey stood aside as the neurologist examined her. He had already noticed that there were more than twenty orthopedic surgeons listed on the board in the emergency room, and only three neurologists. It was a ski community in winter, and they saw more broken bones than head injuries, but the doctor seemed competent enough as Bailey watched him, and Whitney stared at them both.
“All right,” the middle-aged neurologist agreed with Bailey, “let’s get a CT and an MRI on her, and an EEG to be on the safe side, but I think we’re looking at a mild concussion. It isn’t what I’d want to see happen after a brain injury, but I think we may have gotten lucky on this one. She was wearing a helmet?”
“Yes, she was.” Bailey nodded, feeling sick himself at what had happened. He hadn’t dared look at Whitney since they’d walked in, and she wasn’t speaking to him.
They completed the scans within the next hour, and the neurologist came back to confer with Bailey. “The scans all look good. She’s awake, she’s alert, she’s talking to us. I think with a few days in bed she’ll be fine. But I think maybe we want to skip riding lessons after this, if you agree.” He was smiling and Bailey looked immensely relieved.
“God, yes. It was entirely my fault. It was my idea. The horse saw a rabbit, bucked, and took off.”
“They’re a bunch of old broken-down nags in that place anyway. But I think Emma should skip riding after this, for the sake of your nerves and mine, and her mother’s,” he said, glancing at Whitney, and they didn’t bother to explain. He had obviously assumed that Bailey was her father. “You should check her every two hours tonight when she’s asleep. I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Anytime. I’m glad it was nothing worse,” he said and hurried out with a wave, as Bailey turned to look at Whitney. She looked like she was going to faint. Emma already seemed better when she sat up, and had color in her face.
“Are you ready to kill me? You should be,” he said to Whitney with deep remorse. “I’m so sorry,” he said to both of them.
“It was fun, until I fell off,” Emma said as she got off the exam table, and Bailey groaned.
“It was not fun before or after you fell off, and it was a terrible idea. I’m really sorry,” he said, as Whitney nodded and followed them out of the room, and then out to the parking lot. They were all grateful that Emma had been wearing the helmet. Without it, she might be in a coma again, which Whitney and Bailey were both well aware of.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she finally managed to say to Bailey. “It was mine too. I let her do it, even if I was nervous about it. Amy told me I shouldn’t overprotect her, so I was trying to be grown up about it.”
“So much for that. Your instincts are better than Amy’s. Emma’s not her child, she’s yours.” Whitney smiled weakly at what he said. She called Brett a few minutes later and asked her to fly up to Reno. She’d been due back in a few days anyway, after her time off. She was shocked when Whitney told her Emma had a concussion and had fallen off a horse. And she agreed to be there in a few hours. They were going to take turns watching her during the night. Bailey would be watching her too, and said he’d stay a few extra days if Whitney would let him, which she said he could. She was grateful to have him near at hand.
“It could have happened some other way,” she said graciously, once Emma was settled in bed with her iPad, watching a movie. “She could have tripped and fallen, she could have fallen down the stairs. She could bump her head. Amy’s right. I can’t protect her from everything. She can get hurt in school in September, although I hope not.”
“Putting her on a horse was stupid,” he continued to berate himself, and he sat in the kitchen with her while they waited for Brett to arrive. She pulled up in a cab at four o’clock, and Whitney looked relieved when she walked in, and she went straight upstairs to Emma, who was delighted to see her and told her all about her big adventure.
Bailey and Whitney walked down to the lake then, and sat on the dock, trying to calm down themselves. It had been a stressful morning.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked her mournfully after they’d been there for a while and Whitney admitted how terrified she’d been when she saw Emma fly off the horse and couldn’t stop her, and neither could Bailey.
“There’s nothing to forgive. It’ll give us something to talk about years from now.”
“I’d rather be talking about something more pleasant than when she got a concussion because I was an idiot and suggested we go horseback riding.”
“We scared the hell out of Harry Running Horse or whatever his name was. I think we were a lot more than he bargained for,” Whitney said, grinning, now that the worst was over, and they were reassured.
“No wonder you don’t want anyone controlling your life. You do it better than anyone else. You don’t need me screwing things up and getting Emma concussed.”
“She’ll be fine in a few days. You heard the doctor. Don’t beat yourself up.”
They sat on the dock for a long time, until the sun started to go down, while Brett stayed with Emma and played games with her. She said her head felt better, which Brett reported to Whitney when they walked back in, looking slightly more relaxed.
“I don’t suppose this is going to help convince you to join our practice, or to trust me as the man in your life,” he said unhappily.
“It doesn’t chang
e anything,” she said gently. “And we were lucky, since Emma is okay.”
He went to bed early after all the excitement of the day, and Whitney lay in bed thinking about him that night. She had checked on Emma, who was sound asleep, and Brett was in the other twin bed in the room with her, and Whitney had instructed her to check Emma every two hours. It allowed Whitney to relax and think about Bailey. She felt sorry for him. He had been so distraught when Emma got hurt, and so remorseful afterward. It wasn’t his fault, and she knew he meant well, and how much he cared about Emma.
She still wanted to join him and Amy in their practice. Nothing that had happened changed any of that. She wanted to work with brain injured children, and on traumatic head injuries, in addition to her psychiatric practice. The look on his face all afternoon had gone straight to her heart. It made her think of what she had said to Chad almost a year before, when he had come to Los Angeles to have lunch with her and convince her to institutionalize Emma so she didn’t have to deal with her. She shuddered at the thought, and her response had been the right one.
She got out of bed as she thought about it, and put a robe on. She knew what she wanted to say to him, although she didn’t know how Bailey would respond. But he had been so kind to them for so long, she could at least put him out of his misery and reassure him that she wasn’t angry at him. She had agreed to take Emma riding. The fault was hers too.
She walked silently down the stairs, and out the kitchen door. There was a bright moon overhead, and she saw two falling stars when she looked up. She smiled thinking how absurd it would be if she got attacked by a bear on the way to the cottage. The realtor had warned them that there were bears in the area, and they had to be careful at night.
She walked along the path to the cottage, and knocked on the door when she got there. The lights were off inside, and she hated to wake him, but she knew how upset he’d been about Emma, and it was only ten o’clock. Bailey came to the door very quickly and pulled it open, and looked startled when he saw her standing there in her bathrobe and pink ballerina slippers.
“Is she all right?” He looked panicked and ready to run to the main house.
“She’s fine. She’s asleep and Brett is with her. I just wanted to come over and tell you I’m sorry about today. It was an accident. It could have happened doing anything. I know how bad you felt.”
“I could have set her back a year, right into a coma,” he said, looking tortured.
“But you didn’t. That’s all that matters. I’ll be more cautious next time, and so will you. Shit happens.” He smiled when she said it, and stepped backward into the room. “And she’s okay, that’s all that matters.”
“Do you want to come in?” he asked, she nodded and walked in, and she could see a reading light on next to his bed. He hadn’t been asleep.
“I thought about something just now, when I was thinking about you. That’s why I came over, in case you were awake.”
“What were you thinking? That I’m an idiot, and you don’t trust me? I don’t blame you.” He still looked deeply unhappy.
“No, that love is messy. It just is. We all do dumb stuff and make mistakes. Don’t ask me why, but my sister was texting, with the most precious passenger of all in the car, the person she loved most in the world and gave up her life for. She was usually a maniac about seatbelts and they didn’t have them on that one time. It was so unlike my sister. And look what happened. I nearly got us killed in an accident on the freeway that wasn’t even my fault. We got rear-ended and I scared Emma to death. Things happen in life. As soon as we love someone, it has the potential to be a mess. I could hurt you, you could hurt me, we could disappoint each other, or do something stupid that changes everything or kills one of us. Once you love somebody, there’s no protection and nothing is safe, and the stakes are high. There are no guarantees in life, ever. My mother adored my father, and I thought he screwed up her life, but she loved him anyway. And she died, and it ruined what was left of his. And I think he did his best for her, no matter how I see it.”
“What are you saying to me?” he asked her as she stood just inside the doorway of the little cottage. “That love is too dangerous to take a chance on, and you don’t want to risk getting hurt for me?” It was the perfect end to an already horrible day, and he looked heartbroken as he asked her the question. He wished she hadn’t come to the cottage to tell him that.
“No, I’m telling you just what I said, that love is messy. We get hurt, we get broken, we make mistakes but we have to take the risk. Life without taking those risks is meaningless. I’ve been too terrified to move forward since the day I met you, but I’m going to get hurt again one day anyway. I can’t hide under my bed or in a closet forever. And if it’s a mess, and I get hurt, I’ll recover from it. It won’t kill me, and it’s better to take the chance and live, than never dare to love anyone and not take a chance on them.
“I love you, Bailey. That’s all I know. I think you’re worth it. Let’s be brave and give it a whirl. If you scare me to death, I’ll tell you. And if you turn out to be like my father, then that’s bad luck for me and I’ll leave. If you want me, I want to give it a chance, whatever happens. I can handle it. So can you. We’re grown-ups, and I think we love each other, no matter how messy it gets. Life just isn’t perfectly clean.” As she said it, she held her arms out to him, and he pulled her close to him so tightly that it knocked the air out of her, and she gave herself to him heart and soul as he held her. She followed him into the bedroom where he’d been reading, and he gently took off her robe and her nightgown and they dropped to her feet, and she pulled away the T-shirt and underwear he’d gone to bed in, and she gasped as she felt his hands caress her. She had never wanted any man more, and the terrors of the day were forgotten, along with all her fears since they’d met. She knew that whatever happened, he wouldn’t be her father, trying to control her, and she wasn’t her mother, helpless and vulnerable and afraid to think for herself. Or even Paige, who had been a flake right to her final hour, texting while she drove so Emma’s drama coach wouldn’t leave before they got home.
That wasn’t how life worked. Neither of them were the ghosts of the past coming back to haunt them. They were who they were, as they were meant to be, and they’d have to find their way on their own, and do their best not to hurt each other.
After they made love, she lay in his arms and looked up at him, as he smiled at her. “Am I dreaming this? Will I know I imagined it when I wake up tomorrow morning?”
“You’re not dreaming,” she said sleepily and kissed him. “Maybe I am. I don’t know why you’d want me anyway. I’m a terrible cook, I’m neurotic about marriage…I don’t want kids, except for Emma…you could do a whole lot better.”
“Just shut up,” he said and kissed her. “Don’t talk like that. I love you…and I guess you’re right. Love is messy. I’ve been waiting to find it neatly tied up all my life, and it doesn’t work that way. Will you come work with me too? I want the whole package, and Emma, if you still trust me with her.”
“You’ve got it,” she said happily, and fell asleep as he lay next to her, smiling. It had turned out to be a very good day after all. And love wasn’t nearly as messy as she’d thought, and had been well worth the wait.
Chapter 18
Bailey took the last two weeks of July off and stayed with Emma and Whitney in Tahoe. He took Emma swimming every day, and took her out very gingerly at low speeds on the jet ski, even though Emma accused him of being a coward, but he wasn’t going to take another risk. And Whitney slept with him in the cottage every night, and let Brett know where she was, in case they needed her during the night. But Emma hadn’t had a night terror in months, or even a nightmare recently, after she’d remembered the accident. There were no ghosts left in her past, only tender memories of the mother she had loved. She laughed at the stories Whitney told her about when they were young, and P
aige got her in trouble. And Emma embarrassed Bailey and her aunt when she asked them casually one morning over breakfast why they didn’t sleep in Whitney’s room, instead of the cottage every night.
“What makes you think we’re sleeping in the cottage?” Bailey put his best poker face on, and Emma laughed.
“I always peek in to check on her in the morning. She hasn’t slept in her room since you got here. She told me she makes her bed before I get up, but her corners are always messy. Besides, I looked out my window the other day and I saw you kissing.” He glanced across the table at Whitney, who was smiling too.
“You’re not old enough to know stuff like that,” Whitney said, as she sat down next to her.
“Yes, I am. I’m ten. I was on an adult drama. Everyone was sleeping with someone on the show. Are you and Bailey getting married?” she asked in a matter-of-fact way, and Bailey was blushing.
“Not that I know of,” Whitney answered for him.
“Mom said you’re phobic about marriage,” Emma said and helped herself to a cinnamon bun.
“She was probably right,” Whitney admitted.
“Can I be in it if you get married?”
“Of course,” Whitney said nonchalantly, and Bailey looked like he’d been in the spin cycle of the washing machine by the time Emma left the table with Brett and went back to her room to dress.
“How does she know all that? Your sister must have been very open with her.”
“Probably too much so. Ten is the new twenty.”
“Are we getting married?” he asked her, trying to look casual about it.
“I hope not. At least not yet. Why don’t we try working together and living with each other for a while and see what happens?”
“What if I get pregnant?” he asked, and Whitney laughed.
“I’ll have Emma explain to you how that can be avoided. Belinda taught her sex ed. I think she was eight at the time.”
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