It seemed an eternity before the door to the emergency room finally opened.
“Mr. and Mrs. Holt?” the doctor said as he stepped out into the hall. “I’m Dr. Martinez.”
Eve turned her head toward him. The rest of her body was frozen in place, braced to hear the news. “Timothy?” she said.
“Your baby’s going to be fine,” the doctor assured her, including both of them in his smile.
“Thank God,” Travis breathed, and felt something inside him sag with relief. “Oh, thank God.”
Eve didn’t alter her position by so much as the twitch of a muscle. “How is he?”
“He had a pretty close call,” the doctor said, giving it to her straight. “His heartbeat had dropped below one hundred. We had to bag him.”
Eve closed her eyes, squeezing back the tears, and nodded, silently asking the doctor to continue.
“We’ve got him on a dextrose drip, D5W, and he’s breathing on his own now, but I want to get him up to pediatric ICU as soon as possible, get him under an oxygen tent and start pumping antibiotics into him.”
“Keep him?” Travis said. “Why?”
“It looks like he’s picked up that nasty twenty-fourhour bug that’s been making the rounds lately, so we can’t take any chances. I want his lungs completely clear before he goes home.”
Dr. Martinez reached out and put his hand on Eve’s shoulder. Travis couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t shrug away from the other man’s offer of comfort, then felt petty for noticing. She wasn’t even aware that the doctor had touched her.
“I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this was for him, do I, Mrs. Holt?”
Eve shook her head, awash in guilt and remorse.
“If you hadn’t been a trained nurse, well—” He shrugged. “He might not have made it to the emergency room alive.”
And if she hadn’t married Travis; if she hadn’t been so blinded by pride and determined not to accept welfare; if she hadn’t taken her husband into her room and into her bed, then Timothy wouldn’t be in the emergency room right now at all.
“I think you should make it a point to get Timothy to Children’s Hospital in Dallas as soon as you reasonably can for a complete reevaluation of his condition,” Dr. Martinez told her.
“A reevaluation?”
“It may be that you’ll want to schedule open heart surgery earlier than you’d originally planned.”
“But…” Her eyes widened in distress. “I thought…his doctor in Corpus said that the longer we could wait, the better. He said Timothy probably wouldn’t have to have the operation until he was four or five years old.”
“I’m not a cardiologist, Mrs. Holt. So I can’t really advise you on this.” He squeezed her shoulder, then looked past her, including Travis in the conversation. “But I’d strongly recommend that you take your son to see Dr. Gwen Peterson at Children’s. She’s top in her field.”
“Thank you, Dr. Martinez,” Travis said, taking over when Eve just stood there, staring at him with a look of stunned distress on her face. He put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, hugging them from behind, offering support. The crisis was over. She would need him.
Eve kept her eyes on the doctor, not acknowledging her husband in any way. “I want to see my baby now,” she said.
“All right.” The doctor stepped back and pushed open the door to let them in the room.
Travis stepped forward, guiding Eve under his hands.
“I’d like to see him alone,” she said, still without ac knowledging Travis in any way.
Travis dropped his hands from her shoulders.
She moved silently into the room, slipping between her husband and the doctor, making her way to Timothy’s bedside.
The two men looked at each other.
“It’s the guilt,” Dr. Martinez said. “The mothers always feel responsible, somehow, especially when the baby has some sort of congenital defect. She doesn’t mean to shut you out,” he counseled, feeling bound by his Hippocratic oath to attempt to relieve the pain he saw in the other man’s eyes. “She’ll come around as soon as she sees for herself that he’s all right.”
“Yeah,” Travis said, trying very hard to believe that.
“You might want to go down to the admissions desk while she’s in there,” the doctor suggested. “They’ve got a lot of forms they’re going to want you to fill out.”
Travis hesitated for a moment, then nodded. There was nothing he could do for her standing out in the hall.
TIMOTHY WAS IN the hospital for six days. Six days in which Eve barely left his side except to shower and change, and scrub the ranch house and everything in it to within an inch of its—and their—lives. Strong disinfectant soap appeared at every sink, along with a detailed demonstration of how to properly use it. She instituted a strict no-hands policy toward the baby, except under close supervision, explaining about germs and heart defects, while carefully reassuring Gracie that none of it was her fault.
“It’s the mean old germs’ fault,” she assured the child. “Those mean old germs got you and Laura and Timothy. They just made Timothy sicker because he’s so little and was already sick to begin with, even though he doesn’t look like he is.”
She banished Bear and Slik from the house.
And her husband from her bed.
HE WENT TO DALLAS with her, anyway, insisting on sitting in on the consultation with Dr. Peterson.
“You’re my wife,” he told her when she objected that his presence wasn’t necessary. “And as far as I’m concerned, Timothy is my son. Let me be there for you, Eve. Let me help you.”
Eve let him, telling herself she was too tired to argue with him; determined not to lean on him, no matter what promises he made; wondering how long it would be before he’d done what every other man in her life had done when the going got too tough. Her father had left when she was six years old, condemning her and her mother to poverty. Craig had left when she was two months pregnant, turning his back on his unborn son. Sooner or later, Travis would leave, too, condemning her to loneliness for the rest of her life.
She figured it was the least she deserved for what she had allowed to happen to her son.
“I’d like to put in a temporary shunt. Right here, be tween the aorta and the pulmonary artery,” Dr. Peterson said, using a life-size plastic model of a baby’s heart to show them what she meant. “It will give him some temporary relief by increasing the blood flow to his lungs, thereby decreasing the occurrences of cyanosis and allowing him to grow and develop properly until he’s old enough for a more permanent repair.”
Eve pressed her hands together in her lap. “How soon?” she asked.
“The sooner, the better. I’d like to make an appointment for you to bring him in next week for some additional testing, and then, after I’ve had a chance to thoroughly study the results, we’ll look at scheduling surgery.”
“All right.” Numb, Eve nodded and rose from the chair in front of the doctor’s desk with her baby in her arms. She didn’t object when Travis put his arm around her this time. She wasn’t even aware that he had done it.
“You’ll need to stop by the business desk on your way out,” Dr. Peterson said as she ushered them to the door of her office. “Someone from the hospital administrator’s office will be happy to help you fill out the insurance forms and make arrangements for whatever other payments are necessary.”
The hospital administrator was happy to lay the financial picture out for them. “Fortunately, your insurance will cover eighty percent of the costs related to surgery, Mrs. Holt,” she said cheerfully. “Unfortunately, since Timothy isn’t Mr. Holt’s legal dependent, his insurance won’t cover the rest. You’ll have to make other arrangements for that part of the bill before we can schedule the surgery.”
“What do you mean, Timothy isn’t my dependent?” Travis asked, his voice low and hard and dangerous. “I’m married to his mother.”
The little bureaucrat fluttered ner
vously. “Well, yes, that’s true but—” She nudged his insurance card toward him across the desk and looked as if she was about to call security. “Legally, in the eyes of the insurance company, you aren’t related to him in any way at all. They won’t cover his hospital bills.”
“Of all the damned, bureaucratic red-tape bullshit!” Travis fumed, jamming his hat on his head as they left the Dallas hospital. “This surely takes the cake. Not my dependent! Where the hell does that nitwit get off telling me Timothy’s not my dependent!”
He’d had two weeks of being held at arm’s length by his wife. Two weeks of having her look at him as if he were some stranger. Two weeks of being made to feel he had no place in her life. And now some prissy little file clerk had just told him the same thing. Frustration boiled in him and overflowed.
“Timothy is my dependent if I say he is, dammit to friggin’ hell!”
“He isn’t,” Eve said, looking at her husband out of cool, impersonal eyes. “He’s my son,” she said softly. “My responsibility.”
Travis couldn’t believe the hurt her words caused him. Couldn’t believe the pain that twisted in his gut. “Holy Christ, Eve,” he exploded, reaching out to grasp her chin in his hand and turn her face toward him. “I love you, dammit!”
Eve just stared back at him, impassive, refusing to let herself believe him. Her father had said he loved his pretty little fairy princess. Craig had said he loved his fiancée. They had both left when it got too hard.
She couldn’t afford to be taken in again by any man’s vows of love. To believe Travis, and to lose him when he turned his back on her, would break her heart.
The next morning proved her right.
Travis left sometime in the night, driving away from the Rocking H in his shiny red Dodge pickup, with his saddle in the back and Sangria in the horse trailer behind him.
13
GUS MADE SURE it was the baby’s nap time and that all three girls were outside in the tree house, fussing with the pieces of red calico their aunt had given them to use for curtains, before he went up to the house. Children shouldn’t hear what he had to say to Travis’s wife.
“What in tarnation are you tryin’ to do to that boy?” he roared in outrage as he stomped into the kitchen. It had been two days since Travis left. Two days in which Eve hadn’t mentioned his name or even once asked Gus if he knew where her husband was. “Are you tryin’ to get him killed, is that it? ‘Cause if that’s what you’re tryin’ to do, missy, I’m here to tell you, you made yourself a damned good start at it,” he said, so angry he actually swore at a woman.
Eve lifted her head, looking up from the ham and bean casserole she was making for dinner. “I beg your pardon?”
“You damn well ought to be beggin’ somebody’s pardon,” he fumed. “Startin’ with that damn fool husband a’ yours.”
“I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you know where your husband is, missy? Do you have any idea on God’s green earth?”
“No. I don’t. He left without saying goodbye.” And brought all her fears to bitter fruition. “I’m sorry.”
“And whose fault is that?” Gus bellowed.
“Mine,” she said quietly.
Her simple admission stopped the old man in his tracks. He hadn’t expected her to admit it. “Were you tryin’to send him away?”
“No. Oh, God, no. I wanted him to stay.” So much so that she ached inside. “I thought he was different. I thought…” She pressed her fingers to her lips to stop their trembling. “He said he loved me.”
“Well, if he said it, then he meant it,” Gus assured her in a matter-of-fact tone. “That boy ain’t never said a word he didn’t mean.”
“Then why did he leave?” she shouted, surprising both the old man and herself. “Why did he go?” she asked more quietly. “I needed him here with me. I trusted him. I knew I shouldn’t have.” She put her hands over her face and sank down into a kitchen chair. “I knew it, but I couldn’t help it. I trusted him and he left me just when I needed him the most.”
“Good Lord in heaven, girl, don’t you know that man you married any better than that? Travis ain’t left you, not the way you mean. He wouldn’t leave a dog in the situation you’re in, let alone his lawful wife. Why, Travis Holt is the most responsible, upstandin’, downright good-hearted man it’s ever been my privilege to know. I was a rodeo clown for nearly thirty years, you know,” he said proudly. “Between go ‘rounds, me and Slik used to entertain the audience at the smaller rodeos. After my joints stiffened up on me and I couldn’t rodeo no more, Travis reckoned as how he needed someone to look after his gear, share the drivin’ and suchlike while he was goin’ down the road. He didn’t, a’course. But that’s just the way he is. Hell, girl, why do you think his brother and that sweet sister-in-law of his asked him to raise up the girls for them? They trusted him, that’s why! You oughta be trustin’ him, too. Travis ain’t never gone back on his word, not once in all the years I’ve knowed him.”
“Then where is he?” Eve asked quietly, her eyes full of tears.
“He took Sangria over to sell him to a cowboy down in Fairview. Took ten thousand less for him than that cow pony’s worth, too, just to get a start on what y’all are goin’ to need for the baby’s operation.”
“He sold Sangria to help pay for Timothy’s operation?”
“Isn’t that what I just said? Or am I talkin’ to myself here?”
“Why would he do that? He had big plans for that horse.”
“Well, if you don’t beat all! You’re actually going to sit there and tell me you don’t know why?”
Eve nodded, needing to hear him say the words she so desperately wanted to believe.
“Because you’re his wife, is why. Because he thinks of that little bitty boy sleepin’ in the front bedroom as his, is why. And because,” the old man added shrewdly, “he knows you blame him for little Tim gettin’ so sick and endin’ up in the emergency room. And he’s tryin’ to make up for it in the only way he knows.”
“I don’t blame him for that. I don’t,” she said when Gus looked at her as if she were lying. “I blame myself.”
“And him,” Gus said, refusing to let her wriggle out of it with a half-truth. “You blame him because he was the man in bed with you that night and he made you forget about your boy for a while.”
“No, I—”
“Oh, you can spare me your blushes, missy. You think I don’t know where he was that night before little Tim took so sick? When he’d been sharin’ the bunkhouse with me since your weddin’ night? It don’t take a genius to figure out you two was finally doin’ what comes natural between a man and his missus. Neither of you is to blame for that.” He gave her a steady look. “No more’n Gracie is to blame for bringin’ them flu germs into the house in the first place.”
“Nobody blames Gracie,” Eve said, leaping instantly to the child’s defense. “None of this was her fault.”
“That’s right,” he agreed. “Nobody blames Gracie because there’s nothing to blame the precious little darlin’ for. Just like there’s nothin’ to blame you and Travis for, either.” He nodded his head. “You think on that awhile, Miss Eve. You’ll find I’m right.”
Eve thought on it awhile, sitting there at the kitchen table with her hands clasped in her lap, listening to the clock tick away the minutes of her life on the wall behind her, and the girls’ sweet laughter floating in from outside. “Where is he now?” she asked softly.
“He’s gone over to Tyler to ride ol’ Vortex and maybe win the bonus money.”
“He went back to the rodeo, then,” she said, hearing only the confirmation of her worst fears.
“No, he ain’t gone back to the rodeo,” Gus snapped. “He quit the danged rodeo two years ago ‘cause of what that bull done to him. Didn’t he tell you about it?”
“I’ve seen the scars.”
“Then you know he’s riskin’ his l
ife even to climb up on that murderin’ beast again.”
“His life?” Eve scoffed gently. “Isn’t that a little extreme? Everybody I’ve met since I came to Selina has gone out of their way to make sure I know I’m married to one of the best bull riders in the country. I mean, I know he was hurt before, but do you really think he’s in that much danger? Men ride bulls all the time, don’t they?”
“You ain’t never seen a rodeo, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, let me tell you, bull ridin’ is dangerous enough in the natural course of things. Plenty of top hands has been killed doin’ it. It’s a mite more dangerous for that man of yours, though. Travis ain’t got but one kidney.” He waited a beat for that to sink in. “Vortex got the other one two years ago.”
“Oh, my God!”
Gus nodded. “That about covers it, I guess.”
“Oh, my God,” she said again, and stood. “We’ve got to stop him.”
Gus chuckled for the first time in days. “That’s the ticket, Miss Eve,” he said approvingly.
IT TOOK THEM nearly four hours to get to Tyler, all of them piled in Eve’s white Chevy van. She couldn’t leave Timothy behind and she couldn’t leave without him. And if she was taking the baby on this mad adventure, she might as well take the girls, who clamored not to be left behind, either. Gus drove, leaving Eve free to deal with the children.
The small, nonsanctioned rodeo arena was located just west of Tyler, Texas. It was the kind of outfit that wouldn’t normally have drawn much of a crowd, even on a Sunday afternoon. But with Vortex as the draw-The Bull Who Couldn’t Be Rode—and the steadily increasing pot, fed by the entry fees of all the cowboys who had failed to ride him, the stands were packed full.
They were announcing the bull riding event over the tinny loudspeaker when Gus pulled the van to a spot in the dusty, rutted parking lot.
“Ladies-s-s and gentlemen-n-n,” the announcer said. “We are honored today to have a PRCA rodeo champion among our contestants. Put your hands together for four-time National Bull Riding Champion, Traviss-s Holt-t-t, joining us all the way from Selina, Texas.”
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