Montana Sheriff

by Marie Ferrarella

  Stopping, Midge turned around again and looked at her, waiting. “Yes?”

  Ronnie smiled at her, her gratitude coming into her eyes. “Thank you.”

  Again, Midge laughed dismissively. “Nothing to thank me for, Veronica. It’s what good neighbors do,” she told her, then punctuated her statement with a wink.

  What did that wink mean? Ronnie wondered as she got back to work. Was that just a conspiratorial wink or was there more behind it? And if so, what?

  Did the woman suspect that she and Cole had produced more than laughter, and then hard feelings, between them? And if she had them, would his mother mention her suspicions to Cole?

  Okay, she was officially being too paranoid. Mrs. James was being exactly what she said she was being. A good neighbor. That wasn’t exactly unheard of in Redemption. People did look out for one another here. She’d been away so long, she’d forgotten about that. Forgotten a lot of things about life in this small, scenic little town, she thought, unaware that a thread of fondness had woven through her.

  “I REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW TO thank you,” Ronnie told the woman standing to her left as she pushed her empty plate away on the table. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so full. Certainly not on the meals she made. She could cook well enough to keep herself and Christopher—and now her father—alive. But what she couldn’t do, she would be the first to admit, was cook with flair.

  The way Cole’s mother obviously could.

  “You already have.” Midge chuckled. “By cleaning your plate,” the woman explained when Ronnie looked at her quizzically. “Nothing makes me feel better than to see someone enjoying a meal I’ve made.” She sighed happily, looking at the other two occupants at the table. “With Cole out of the house and my Pete gone, there’s nobody to cook for, nobody to appreciate my efforts. Letting me help out here, you’re doing me a bigger favor than I’m doing you,” she assured the younger woman.

  Midge’s line of vision shifted to Amos, who not only had eaten the serving that had been placed before him, but had gone on to do justice to a second helping, as well. Midge beamed at the man, satisfaction all but radiating from her every pore.

  The woman looked softer somehow, Ronnie caught herself thinking. Younger even. And her father, well, he had brightened considerably in the older woman’s presence. Oh, he couldn’t have exactly been accused of being morose and he was interacting with Christopher, but it wasn’t on the same level. Ronnie could see that something had been missing.

  And now it wasn’t.

  It hit her like a ton of bricks.

  Cole’s mother and her father were sweet on each other. Who would have ever thought it?

  She stole another look at her father. Did Amos even realize that he was sweet on Midge James? She was fairly certain that Cole’s mother was aware of how she obviously felt about her father. But as for her dad reciprocating, well, men could be so obtuse.

  Rising, she announced, “Christopher and I are going to do the dishes.”

  Instantly, Midge blocked her way into the kitchen. “No, you’re not. Amos and I will take care of the dishes, won’t we, Amos?” She eyed Amos pointedly, but her smile was wide, coaxing.

  Amos never stood a chance. Before Ronnie’s disbelieving eyes, he easily agreed to do what she had once heard him refer to as “woman’s work.”

  “Sure thing, Midge.”

  This didn’t seem fair to her. “But you cooked,” Ronnie protested.

  Midge was not about to budge on this. For such a small, amiable woman she was quite a force to reckon with. “And you, from what I hear, did everything else. You’re not a superwoman, Veronica, no matter what you think. You can’t do everything and you’ll wear out much too fast if you try.”

  Ronnie slanted a covert look at her father. He had definitely perked up today ever since Cole’s mother had arrived.

  Okay, Ronnie decided, maybe she should just back off and retreat. Standing in the way of this just didn’t seem right.

  “All right, then I’m going to go and look in on Wayne if it’s okay with you,” she said to her father.

  It was obvious that he wanted to stay here with Cole’s mother, but his sense of obligation compelled him to go see his son.

  “Maybe I should go with you,” Amos told his daughter.

  He was acutely aware that he hadn’t been to see Wayne since he’d first conferred with the doctors at the hospital about his son’s injuries and the unnerving coma that had Wayne in its grip.

  “No, what you should do is stay here with Midge and Christopher,” Ronnie told him calmly. “I called the hospital this morning.”

  The way she did every morning and every night since she’d gotten the news about the accident. She knew someone would notify her the moment her brother came out of his coma, but she still called, just in case it had happened and they hadn’t gotten a chance to give her a call about this newest development.

  “Wayne still hasn’t woken up,” she continued. “There’s no point in you going.”

  She knew how hard all this was on her father, seeing Wayne unconscious and unresponsive. Her father was still very much a prisoner of the guilt he’d assigned to himself because of the accident. Despite any arguments, he still felt that he was the one who had put Wayne in that hospital bed.

  Even though it was the other driver who had run into them.

  She paused beside her seated father to kiss the top of his head affectionately. “I’ll tell Wayne you send your love,” she promised.

  “Can I send my love, too?” Christopher asked, jumping up out of his chair, ready to stay or go, whatever his mother decreed.

  Laughing, Ronnie knelt down beside her son and hugged him. “Absolutely. I’ll tell Uncle Wayne you send your love.” I only hope that somehow, he can hear me. Rising again, she looked over toward the other woman. “Thank you.”

  “Nothing to thank me for,” Midge scoffed, waving away the words.

  But she was beaming, pleased, as she said it.

  Chapter Nine

  It felt as if no time had passed at all even though it had been more than a week.

  Ronnie was standing in approximately the same place, in the very same small cubicle she had stood in the last few times she had been here at the hospital to see her brother.

  Nothing had changed.

  Wayne was still wired to the same machines and monitors, still lying immobile with his eyes closed while all around him the subdued humming, buzzing and vibrating sounds wove one into the other to produce a disturbing dissonance. All involved in sustaining her brother, tethering him to the life he had almost left behind more than three weeks ago, functioning for him until he was able to function for himself.

  If he was ever able to function for himself.

  The sight ripped at her heart, but she refused to give in to pity, either for Wayne or for herself. He wasn’t going to get better if she tiptoed around him softly, talking in hushed, quiet tones. She knew her brother. Wayne was only going to get better if he became determined to do so; if he became angry that his body was confining him like this.

  Ronnie felt desperate.

  There had to be some way to get through to him, to make him rally.

  “Doctors told me that everything seems to be healing well. They also said that they can’t find a reason why you’re still in a coma.”

  C’mon, Wayne, get up. Open your eyes and get up. Please, she silently begged. Taking a breath, she went on talking to the inert body in the hospital bed. To the brother whose facial bruises were healing but whom she didn’t recognize.

  “But they don’t know you like I do. They don’t know that you were always the one who wanted those five extra minutes in bed when you were a kid. Or that you slept in every chance you could. They don’t understand that you’re just being lazy, but I do,” she told him, her voice hitching just a little. “I do,” she repeated more firmly. “And I want you to stop it. Do you hear me? Just stop it.” She could feel her insides trembling as
she added, “That’s an order, damn it!”

  When there wasn’t even the slightest sign that her words had penetrated the haze surrounding Wayne, she pressed her lips together—willing herself to remain together, as well.

  “I know I always said I was twice the man that you were when we were growing up, but I never thought you’d call me on it.” She drew a little closer, leaving no space at all between her and the side of his bed. “I can’t keep this up indefinitely. I need you back to take over, to do what you’ve always done.” She paused, slowly releasing a shaky breath, desperately trying not to break down or start sobbing.

  “I’ll stick around for a little bit longer, to help, but the running of the ranch, that’s your job, you know that. By the way, your handwriting stinks. I wouldn’t have to spend as much time on the books if I could read that chicken scratch you call writing. Don’t you know it’s the computer age? Why didn’t you use the laptop I sent you?”

  As she talked, Ronnie watched her brother’s face for even the tiniest glimmer of movement.

  But there was nothing. The desperation inside her grew.

  “You’ve got to start coming around, Wayne. I really don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.” She stopped for a moment, banking down the sob she felt rising in her throat. “And every day that you’re here like this, Dad sinks a little deeper into that hole he’s digging for himself. He’s not going to start getting better until you start getting better. Do you hear me?”

  She took Wayne’s hand in both of hers and squeezed it, willing him to hear her. Terrified that he didn’t. And that he never would.

  “Do you hear me?” she demanded, repeating the question. “Damn it, Wayne, I know you can hear me. I’m not going to let you fade away like this. Do you understand? I’m not. You’re going to open your eyes and wake up. Your life’s waiting for you. I’m waiting for you and so’s Dad and Christopher. Stop being so selfish and open your eyes, Wayne,” she ordered angrily. “Open them now!”

  “That sounds scary enough to get the dead to open their eyes and sit up.”

  Stifling a yelp, Ronnie swung around, her heart temporarily launching into double time. She was so wrapped up in what she was saying, in trying to get her brother to wake up she hadn’t heard anyone entering the area.

  Her eyes grew wide when she saw Cole standing behind her, looking laid-back and casual. As if he didn’t belong anywhere else but exactly where he was.

  How had he even known she was here?

  “Cole, what are you doing here?” Ronnie cried.

  “Looking in on Wayne,” Cole answered her matter-of-factly.

  And on you, he added silently. His mother had called to tell him where Ronnie was going and that she thought perhaps the younger woman might need a “strong shoulder to lean on.”

  Cole had patiently told his mother that he was busy, but somehow, thanks to the fact that it was yet another peaceful day in Redemption, he’d found himself driving toward Helena and the hospital anyway.

  Self-conscious, Ronnie quickly swiped the back of her hand against her cheeks, wiping away the tears she only now realized had slid down her face. She’d been too involved trying to bully her brother into waking up to notice that she was crying.

  “I thought maybe if I yelled at him, he’d hear me and wake up just so he could yell back,” she explained wearily. Still holding tightly onto her brother’s hand, she exhaled slowly, doing her best to center herself. “I guess maybe I didn’t yell loud enough.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Cole contradicted in his even, emotionless voice. “My guess is that there were people out in the parking lot who heard you and snapped to attention.” Sympathy for Ronnie had him asking, “Did the doctors say anything positive?”

  That was just it, they had. It was just Wayne who was behaving so negatively. “They said he’s healing—and that according to everything they know, Wayne should be out of his coma by now.” The despair she was experiencing seemed bottomless. She was doing her best to keep from slipping into that abyss. “I guess they don’t know all that much,” she murmured, looking at her brother.

  Raising her chin to keep a fresh crop of tears from falling, Ronnie stared out the window. She wasn’t standing close enough to see anything but a blue expanse of sky.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said in a small voice, then repeated the words, her voice growing stronger in her frustration. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Stop.”

  Hearing the very hoarse entreaty, she looked at Cole, puzzled. “What did you just say?”

  But Cole shook his head. “I didn’t say anything. I thought you did. Why’d you suddenly say stop?”

  “I didn’t.”

  In unison, they both turned their attention toward the man in the bed. Wayne’s eyes were still closed, just like they had been this entire time.

  They couldn’t have both imagined hearing the word, Ronnie thought. She was almost afraid to hope—and more afraid not to.

  “Wayne?” Ronnie said hesitantly. “Wayne, did you just say something?” As she asked, she leaned over her brother, her ear near his lips—just in case.

  And then she heard that same raspy voice.

  “Man…can’t…rest…with…all…this…racket.” The words were almost inaudible. Almost.

  “He talked!” Ronnie cried. Thrilled, shocked, excited, she found herself verging on being utterly hysterical with relief. Immediately, she looked up for confirmation. “Cole, he talked. You heard him talk, right?”

  Rather than stand there, answering her question, Cole had already crossed toward the outer room and was striding toward the nurses’ station located at the outer edge of the ICU. He was intent on corralling the first doctor or nurse and bringing him or her back with him.

  Returning to Wayne’s bedside inside of three minutes, Cole brought with him a tall, efficient-looking woman with pinched features and a no-nonsense attitude. She immediately proceeded to move Ronnie out of the way in order to do a very basic exam of the heretofore immobile patient.

  “Mr. McCloud, can you hear me?” the woman—a nurse it turned out—asked as she shone the pencil-thin light in her hands first into one of Wayne’s eyes and then the other.

  “Sleep.” The single rumbling word emerged with a maximum of struggle.

  “Yes, you’re right. Sleep’s the best thing for you right now,” the nurse agreed.

  Looking at the monitor that was continuously screening his blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature, the nurse nodded as if conducting a conversation on some higher plane that only she was privy to.

  Only then, when she was finished making her assessment, did the nurse turn toward Ronnie. “He’s out of his coma,” she said guardedly. “At least for now.”

  “Does that mean he could have a relapse?” she asked the nurse. When the woman didn’t answer her immediately, Ronnie pushed herself to ask the rest of it. She might as well know the worst now. “Could he sink back into another coma?”

  “Yes,” the nurse replied, pulling no punches.

  “What are the odds on that?” Cole asked.

  He shifted so that he was standing next to Ronnie in order to physically give her the support she needed. Under the circumstances, he thought that she was bearing up rather well, but even she wasn’t superhuman. Everyone had their breaking point. Family apparently was hers.

  “Remote,” the nurse was forced to admit. “More likely, this is the beginning of his recovery.”

  Suddenly feeling weak all over, Ronnie went on automatic pilot. Struggling against dissolving in a puddle of tears, and because she and Cole had been friends for so long before, she buried her head in his chest. With a huge effort, she dammed up the tears that threatened to flow.

  She felt his arms close around her, felt Cole holding her to him, not tightly but with just enough pressure to allow her to take comfort from knowing that she wasn’t alone. That he was there for her whenever she needed him. And always would be.
>
  Stroking Ronnie’s hair so lightly, he had a feeling she wasn’t even aware of it, Cole looked over toward the nurse.

  “Thank you,” he told her quietly.

  The woman nodded. “Just doing my job. I’ll call Dr. Nichols in, alert him to the change.” What most likely passed as a smile for the woman graced her lips. “Nice to have something positive to tell him.”

  Ronnie fought hard to keep her composure, to keep the tears from falling. It took a great deal of effort and self-discipline. She had a feeling that if she gave in, if she started to cry, there would be nothing left of her by the time she stopped.

  Taking a long, shaky breath, she separated herself from Cole.

  The air hit her cheeks and she could have sworn they felt damp. Annoyed at the lack of discipline, she scrubbed her palm over both cheeks, getting rid of any telltale signs of dampness. She was stronger than this. She wasn’t going to fall apart now, not when the news was basically good.

  What was wrong with her, anyway?

  Pulling herself together, Ronnie looked back at her brother. His eyes were still closed, but that was all right. She’d heard him try to talk, heard that drawn-out, labored sentence. He was coming around. She could wait as long as she knew that was going to be the end result.

  “Knew you were faking it,” she sniffed, so relieved she couldn’t even begin to take measure of the feeling. It filled every single tiny space within her.

  Wayne’s attending physician walked into the cubicle at that moment. “I hear your brother finally decided to join us,” he said kindly to Ronnie.

  Cole only managed to partially suppress a grin. “He told her to stop talking.”

  The doctor nodded understandingly. “I have a sister like that. Never lets me get in a word edgewise. Ronda promised to bring me back from the dead if I ever needed her to do it. Turned out I did. It was a skiing accident,” he tacked on vaguely and then Dr. Nichols smiled at Ronnie. “He’s lucky to have you.”