A Temporary Arrangement

by Roxanne Rustand

  At the sound of a truck lumbering up the drive. Ethan launched out of his chair and strode to the window. "Looks like your tow truck is here."

  Abby followed him out into the yard to meet the truck. Sure enough, the front of her mud-spattered car hung from its hoist. A burley man in grease-stained coveralls climbed out.

  "You Miz Cahill?" he asked around a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. When she nodded, he shook his head and hiked a thumb toward her car. "I'm Sam, from Sam's Garage. I got your car outta the mud, but it won't do you no good. You musta hit a rock, 'cause there's a hole the size of Texas in the transmission pan."

  "And that means...?"

  "Fluid all leaked out. Looks to me like the transmission burned out, too."

  She swallowed hard. "Can you translate that into dollars?"

  He chewed on his cigarette for a moment. "If the tranny's gone, it'll be fifteen hundred, easy. Might be able to pull something off a junker at the salvage yard, but no telling if we can get a match."

  Her heart sank. "And if you can't?"

  "We have to order one. Could be a week, maybe longer. When the new tranny comes in, then we gotta fit the job into the schedule."

  She dredged up a smile. "Is dropping it over the nearest cliff or setting it on fire an option?"

  He snorted, her attempt at humor apparently going right over his head. "Tree huggers around here would love that. Nope, it's either here, the junkyard or my garage."

  "To town, of course." Had she remembered to eat anything this morning? She suddenly felt faint, as the impact of the repair estimate hit her. "Can I hitch a ride back?"

  "All right by me, ma'am. If you're ready to head out right now. The missus expects me back in time for eleven o'clock mass, she does."

  "Yes—" She caught herself, remembering Ethan's dilemma. "Wait. I should stay and help round up the livestock."

  "No. You'd better go while you can." Ethan wearily shoved a hand through his hair as he studied the cramped cab of the tow truck.

  She followed his gaze. "But you need to go after your truck, and we can't all fit in there. I can come back out here and pick you up, once I have a loaner car."

  "Nah, me and a buddy can bring your truck out." Sam scratched his chin and studied the gray sky with an avaricious gleam in his eyes. "For, say, sixty bucks:'

  Ethan barely flinched. Abby had to give him credit for that, but it was surely an excessive amount. "Forty," she blurted.

  Both men turned to stare at her.

  "Since you've already got this tow and repair job," she added lamely, "seems like a deal to me."

  Sam considered, spat, then hobbled back to his truck. "Get in, little lady. We've got a long drive back, and I still need to make this trip one more time." He chortled as he pulled open his door. "Seeing as how your man drives such a hard bargain."

  Abby's take-charge attitude was an all too vivid reminder of that unfortunate episode in his life. But now his initial relief at her farewell felt more like guilt—even though he'd seen Abby's eagerness to accept that ride back to town. "She'll find a place in town, much closer to her job."

  "But her car broke 'cause she came here to help us."

  "It broke because she isn't used to driving on the bad country roads. She's a city girl, Keifer, way out of her element. I imagine she found this whole experience frightening."

  But Keifer's logic was inescapable. She wouldn't have been on that rutted, muddy road at all, if it weren't for Ethan.

  "And she wants to save a dog," Keifer persisted. "Do apartments let people keep dogs?"

  "Some might," Ethan hedged, trying not to think about the restrictive clauses at most of them. From the heavy stand of trees behind the house he heard the faint sound of his sheep bleating. Thankful for the interruption, he started off in that direction. "We'd better go round up the girls, don't you think?"

  Keifer stood his ground. "Abby used grain to catch the goats. That worked really good. Abby said—"

  Ethan gritted his teeth and kept walking. "If we just move around behind them, they'll head back to the barn."

  "But Abby said—"

  "Come on, Keifer." The words came out a lot sharper than he'd intended, but his arm was aching

  and it was time for a couple of pain pills. And the thought of hearing that woman's name invoked a hundred times a day loomed like a threatening specter over the rest of the summer.

  Over his shoulder, Ethan saw Keifer kick a rock into the weeds, then start to follow, his head bowed. "Hey, when we get the truck back, would you like to run into town?"

  Keifer shrugged.

  "I hear you lost a shoe in the mud. We could get you another pair, and maybe rent some movies or video games." That earned him another shrug, but also a flash of eye contact. Progress.

  "And then we could see if Abby's okay. What about the dog? Could we help take care of her dog for a while?"

  "I don't know, Keifer. I'm sure she'd want to keep the dog with her, if she gets it. And I'll bet the hospital staff will help her find a place to stay."

  Of course, this was the height of the tourist season. People booked accommodations a good six months in advance, according to the local paper.

  His own two guest cabins were usually booked from June through September by sportsmen who came north for prime fishing. This summer he'd delayed the reservations until almost mid-July, though, to focus on his research.

  The first parties would arrive in a few weeks, and had scheduled a number of outings with him as their fly-fishing guide.

  Outings that were going to be one hell of a challenge with miles of gauze bandaging protecting the sutures in his arm.

  And Keifer... what would he do with Keifer then?

  During the weekdays, Ethan was usually at home working at the computer, so that wasn't a problem. But evenings and weekends were when he usually took clients fishing, and later at night he often went out into the woods for his howl studies on the wolf pack.

  He'd had a babysitter lined up for the summer, a local girl home from college. But last he'd heard, she and her girlfriends were backpacking in the Rockies, with no plans to come home anytime soon.

  At the sounds of rustling ahead he motioned for Keifer to swing wider to the right. "Let's get behind them, Keif. Ready?"

  He moved forward and sure enough the three "girls"—puffballs of creamy-white—were grazing just ahead. One of them—either Sylvie or Doris— raised her head and looked at him, then took off at a trot to the left. The other two bleated and promptly took a sharp right.

  Keifer whooped and hollered as he crashed through brush, waving his arms. The two sheep in front of him split up and disappeared into the underbrush. He stared after them, then looked over at Ethan. "What now?"

  Ethan sighed. "They'll hear each other and end up together, and next time, we'll try to be a little less intimidating. Okay? Let's round up the cows, and then go after the girls a little later."

  If they weren't successful, there might not be three sheep left in the morning. The farm was on the southern border of the Lake Lunara wolf pack's range, and the fairy tales were true. Sheep were very easy prey.

  An hour later, three sheep and all but one cow and her calf had been captured.

  Keifer, muddy from head to foot, leaned against the barn and yawned. "Are we done yet?"

  "You've been a great help, son. Why don't you go on back and start rinsing off that mud with the garden hose?"

  He didn't need to ask twice.

  Ethan followed him until he made it into the fenced yard. "I'll be back in ten, fifteen minutes," Ethan called. "Stay put."

  Then he headed for a spot to the east he'd glimpsed through the trees, a small grassy knoll surrounded by pines.

  A place he'd avoided while Keifer was at his heels.

  Even before he reached it, the smell of blood and death assailed him. Powerful. Cloying. An agitated mother cow paced through the trees. Calling for her calf. Then she returned to the knoll, warily skirting somethin
g on the ground.

  Ethan stopped and stared at the dark, sticky pool. Only a few tufts of hair and blood-soaked grass remained of what had been a pretty little heifer. Wolf kill, maybe. The carcass could've been dragged back to a den where the pack would share the feast.

  But there was another possibility. One he didn't want to consider.

  Other predators were in these woods—some far more cunning, far more dangerous than a pack of wolves.

  He'd already seen the evidence.

  Abby called the animal shelter four times on Sunday. Each time, after listening to the answering machine's litany of business hours, she left a message and her cell number.

  Now at her desk first thing Monday morning, she held her breath and dialed one more time. An unfamiliar voice answered.

  "I'm calling about a dog." She coiled the telephone cord around her finger, her stomach tightening. "I came in on Saturday and left my name."

  There was a long pause and the sound of papers shuffling. "I don't see any notes here, Miss—?"

  "Cahill. Abby Cahill. I talked to the attendant around noon Saturday about this dog.. .it looked ill. Sort of frightened. I think it was a springer-retriever mix, and the attendant called the dog Belle."

  There was a long sigh from the other end of the line. "That dog was scheduled for yesterday, ma'am. She was put down. We don't have much luck placing dogs like her, so we don't keep them very long."

  Abby closed her eyes. "The attendant said she would save the dog for me. She promised. I tried calling yesterday, but no one answered. Are you sure?"

  "We've got several vets in the county who volunteer for us. Sunday is when most of them can donate their time. I'm sorry, but the policies here are strict. We barely make ends meet for utilities and feed, month by month. Mostly, we're in the red."

  "But—"

  "Rae should have explained the regulations here, which are set by the county board."

  "She did, but I had car problems and couldn't make it."

  "We've got a lot of other dogs, some also running short of time, if you'd like to take a look."

  "No, I..." The image of Belle's haunted expression made Abby's eyes burn. "I'll send a donation, anyway."

  She cradled the receiver and dropped her head into her hands. One look into that dog's mournful eyes had made it clear the poor thing had had a miserable life. Where was the justice?

  "Can I talk to you a minute?"

  Abby looked up and found Gwen Iverson standing at her door. The stocky, middle-aged nurse had been an employee of the hospital for twenty years, and had been the day charge nurse in the long-term-care unit for the past ten. "Of course."

  Gwen settled into a chair facing Abby's desk, her jaw set and her eyes flashing fire and indignation at odds with the puppy print of her pull-over hospital smock. "I know the hospital is trying to expand its services. I understand the reasons. But Dr. Peters has canceled his clinic appointments for the second time.

  I've already told Mrs. Reynolds, but I thought you should know, too."

  According to Grace, the cardiologist from Green Bay had started offering appointments at Blackberry Hill back in April, and came on the third Monday afternoon of every month. The system was a perfect way for local patients to see a specialist without commuting to a larger city. But the system didn't always work. "Did he have an emergency surgery?"

  "His office didn't say. Carl and I had to reschedule fifteen patients. Some of them are from outlying areas and we haven't been able to reach them, so they might already be on their way. Carl is livid."

  Gwen looked pretty livid herself. Abby tapped the eraser of her pencil on the desk. "Do you have any suggestions?"

  "Using a cardiology practice with several docs willing to rotate here, so they always have a backup. More notice before cancelations. Finding someone who will make us a priority instead of an afterthought."

  "Excellent ideas." Abby flipped the pages of her day planner and jotted a note. "Erin and I meet with the local doctors every Thursday morning at Ollie's Diner, and I'll make sure this is discussed." She looked back up at Gwen. "Anything else?"

  "A young gal stopped at the nurse's station this morning. She said she'd just been hired, and came in for her TB tine and drug screening. I sent her to the lab, and Madge has her watching orientation videos."

  "Good. Once Joan's labs are clear, I'll have her work with you for a few days, then she can shadow Marcia. The sooner we start scheduling her, the better, but we still need to hire two more/'

  "Amen," Gwen said fervently. "Too many of us have been pulling double shifts this month, and over the summer most of us want to take our vacation time. I haven't even had time to walk my dogs this week."

  "Losing three nurses this spring really hit us hard. I understand the hospital is advertising, but there just aren't many spare nurses right now."

  "Or they don't want to make the move north for our pay scale."

  Abby sighed. "That, too, though the board is aware of the problem and working hard to correct it."

  * w Glad to hear it." Gwen glanced at her watch. "I need to get back out on the floor, but if there's anything I can do to help, just say the word. I heard you're looking for a new place to live "

  "You're the second person who's brought that up " Abby said dryly. "Word does get around in this town. Fast."'

  Gwen shrugged. "Deputy Krumvald mentioned it after mass yesterday, in case I might know of some good places. I'm afraid I don't."

  "Even if I have to drive from a neighboring town, it'll only be until late August." But at the doubt in Gwen's eyes, her confidence faded.

  "I'll do some checking," Gwen assured her as she

  started for the door. "Around here, everyone knows just about everyone else, so I'm sure we'll come up with something."

  "Thanks." Abby smiled, then bent over the staff schedules on her desk.

  The scheduling process had given her a headache as soon as she'd walked in the door this morning. Tricky, managing coverage of three daily shifts for both the hospital and long-term-care unit when there weren't enough nurses to go around. It was—

  "Hi!"

  She looked up, surprised and delighted to see Keifer standing at the door. "Hey, stranger. What brings you here so early on a Monday?"

  "Dad. He's just down the hall, getting stuck with a needle. That was too gross so I came to see you. The nurse showed me where to go."

  "How's he doing?"

  Keifer frowned. "He didn't feel so good this morning. He was shaking a lot and he looked sorta sweaty, like he had a fever."

  "Really"

  "We caught all the animals though. We had to chase the cows all through the woods, and the sheep, too." Keifer grinned. "It was pretty cool."

  But all that stress had probably been hard on Ethan, who'd just had surgery and would have been far better off if he'd been able to rest quietly.

  "Is your dad seeing the doctor today?"

  Keifer shrugged.

  "Did he tell the nurse he wasn't feeling well this morning?"

  The boy lifted a shoulder again.

  Men. "Let's go see how your dad is doing, okay?"

  Down in the ER, she could hear Dr. Edwards's stern tone before they reached the outpatient treatment room. Abby steered Keifer to the waiting area near the nurses' station, then followed Jill's voice.

  An empty bag hung on an IV pole next to the exam table where Ethan sat fully dressed. His shirtsleeves were both rolled back to his elbows, revealing a heavy bandage on one arm and a cotton ball and Band-Aid on the other where he'd just had his IV withdrawn.

  "Really, Mr. Matthews. We're going to have to admit you if this happens again." Jill finished wrapping his arm.

  "That isn't possible," he said. "I'll...just try to take better care of this damn thing."

  Jill looked over her shoulder at Abby. "Your friend came in running a fever, his dressing soaked and muddy. A couple of sutures had pulled free, too."

  "It rained," he said wearily. 'The liv
estock got loose."

  Abby felt a pang of guilt over leaving him on Sunday. "I should have stayed to help you round up your animals. I'm sorry."

  "But even now, are you going to be able to manage?" Jill shook her head. "Your incision has barely begun to heal. I've started a different antibiotic, but you need to take it easy for a few

  weeks...and make sure you get back here without fail for your IV meds and dressing changes. I'd much prefer admitting you for a couple days."

  "No."

  "Can you get someone to stay with you?"

  He glowered at her. "That's not necessary."

  "Even cooking and washing dishes will be difficult until this bandage is off."

  "I can manage. Are we done now?"

  "Until tomorrow." Jill jotted a note on his chart. "But if you start to run a fever again or the pain increases before then, call my office or this ER, pronto. None of this I'm-tough-I-can-handle-it stuff. I know you don't want any additional surgery, and you sure don't want an infection that'll force you into the hospital."

  He nodded as he stood and awkwardly rolled his shirtsleeves down. "Thanks, Doc."

  "Keifer's out in the waiting area," Abby said. "He's worried about you."

  "He needn't be. Thanks again for taking care of him, though." With a nod, he walked out of the room.

  Jill waited a moment to make sure he was out of sight, then grinned. "So how did it go?"

  "With Keifer? He's a good kid, but I'm not cut out for this parenthood stuff. Give me a sick child and I do fine. For anything longer—I'm at a loss."

  "I meant with his dad. That's one very handsome guy."

  "If you like tall, dark and stubborn. I don't know

  who was more relieved when I left on Sunday—me or him."

  "So you aren't going to volunteer to help him out again?" Jill teased. "Just so you can get to know him better?"

  "Did you hear what he said? He doesn't want anyone to help him. He's a loner, and a grumpy one at that. Believe me, if I was actually looking, he's the last man I'd choose."