by Dawn Mattox
Tears rained as I felt the loss of my friend all over again while Chance sat in respectful silence as I mourned.
“Tell me everything that happened,” Chance gently prodded. “Why was Paige at the cabin?”
I didn’t hold back. I told him everything I could remember. Between waves of grief and rills of tears, the words rolled like pebbles, triggering stones and boulders that slid recklessly and without regard like an avalanche pouring from my mouth.
“She said she was afraid of being found at the hospital. She said ‘they’ would kidnap her baby. I asked her who. Paige must have been talking about the cartel because she kept talking about her captivity in Mexico, and how she’d waited for her dad to rescue her, and it took so long that she gave up hope.”
“Anything else? Any last words before you left her?”
“Just a lot of mumbling when she was in labor. After the baby was born, I gave her the gun to protect herself and the baby from whoever was going to come through the door. She got angry—crazy—started threatening to kill herself if I didn’t take the baby with me. I kept telling her that the cartel was after me and Logan’s money and guns—that no one was after her. I guess . . . she must have thought they wanted her child for sex trafficking.” I cradled my head in my hands. “If only she had listened. But she wouldn’t. There wasn’t time. I had to run or risk a shoot-out in the house and all of us being murdered.”
Chance ran his fingers through my hair with long gentle strokes with one hand, lifting my chin with the other to meet my gaze. “You did the right thing, sweetheart. You did the only thing. You did good. Really good.”
Somehow the clock on the wall kept moving forward. The second hand swept around and around. It felt so impossible, so unfair that my life should go on while people had died. All because I had left a gun in the hands of a suicidal woman.
The heavyset nurse returned to ask me how I was doing. I had no words, just a quivering jaw supporting a tear streaked face. She smiled sympathetically, reached up and adjusted the IV, giving me the gift of sleep.
The delicious smell of food drew me back to the real world.
“You must be starving,” Chance said with a smile as he reached for a spoon and stirred a bowl of vegetable soup. “Here, take a bite. Just one.” He shoved the spoon in my mouth and then caught the dribble, scooping it from my chin and putting it back as if he were feeding a toddler.
I snatched the linen napkin before Chance could wipe my face and did it myself. “Hon, it’s my foot that doesn’t work, not my hands. I can do that.”
“Sorry, I just want to help.” Chance looked awkward as he apologized. “You will keep eating, won’t you?”
He didn’t need to ask me twice. I dove into the food, savoring every bite as we talked.
“I’m just so thankful.” Chance’s eyes glistened as he spoke. “You know, it was a miracle you were found. Some passing snowmobilers – being in the right place at the right time. I heard that one of their group hit a rock and broke a fuel line. By the time they figured out the problem and siphoned gas from one of the other machines, it was almost dark. Any earlier or later and they might have missed you.” He paused, and then reached out to pat my leg as if reassuring himself I was really there. “I wish I had been the one to find you,” he said.
“Oh, Chance. I prayed that you would find me when I was up on the mountain, even though I knew you were in Mexico. And then”—the memory came flooding back—“I was drowning in the river . . . and I heard you calling my name. Seriously, I know it sounds crazy, but I heard you telling me to untie my boot when it was wedged between some rocks in the river. I would have died if I hadn’t.” I reached for Chance. “Did you? Did you have a premonition?”
Chance reached over and took my hand, stretching the IV tube, making me wince when it tugged on the needle in my vein. “I don’t know what to say. I guess you were either hallucinating from hypothermia or else God was speaking to you.”
“Sorry to interrupt.” We turned our eyes to the floor nurse as she made her way past the privacy curtain. “I just wanted to let you know that the helicopter has been dispatched from Paradise. We will be prepping you for your departure in...” she glanced at her watch, “about a half-hour.” And then she left, with a smile as sweet as the pudding on my tray.
I turned to Chance. “I’d like to see the baby first if it’s okay.” I wasn’t sure.
Chance bent over the bed to plant a quick, reassuring kiss next to the bandages. “Of course it’s okay. I’ll make it happen.” And he did. As soon as I had finished eating and dressed for the trip to Paradise, two orderlies appeared with a gurney.
Chance hummed a little tune of satisfaction as he wheeled me to the nursery. The wheels on the gurney made a soft whooshing sound like that of skis skimming across the surface of a frozen world.
The drugs were powerful and my pain minimal. My mind was hazy but my emotions almost tactile, with a vibrant need to touch the baby and confirm that she was really alive. That we were really alive.
“You’ll need these,” said the pediatric nurse, who gave me a curious look as she slipped a surgical mask over the derisive smirk on my face.
She’s protecting the baby—from me. I thought. Me—the one who saved her.
We bumped through the doors of the neonatal intensive care and headed toward an isolette, where a stout-looking gray-haired nurse adjusted her glasses as she straightened from bending over her little patient. She said something to two people who were seated on the other side of her and then smiled kindly as she stepped aside.
“What is she doing here?” Cali rose from her chair as if to run interference, her expression colder than the ice on Nelson Creek. She started toward me, when the man who had been sitting next to her, took her by the arm and gently restrained her. White-haired, handsome, with a clean, strong jaw—it wasn’t hard to guess that he was Paige’s father, Perry Atchison.
“Cali.” His voice had depth and authority. One word spoke volumes. Cali froze, then relented and sat back down, clamping her jaws and pressing her lips into a tight line.
I didn’t dwell on the grandparents. My eyes reached for the child with an ache and a longing that words could not define. Turning to catch the watchful gaze of the matronly nurse, I pleaded, first with my eyes and then with my voice, “Can I? Please?”
Cali almost knocked her chair over as she jumped up again. “Absolutely not. Don’t you dare touch that child. You’ve done enough harm.” Cali reminded me of the cougar, smelling weakness, with claws extended, ready to pounce.
“Do you have any idea what I went through to keep her alive?" I asked.
Chance and Paige’s father exchanged looks, and then Paige’s father rose to take a sputtering Cali by the elbow and guided her from the room over her protests.
The nurse smiled apologetically and gave me a curious look before turning to Chance. “Are you the father?” she asked.
Chance stopped short, looked at me and then at the nurse, and then back at me. “Yes. I am Chance McLane.”
I silently wondered if Chance was making a claim or staking his claim. Couples often race to the courthouse when filing for child custody as the law seems to favor the winner. And we both knew that there is nothing like misfiled paperwork to jam up the legal system.
The nurse smiled and picked up the child, admonishing Chance to “be careful now” as she handed him the baby. His leather-tough outdoor features softened as he embraced his daughter, nuzzling her and making cooing noises.
“You sound like a pigeon,” I observed.
Chance smiled an awkward boyish smile. “Here. Hold your baby, Sundance,” and he laid the wriggling bundle, tenderly as a gift on an altar and into my waiting arms.
I raised my brows, shooting Chance a questioning look as I reached out to accept her, but all I could hear was Kenny’s words ringing in my memory; and now you have a daughter of your own.
“Hello, baby girl,” I whispered with a tear in my throat. “We mad
e it, didn’t we?” My heart swelled with happiness as it drummed a celebration of life. And then I realized—her mother is dead—and I was the one responsible. Regardless of Paige’s ridiculous decision to hike into a cabin during a snowstorm in her condition, she might still be alive if I had not left my gun behind. Nothing could ever alter the fact that it was my gun that Paige had used to take her life. The lump in my throat continued to grow.
The little one smelled fresh, sweet and new; aromatherapy that triggered a flood of emotions. Trembling, I loosened her blanket and let my fingers explore. Soft, incredibly soft silken down crowned her pale-pink skin. I inhaled her essence and drank in her perfect beauty, getting lost in her dark lashes that fluttered like butterfly wings above her intense gaze, tracing her rosebud lips with my fingers, over her chin, across her shoulder, and down her arm . . . then bumped. She jerked, howling, balling tiny fists and waving them in the air like a shadow boxer, kicking her way free of the blanket to reveal thick pads of gauze wrapped around her forearm and hand, and one foot entirely dressed in bandages.
Quincy wailed pitifully.
“What’s this?” I looked at Chance, and he shrugged to minimize.
“Some burns on her arm and frostbite on her foot,” Chance explained, stroking my arm and giving me a tight smile. “You’re not the only one losing some toes.” I knew he was trying to be supportive. “She’ll be okay—you’ll both be fine. I’m just so thankful that you’re both alive.”
The shock of her injuries came as a blow. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered in her tiny ear, rocking her as well as I could. She slowly calmed as a song welled up, breaking from my lips like the first flower of spring, I sang the only child’s song I knew. “Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong . . .” Her gaze steadied, fixed and trusting. I had spent most of the journey through the wilderness resenting the helpless infant that now lay in my arms. It seemed a great mystery that this child, a baby I had begrudged and sometimes even hated, would suddenly feel like a blessing.
The nurse cut into our reverie to retrieve the baby, whose renewed cries tugged at my heart as she was returned to the isolette. “Don’t leave yet,” the nurse admonished. “I have some paperwork. It will just take a minute.” She gave an apologetic smile and picked up a clipboard and jotted some notes. “Okay, I have the father’s name. What’s the baby’s name?”
Chance and I looked long into each other’s eyes. So much had happened. I wasn’t surprised when Chance claimed to be the father of Paige’s baby, but I was stunned when he turned to me and asked, “Honey, have you decided on a name?”
Again, that long searching look, and I think Chance was trying to tell me something that I should have understood but didn’t. I wished the nurse would go away and give us some privacy, but she waited, hugging her clipboard. I dropped my gaze a couple of inches from Chance’s eyes to his neck where my particle board cross, removed no doubt by the hospital, was hanging. As I stared, an inexplicable peace washed over me.
Quincy. “Her name is Quincy. Quincy McLane.”
Chance gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead and signed the papers. Just like that, in spite of the mountain of misgivings that kept piling up, we became parents of a baby girl.
The momentous occasion was interrupted by Paige’s father, knocking on the door and motioning to Chance. “I’ll be right back,” said Chance.
“I’ll be right with you Perry,” Chance called to Perry before turning to the nurse and taking her by the elbow. He lowered his voice, but I heard every word.
“My child,” Chance affirmed to the nurse. “I am the father, her biological mother is dead. As Quincy’s legal father, I want you to write this down regarding my daughter’s medical treatment. I hereby authorize this hospital to continue her care and treatment as prescribed by the treating pediatrician. Furthermore—and I want this in writing—no paternity test is to be taken, regardless of who requests it.”
The nurse’s jaw dropped, and eyes widened in shock and dismay even as Chance gave her a reassuring pat on the arm and turned away, leaving the room to join Perry in the hall.
I managed a weak smile. My husband had just become a shaft jammed into the wheels of justice. I hoped that the kindly nurse would not lose her job and then I gave in to exhaustion, dropping deeper into the arms of the gurney.
There was nothing left to hold. Chance had vanished through the door, and all that remained of Quincy was the plaintive sound of her cries that continued to fill the room.
I must be crazy. It’s got to be the morphine. Me, pretending to be Quincy's mother.
My foot and face were madly throbbing, making me fidget. Tears quickened. It was all too much; the pain, the fight for survival, Paige’s suicide and Kenny’s death, Cali’s hatred, the baby’s amputation, my pending amputation—and now this churning mass of hope and doubt. I could almost hear the sound of my heart snapping in two as I motioned to the nurse. “Please get my husband.”
“Goodbye, Quincy,” I whispered in farewell.
The steady thwack-thwack-thwack of the chopper blades thrummed as we headed down a hall toward the EchoStar 130, the newest helicopter of its kind waiting to transport me to Feather River Hospital and my friend and surgeon Dr. Lance.
Cali’s voice thundered through the hospital and echoed down the hall as I was lifted from the gurney and placed onto a backboard.
“He what?” Cali shouted. “He is not the father of that child . . . they have no right . . . baby (something-something) with us . . . I won’t . . . ” Her voice trailed and faded beneath the reassuring words of the flight crew as we rounded the corner, heading for the exit that led to the helipad.
CHAPTER 31
I woke to three smiling faces and three less toes—including a portion of my left foot and a small section of the top rim of my ear. I had no idea it would hurt so bad. At least the faces around me looked reassuring; a soothing balm to my mental and emotional state.
Chance spoke first as he tenderly stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “Hello, sweetheart. How’s my girl?” He looked more rested and less stressed than he had looked in Quincy. He gave me a little wink, and the corners of his mouth turned up, making his mustache smile with him.
Standing next to him was Dr. Lance with his usual charming, teasing ways. “Miss Sunny,” he began, “how many fingers am I holding up?” He held up five as if to give me a high-five.
“You’re about to get one finger,” I said, my head pounding and spinning all at the same time.
“Ouch!” Dr. Lance exclaimed, shaking his hand as if stung by my words. “You’re on the fast track to recovery, always the fighter. If you don’t mind”—he smiled—“I’ll just take a quick look at your foot.”
“And if I do mind?” I asked as Dr. Lance who went about the business of pulling back a sheet and inspecting my ankle and leg for swelling, purple streaks, and whatever other alien life forms might invade a surgical site.
“I’ll wheel you back in and remove some vocal chords,” he said.
Dr. Lance left after giving me the status on my foot and ear, assuring me that I could go home in a week and probably start rehab and be back to work with a special shoe in a month. At the moment, I didn’t know how I was going to make it to dinner. My foot hurt, my stomach ached, and if my head could throw up, it would.
“Anything else?” asked the doctor.
“I want my dog.”
“If you promise to be good and not throw things this time, you can have your dog at the end of the week when you go home.” My doctor was referring to a previous stay in the hospital. With a wink and a reassuring flash of his laughing eyes, he left with a promise to return later.
The third face had been silent, sitting patiently in the background, all soft and round and red-cheeked, with round gauges that reminded me of a second pair of eyes staring from his earlobes. It belonged to Duncan. He was sitting in a wheelchair with a hard cast on one leg, a soft cast on his arm, and the smile of a kid who has
just got his first-bicycle-ever from Santa. You had to love a face like that.
Chance completely ignored Duncan as he talked with me about the surgery, my recovery, and my scheduled physical therapy. He told me that he had quit school and would be staying home to take care of me. Every now and then Chance would glance at Duncan, seemingly irritated by his presence. It seemed odd that Chance would not be more gracious toward my invalid guest.
Ignoring Chance, I motioned to Duncan, who sometimes reminded me of myself back when I was in high school—a shy wallflower, different from everyone else. Duncan’s smile broke out like sunshine from behind a lone, dismal cloud as he wheeled his way toward me. I smiled at the duck-foot cast on his leg with more signatures than a guest book from a celebrity wedding.
“Chance, hon, would you do something for me?” I looked at Chance and squeezed his hand. “Would you get me something unhealthy from the cafeteria? Chips, ice cream, candy?” Chance frowned and then shrugged.
“Sure. Be right back.” Chance left the room with his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his Levi’s, nodding a silent acknowledgment to Duncan as they passed.
“Hey, buddy, don’t be shy. Roll closer. Come sit by me and tell me what’s been going on,” I said as Duncan rolled up next to my bed.
“Hi. How are you?” Duncan’s face radiated genuine affection. “We all heard something about you being lost up in the mountains and then being rescued. I hacked into the system and found out you were life-flighted here. I’m glad you’re okay. I’ve been worried about you.”
“Yeah? I think I’ll make it. How about yourself? How long will you be in a wheelchair?”
“Me? You know me—I’ll be okay—strong as an ox and sometimes as dumb as one too.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.” I rested my hand on his arm. “I don’t think you’re dumb at all. You are one of the smartest people I know.”