Cowboy Take Me Away (4 page)

She grabbed an Excel spreadsheet from the corner of her desk, which was Freddie Jo’s weekly report that listed information about every animal on the premises. She flipped through it and shook her head. It was always more painful to see it in black and white.

“Don’t worry,” Freddie Jo said. “We’ll just do what we always do. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Shannon nodded glumly.

“You need the Wall,” Freddie Jo said. “Go look at the Wall.”

“I don’t need the Wall.”

“The Wall.
Now
.”

With a heavy sigh, Shannon rose from her chair and went to the wall beside the front door, which was covered with photos of animals that had passed through there and the people who’d adopted them. Sometimes on the hardest days, she’d stand there in front of it, her gaze going from one photo to the next, just to remind herself for the umpteenth time that nothing was impossible. And now, as she looked once again at the down-and-out animals that had gotten their second chances, she felt her conviction coming back.

Failure was
not
an option.

Shannon heard the back door open, and a few seconds later, Angela Cordero came into the office. She was a seventeen-year-old girl with an unprecedented love of animals and an uncanny ability to identify a problem and solve it, sometimes before Shannon even knew there was one. Angela wore a T-shirt with the shelter’s logo on it and a pair of khaki shorts, which was normal for her. What wasn’t normal was the lead rope and muzzle she held in one hand and the bucket of oats she held in the other.

“Oh, no,” Shannon said. “Don’t tell me—”

“Manny got out again.”

“That’s impossible! I tied a rope around that gate to keep him from flicking the latch with his nose!”

“He chewed through it.”

Shannon couldn’t believe it.
Another
jailbreak? She didn’t need this today. She just didn’t.

“Did he take anybody with him this time?”

“Nope. Everybody but Manny thinks they have it pretty good around here. You want me to go after him?”

“No,” Shannon said, taking the rope, muzzle, and bucket of oats from Angela. “If somebody’s going to get bitten, I want it to be me.”

Manny was part miniature horse and part escape artist, and hardly a day went by that he didn’t pose some kind of challenge. Fortunately, he was also part pig, so sooner or later she’d be able to lure him with the bucket of oats as long as she didn’t make any sudden moves. Once he had his head stuck in there, she could grab his halter and slip on the muzzle so she could walk him back home without losing a few fingers.

“You guys hold down the fort,” Shannon said. “I’ll be back soon.”

On her way out the door, she glanced at the Wall one last time for a little moral support. How many more tightwad millionaires and tiny runaway horses would she have to deal with before things got easier around there?

She hurried up the drive, knowing if Manny had gotten out of the paddock, he was free to walk right out the open front gate. Last time he’d merely strolled along the highway, stopping now and then to graze. She’d had to follow him for a good quarter mile before he realized she was holding a bucket of oats and turned back. And the entire time she’d held her breath that he wouldn’t suddenly decide to cross the highway and get hit by a car.

She reached the road. Looked left and right. No little horse. He’d been out such a short time that if he was walking the shoulder of the road, she’d see him. So where—

There.

He’d crossed the highway—safely, thank God—and wandered down to Glenn Dawson’s property. Now he was making his way down the gravel road toward the house. Clumps of grass grew up through the gravel, and he stopped now and then to chomp on a few.

Shannon waited for an aging Toyota to speed by, then dashed across the highway and down the shoulder of the road until she reached the rickety gate. Manny saw her coming and went from a walk to a trot, rounding a large stand of trees and disappearing from sight. She hurried after him, hoping he hadn’t ducked into the trees where it might take her forever to find him. She rounded the bend. The decrepit old house came into view, and what she saw there astonished her.

Luke was sitting on the porch steps. Manny was standing fewer than three feet in front of him. The little horse took a step forward and stretched out his neck. Luke put his hand out and Manny sniffed his fingers, his little nostrils flaring. After a moment, he eased closer and sniffed again.

Shannon didn’t know which to be surprised about first—seeing Luke sitting on the steps of his father’s house, or Manny getting that close to someone who didn’t have a bucket of food. Then Manny came closer still and Luke rubbed his nose, telling her disaster was only seconds away.

“Luke!” she shouted.
“Don’t!”

In that instant, Manny sank his teeth into Luke’s hand. Luke yanked it back, but the damage was already done.

“Holy
shit
!” he muttered, holding his hand and grimacing in pain. Manny shied away and trotted to the edge of the house before turning back to watch them warily. Shannon hurried over, praying Luke still had all ten fingers.

He spun around. “Why the
hell
did you shout like that?”

“Because he bites! I didn’t want you to get bitten!”

“Yeah? Did you notice he didn’t bite until you yelled at me?”

“Oh, all right,” she muttered, dropping the bucket and other stuff to the ground. “Let me see your hand.”

“It’s fine.”

“Luke. Let me
see
it.”

He held it out. It was already starting to bruise, but at least there was no blood.

“Does it feel broken?”

Luke flexed his hand. “No. It’s fine.”

“Still, I think you should get some ice and—”

Then she saw something that made the bruise on his hand seem about as significant as a paper cut. The leg of his jeans was pulled up, revealing a knee swollen at least twice its normal size. Dark bruising spread from his calf to his thigh, along with a deep, bloody scrape.

“Oh, my God,” she said, her hand sliding to her throat. “Your knee. What
happened
?”

“I fell through the porch,” he muttered.

She spun around to see a jagged, gaping hole in the porch decking. Good Lord. This place was falling down around his ears. She looked back at his knee, and her stomach twisted at the sight.

“You have to get to a doctor.”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“
Thinking
about it? What would make you take action? Severing a limb?”

“I’ve just been waiting for the swelling to go down a little.”

“You’ve got a long wait for that. How much does it hurt?”

When Luke didn’t respond, she knew the truth. The pain must have been unholy. She wanted to shout at him:
You don’t have to suffer in silence!

But that was nothing new. Hadn’t he always held everything inside? Pain equaled weakness, and he never let anybody see him sweat. But there had been a time all those years ago when she could have sat down on that step beside him, held his hand, and he would have told her how much it hurt.

But those days were over.

“You can’t drive with your leg in that condition,” she told him.

“I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

“And what conclusion did you reach?”

“I’m working on it.”

Shannon couldn’t stand this. Exactly how long was he going to sit on the steps of this god-awful house doing nothing because he wouldn’t ask for help? He needed a doctor, and soon.
Do something,
she told herself.
You have to do something about this now.

“Stay put,” she told him. “I’ll catch Manny, take him home, and then come back with my truck.”

“No! That’s not necessary.”

“You need a doctor. There’s no other way.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Luke muttered. He reached for the porch railing—the part that wasn’t falling down—and pulled himself to his feet. He paused after two steps, his hands curling into tight fists. Then he started walking again, limping heavily. Shannon felt the pain of every step like a knife to her heart. He circled his truck, leaning on the hood for support, and finally made it to the driver’s door, where he placed his palms against the glass. He stood there for a long time, his head bowed, breathing heavily. When he lifted his head again, she saw pain written across every inch of his face.

“I’ll get my truck,” she said, and this time he didn’t argue.

I
t took Shannon approximately ten minutes to grab the little horse, walk him back to the shelter, and then return with her truck, an ice pack, a pair of shears, four ibuprofens, and a bottle of water. She told Luke to take the ibuprofens, chopped off the leg of his jeans, wrapped the ice pack around his knee, and opened her passenger door so he could get inside. A few minutes later, they were buzzing down the highway, and Luke was reminded once again of how Shannon handled every task she encountered: with the tenacity of a bulldog going after a bone.

“So what’s with the pint-size horse with the great big teeth?” Luke asked.

“He was abused. I’ll spare you the details. He doesn’t trust anyone now. He’s probably going to be one of our permanent residents.”

“If he keeps on biting like that, yeah. He’s not exactly pet material.”

“I know,” she said on a sigh. “Unfortunately, most of the animals at the shelter are a little hard to love. Except the kittens. Everybody wants kittens. Sweet, fuzzy little kittens with no issues. For better or worse, we always have enough of those to meet the demand.”

At that moment Luke realized they’d just passed by the road leading to downtown Rainbow Valley. “You missed the turnoff.”

“I didn’t miss it. We’re not going to Rainbow Valley.”

“But the doctor—”

“The doctor you need to see is in an emergency room in Austin.”

“Austin?” Luke said incredulously. “That’s an hour away. Just take me to a doctor in Rainbow Valley.”

“Waste of time and money. He’ll just turn around and send you to a specialist in Austin.”

“No. It’s probably just a sprain. So driving all the way there—”

“Sprain?” She glanced down at his knee. “Really, Luke? A sprain?”

“I’m not going to Austin.”

“You are if you want proper treatment.”

“Turn this truck around, Shannon.”

“But—”

“Now.”

She shot him a look of frustration, then pulled to the shoulder of the road. She shoved the gearshift into park, and the engine idled softly.

“Okay,” she said. “What’s the deal?”

“I’m not going to an emergency room.”

“Look at your knee. That’s an injury that won’t wait.”

But he knew how expensive ER visits could be. First came the bill just because he showed up and was seen by a doctor. Then came the outrageously expensive diagnostic tests. And if he had to have surgery…

He didn’t even want to think about that.

“You do have insurance, don’t you?” Shannon said.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “For all the good it does me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Insurance companies don’t like to cover bull riders. Too risky. Which means my deductible is so high it’s almost not worth paying the huge premiums.”

“So it’s good only for catastrophic injuries?”

“If I end up in a coma for six months or paralyzed from the neck down, I might see a few bucks. But for stuff like this, I’m pretty much on my own.”

“So this is about the money,” Shannon said.

Yes, damn it, it’s about the money!

Luke hated that crawly sensation in his stomach, the one he always felt when he was at the mercy of circumstances he couldn’t control. For the past several years, it seemed as if for every step he took forward, he took one step backward. There were the ever-present injuries and the outrageous medical bills that went with them. The travel expenses that chewed up a lot of his prize money. The bad-luck draw of bulls that were either deadheads who earned him no points, or crazy ones that slammed him into fences or tried to gore him before he even hit the ground. But this year…
this
year everything had finally gone his way.

And now this.

“Let’s just say I’d like to keep my expenses to a minimum,” he said.

“Ever been injured before?” she asked.

“Just minor stuff. Sprains, concussions, dislocations. Broken ribs. Fractured shoulder.”

“Good Lord. If all that’s minor, what’s major?”

“Anything that makes them get a stretcher.”

“Seems like a tough way to make a living.”

“It was that or become a rocket scientist,” Luke said, turning away again. “It was so hard to choose.”

But of course she wouldn’t understand about his limited choices. Not when her parents were loaded with money and had given her every opportunity on the planet.

He hated this. He hated telling Shannon North, of all people, that money was an issue. But even more, he hated that she was right about going to Austin. X-rays were good only for bone breaks and fractures. In his sport, he’d seen knee injuries like this one, and MRI and CT scans were the only way to determine the extent of the tissue damage.

“Luke?” Shannon said, her hand on the gearshift. “What’s it going to be? Back home, or Austin?”

He looked down at his knee, then turned away with a huff of irritation. “Austin.”

She put the truck in gear. “Good decision.”

“I see you never got over your bossiness.”

“I prefer to think of it as providing direction to people who desperately need it. I see you never got over your hardheadedness.”

“I prefer to think of it as a logical reaction to bossy people.”

“Just because I’m bossy doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Shannon said.

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were heading to Austin?”

“Would you have gotten into this truck if I had?”

“Nope.”

“Well, there you go.”

Now he remembered what a challenge it had been to stay one step ahead of Shannon. Her speech had always been filled with one declarative sentence after another, as if whatever words she spoke instantly became law.

He looked out the passenger window, thinking about his predicament and trying to get a handle on it. Even if he was sidelined for a few months, he’d already won enough prize money that he’d stay in the top ten bull riders, and that was all it took to qualify for the World Championship. Prize money was cumulative, though, right through the finals, so the higher he was in the standings, the more likely he was to win the title. As long as he was in good enough shape to climb aboard a bull the first week of November, he still had a shot.

But if the worst happened and he couldn’t compete even then…

He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about starting all over again in January. About following a grueling schedule that put him in a different town every week so he could pile up the prize money and inch up in the standings. About all those younger cowboys coming onto the scene, ones who hadn’t spent the past ten years getting knocked around the way he had. He was hot this year, hotter than he’d ever been, but he couldn’t count on his good fortune lasting forever. If he missed this window of opportunity to win the championship, it might never open up again.

Forty-five minutes later, Luke and Shannon arrived at the hospital emergency room. But it was another hour before a nurse took Luke back to be seen by a doctor, a bearded guy who was probably in his early forties, who stroked his chin a lot as he talked. After a brief exam, after which a different nurse treated the scrapes on Luke’s leg and removed at least a dozen splinters, the doctor ordered an MRI to diagnose the knee injury. Luke had to endure another long wait for that, and yet another before an orthopedist showed up to evaluate the results. Whenever Luke came back to the waiting room, Shannon questioned him about what was going on. But he quickly grew frustrated by the whole experience and clammed up. Eventually she did, too.

They finally called Luke’s name. He left Shannon reading a copy of
Business Week
and followed the nurse to the back, where she escorted him into an exam room. A few minutes later, the orthopedist came in.

“Looks like you messed your knee up pretty good,” he said. “You have a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament, along with some damage to the meniscus and articular cartilage.”

The doctor showed Luke a drawing of a knee, pointing out the various parts of his anatomy as he explained the extent of the injury. But Luke was interested in only one thing.

“What’s the prognosis?” he asked.

“Excellent. We’ll get you scheduled for arthroscopy. Clean up that tear. And then—”

“Wait a minute. Surgery?”

“Outpatient surgery. No big deal.”

Luke closed his eyes, frustration eating away at him. “What’s that going to cost me?”

“It’s hard to say, exactly.”

“Ballpark.”

The doctor tossed out a figure, and Luke’s stomach practically fell through the floor.

“We’ll schedule you for next week so the swelling will have a chance to go down,” the doctor went on. “After that, with rest and rehab, you’ll be good as new.”

“How long will the recovery take?”

“I’d give it six months.”

Luke felt a rush of disappointment. “Can I do it in three?”

“That’s pushing it.”

“I need to be able to ride again.”

“Horses?”

Luke paused. “Bulls.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “You want to get back on a
bull
? Three months after an injury like this?”

“That’s right.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that. If you sustain a total ACL tear, it could blow that knee for good.”

“I just need to know if it’s doable.”

The doctor thought about it for a long time, finally shrugging weakly. “If you do physical therapy at home, and then come up here a couple of times a week for more intense therapy…maybe. But again, I am
not
recommending that.”

“I’ll wear a brace while I’m riding.”

“That won’t totally prevent injury.”

Luke leaned in, wearing a no-nonsense look. “Listen to me, doctor. I’m
this
close to a world bull riding championship. I just need to know that in three months I can walk back into that arena and climb up on a bull. That’s all.”

“What about the odds of you walking
out
of that arena?”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“I’m not recommending—”

“You’ve made that clear. Just tell me what I need to do.”

A few minutes later, Luke had his discharge instructions, and he sat down at the ER clerk’s desk to settle the bill. The clerk was an older woman with bifocals resting on her sharp, pointed nose, wearing the kind of sour expression that said she’d worked there for years and hated her job. She slid a piece of paper in front of him, and when he saw the charges, he felt light-headed, as if blood wasn’t getting to his brain. Given his huge deductible, this entire bill was coming out of his pocket, along with most of the cost of his surgery to come.

The clerk apparently sensed his hesitancy. “We do take credit cards.”

“I don’t use credit cards.” He looked back at the bill, and the amount seemed to grow before his eyes.

“Sir, if you’re unable to pay this invoice—”

Luke jerked his head up. “What makes you think I can’t pay it?”

She gave him a smile, but Luke could see what was beneath it. Condescension.

“If you’re having financial problems,” she said, “you may qualify for assistance. If you’d like, I can put you in touch with one of our social workers to advise you.”

Luke could barely contain the rumbling of resentment he felt. Social worker? He’d dealt with enough of those to last him a lifetime. Just hearing the words made his skin crawl.

“I don’t need assistance from anyone,” he said.

“All right. Maybe a payment plan? The interest rate is quite reasonable.”

“No,” he snapped. “I don’t borrow money. I pay my bills. I
always
pay my bills.”

He reached into his wallet, pulled out his debit card, and tossed it down on the desk, numb with disbelief. Only hours ago, he was heading for the next rodeo in Phoenix, one more lucrative stop on his way to the top. Now he was sitting in this hospital with a damaged knee, essentially broke, with no means of support. Yeah, he had enough to pay his medical bills, but then he’d have nothing left over for living expenses for the next three months, not to mention the physical therapy he needed if this knee was going to heal in time for the World Championship. He could sell his father’s property to get the cash he needed…if only he had the money to get rid of the old gas storage tanks at the front of the property so it could be environmentally certified for sale.

Damn it.

He flipped open his wallet. Sixty bucks. It might as well have been sixty cents.

His pulse pounded in his head, making his mind feel dark and muddled. He just wanted to get the hell out of there. He wanted to go somewhere by himself and think about how to get out of this mess. And he
would
figure it out, one way or the other.

Unfortunately, his truck was currently in Rainbow Valley, and Shannon was his only means to return there.

When Luke finally came out, Shannon took one look at his tight-lipped expression and knew he wasn’t happy. He had a brace on his knee and was walking on crutches. He brushed past her and hobbled out the sliding glass doors. Once they were in her truck, he seemed no more interested in talking than he had been all afternoon. But since his mood had clearly deteriorated, she could only assume whatever news he’d received was bad.

“Tell me about your knee,” she said as they drove out of Austin. “Is it going to be okay?”

“Eventually. I’m having outpatient surgery next week. Then physical therapy.”

“Oh. Okay.” She paused. “So that’s doable, right?”

“Yeah,” he said in a deadpan voice. “It’s doable.”

“Did you get pain medication?”

“I don’t need it.”

Then why, every time he shifted in his seat, did he grimace as if his knee was killing him?

“Did the doctor clear you to drive?” she asked.

He paused. “Yes.”

She wasn’t sure she believed that. “Are you going to be able to compete anytime soon?”

“I’ll compete,” he said. “Bank on it.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Luke was silent.

“Well,” she said brightly. “Then everything’s going to be fine, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just fine.”

She wondered if he knew how transparent his lies were. Or maybe he didn’t care. Either way, he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She also wondered how big a hit he’d taken with the emergency room bill, but she knew he wouldn’t want to talk about that, either.