Dani felt icy fingers of foreboding skittering up her spine as she reached for the cold metal handle of the break room door. She shivered. Shake it off girl! Everyone’s stable, that’s the only reason you’re able to grab a few minutes! She whipped the mask off her face as she dropped into a chair. She was eight hours into her twelve-hour shift in the CCU and had been running non-stop. Her feet were throbbing, and she had an ache building behind her eyes. She smiled thankfully at her friend, Kim, who pushed a 44 oz Diet Dr. Pepper in her direction across the table. “You’re a lifesaver!” Dani said, taking a large gulp of the icy drink. Since she didn’t drink coffee, Diet Dr. Pepper was her main vice. To her ongoing dismay, the break room soda machine didn’t carry them, so she went without unless she was able to sneak downstairs to the cafeteria. “This is the first time I’ve been able to take a break all day. How did you know I’d be here dying for one right now?”
Kim chuckled. “Brandon said you texted him a few minutes ago that you were going on break. His case is running long so he let me go on break early and asked me to bring it to you.” Kim was Dr. Brandon Walker III’s scheduling nurse and, Dani often thought, knew more about Dani’s boyfriend than she did.
“That man does have his moments.” Dani took another large gulp of soda. She did wish those moments were more frequent.
“Just four more hours to go.” Dani slid off her clogs and propped her feet up on an open chair. “I’m hoping Bed 5 stays stable until tomorrow. It’s been touch and go all day but his vitals are looking better now and we haven’t had to put him back on the vent.”
“We’ve been pretty smooth all day,” Kim said, taking her popcorn out of the microwave, “until this guy Brandon has on the table now. The guy’s vessels are pretty friable so he’s had to go slower than he normally does.” She took a sip of her coffee. “He was about to finish when he let me go though. I’m sure he’ll have his fellow close up and be out shortly.”
Dani thought again how she seemed to spend much more time with Brandon’s scheduler than with Brandon. Kim had fallen into running interference between them more and more lately as Brandon had less and less time to spend with her himself. They really needed to get away. Maybe she could finally get him out to Gladewater for Memorial Day since they’d had to cancel Easter at the last minute for that quadruple bypass. He did have partners after all.
“Too bad I’m going to miss him again. We can’t seem…” Dani was interrupted by her cell playing Tanya Tucker’s Texas When I Die. Dani smiled ruefully. The tone was her Aunt Lu’s designated one. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to have time to hear her aunt’s always entertaining updates on Gladewater life before she was due back on the floor.
“Hi, Aunt Lu! Sorry I can’t visit right…” Dani was interrupted not by her aunt’s chatty soprano but her uncle’s slow, deep bass.
“We need you, baby girl. The doctors say it’s real bad.” She could hear the agony in Uncle Eustace’s voice behind that slow, Texas drawl.
Dani straightened and her feet hit the floor. “What happened?” Kim’s hand froze inside the popcorn bag as she heard the fear in her friend’s voice.
“Lu’s had a stroke,” her uncle said with a catch in his voice. He paused and she heard him take a strangled breath trying to cut off a sob. “They don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”
Dani had never heard her uncle break down. The man who had raised her since she was eight, and her parents were killed by a drunk driver, was a rock. Stoic and steady. Always there for her and anyone who needed him.
“Oh my God!” Time slowed. Her breath caught in her chest and she heard her heart pounding loudly in her ears. She clutched at the small, silver caduceus necklace that Aunt Lu and Uncle Eustace had given her for her graduation from nursing school. It was the only jewelry she ever wore at work. Stroking the charm, she pulled herself back into nurse mode by sheer force of will. She didn’t have time to fall apart.
“I’m on my way! I’ll find someone to cover the rest of my shift and leave asap. You hold on, Uncle E. I’ll call you when I’m on the road.”
“Hurry,” was his only response.
“Kim, my aunt’s had a stroke.” Dani’s voice was steady but her friend could see the terror in her bright green eyes. “Can you please let Brandon know I have to go to Gladewater? I’ll call him when I know something.”
“Of course, Dani, anything! Do you need me to help with anything else?”
Dani tried to think of what she had to get done before she could get on the road. “Not right now but thanks. I’ve got to go tell Margarite I’ve got to leave early. She’s not going to be happy since we’ve been so short staffed lately but she’s going to have to make it work.” She hated to leave her team in a lurch, but she couldn’t feel guilty about it right now. Her aunt and uncle were too important to her.
“I can call Janice and see if she can come in,” Kim suggested. “She’s been cross trained in the CCU.”
“That would be fabulous, Kim! Thanks so much.”
Dani quickly slipped on her shoes and ran out the door to get back to the unit. Between giving report to one of her coworkers and tracking down her supervisor, she ran headlong into her friend, Zane, while she was taking a corner at full speed.
“Dani, whoa!” He grasped her arms to keep her from falling. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, Zane! Thank God!” The collision almost made her lose the tenuous hold she had on the panic bubbling just under the surface, but she pulled it back just before it spilled over. Not now Dani. Keep it together. “My uncle just called. My Aunt Lu has had a CVA. He says it’s bad.”
“Oh, Dani, I’m so sorry!” He gave her a quick hug. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I may take you up on that,” she said. “I need to see what the doctors there are saying. I’m trying to get out of here right now.”
“Of course!” Zane replied. “You just let me know if there’s anything I can do and I’ll be there.”
“You’re the best, Zane! I’ll call you soon!” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and was back on the run.
Half an hour later, she was in Pearl, her white Mercedes convertible, speeding toward her condo. In her bedroom, she threw everything haphazardly into a large Prada bag that Brandon had given her for her 29th birthday. Fifteen minutes later she was jumping in Pearl again, not worrying who saw her in ratty yoga pants, an old T-shirt and flip flops with her long red curls in a messy bun on top of her head. The people who had stepped in to save a little girl, when she had no one, needed her and she had to get to them.
At the little community hospital in Gladewater, Dani found her uncle in the ICU waiting room. He looked deflated, not like the large, solid man she knew and loved.
“Uncle E!” she cried, running to him. As his big arms enveloped her, she could feel the fine tremors in his body.
After a long moment, she pushed back from him and looked up into his bloodshot eyes. “Tell me what the doctors are saying.”
Eustace breathed out a long breath. “It’s a big one, baby girl. They said she…she might not walk or talk again. Can you imagine Lu not being able to talk?” His voice broke again.
“She’s gonna beat this,” Dani told him, hugging him forcefully. “They don’t know Aunt Lu. Small but fierce, right?”
Her uncle took her to her aunt’s room. The silence was only broken by the beeping of monitors and her aunt’s breathing which seemed louder than normal with the oxygen mask that covered her nose and mouth.
As Dani saw her aunt’s small, pale form lying so still in the crisp, white hospital sheets, all the trappings of success she had acquired didn’t seem important anymore. Not her coveted ICU nurse job, not her high-rise condo, not her accomplished surgeon boyfriend. Only this little woman lying in the hospital bed and the large man beside her holding her hand, had any meaning for her.
Dani stroked her hand lightly over her aunt’s white hair. It was a shock to see it laying loose on the pillow and not in her normal, hard-sprayed updo. She fought back tears as she held Uncle E’s hand tight and remembered that night - the night they had come to save her.
Flashing lights. Lots of flashing lights. Blue and red strobe lights came through the windows of her bedroom and bounced off eight-year-old Dani’s pink walls. They startled her when they first woke her up but then she lay there mesmerized by the colors. She thought they were really pretty dancing through her windows and onto her bedroom wall. Then she heard Melanie, her babysitter, scream. She jack knifed up in bed, held her covers up to her chest, and froze, scared to move. She listened hard but after that scream, all she could hear were low mumbles and crying. She gathered her courage, slipped on her bunny slippers, and crept down the hall to the top of the stairs. She squatted down to make herself as small as possible and listened again. She tried to process what she was hearing but didn’t understand. She heard heavy steps coming up the scuffed, wooden steps but couldn’t seem to move. A large shadow loomed over her and she looked up with big wide eyes. A policeman. A policeman in a dark blue uniform.
He sat down on the step just below the little girl in the Cinderella nightgown. “Dani, honey? I’m Officer Garrett.” She just stared into his tired looking, deep brown eyes. “Can you come downstairs with me?”
Dani couldn’t answer. Her mind was racing. Mama and Daddy always said if she needed help, she should find a policeman. Do I need help? She didn’t know.
“Is it ok if I pick you up? We can go see some people outside that are here to help you. Is that ok?”
She peeked around the corner and looked through the stair rails at Melanie in the living room. She was sitting with another policeman and sobbing with her hands over her face. Melanie was always laughing. Dani had never seen her cry. Maybe she did need help. Dani glanced at her bunny slippers, then nodded. Mama wouldn’t want her to get her slippers muddy and it was raining outside. If she was going outside, he should carry her. Keeping her slippers clean seemed very important right now.
Officer Garrett picked her up and on the way to the door grabbed the Aran afghan her Aunt Lu had knitted that was on the back of the couch and wrapped her in it. She stared at Melanie over his shoulder as the policeman took her out of the house.
The lights that were so pretty on her bedroom wall became overwhelming when she was outside in the middle of them. There were lots and lots of people there, too – other policemen, neighbors under umbrellas, an ambulance with more lights and even a fire truck. It was all too much for a little girl woken from sleep in the middle of the night. She hid her face in Officer Garrett’s shoulder and tried to block out all the noise. She concentrated on the way the scratchy material of his uniform felt on her cheek. He smelled like some kind of cologne and that reminded her of the way Daddy smelled when he went out with Mama. She liked it.
She felt the policeman carrying her up a big step and then he was putting her down on a skinny bed in a very bright car – no, this was an ambulance.
“Dani, sweetie, can you hear me?” Officer Garrett asked her as he sat her on the bed inside the vehicle. The rain was loud as it continued to pound on the roof of the ambulance. She pulled the afghan tighter around her and studied her feet again. Good, they were still clean.
“She’s in shock.” A woman’s voice now. One she didn’t recognize. The lady was in a different kind of blue uniform. She wondered what shock was. Did I do something bad? Was that why all the policemen were here?
“I’ll start some fluids,” the strange woman continued talking to the policeman. “Is the babysitter going to be ok? Can she talk to us about allergies or anything about her medical history until we locate some family?”
“I think she’s starting to settle down now. Ben has her in the living room. I’ll go see what I can find out while you take care of this little one.”
“Dani,” the nice officer who had carried her here said to her in a calm, soft voice, sitting on a bench next to her, “this is Amanda. She’s going to take good care of you. I’m going to go talk to Melanie again.” He rubbed her back a little, then left.
Dani looked up quickly, her big green eyes widening with fear, following his exit and what was going on around her. More bright flashing lights. They hurt her eyes. Crackling static and talking from police radios. Neighbors staring at her. She tore her eyes from the scene outside the ambulance and looked at the lady.
“Here ya go, honey. Let’s scoot on back here. I think I may even have a teddy bear back here that needs a new home.”
The little redhead looked around at all the strange metal and black things hanging from the wall as she scooted farther into the ambulance on the white bed.
Where was the teddy bear? Was Melanie ok? Where are mommy and daddy? Why are all these people here? As the nice lady handed her the stuffed animal and let her lie down on the bed, she closed her eyes tight. She felt her bunny slippers still on her feet under the blanket and she was just happy they would stay dry now and mama wouldn’t be upset.
Dani only vaguely remembered the ambulance ride. The next thing she knew she was in a very white, very quiet room with only the newly acquired teddy bear for company. She thought it must be a hospital because it smelled funny – like the time she had fallen off the monkey bars and broken her wrist. Mama and Daddy had taken her to a hospital then and she had gotten a purple cast. It had hurt a little but the cast was pretty neat. Mama had made her promise not to hit anyone with it at school, not even Billy, who was mean and pulled her pigtails. She was a good girl, though, and didn’t hit anyone with it. Do I need another cast? Were Mama and Daddy on their way?
She must have fallen asleep again because the next thing she remembered was her Aunt Lu and Uncle Eustace standing by the bed in full, dazzling color against the sea of white in the room. They looked down at her and looked sad.
“Hi there, baby girl,” Uncle E had said in that slow East Texas drawl he had. “You don’t worry about nothin’. You’re gonna come home with us and everything is gonna be just fine.” He ran a hand over her head softly, then picked her up, kissing her on her forehead and hugging her to him.
Her aunt had tears in her eyes but kissed her on her cheek and rubbed her back up and down, smiling at her. “You’re gonna be fine, Dani Lynn, just fine. We love you so much and you’re going to love living in Gladewater. You’ll see.”
After Levi typed the last figures into his spreadsheet and emailed it to his assistant, he spun around in his chair to look at the view. The setting sun glinting off the neighboring metal and glass towers was dramatic, but nothing beat a sunset on the farm. Watching that large red-orange ball dip behind the barn and then the trees, the whole sky turning red then purple as a bruise until everything was left in a blue gray shadow with the moon rising above it. It made your heart swell. Despite how badly he had wanted to escape it when he was eighteen, he could now admit he did miss some aspects of the farm. He was the youngest broker at the firm and had basically given his last eight years to the company. He worked long hours and had almost completely forgone a social life. His coworkers never gave up trying to get him to go out, however. At least once a week, Mike showed up at his door at the end of their workday. Apparently, today was his lucky day.“Levi, come on. It’s Lydia’s birth
After conferring with the doctors and therapy team, Dani stayed at her aunt’s bedside the rest of the day talking to her constantly and doing range of motion exercises on her arms and legs. Her uncle sat through it all in the uncomfortable hospital chair, silently holding and stroking his wife’s hand. After trying unsuccessfully to lovingly convince her uncle to go home and get some rest, she finally resorted to using her best Nurse Ratchet voice to convince her uncle to unglue his backside from the horrible chair next to his wife’s hospital bed. “You’re not going to do her any good if you fall over too,” She put both hands on her hips and tried to glare at him. “I’m not going anywhere, and you know I know what I’m doing. Nurse’s orders! Go home, eat, take a shower and close your eyes for a few hours. I will call you if there is any change at all.” As he looked up, her voice and demeanor softened. “Please, Uncle E. She’s going to need you to be strong. Take a break now while you can.”
The next morning, Dani found herself waking up worried that she had overslept for school before her brain righted itself. Living in her old bedroom in the house in Gladewater was like being in a time capsule. Her aunt hadn’t changed a thing. Pink painted walls, Luke Perry and John Stamos posters, and her purple beaded curtains on the big windows were just as they had been when she left. She supposed she hadn’t been back enough to worry about trying to modernize it and make it more grown up. She lazily wondered if she should try to do a little updating now. After grabbing a quick shower, she pulled her red curls out of her face with a headband and put on her hospital ‘uniform’ of yoga pants, a T-shirt and Toms. She grabbed her small wristlet and headed to the hospital to meet Zane. At 11 o’clock on the dot, Zane came breezing into the hospital lobby. He managed to look casual and professional at the same time. Today he wore a tan blazer over dark jeans and a navy T-shirt. His sun-kiss
Levi sat sweating in his Tundra in the middle of the gravel road about a mile from his childhood home. The sweat wasn’t from the sweltering Texas sun, however. It was a cold sweat at being so close to the place he had escaped from when he went to college. The day he had left, his teenage self had vowed to never set foot on the place again, but here he was, a grown man come home. C’mon Levi, you can do this. Mom’s waiting. It’s just a set of buildings.He took a deep breath and put the truck back in gear, driving slowly until he arrived at the driveway. His mother must have been watching for him from the front windows because she burst out of the front door, screen door slamming behind her as he pulled up. She grabbed him in a hug before he could get completely out of the truck.“Come here, you!” She kept his neck in a vice grip and kissed him repeatedly on the cheek.Levi laughed and picked his mother up off the ground in a bear hug. “I’d have come home sooner if I knew I was going to
It was a joyful and proud day when her Aunt Lu was released from the hospital to go home, well enough to start outpatient rehab. She and Maggie had tied balloon bouquets to the carport and made a WELCOME HOME sign for the front of the house. Maggie, JT and their neighbors had gathered to welcome her home. Her aunt and uncle both teared up when they saw the display. “Oh, yyyou! Yyyou shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” her aunt said, wiping her eyes. Dani leaned down to the wheelchair and gave her aunt a big hug. “Everyone wanted to be here. You deserve a few balloons for all the hard work you’ve done!”“C’mon Lu,” her uncle said, pushing her toward the door. “Time for you to start making me some dinner!”Everyone laughed. She reached back and patted his hand, looking up at him lovingly. “Dddon’t you think I wwwon’t be soon! You’ve wwwasted awwway on that hospital ffood!”Dani looked at her aunt and uncle longingly. They had been together for so long and were so happy together. T
An hour later, Dani and Maggie were in Pearl trying to navigate the old gravel road out to the homestead. She had remembered the route but had forgotten the giant potholes in the road. Out that way there was just the old Cooper spread and theirs and apparently no one had even been trying to maintain the road. Poor Pearl was not a happy camper with the constant scraping of her undercarriage. “Gee, Dani,” Maggie said as they bounced through yet another pothole, hitting their heads on the soft top of the convertible, “if you had told me we were going out here we could have taken my Explorer. Your expensive car is going to be ruined.”Note to self, if I did move out here, Pearl and I were going to have to have a difficult chat about replacing her with a 4-wheel drive.“Yeah, well, it’s been a minute and I kinda forgot how bad this road can get,” Dani said, gritting her teeth as gravel flew up to hit the windshield despite creeping along like a turtle. “It’ll be ok. We’re almost there.”A
Levi couldn’t remember being so tired in his life. Even when his dad had him working long hours as a teenager, he hadn’t felt this exhausted. It was a good kind of tired, though. One earned with accomplishment. After he had fired the farm hands, he had been happy to discover that they had at least kept up with his cattle. The prize breeding stock was well taken care of and his pastures looked good. He spent hours studying bloodlines and creating his own specialized feed that would be mixed by Johnson’s Feed & Seed as soon as he could make time to get into town. He also updated the spreadsheets for the farm’s finances and did maintenance on equipment that had seen better days. It was also up to him to make sure the stock were fed and watered and check all the fences were up to par. He’d also made a first pass at the gravel road trying to fill in some of the holes and smooth out the ruts. He couldn’t believe his mom had been traversing this road on a regular basis and never got anyone
“Good Lord. Jesus take the wheel!” Dani said, her eyes widening. “What did I miss?” asked Maggie, her lively brown eyes darted around, looking for the action, as she set their lunches down on the table at Common Grounds. She was well-aware of her friend’s new favorite sport of people watching and was always ready to add to her ever-growing pot of fertilizer for the Gladewater grapevine. “That.” Dani pointed with her chin, trying to be discreet but failing miserably. Her eyes ogled the man who just climbed out of an old, faded red Chevy pickup, a truck that somehow looked familiar.The man himself looked like he was hot off some cowboy romance novel cover. He was at least six foot four, his dusty, faded Wranglers were tight in all the right places and sported holes that she bet were put there from hard work and not by a designer. His white t-shirt was so tight it left little to the imagination. No wondering if there was a six pack under there, you could count every ab muscle. His bice