Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
T rey lied.
He lied when they asked him if he was okay.
He lied when they asked him if he needed to go to the hospital.
What he needed was to get home and get his son home. And then? And then he had no idea what he was going to do.
Because he wasn’t okay.
There wasn’t any light coming into his right eye. Not even any light. There wasn’t any vision around the outside of his left eye either, but at least there was light. Red light.
But there wasn’t even any light showing from the right one, his bad one.
If he moved, he would shatter, he would panic.
He didn’t know what to do. So he lied.
He lied and he went home, and waited for his people to come home.
“Are we still going to have a fambly thing?” Zoe asked, tears in her voice. “We made all the food.”
“It’s just going to be a little later, that’s all. Don’t worry. We will still be a family.”
“Where’s Cowboy West?”
“He had to go to the hospital and get his head checked out, his hand. We had an accident in the truck. There was a cow. It’s okay though. Cars can be replaced. We’ll get to go buy a new car.” Not a new eye, though.
They didn’t sell those.
“Can it be red?”
He hugged her, ignoring the way that made his bones throb. “I think that sounds like a great idea. A bright red truck, maybe a blue one.”
“Noah likes red.”
Trey was just going to die. He wanted to curl up and sob.
There were so many things that he needed to do. He needed to email his retinal specialist, and talk to Dr. Pitcher and say, ‘Here’s what’s happening, what do we do?’ They needed to call the hospital again.
There were so many things he needed to do, and all Trey could do was sit in his office and wait.
He didn’t know how long he was going to have to wait.
What was wrong with him? Trey never just waited.
But if he closed his left eye, there wasn’t even any light.
“Daddy. Tell me what happened.” Noah’s voice had his eyes flying open. “Oh, you’re all bruised. Aunt Mallory said that you were in a car accident. Is West dead?”
“Of course not, son, come here.” He opened his arms and hugged Noah tight. “Of course he’s not. He’s at the hospital getting his head checked out. He bumped his head, and I think he hurt his hand. I’ve got to figure out how to get somebody up there, in fact, so he can come home.”
“I’m going to send Liam up there to go get him.” Mal’s voice was a balm. She would help. “I think you should stay here with the kids. I think I should too. That’s a very stressful drive.” There was a long pause, and then he heard her tell Noah. “Why don’t you go put your stuff away, get out of your school clothes, and put on something warm and fuzzy.”
“Can we all play out in the snow?”
“Ask Miss Lisa, I bet she’ll take you out and let you all make snowmen or angels or what have you.”
He sat there like a damn moron, frozen deep down, as if his soul had turned to ice.
Then Mal’s warm hands took his. “Trey, I need you to talk to me now. I really need you to talk to me. Are you okay?”
“I can’t see.”
“You got to give me more than that, honey.”
“I can’t see. Like at all. At all. Not even… It’s not even light on the edges of my right eye. Nothing. And then… I mean, I can see a light on my left, but that’s it.” He could hear his own hysteria, and he forced himself to dial it down.
“Did you hit your head?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why didn’t you go with the ambulance?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.”
“Okay. Let’s work this out, because we’ve got to. Fair enough?”
“Yeah. Fair enough.”
“Okay. So what do we do first?”
“We email?—”
“Call…”
He cleared his throat. “Right. We call my retinal guy. See if I can get an appointment.” The jingle of tags told him Valentine was coming for some love, her snuffling of his leg making him chuckle, even though he was worried he’d never stop laughing if he started.
Like a weird clown from a horror movie. Chuckles, the blind guy.
“Okay, the retinal guy. What if he tells you to go to the hospital?”
“Then I’ll go up with Liam, I guess. Or Lisa’s wife, Belinda. She can drive me.”
“See, you’ve got yourself a plan. Nicely done.” She picked up his phone. “You call the doctor. I’ll call Liam, because he’ll be getting ready to head up to the hospital, okay?”
“I don’t want to leave the kids here. They are having a family meeting about Thanksgiving.” He knew more hemorrhages were bound to happen. The retinal guy said it was inevitable, but?—
“So we have it later this evening. The kids aren’t having school tomorrow, right? It’s a fucking blizzard out there.” Mal’s voice was tightly controlled, but she was losing her patience. “What if they can help? Even a little bit?”
He dialed the phone, and managed to get a nurse whose position was, “Dr. Pitcher will meet you at the hospital in an hour.”
“See? It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? We need to get it looked at.”
He agreed, in theory, but he couldn’t stand up. He was too overwhelmed and sore. “He wants to check for detached retina and head trauma, just in case. He said the wreck probably caused another bleed and, the light will come back, it just takes time for the blood to settle.”
He was going to throw up or scream or something. It didn’t matter which.
“Okay, Liam’s coming. He has chains on his truck. He’ll stay at the hospital with both of you until he brings you home. Lisa will stay here with the kids. Everything will be okay.”
“I don’t want to go.” He didn’t want to face West, not after losing his shit in a most spectacular way. He’d screamed like a scared little boy, and he’d been trying so hard to have West accept him as a fully functional adult.
Dammit.
This wasn’t fair.
“Too fucking bad. I need you. I need you to be my baby’s godfather, I need you to have a beer with, I need you to be the kids’ father. So quit whining and cowboy up.”
“I hate you.”
Mal snorted. “Do not. You adore me.”
“Nope. I have nothing but hate for you in my heart.” He held his arms open, and she hugged him tight, holding him.
“I love you, Trey. You got this. You are not alone, do you understand? We got this. Together.”
He closed his eyes. Together. He had to show those babies their daddy had his shit together, right?
Hell, yes.
Time to cowboy up or get in the truck.
Or both. He chuckled, clinging to Mal. He took one deep breath, then another. “I need to tell the kids. And eat some of Zoe’s munchies.” He felt sick in the pit of his belly, but he had to have something she’d made.
“Sure. You have a little time to clean up, too. What do you need?”
“Can you walk me to my room? It’s a little freaky how much things have changed in such a short time. I might need some help to find clothes that match.”
“I can do that.” Mal helped him, and he changed, washed up, and talked to the kids, having a pretzel that felt like a cross between a wonky eight and a heart. Mark had explained to him how Zoe had shaped it herself.
Which was pretty damn obvious.
“Okay, guys. I have to go meet with my eye doctor, okay? I’ll be home soon.”
“Bring home Cowboy West!” Noah called. “Keep your eyes!”
“I sure hope so, y’all.” He grinned at that. No one wanted him to take out his eyes. That would be horror movie.
He heard Liam pull up and Mal took his hand to put it on her arm. “Come on. You okay to walk with me?”
“Yeah, but no slippy slidey fally for the preggers woman.”
“I have my stompy boots on. We’re good.” She led him out into the bitter cold, and maybe his eyes would just freeze solid.
That would stop the bleeding.
“Hey, Trey. Rough day, huh?”
“Yeah. Kinda sucks. I need to get to the hospital to meet with my retinal guy, and I need to check on West. Are you okay with driving me?”
Liam chuckled. “Dammit, if only I’d known when I married this old girl that I was going to end up with this rich blind dude…” The soft chuckle actually made him smile. “Get in the truck, I promise to be careful.”
“I know.” He did. He’d let Liam pick up Noah. He so knew.
The ride to the hospital seemed to go pretty quick. He wasn’t sure if he’d dozed or not. He knew he heard the music and the low voices in the front seat. Besides that, he didn’t know anything.
He woke up as they stopped, everything quiet for a second. The only sound in the cab was Ashley McBride’s voice breaking through like a rusty bell, the sound sliding into his soul.
Finally Mal spoke. “Okay. You want me to go check in at the ER with you, or do you want Liam to go with you? One of us can do that, and one of us will go see West.”
“I want to go see West first, and then I’ll go down and check in at the ER for myself.” He knew the doc would call his retinal guy, anyway. It shouldn’t take long.
“Are you sure you don’t want to check in first? It could be a wait and…”
He shook his head at Mal. “Y’all. I need to see West. That’s first. All right?”
“Hey, that’s what you want, that’s what you’re going to get, right, lady?” Liam’s voice was firm.
Mal sighed. “You came out; that’s enough for me.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t want to argue with her.
They headed into the ER, tromping through the snow, the wind making the snowflakes seem sharp-edged.
He told the little lady at the desk he was there to see West, and they took him back, his hand on Mal’s elbow.
He managed to get settled in a chair, Mal beside him before West cleared his throat. “Babe…”
“That’s me. How’s the head? Everything all right?” West had to be okay. Someone had to be.
“Yeah. I bumped it pretty good. They gave me some stuff for nausea, but basically there’s no bleeding, there’s no swelling. I might have some bruises. How about you?”
“I’m fine.” He felt Mal squeeze his arm, but she didn’t argue with him any, so that was good.
“That’s bullshit, but we’ll talk about it later.” West knew. He always knew.
Trey tried for a smile, but it wouldn’t come. “I need to get checked out, is all.”
Silence reigned for a moment, then West’s callused hand landed on his. “You do. That was a hell of an impact, honey.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I—” He sighed. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. So he shouldn’t apologize. That would just piss off West. Cows got out, and sometimes they appeared way too quickly on an icy road, even when the driver was doing everything right.
“I’m glad you’re going to make it. Are they gonna let you come home tonight? The kids still want their family meeting, and you know, we gotta talk about Thanksgiving.”
“I’m totally getting out of here. They just had to put a couple of stitches in my hand; wasn’t anything big. I’m going to have some amazing bruises.” West chuckled low in his throat. “You gotta get you checked out next.”
“Yeah, it’s no big. The insurance should cover both of us and the truck, even if no one else does.”
“I just want them to fix that fence before someone else gets hurt. My poor truck.”
“You’ll get a new one. The kids want a red one, just so that you know.”
“Red, huh? Not blue?”
He shook his head. “Noah said red. Zoe made pretzels.”
Mal cracked up. “Oh, good Lord. You should see these things. They’re like alien pretzels.”
“No shit? I’ll have to get some. I think a pretzel might actually sit on my belly. I lost all of everything that was in it. So macho.”
Mal snorted. “I tell you what head injuries will do it to you every time. You remember when I was training that big old stallion? Trey, you remember Shark Bait?”
The temptation to go “Ooh-ha-ha” was huge. “I do. You went ass over tea kettle and ended up in the hospital for four days. You bled so much I was sure you were dying.”
“Yeah, man, I didn’t think I was ever going to keep anything down, and I have this wicked scar right down the back of my head. No wonder I wear my hair long, huh?” Mal’s laugh filled the room, so bright, like the way orange juice tasted on the back of your throat.
“Yeah, at least I could see some then. I was doing good. I was at home from college when you did that…” And he’d been damn near frozen with fear.
“Yeah, poor Trey grabbed me up off the ground and rode my ass home laying over the back of his horse—was it Peaches?”
“Red.” He’d panicked, throwing her up on the back of the big quarter horse and riding her in, as fast as he’d dared.
“He’s my hero.”
“Yeah, except that I probably should have left you there and run home and just got somebody to call 911. I probably did more damage draping your ass over the horse.”
“Well, there is that, but we just won’t bring that up.”
He sighed. “I guess I better go let them check me out and then, as soon as we’re both done, we’ll go home. If you get done before I do, and I’m gonna be here a bit, I’ll just have them take you home and I’ll figure something out.”
“Bullshit, you will,” Mal and West spoke together.
He rolled his eyes. Fuckers.
He just needed to do this, and he’d be able to go home where he belonged.