Chapter 10 Elise
Shambles wasn’t blinking. That was what worried Elise the most.
“Come on, girl,” she murmured, resting her forearms on the top rail of the pen. The barn smelled like hay and animals and the faint metallic tang of the heat lamps. “You’re supposed to be rehearsing for your big debut, not staring into space like a tragic poet.”
The ewe stood with her head lowered, jaw making slow, distracted chews. The left eye, the good one, tracked Elise’s voice. The right eye…didn’t. The cloudy, angry-looking globe had always been unsettling, but ever since the biopsy, it felt like a countdown clock.
She reached through the rail and scratched the rough wool just behind the ewe’s ear. “I got your results,” she whispered. “It’s exactly what that wonderful Dr. Reynolds thought.”
Carcinoma. No more pretending it could be some weird irritation that would clear up with ointment and optimism.
“You are officially a medical case, my darling.”
Shambles shifted her weight with a small snort, looking patently exhausted. Some of the other animals in the barn played and chewed on hay, but Shambles seemed dull around the edges, like someone had turned down her brightness.
Elise checked the time on her phone. Wade would be here any minute. They’d talked that morning—the first time she’d called him since he’d been here.
But not the first time they’d talked. The afternoon he left, they’d started—and kept—a running text conversation.
He’d been waking her up with, “Good morning, cowgirl,” and the exchange continued on and off during the day and ended late at night.
They shared funny memes, told each other about their days, and kept a running chat that neither one seemed to want to end.
He also called her every evening, ostensibly to check on Shambles, and made a plan for him to come back after the biopsy results were in.
They hoped to celebrate, but…not this time.
She didn’t like the lab report, but she sure did like Wade’s instant reaction—he dropped plans he’d had with his uncle to make the hour-plus drive from Park City to Eagle Mountain to do what he could for Shambles.
She blew out a breath and nudged the sheep’s muzzle.
“Would he come if you weren’t sick?” she asked the animal in a breathy whisper.
“Maybe. Probably. Who knows? I can’t…” She leaned in to the sheep’s curly fur.
“I can’t let my heart go there, Sham. I have to guard it.
You understand that, right? I mean, I’m a girl in a wheelchair and he’s… an unattainable dream.”
She could only get hurt or disappointed, right? Yes, he’d go back to Alabama after the holidays, and this would have been a nice interlude and maybe she’d get her first kiss, but she couldn’t…
Then she remembered the look on his face when he revealed that he had known she was in a wheelchair and came to see her anyway. Every time she thought about that, she clung to hope.
A latch clinked near the front of the barn.
Her heart jumped at the same time her hands tightened on the wheel rims, pushing herself back to see who’d come in. She caught his silhouette in the barn door—tall, broad, masculine, delicious, and, oh, man—he was wearing that cowboy hat.
Not fair!
“Hey, there,” Wade’s voice called, easy and warm. “How’s my girl?”
Her heart stuttered. “She’s in pain, I think, but bearing up well.”
He strode down the aisle of the barn, his face coming more in view with each step. He wore a pale blue denim shirt and jeans, the dark puffer vest, and that black hat that sent butterflies into flight from her throat to her belly.
When he reached her, he tipped back his hat, leaned down, and kissed her hair. “I meant the two-legged girl.”
She looked up at him and had to swallow the quip that rose—“two legs that don’t work”—because that was her old coping mechanism when attention was on her or her disability. She would always make a joke, mostly because it put other people at ease when they didn’t know what to say.
But nothing needed to be said or done to put Wade Reynolds at ease. His steady demeanor was just another ridiculously attractive thing about him.
“Better now,” she admitted with a soft laugh. “This isn’t something I relish handling on my own and this place is a ghost town due to winter break.”
“You’re definitely not on your own,” he assured her. “And neither is Miss Shambles.” He turned and leaned against the half door of her pen, looking down at the sheep. “Heard you got some bad news, kiddo.”
The way he spoke to the animal—like Shambles had a heart, soul, and spirit—knotted something tender in Elise’s chest.
Elise reached into the side pocket of her chair to pull out her tablet to read the lab report.
“It says, “confirmed squamous cell carcinoma in the right eye,’” she read. “The margins on the sample were…not clean. Kudos on an impressive pre-test diagnosis.”
He flicked his gaze from Shambles to her, all business now. “Can I see it? Did they give you a staging report or just the pathology?”
“Just pathology so far. I can pull it up if you want to see the exact wording.” She tapped the screen. “But the bottom line is cancer.” She swallowed. “As you know, Great Basin doesn’t have an oncology department.”
She hated how that last bit came out sounding like a failing on her part, like she should’ve somehow conjured one up.
Wade didn’t look surprised. “It’s a specialty practice and this institute is still growing,” he said, opening the gate and walking into the pen.
He snagged a stool that put him eye to eye with Shambles.
“Some states only have one vet school that has oncology, especially out west where there’s so much emphasis on large animals and livestock.
Most of the time, oncology is just attached to a study for funding. ”
She wheeled in closer to the sheep, splitting her attention between Shambles and the way Wade moved into his examination.
He took off his cowboy hat and got close to Shambles, silent while he did an initial observation of the site.
Elise gave the ewe’s wool a quick stroke.
“I talked to Dr. Hayes—my professor—and she suggested calling in a local oncologist, but the farmer…” She exhaled.
“He was very clear. He can’t afford a specialist. He said he only offered Shambles for the Live Nativity because he thought it would be fun for his grandkids.
He said he didn’t know anything was wrong but he had noticed the eye was cloudy. ”
Wade’s brows pulled together as he studied the sheep. “Did you explain the prognosis without treatment to him?”
“Yes. I told him the eye would get worse. That eventually it could ulcerate, become painful, maybe spread deeper. He asked me if she could see out of it now, and if she was in pain. I had to say not really. Maybe a little.”
“She feels this,” Wade said. “But it’s not debilitating. Not yet, anyway.”
“Well, his owner says Shambles is old, and he just doesn’t have the money, especially right before Christmas.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, which was mortifying. She cleared her throat and focused on some hay on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m not usually this emotional about livestock cases.
I know the realities. I know farmers can’t always…
” Her hands opened helplessly. “I just—he volunteered Shambles for a good cause. And I can’t stand the idea of sending her back like this when there might be something we can do. ”
There was a small pause, then Wade turned to her. “Please don’t ever apologize for caring. It’s one of the most attractive things about you. One of many.”
Her heart rolled around, flipped in the air, then took a dive to the hay-covered floor. “Thank you,” she managed.
“What else did your professor say?” he asked as he pressed his thumb into the skin around the cancerous eye.
“She said if we wanted to pursue treatment, we’d have to run it through the teaching hospital like any other case. Which is closed for the semester, of course.”
“Is there an emergency surgery or OR?”
She nodded. “Yes, but it’s for true emergencies and I’m not sure this counts.”
“To Shambles it does,” he said.
“Of course, there’s an expense involved and the school can’t be responsible without a clear academic reason, and there’s no current study that fits. The owner can’t pay, Great Basin can’t pay, and, technically, it’s not an emergency yet. So it’s kind of…stuck.”
“Unless,” he said, “someone with oncology training is willing to donate their time and the school provides space and tools for the procedure because it’s teaching.”
“Teaching?”
“Well, have you ever seen the excision of an ocular squamous cell carcinoma?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll be learning. And assisting. Surely there’s extra credit for that.”
She hardly dared to breathe. “Are you…offering that?”
“Yes.” The answer was immediate. “If we can get into the emergency OR, the standard treatment is debulking with adjunct cryotherapy. It’s not a complicated surgery, I promise.
We’ll just need the space, some equipment, light medication.
We’ll reduce the tumor load, clear her vision, lower the chance of recurrence, and get it done in an hour.
The bulk of the expense is the specialist vet and… ”
“And I’m looking at him.”
“And I don’t cost a thing.” He tapped her nose playfully. “But rest assured because I got an A in my semester of ophthalmology and was number one in my soft tissue surgery class. Does that make you feel more confident in me?”
It made her feel dizzy with attraction. “I trust you,” she said simply.
His smile flashed, quick and proud. “Good. Then how do we make it happen?”
“I’ll plead the case to Dr. Choi, who is running the Emergency OR and Trauma Center over the holidays.”
“Can you do that now?”
She nodded. “But we should remember that most of the faculty is out of town, and elective procedures are limited.”