Chapter 17
Macey’s quiet for the first half of the drive down to San Antonio as she texts back and forth with her sister.
“I feel terrible that Mama couldn’t reach me,” she says. “My phone died, and I didn’t even know it.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Mine died, too.”
She tugs at the cord currently charging her phone in my truck.
“I’m just not usually so irresponsible.”
“You’re never irresponsible,” I tell her. “If everyone was as responsible as you are, we’d all have a lot less to worry about.”
The hospital lobby is nearly empty when we arrive. We check in and make our way up to ICU.
Freedom, Ben, and Mrs. Henwood are sitting in the waiting area.
The three of them look up as we walk into the room. They all immediately stand and rush Macey.
“Mace, I’m so scared!”
“Daddy’s such an idiot—I know he didn’t realize where he was, but still— a bull?”
“Macey, the mayor’s going to shut down the saloon for sure now! However will we pay these medical bills?”
Macey spends the next few minutes trying to get only one of them to talk at a time.
She promises her mother that she’ll fix it. She’ll run The Cowherd while her father’s indisposed just like she always does; she’ll make sure the mayor doesn’t take away the liquor license, and she’ll figure out a way to convince her father to go to rehab. Again.
Riley and Wink show up, and Mrs. Henwood starts up with her concerns all over again.
I feel helpless as I stand by Macey’s side and listen to her make promises she should never have to make.
To save her family yet again from the poison that controls her father.
Family is everything to Macey. It always was, and it always will be.
But the Henwood house is never without drama.
And trying to snuff out the constant crises is a daily battle for her.
“Why don’t we all sit down?” I finally suggest. “Can I get anyone some coffee?”
Macey offers to come with me to help carry the cups.
As the two of us walk away, I ruffle her hair, something she claims to hate but I know has always soothed her.
She slaps at my hand, but her shoulders relax.
“Things will settle.” I say the one true thing I can. “Somehow, they’ll settle. They always do.”
“I know.”
After what feels like forever, the doctor comes into the waiting room. When Mrs. Henwood freezes in fear, Macey stands and goes up to the doctor. I follow, and she takes my hand as we wait for the news.
“Benjamin Henwood is stable,” the doctor says with a quick smile. “This is good news.”
Macey squeezes my hand, and I feel some of the tension leave her body.
“However, he needs to stay here for the rest of the night. We had to pump his stomach and treat him for a concussion and four broken ribs. He’s still out, and he’s going to be in a lot of pain when he wakes up.
He’s very, very lucky. I cannot stress that enough.
That bull could have done a lot worse damage. ”
As Mrs. Henwood cries out with relief and then starts peppering the doctor with questions, Macey turns toward me.
“As grateful as I am, and as much as I wish his physical health was all I had to worry about,” she murmurs to me. “Things aren’t going to get any easier.”
No one knows that better than I do.
Time at the hospital passes in weird chunks.
Macey leaves the room for a little while, and I see her in the hallway, swiping her phone before she returns to my side.
I don’t ask her what that was about, and she doesn’t offer.
I have a feeling it’s about her family’s business, but I don’t want to press when she’s got enough people pulling at her.
Eventually, she falls asleep on my shoulder. Her siblings and mother have all gone home. But Macey stays because she’s the rock of her family, and they never make a single decision without her.
I drift off myself, and when I wake, my dad’s standing in front of me.
Cowboy hat in hand, dark hair that’s graying at the temples, and blue eyes that mask the hell he’s been through, my father is a cowboy to his core.
Hard on the edges, hates to be penned in, especially by emotions, and he learned ways to numb rather than feel.
“I feel bad about the bull,” he says in his typical cut-to-the-chase style.
“Not your fault,” I say. “Obviously, Mr. Henwood was inebriated and not thinking straight.”
He nods, and we lapse into our usual awkward silence.
I think maybe he’s going to lash out at me for skipping work today, but he takes a long look at Macey sleeping on my shoulder.
Then, he puts his weathered hand on my other shoulder and says in a low voice, “How’s Benjamin doing?”
“He’s stable. Should be free to go day after tomorrow.”
There’s a long pause where neither of us states the obvious.
Finally, my dad asks, “What are they going to do?”
I look down at Macey to make sure she’s really asleep before I look up at him. “Stage another intervention.”
He and I both know what that’s like.
We’ve lived through it too—he as the addict and me as the kid who just wanted his father to be sober.
My dad’s one of the lucky ones.
He made it out.
Nine years and counting.
Macey’s daddy hasn’t escaped his hell. Not yet.
“Take tomorrow off, too,” my dad says.
I jerk my head up. His eyes are on Macey, and they’re…soft. For Roy Wild, the man who won’t listen to a word I say when I tell him I want to paint and not run the ranch, this is a moment. A moment I have no fucking clue what to do with.
“Take care of her.” His voice is gruffer than usual.
He nods at me, and then he’s gone.
I watch him disappear around the corner of the ICU. And I decide that, for tonight, I’m going to do just that.