Peace River (Rockland Ranch Series) (21 page)

             
He said that Slade would be made whole and well again and that his Father in Heaven loved him and was mindful of his needs.

             
Isabel didn’t understand it all, but she didn’t need to.  The warm sweet peace that filled her was enough. 

             
They started to wheel him away almost before Rossen finished his prayer, and Isabel buried herself in Rossen’s embrace.  He just held her, his head resting against hers as they prayed silently for the safety of their friend.

              He was in surgery for less than two hours, but it seemed like forever.  She and Rossen had finally gone to a waiting room near the OR and recovery room, and tried to settle in to wait.  Treyne and Cooper brought them a change of clothing, then took Joey and the horses and trailer and went home to the ranch. Isabel felt like she’d aged years by the time the surgeon finally came back.

             
What he had to tell them scared her worse than ever.  Slade had suffered a ruptured liver and had narrowly missed bleeding to death tonight.  Only the fact that he’d been so close to a hospital had saved him.  Multiple other organs were badly bruised, and internally and externally he was a mess.

             
He had several other injuries, but none were life threatening.  They’d set his shoulder and collarbone and he would be wearing a brace for awhile, but all in all he’d been lucky.  He had a long road ahead but he would be fine, just as Rossen had promised.

              The longest night of her life passed and morning had come and gone.  Slade had been taken to the ICU for four hours in the night until they’d been able to stabilize him with several units of blood.  He was now in a regular room hooked up to what seemed a myriad of machines and tubes.  He was scarcely darker than the white sheets and was heavily sedated.  She and Rossen had struggled through the night together, and now dozed intermittently in chairs in his room.  She felt like she had sand in her eyes. 

             
Mid-afternoon Naomi showed up and was like a breath of hope.  Her calm reassurances and tranquil faith soothed Isabel’s troubled heart, and she was finally able to really fall asleep.  Rossen left Slade in his mom’s capable hands and went to the cafeteria for a quick bite.

                                                        ****

              Slade knew there was someone in the room, but he was much too tired to open his eyes to see them.  Whoever it was, he knew that everything was okay from their peaceful calm.  He realized someone was holding his hand and went back to sleep.

             
Sometime later when he finally did open his eyes, he saw Naomi Rockland sitting beside his bed.  She held his hand and patted it gently as he woke up. 

             
“Good morning.”  Her voice was low and gentle as she smiled at him.  “Sleep well?” 
Only the Rocklands could tease him at a time like this.

             
“Actually, no.  Whatever they’ve given me gives me strange dreams.”  He gave her a tired smile

             
He noticed Isabel asleep in the chair.  “Has she been there all night?”

             
“And all day.  She’s been beside your bed whenever they'd let her.  In the ICU she could only come in every half hour, so she waited in the waiting room between.”

             
Tiredly, he admitted, “She tried to get me to wear my flack jacket last night.”  There was infinite regret in his voice. 

Naomi winced.
  “You might be in a lot of trouble once you’re better.”

             
“No.”  He barely shook his head.  “She loves me unconditionally.”  Somehow as he said it, he knew it was true.  

             
“Is that a good thing?”  He could hear the hope and love in Naomi’s voice

             
His voice was husky as he answered, “Yeah, it‘s a good thing.  A really good thing.”  She squeezed his hand and he closed his eyes and drifted off again.

                                                        ****

              When Isabel awoke in the early evening, all was quiet.  She felt much better.  She sat up, running her fingers through the tangles in her hair.  Looking at Slade, she realized his eyes were open and following her every move.

             
He slowly reached across for her with his good arm and she moved to his side.  They just sat for a moment looking at each other.  Finally, she spoke, “If you had died on me, I’d have been really ticked.”  He gave her a tired smile and she gently kissed it.

             
She said, “They think it might take awhile, but you’re going to be okay.”  She cupped his face with her hand.  After a minute, she lowered her forehead to his good shoulder and whispered, “I was scared.” 

             
He awkwardly stroked her hair.  “I was, too.  I’d finally figured out what I really wanted and almost messed it up.  I love you, Isabel.”  She raised her head again, searching his eyes.

             
“You’d better be careful what you say when you’re on narcotics.” She smiled and sat up, brushing the hair back from his forehead.  “How do you feel?”

             
“Like I’ve been crushed by an angry bull and then drugged.”  

             
She studied his face and scanned his bandaged body and grinned.  “That’s about how you look.” 

             
His abdomen was bandaged all the way around, and his left shoulder and lower neck were tightly taped.  He wore a brace that looped around the front of both shoulders and under his arms and behind his neck and back.  There was heavy bruising visible in multiple places, and she could only imagine what was under the tape and on his back and side, where the bull had hit him. Just thinking about it made her shudder.

             
She wished there were something she could do to help.  “Tell me what I can do for you.  What do you need?”  She could tell he was in pain and still needed to sleep. 

             
He gave her a weak smile.  “Time to heal.  The nurse just gave me pain medication, and other than to see your pretty face, there’s not a thing I need.”  She sat beside him, and he drifted back to sleep.  She leaned her head against his bed and was dozing again when Rossen and Naomi returned.

****
 

Bo and Joey had told Naomi how nervous Isabel had been at the rodeo.  She wondered if Isabel was that way every time. 

Rossen
seemed to read her mind and said, “She’s held up well considering what she saw that first night.  These last several rodeos she’s been a trooper as far as I know.  We’re never with her when he rides bulls because I’m helping at the chute, but I think she’s been okay.

             
“I can’t imagine what went through her head last night.” 

             
Naomi stayed overnight and when Slade seemed to be out of the woods the next day, she and Rossen started to plan out the next few days and weeks.  The doctors wanted him to stay hospitalized for another three or four days and then he needed to recuperate for at least several weeks.  For the first little while he would need a lot of care.  He had a six inch incision in his stomach and internally he was still terribly fragile and was not to do anything but lie around for at least ten days.  Then it would be weeks before he could do anything even mildly strenuous.  

             
With Slade’s input, they decided to take him home to the Rockland Ranch, and Isabel and Naomi would help him as long as he needed them.  When he was a little stronger, Rossen would take Sean, who had offered to take a college semester off, and head back out on the road to try to salvage their run at the NFR.  They would play it by ear as to whether Slade would really be up to that, even though it was still more than four months away. 

             
Slade was incredibly weak and tired.  Everything he owned hurt when he tried to move.  So far about all he had been up to was occasionally raising and lowering the head of his hospital bed. 

             
Isabel was always there beside his bed when he awoke, always attentive to his needs.  He wondered if she ever ate or slept

             
Even though it’d been more than two days since his surgery, they hadn’t let him eat and he hadn’t even missed it.  He was used to being so physically strong and independent, and it was proof of what rough shape he was in that he was willing to just rest and let the people around him fuss.  Now he was stiff, not only from his injuries but also from just laying there.  He knew it, but was unable to move much to ease the stiffness because of the pain.  Even the physical therapist hadn‘t helped much.  Slade felt like one big bruise.  The medication helped the pain, but often left him in such a haze that the only thing he really knew for sure was that Isabel was always at his side.  It was incredibly sweet to have her near. 

                                                        ****

              Isabel was still there.  She watched over him and prayed, and he knew it was hard for her to see him so badly hurt.  Slowly and gradually he improved, and on the morning of the fifth day he felt like he had turned a corner.  He was finally hungry and wanted to stand up and try walking around.

             
With the help of the physical therapist he moved to the edge of his bed.  He was light-headed and they had him just sit there for several minutes, then lie back down.  

It wa
s the first time Isabel saw his back and he heard her gasp.  When he looked around, there were tears in her eyes and he tiredly asked, “What?” 

She shook her head and then whispered, “Almost your whole back is bruised.”

With a weak smile, he said, “I know, honey.  But don’t worry.  My heart’s strong as ever.”

All she did was close her eyes and swallow hard.

              The next day they removed some of the taping from his dislocated shoulder and he was backing off on the pain pills, so he was much more alert.  Sometimes she caught him quietly watching her and he knew she wondered what he was thinking. He hoped she trusted the things he’d said when he was sedated. 

             
That afternoon he finally stood up and, although he felt ridiculously weak, he was elated.  He wanted out of this hospital in the worst way.  He wanted real food and more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time.  There were a lot of things he wanted. 

             
For days he’d watched Isabel near his bed and it was incredibly frustrating to be so incapacitated.  Sometimes late at night when he was awake, they talked into the early morning hours.  He’d told her things he never told anyone, not even Rossen, and felt that she’d done the same with him.  Their backgrounds were in some ways opposites, but in many ways they had a lot in common. 

             
She’d asked him about the two bad experiences he’d let keep him from getting baptized and he’d finally told her about his mother.  He knew that somehow she understood how hurt he’d been over the years.  He’d told her more about his father and Chante and she’d cried there in the semi-darkness holding his hand. 

             
His heart had been full when she haltingly admitted she wanted a home and family more than anything else, but was afraid she wouldn’t know how to have one successfully.  He’d come to realize that she'd had more mothering in the couple of times she’d been around Naomi than she’d experienced in most of her life, and she worried she would fail as a mother herself because of that lack. 

             
She was sweet and smart and beautiful, and he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her. 

             
What to do about that was entirely another question.  She was still living in fear of her father, and even though Slade was comfortably well off, his assets paled in comparison to her wealth.  Moreover, he’d never thought about settling down anywhere but home in Wyoming, but her home was far away and very different from his.  Although he’d uproot even from his beloved Wyoming if he had to for her—something he never dreamed he’d consider. 

             
On top of everything else, she was only twenty years old and he wondered if she was even ready to think about the same big decisions he needed to make in his life.  He knew she loved him even though she hadn’t told him so.  She’d proven it over and over, especially in the last few days.  She never put limitations on him and accepted him exactly as he was.  He just wondered how much of that was the fact that she’d needed help so desperately when they came along.  And would she marry him even when she knew she was in love with him, or would she refuse out of some warped sense of protecting him from Judd and his friends? 

             
He thought about all these as he rested on and off.  The pain medicine was still making him have bizarre dreams, and that mixed with his deep thoughts made an awful combination.  He awoke in the night drenched in sweat from dreaming of a hellish bull ride, all tangled with Isabel, the mafia, Judd, and the FBI.  Even Dante and Rossen’s brothers were in there somewhere.