Page 32 of Forbidden Cowboy

* * *

New York City looked gray again with both of them gone.

It had been less than two days they’d been here fully, and I promised myself I would bring both of them back for a week, maybe when everything settled down, when Beau got better.When, not,if.

Anna’s words about Beau also echoed in me. She had been so understanding and caring through the whole thing that I had neglected to ask how she was coping with Beau’s hospitalization. He meant a lot to her, and really had been like an uncle to her. He’d even taught her about computers when I, in all my farm boy glory, had failed to. I hoped some time with the other person close to Beau would be good for her.

With a sigh of discontent sitting in my chest like a bowling ball, I got back in my stupidly expensive rental car and drove to a meeting with Archie and Eric Rinaldi.

Chapter Eleven

Sierra

By the time I got back to Gunnison, Beau was already in the post-operative recovery room.

As much as I felt some guilt for not being there in the waiting room for him, it was a relief to arrive and have the surgeon be able to immediately tell me he had pulled through and was recovering well.

The unfortunate side of things was that Beau had taken a few steps backward. Where he had started having occasional responses to external stimuli, like moving his fingers, he had slipped backwards. Apparently, the seizure had been caused by a very, very small bleed in his brain that had gone unnoticed since his first scans, because it had been too small to pick up. Despite having not stepped foot in a church in years, and not really being sure about the existence of any god, I began to pray, because that’s what desperate people do.

“I don’t really know how to pray,” Anna had said to me as we walked to the hospital chapel.

“I don’t know if I’m doing it right,” I admitted. “I’m not really religious or anything.”

“Then why do you pray?”

“Because, at this point, I’m going to ask anyone for help, even if I’m not entirely sure they exist.”

So, Anna nodded, and came with me. I couldn’t deny that having her there was a comfort. She was mature enough to not nag me about being bored, and had stayed by my side and not tried any mischief our entire way back. Instead, she was like a solid little shadow, and when I knelt down in the tiny hospital chapel, she knelt beside me and copied my posture of clasped hands and muttering lips. I didn’t really know what to say, or if there was any particular way I was supposed to speak to any deity that might be above me, so I just thought about how badly I wanted Beau to get better, and whispered the Lord’s prayer that I could only just remember from Sunday School. Once I was done, I stood, and waited for little Anna to finish praying for whatever she had on her mind.

It was strange, to sit in the hospital and acknowledge the fact that it was looking less likely that Beau would wake up. I couldn’t even bear to enter his hospital room, afraid I’d have to deal with the absence of his bed and be faced with the worst possibility. So, we sat outside, and I tapped a nervous leg, and Anna played on a handheld game console, and hours passed.

Three hours passed before I saw them wheeling him down the hall, and as soon as he was in my sights, I was looking for any sign of life from him. They had shaved the part of his head where they had gone in, just a small patch behind his ear. There weren’t many stitches for what I had expected to be a giant surgery. I hoped that meant he’d heal faster.

Somehow, even though he’d been asleep for weeks, Beau looked tired. He was pale, and dark circles had appeared under his eyes. The transporters parked his bed back in its place in his room, and a couple of nurses followed them in to hook his beeping monitors and dripping IVs back into the wall.

As soon as they were gone, I took a seat in that familiar vinyl chair, and for the first time since getting that call, more than ten hours prior, I cried.

I didn’t see Anna come up beside me, but then she was in a chair next to me, and her hand was on my arm. It wasn’t an overwhelming amount of contact, just enough to let me know she was there. When I turned to her, though, and opened my arms, Anna climbed into them like we’d known each other for years, and I held her to me, my hand on the back of her head as she sat in my lap. We both needed comfort in that moment, and I felt tears begin to fall from her eyes onto my shirt.

Anna fell asleep like that, and I couldn’t blame her. It had been a big day for both of us. The nurses wheeled in the same cot I had slept on in the time before I moved in with Wyatt and Anna, and I carried the girl over to the cot. I tried to set her down, but her little fists held onto my shirt stubbornly. I sighed and laid down with her, appreciating the warmth she gave off even in the warm summer night. The lights were mostly off, but my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and everything had taken on the pale tint of the moon outside the window. In the quiet magic of the night, I could almost imagine Beau’s eyes opening, just for a moment. As I thought I saw this, I closed my own eyes, and drifted into a fitful sleep.

* * *

In my dreams, Beau was walking ahead of me. We were both adults, but it was a scene that had repeated hundreds of times over our childhood. I was calling out to him in a small, angry voice to “Wait, Beau! I wanna play too!” and he was determinedly not looking at me. I heard Wyatt calling Beau’s name from behind, and I turned to see the man running. We were in a forest. Huh, I didn’t notice that until I turned to look at Wyatt.

Wyatt ran by me, and although he didn’t take me with him, he made eye contact, and I saw the panic in his eyes. He ran quickly, and into the distance ahead of me, but somehow, he couldn’t catch up to Beau, whose gait stayed calm and sure. I tried to run, but the ground felt like quicksand, and I couldn’t make my feet move.

Then there was a tug on my left hand. I looked down, and Anna was there, but she was younger, with tears running down her face, and a cut on her cheek. Her hair was cut in some choppy bob, and had clearly been done by someone without any care in the world.

“What happened?” I asked, and she just stared for a moment with big, solemn eyes.

“I don’t want to go back to Mommy’s house,” she whispered, and then there was another tug, this time on my right hand.

I looked, and a little boy with bright red hair, skin not as pale as mine, and brown eyes stared up at me. He looked to be the same age as dream-Anna, maybe only four or five.

“Who are you?” I asked, confused.

But, like sometimes happens in dreams, I already had the answer before it fully left my mouth.