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“Becka,” the woman asked. “Can he still sign the E.R. papers? Or do we need to wait on Mr. Garrett to wake up?”
“Garrett? Jett Garrett?” Memory flooding back, Becka turned toward the unconscious patient. “I remember him.”
No wonder he’d looked familiar. He and her husband had played some rodeos together when she and Chris first started dating five years ago. Even Chris, as fearless as he was, marveled at Jett’s reckless daredevil attitude.
“He’s Colt Garrett’s little brother. The wild and crazy one.” The man was renowned for his careless, throw-caution-to-the-wind antics.
Jackson grinned. “One and the same. He and Colt own the Garrett Ranch outside of town. You know them?”
Reluctant to reveal just how she remembered Jett, Becka settled for the easy answer. “In a town of 6500 people, everyone knows everyone else, at least by name. Colt’s wife, Kati, takes care of my son in her day care.”
“‘Do, Lord, oh, do, Lord…’” Jett’s head wobbled back and forth on the pillow as he started singing in that deep baritone again. “‘Where the buffalo roam and the bulls and blood and dust and mud…’”
His partner laughed out loud.
“You gotta admit, ma’am, he’s pretty funny.”
Becka suppressed a smile. “Does he always sing—and I use the word loosely—when he’s injured?”
“Sings in his sleep, too. But never like this.”
Becka ran experienced fingers through the dark wavy hair covering Jett’s skull, searching for bumps or wounds. Finding none, she made the notation on the chart and reached for the telephone hanging on the wall next to the door. After a moment she hung up and turned toward the two men.
“Dr. Clayton will be here in a few minutes, but he said to go ahead and admit Jett for observation. Can’t be too careful with a concussion—which he clearly has.”
“Nope.” Jett sat up as quickly as a jack-in-the-box, steadied himself with a hand on either side of the table, and shook his head. After two shakes his eyes crossed. “I appreciate the invite, but I can’t stay.”
Becka saw what he was about to do, but couldn’t move fast enough to stop him from pushing off the table. He crumpled like a paper sack. The only thing that kept him from slamming onto the hard tile was the fast reflexes of his oversize friend.
“Whoa, there, partner.” Jackson gripped his arms and hoisted up as Becka rushed to roll a wheelchair beneath him. “I think you better do what this little nurse tells you to.”
Head lolling crazily, Jett gripped it with both hands and steadied the wobbling. “Nope, sorry, can’t do it. I promised Melissa…”
For once in her career Becka was actually glad to see a patient pass out. Jett and his women were legend, and she really didn’t care to hear about the latest flame.
While lifting his feet onto the wheelchair’s foot support, she saw what she’d missed before.
“Good grief.” Dropping to her knees beside the chair, she yanked a pair of bandage scissors from her uniform pocket.
“What?” Jackson squatted beside her.
“No wonder he passed out when his feet touched the floor.”
Quickly cutting Jett’s jean leg up the inner seam, she exposed the dark-muscled knee and thigh. The notion flickered through her head that he would be this rich tan color all over his body, a notion she squelched instantly. Jett needed her expertise, not her admiration, though heaven knew it was hard not to admire such an athletic, blatantly masculine body. Her husband’s body had been like this, all hard-cut muscle without an ounce of fat.
But even Chris’s perfect, athlete’s physique hadn’t been strong enough to stand up against the damage she’d unwittingly done it.
The familiar pain of guilt and loss twisted in her stomach. She glued her attention to Jett’s injury. She could help Jett. She couldn’t do a thing to help Chris. Not now. Not even then.
To her dismay, Jett’s knee looked more like a softball than a body part. Gently running expert fingers over the hot, misshapen flesh, Becka chastised herself for missing so obvious an injury. She hadn’t handled anything right today. Between the worry over her car, the nagging fear for her son’s safety, and these unwanted reminders of her dead husband, she wasn’t thinking straight at all.
“Oh, man,” Jackson murmured. “The bull must have stepped on him.”
“This had to hurt. Didn’t he complain?”
Jackson shrugged. “Cowboys believe if you’re still breathin’ you ain’t hurt.”
“Then why’d you bring him to the E.R.?”
A grin split the big man’s face. “I didn’t want him to quit breathin’.”
Becka shot him an exasperated look.
“The doctor will have to X-ray him and probably do a scan to say for certain, but I’ve seen this kind of injury before. He won’t ride on this knee for a while.”
“Jett won’t like that. He’s only a few rodeos away from the big show.”
“Excuse me?”
“Vegas. Jett’s never made it to the National Finals, but he has a shot this year. A few more rodeos, a few more points, and he’s eligible.”
Becka gave him a doubtful twitch of one eyebrow. “I don’t like to rain on anyone’s parade….”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’m afraid it could be.”
They both stared at the unconscious patient. One with sympathetic eyes. The other with thoughts that the idiot would be better off in traction than to risk his life on the back of a Brahma bull.
Jett awakened that evening with the mother of all headaches. Turning only his eyes because his brain undulated like the curves of a belly dancer, he spotted an overhead television, a bedside table and a wheelchair. He eased his eyelids down again, waited two beats and tried again. He could not be where he thought he was.
“A hospital?” He ran a thick tongue over dry lips. His mouth tasted like the floor of a rodeo arena.
From the corner Jackson unwound his big body from a miserable-looking plastic chair. “You awake?”
“Must be talking in my sleep. I can’t be in a hospital.”
“Rattlesnake Municipal. At least for tonight.”
A little quiver of relief shuddered through him. He was only here for the night. He must not be hurt too badly. Tomorrow he and Jacks would be back on the road. With a win in Odessa tomorrow night, he’d be one rodeo closer to the NFR.
“Did you bring me in here?”
“Yep. But Colt will be back in the morning to take you to Amarillo.”
“Colt?” Jett frowned. What did his brother have to do with anything? “Amarillo?” Jackson was talking in riddles. Maybe he’d been the one to get his head dinged. “We’re riding in Odessa tomorrow night, not Amarillo.”
The brown door swished open and the tiniest redheaded nurse Jett could imagine whipped into the room. If she hadn’t been wearing pink scrubs and a name badge that said, B. Washburn, RN, Jett would have sworn she was a little kid.
She bent over his knee, turning her backside in his direction.
Nope, he thought with an appreciative grin. This one’s definitely not a kid. He was in the midst of a rather nice perusal of her other petite but womanly assets when she laid an ice pack against his leg.
Pain, violent enough to be rated F5 in the tornado world, shot from his kneecap to his head and rattled around inside his brain long enough to make him forget his name.
He clamped down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his big mouth from squealing like a stuck hog. He’d had pain before, didn’t really even mind pain that much since it was an expected part of his job, but this wasn’t regular pain. This was hot-metal-in-the-eye pain. Steel-toed-boot-in-the-groin pain. Hold-me-down-and-stomp-my-nose pain.
The little nurse looked up with sympathetic eyes. “Would you like me to ask Dr. Clayton if you can have something for the pain?”
“Pain?” he grunted, sucking in air through his teeth. “I don’t need anything for pain. What I need is my pants.”
She cast a sideways glance at Jackson who looked way too serious. And Jacks was not a serious kind of guy. All of a sudden, Jett had a real bad feeling.
“Did something terrible happen to my pants?”
Jackson laughed. “Yeah. She cut ’em off.”
“She did?” The dynamite blast in his leg had subsided a little. He managed a lascivious grin in the nurse’s direction. “And what did she do to me while I was helpless and naked?”
B. Washburn, RN, never even blushed. Guys must come on to someone as cute as she was all the time.
Was that what he was doing? Coming on to her?
Nah. He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted right now with the NFR within reach. But she was cute.
Maybe later.
“So how am I going to get out of here without any pants?”
A cute little dip formed between Nurse Washburn’s eyes. “Don’t you remember talking to Dr. Clayton?”
That bad feeling came back, stronger this time. He cast a glance toward Jackson, who once more wore a troubled expression.
“’Fraid not. What’s up?”
“We’re sending you to Amarillo tomorrow to an orthopedic surgeon.”
“For a headache?” He refused to think about that teensy-weensy twinge in his knee.
“At the very least, you have a severed ACL that will require surgery.”
“How bad?” He looked to his partner for reassurance, but Jackson got that hang-dog look again.
Ignoring the incessant school of sharks ripping through his kneecap, he thought he’d better listen to Miss B. Washburn, RN, considering how he didn’t recall ever meeting Dr. Clayton. Or having an MRI for that matter.
What she had to say really put a kink in his good mood. He knew all about tears of the anterior cruciate ligament. Every athlete hated them because they sidelined a guy too long. But from the way B. Washburn, RN, told it, a regular ACL tear didn’t sound so bad. His, on the other hand, was way beyond torn. His knee was, as she so blatantly phrased it, “demolished.”
“So, when can I ride again?” He asked when she finished telling him that not only was his dream in jeopardy, but his career, as well.
“That will be for the orthopod to say after he’s done a scope.”
Orthopod? Was that a doctor from outer space?
He thought better of asking. And to tell the truth, if someone didn’t get the sharks off his leg, he was going to lose his sense of humor.
“But you’ll be off the circuit for at least a couple of months, maybe longer.”
“No way.” He struggled up to his elbows. “Get me some pants, Jacks. I can ride.”
To prove his point, he swung his right leg over the side of the bed, but the left one refused to follow.
B. Washburn, RN, caught him by the calf and pushed him gently, but efficiently back onto the bed. The eyes he’d thought of as honey-colored, now looked muddy with anger.
“Don’t be foolish, Mr. Garrett. It’s bad enough to put yourself in harm’s way by riding bulls, but refusing treatment for severe injury is totally irresponsible. It won’t heal and you won’t ride, maybe ever again if you make it any worse.”
He gazed down in amazement at her slender arms. “Hey, you’re pretty strong for a girl.”
She’d tossed him back onto the bed as easily as Sinsation had tossed him on his head. Dadgum ornery bull. “You must know judo or something.”
“Or something.” She favored him with a cheeky grin that sent a little spiral of interest curling through his belly. Darn if she wasn’t making him think of taking a couple days off to hang around Rattlesnake and find out just what that something was—among other things.
“Man, what’s the world coming to? I get stomped by a bull and body-slammed by a girl all in one day.” Moving had stirred the knee-eating sharks, and he was starting to feel grouchy again. “Are you gonna get my pants or do I have to call 911 and report a theft, as well as a kidnapping?”
B. Washburn, RN, pushed the phone toward him. He scowled at her. She stared back with those honey-colored eyes, as solemn and sympathetic as an undertaker. The real bad feeling settled in to stay. He got the unmistakable impression that he was about to take an unplanned vacation to Amarillo.
Chapter Two
Near the end of her shift Becka slid into a chair at the nurses’ desk to make final notations on the patients’ charts. As she leafed through Jett Garrett’s, she frowned.
Rolling her chair away from the desk, she called to the nurse standing inside the medication room directly behind her. “Mindy.”
“Yeah?” A bubbly blond head peeked around the door.
“Has Mr. Garrett in 14B had anything at all for pain since admission?”
“I haven’t given him anything. Did you give him something in the E.R.?”
Becka worried her bottom lip and looked through the chart once more. “No.”
“Those rodeo cowboys are so tough.”
Becka rolled her eyes. Tough or not, the man had to hurt, and there was no way he could sleep with a roaring headache and a throbbing knee. As uncomfortable as she was around a man as reckless as Jett, tonight he was her responsibility and, bull rider or not, she would never shirk her duty. Neatly replacing the chart, she stashed the ink pen in the pocket of her scrubs and headed for room 14B. On the way she made up a new ice pack for his knee.
As she approached the room she heard the sounds of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and didn’t even try to stop the grin that formed on her lips. Her son, Dylan, loved that song and she’d tickled her fingers up his four-year-old arm a thousand times or more. Besides, Jett’s inappropriate singing amused her.
Upon entering the room, Becka noticed at once that the cowboy was in a world of hurt: eyes squeezed a little too tight for sleep; lines of stress creasing his richly tanned forehead and bracketing the handsome mouth. The singing, no doubt, was to take his mind off the pain.
“‘Down came the rain,’” he sang through gritted teeth.
