Lone Star Baby

“Anything else of note?” Gavin asked, frowning as he checked the lymph nodes.

Carlson was mum.

“He’s had pain,” his wife declared. “I know he has for weeks now. He just won’t admit it.”

“Everyone our age has pain.”

Wanda dabbed her eyes. “I think the cancer has returned.”

Violet hoped that was not the case. She’d become very close to the older couple over the past five years. Too close, she sometimes thought.

“Which was why I asked for you.” Carlson looked pointedly at Violet. “I want you to tell Wanda that’s just not true.”

Violet forced a matter-of-fact smile.

“All this is, is old age and indigestion,” the patient declared stalwartly. “Tell her, Dr. McCabe.”

Violet wished it was that simple. “You know I can’t rule anything out from an oncology perspective until we do a few tests. Which you are about due for, anyway, aren’t you?”

Carlson groaned at the prospect. Defiantly, he attempted to sit up and shook his head. “Now that I’ve celebrated our anniversary here—”

Gavin gave the couple a curious look.

“We met in the ER sixty years ago, fell in love at first sight and married a week later,” Wanda explained. She patted her husband’s hand fondly. “And I have never regretted loving this man for an instant.”

“Nor I you. And now that we’ve commemorated that great day with yet another trip to the hospital, I just want to go home,” Carlson said stubbornly.

“And you will. In a day or so. After we make sure everything is as it should be,” Violet said soothingly.

Briefly, she and Gavin stepped out to consult and then she returned to the exam room. “Dr. Monroe confirms you are in no immediate danger. However, we both think you need more tests. So I’m admitting you on the oncology floor.”

“Thank heaven.” Wanda exhaled in relief.

Carlson scowled in mock aggravation. “Don’t be so anxious to get rid of me!”

“Hey,” Wanda replied, her usual good cheer returning now that her husband was in good hands. “Even I deserve a Carlson-free evening every now and then.” She winked at her beloved. “So stop trying to ruin it for me!”

The couple chuckled in unison. Their verbal one-upmanship continued, to the amusement of the staff.

Grinning, Violet stepped out to the nurses’ station to write the orders.

By the time she had finished, Carlson was already on his way up to a private room. Gavin had been called to stitch up a teenager who had accidentally thrown a baseball through a window, then cut his hand while cleaning up the broken glass.

And that was when one of his sisters, Bridgette, rushed through the emergency entrance.

She and her twin, Bess, were both nurses. But only Bridgette had returned to Laramie to live.

A nurse in the neonatal unit, the lively twenty-four-year-old brunette was usually enviably calm.

Not today.

In paint-splattered clothing, her keys in one hand, cell phone in the other, she strode toward the desk. “Where’s Gavin?”

“With a patient. What’s going on?”

“It’s Nicholas.” Violet knew she was referring to their nineteen-year-old brother. “He was in an accident.”

“Oh, no! Is he hurt?”

“I’m not sure. I got a call they’re bringing him in.”

In the distance, sirens sounded. Bridgette looked around, wild-eyed and teary.

“I’ll get Gavin,” Violet told her.

She grabbed a pair of sterile gloves as she walked through the exam room door. “Want me to finish up?” she said with a look that told Gavin he was needed elsewhere.

“Sure.” He handed off the task to her.

By the time Violet had finished with the stitches, the EMTs were wheeling Nicholas in on a gurney.

If the way he was arguing with the EMTs was any indication, she thought, he wasn’t badly hurt.

“—completely unnecessary.”

“Your pickup rolled and nearly went down a ravine. You’re getting checked out.”

Another ER doc followed the gurney into an exam room. She came out ten minutes later, announcing, “Except for a few bruises, he’s fine.”

“Thank heaven.” Bridgette sighed, rushing in, Gavin beside her.

Seconds later, sounds of arguing could be heard.

Knowing if it continued, other patients would be disturbed, Violet knocked on the door and breezed in. “How’s it going here?”

Nicholas looked at Violet and pointed at his two older siblings. “Tell them I have every right to drop out of college if that’s what I want.”

What?

Gavin gave Violet a look that said “Help me out here...”

She smiled. “Is this really the time and place to have this discussion? Because there are others in the waiting room still needing to be seen. So...”

“Violet’s right.” Bridgette looked at her younger brother. “I’ll drive you home.”

“I’ll take care of the paperwork,” Gavin said.

“Are you okay?” Violet asked gently after his two siblings had left.