The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming

Sierra printed her own name, as guarantor. She bit her lip when asked about her job. Unemployed? She couldn’t write that.

Travis, watching, took the clip board and pen from her and inserted, Damn good mother.

The tears came again.

Travis got up, with the forms and the clip board and the insurance card, in scribed with the magical name and carried them over to the waiting clerk.

He was halfway back to Sierra when the doctor re appeared.

“Hello, Travis,” he said, but his gaze was on Sierra’s face, and she couldn’t read it, for all the practice she’d had.

“I’m Sierra McKettrick,” she said. The name still felt like a garment that didn’t quite fit, but if it would help Liam in any way, she would use it every chance she got. “My son—”

“He’ll be fine,” the doctor said kindly. His eyes were a faded blue, his features craggy and weathered. “Just the same, I think we ought to send him up to Flag staff to the hospital, at least over night. For observation, you understand. And because they’ve got a reliable power source up there.”

“Is he awake?” Sierra asked anxiously.

“Partially sedated,” replied the doctor, exchanging glances with Travis. “We had to perform an intubation.”

Sierra knew how Liam hated tubes, and how frightened he probably was, sedated or not. “I have to see him,” she said, prepared for an argument.

“Of course” was the immediate and very gentle answer.

Sierra felt Travis’s hand close around hers. She clung, in stead of pulling away, as she would have done with any other virtual stranger.

A few minutes later they were standing on either side of Liam’s bed in one of the treatment rooms. His eyes widened with recognition when he saw Sierra, and he pointed, with one small finger, to the mouth piece of his oxygen tube.

She nodded, blinking hard and trying to smile. Took his hand.

“You have to spend the night in the hospital in Flag staff,” she told him, “but don’t be scared, okay? Because I’m going with you.”

Liam relaxed visibly. Turned his eyes to Travis. Sierra’s heart twisted at the hope she saw in her little boy’s face.

“Me, too,” Travis said hoarsely.

Liam nodded and drifted off to sleep.

The doctor had ordered an ambulance, and Sierra rode with Liam, while Travis followed in the truck.

There was more paper work to do in Flag staff, but Sierra was calmer now. She sat in a chair next to Liam’s bed and filled in the lines.

Travis entered with two cups of vending-machine coffee, just as she was finishing.

“Thank you,” Sierra said, and she wasn’t just talking about the coffee.

“Wranglers like Liam and me,” he replied, watching the boy with a kind of fretful affection, “we stick together when the going gets tough.”

She accepted the paper cup Travis offered and set the ubiquitous clip board aside to take a sip. Travis drew up a second chair.

“Does this happen a lot?” he asked, after a long and remarkably easy silence.

Sierra shook her head. “No, thank God. I don’t know what we would have done without you, Travis.”

“You would have coped,” he said. “Like you’ve been doing for a long time, if my guess is any good. Where’s Liam’s dad, Sierra?”

She swallowed hard, glanced at the boy to make sure he was sleeping. “He died a few days before Liam was born,” she answered.

“You’ve been alone all this time?”

“No,” Sierra said, stiffening a little on the inside, where it didn’t show. Or, at least, she hoped it didn’t. “I had Liam.”

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” Travis said.

Sierra looked away, made herself look back. “I didn’t want to—complicate things. By getting involved with someone, I mean. Liam and I have been just fine on our own.”

Travis merely nodded, and drank more of his coffee.

“Don’t you have to go back to the ranch and feed the horses or something?” Sierra asked.

“Eventually,” Travis answered with a sigh. He glanced around the room again and gave the slightest shudder.

Sierra remembered his younger brother. The wounds must be raw. “I guess you probably hate hospitals,” she said. “Be cause of—” the name came back to her in Eve’s telephone voice “—Brody.”

Travis shook his head. His eyes were bleak. “If he’d gotten this far—to a hospital, I mean—it would have meant there was hope.”

Sierra moved to touch Travis’s hand, but just before she made contact, his cell phone rang. He pulled it from the pocket of his western shirt, flipped open the case. “Travis Reid.”

He listened. Raised his eyebrows. “Hello, Eve. I wouldn’t have thought even your pilot could land in this kind of weather.”

Sierra tensed.

Eve said something, and Travis responded. “I’ll let Sierra explain,” he said, and held out the phone to her.

Sierra swallowed, took it. “Hello, Eve,” she said.

“Where are you?” her mother asked. “I’m at the ranch. It looks as if you’ve been sleeping in the kitchen—”

“We’re in Flag staff, in a hospital,” Sierra told her. Only then did she realize that she and Travis were both wearing the clothes they’d slept in. That she hadn’t combed her hair or even brushed her teeth.

All of a sudden she felt in credibly grubby.

Eve drew in an audible breath. “Oh, my God—Liam?”

“He had a pretty bad asthma attack,” Sierra confirmed. “He’s on a breathing machine, and he has to stay until tomorrow, but he’s okay, Eve.”

“I’ll be up there as soon as I can. Which hospital?”

“Hold on,” Sierra said. “There’s really no need for you to come all this way, especially when the roads are so bad. I’m pretty sure we’ll be home tomorrow—”