A Family For Christmas

At least until he knew his options. Maybe longer. Maybe he wasn’t ever going back...

Simon’s stick hit something on the ground in front of him. Something solid...and yet not hard like a rock. Playing a game with himself, he stared in the general direction of the object, tapping around it to fill in the blanks. It was long. More than five feet. When he pushed it, it had some give, but didn’t really move. A fallen tree perhaps? What kind of tree?

He continued to follow the mass. Didn’t find obvious branches. Apparently a grown man, a surgeon, no less, could be entertained by a fallen tree.

“Now, isn’t that one for the books?”

What books he wasn’t sure. He was tempted to take off his patch—to take the easy way out and see what was blocking his path. Or just step over it. But he wasn’t letting his right eye off that easy. If he’d given up on his young patients as easily as he seemed to want to give up these days, there would be far fewer homes filled with laughter in the Los Angeles valley.

Give him a chest cavity and he could delineate every nerve, vein and muscle. But trees? In Nevada? He knew next to nothing about them. So he thought about fruit. Oranges grew in Nevada. But they’d still be at the little green ball stage this early in the fall. And there were no orange trees in his new yard. Not like a tree with oranges actually growing on it would be fallen over on the ground. More likely it was some kind of cactus.

How far was he from the cabin?

He’d been out about an hour. Didn’t think he’d turned enough to be headed back. But at his pace, even walking straight, he wouldn’t have gone that far.

He came to one end of whatever was blocking the path.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, as though solving some great conundrum. In his current world, this was one. A fact that might bother him later, when darkness set in and he looked back over his day. At the moment, he was occupied.

Challenging his brain.

He took a small step forward. His walking tool gave suddenly. Stumbling, Simon let go of the stick. The log had to be rotted, which meant any number of things could be living in it. Stepping back, he straightened, instinctively yanking off the eye patch. The first thing he saw was his cabin fifty yards away.

“Damn.” He was right back where he’d started.

And then he looked down.

“Holy shit.” He hadn’t been identifying a log.

He’d prodded a body. A body! Feminine. A hooded, long-sleeved sweater covered the top half of her.

He noticed the jeans, the sweater. The feminine curve of hips. But only briefly. Cursorily. His trained good eye had already seen the moving rib cage, indicating life, as he dropped down to the woman lying on her stomach. Her dark hair was long, tangled. Dirty.

And she hadn’t said a word.

Of their own accord, his fingers reached for her pulse, registering a steady, strong beat. Yet she made no sound. No reaction to being touched.

She was sweating, though. In a thick sweater, exposed to the sun, so sweat by itself wasn’t alarming.

“What the hell...”

He needed to see her face, some age identifier, to look at her eyes, her pupils, her lips, but he didn’t dare move her. Not until he knew that her neck was okay...

Already feeling for breaks, he gave an inward shudder as he pictured his idiot self, prodding this poor person with his walking stick.

What had he been thinking?

Finding no obvious breaks, he leaned down, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I’m going to roll you over now,” he said. “I’m a doctor and I’m here to help you.”

She appeared comatose, but many could hear while in that state.

Lying beside her, he used himself to support her entire body, and turned with her. Then, sliding aside, he sat up. She had major maxillofacial trauma. Severe facial edema. Her face was badly bruised, so swollen he couldn’t make out her normal features, with open lacerations on the right cheek and chin. Medical terms came to him, but as a doctor of children who had to remember he was speaking to children even in tense or emergency situations, he’d begun translating in his thoughts as well as his words. Her lips were oddly healthy looking, considering the rest of her face, with no cuts or signs of bleeding. He lifted her lids enough to note pupil activity. Gums had good color. No immediate sign of oxygen deprivation.

Breathing was shallow. Skin warm, but not hot.

Lifting up her sweater, he made a cursory check of her torso, finding nothing unusual.

He couldn’t be sure about internal injuries. What he was sure about was getting her inside. Assessing more thoroughly. Doing what he could in the moment.

And then, as loath as he was to expose himself to anyone, anywhere—he was going to have to call for an ambulance to come get her.

Either that or pray that she regained consciousness and could tell him who to call on her behalf.

CHAPTER TWO (#uc61905c8-f0b6-58b4-b7cb-4fe4103705c8)

HIS ARMS WERE GENTLE. Lying inert, as much by instinct and habit as anything else, Cara remained limp as she awoke to feel him lifting her. He settled her against his body.

Her head shrieked with pain. Please God, let him be in a good mood.

Shawn was kind to her, caring, when he wasn’t tense.

He’d changed his shirt. The day before he’d had on the denim one over his T-shirt, but this one was softer. Must be the blue flannel she’d bought him for his birthday...

The fact that he was carrying her so carefully boded well. Her head fell sideways, settling against his chest and she almost drifted out again.

But the smell. It was unfamiliar.

Shawn didn’t wear aftershave. Or cologne. But they’d been on the run. Maybe he’d stolen a bar of soap from someplace?

He smelled like more than just different toiletries. Nothing that she recognized. Why such a small detail was keeping her conscious, she didn’t know. She kept trying to place the scent.

She liked it.

A lot.

It reminded her of something. She had no idea what. But it felt...safe.

He felt safe.

So maybe he was in a good mood. Maybe she’d be okay for a while. At least long enough to sleep off the headache so she could figure out what she was going to do...

* * *

“OKAY, MY DEAR, let’s get you more comfortable so I can get a look at you.” Simon spoke aloud more out of habit than because he expected a response.

The reaction of the woman in his arms was an instantaneous stiffening. She didn’t fight him as he carried her through the cabin’s main room to the one bedroom. Didn’t say a word. She could still be unconscious, but she was coming back to him.

So he kept talking.