LITMIR.BIZ

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Mary Brady lives in the Midwest and considers road trips into the rest of the continent to be a necessary part of life. When she’s not out exploring, she helps run a manufacturing company and has a great time living with her handsome husband, her super son and one cheeky little bird.

      For my husband and son, with whom I make my own

       fiercely loving—and laughing—family of three.

      Acknowledgments

      My thanks to the people of Montana, who have never been anything but welcoming to me and who won’t know where to find the town of St. Adelbert, because it exists only in my mind.

      And to Dr. Gillian Rickmeier, who selflessly answered my questions about the medical field. That said, any errors in this book—especially errors concerning medical issues—are mine and mine alone.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER ONE

      MAUDE DEVANE, M.D., bypassed her crisp white lab coat and slipped on the one with a couple of badges of courage stained faintly into the fabric. Collar turned to the chill of the sunny June morning, she stepped out onto the ramp of the Wm. Avery Clinic’s emergency entrance. Somewhere under the biggest, bluest of Montana skies a man had fallen from a horse.

      And she was ready, make that eager, to help her first patient in her brand-new solo practice.

      On cue, the Squat-D Ranch’s red pickup truck careened around a corner and raced up Main Street. Traffic in the tiny mountain town of St. Adelbert made way as if they knew the passenger was unconscious.

      Some of them probably did.

      The truck lurched up the ramp and fishtailed to a halt, engulfing Maude in the smell of oily exhaust.

      Curly Martin’s great-grandson Jimmy burst out the driver’s side door. “He still ain’t talking to me, Dr. DeVane!”

      The bear-size seventeen-year-old barreled around toward the passenger side. As Maude reached the dusty truck, she leaned in to see the ninety-two-year-old rancher slumped against the door.

      “Jimmy, get back in the truck.” Maude conveyed calm in her command. “And hold him in position. Don’t move him at all, especially his head.” And if they were all very lucky, the old man was not already paralyzed.

      Jimmy dashed back around and scrambled into the cab. As he cradled his great-grandfather in his giant hands, Maude opened the door and reached in to feel for a pulse.

      “Is he dead?” Jimmy peered at her from under the bill of his faded green cap.

      She gave him a quick smile. “He’s alive, Jimmy.” Curly Martin, icon, epitome of cowboy in these parts, was not going down to a spill from a horse, not if she had any say.

      She patted Curly’s chest. “Mr. Martin.” No response. “Curly, open your eyes.” She rubbed her knuckles into the man’s breastbone hard enough to awaken a sleeping person. The man remained still, his lips a pale slash in his tanned face.

      “Keep holding him just like that, Jimmy. I need to put a protective collar on his neck.”

      “I’m here, Dr. DeVane,” a woman’s quiet voice said from behind her.

      Maude turned to the dark-haired, scrubs-clad, on-call nurse holding the stiff cervical collar in her hand. Maude smiled. “Thanks for getting here so quickly, Abby.”

      “Carolyn will be here soon,” Abby said of the tech on call.

      Maude nodded and then bent down to speak into Curly’s “good” ear. “Mr. Martin, I’m going to put a safety collar around your neck,” she said in the event he could actually hear her. After stabilizing his neck, the three of them lifted the unconscious man onto the waiting gurney and wheeled him inside the glass and aluminum entrance doors of the red-brick clinic.

      “I’ll have vitals for you in a sec,” Abby said when they had moved Curly into the trauma room, a large, well-stocked room reserved for critical cases.

      The serious knot

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