LITMIR.BIZ

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week?” It must have been a pretty bad break. She nodded. “Okay, I get that part, and from what I see he’s still not quite in his right mind.”

      Luke stopped drinking. “I’m perfectly sane!”

      “And perfectly concussed. Hush and drink. Let’s figure out things so we know what to do.”

      She was beginning to understand why Jan could see some humor in this. She was beginning to see it herself.

      “Bri...”

      “If you don’t behave, I’m going to tape you with my cell phone so I can show you later just how impossible you’re being.”

      He glared at her, but resumed trying to drink his milk shake.

      “Now what about everyone else here?” she asked.

      The stranger stepped forward, offering his hand. “I’m Mike Hanson. I work with Luke sometimes. We were out checking out the building site when Luke fell. I brought him in. The thing is, he was insisting he was pushed, so I reported it to the chief here.”

      Jake Madison nodded. “We were hoping Mr. Masters might remember, but he doesn’t seem to.”

      “That’s not unusual,” Dr. David said. “He might never remember what happened right before his fall.”

      Jake nodded again. “I’m asking Mr. Hanson here to take a deputy out to the site to see if there’s any evidence that someone else was out there, but he didn’t see anyone at the time.”

      “Not a soul,” Hanson agreed. “It was awfully slippery out there, but Luke isn’t a careless man. That’s the thing. If he says he was pushed, I believe him.”

      “We’ll check it out,” Jake said. A moment later he departed, reminding Mike that a deputy would be by to pick him up shortly.

      Bri followed him out. “Jake? Someone told me you or another officer were at my place early this morning.”

      “Me. When I heard you’d spent all night watching Luke, I thought he might have told you something.”

      She shook her head. “He couldn’t even remember for ten seconds that he was in the hospital.”

      “That’s what I was just told. Your ex, huh?”

      Bri simply sighed. Jake winked at her. “Fun times. Not. Good luck.”

      Back in the room, a glaring Luke was still drinking his milk shake. Bri’s first question was straight to the point and directed at Mike.

      “Is the company going to send transport for him? He obviously can’t work like this.”

      Mike shook his head. “They said they aren’t going to hire an ambulance just to move him somewhere else. When he’s ready for a car and plane ride, he can go home. They’re sending out another builder.”

      Luke released the straw. “Nobody else is going to do my job.”

      Mike shook his head. “Sorry, Luke, but you’re in no condition to do it yourself. You can advise, but you ain’t climbing no mountains.”

      “I’m sure not staying here.”

      Dr. David spoke. “Well, you sure as hell aren’t going to stay at the La-Z-Rest. You need to be under observation. You’re going to need help until we can get you up on crutches, which doesn’t look like anytime soon what with that broken arm. Regardless, you might be a wheelchair commando for a few weeks, and you can’t be by yourself.”

      The freight train was bearing down on her. Bri felt as if she were standing at the end of the tunnel and could see the light coming. At least until he could be transported, she was probably the only option. She gave up the fight, hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake.

      “He can stay with me, but I need to make arrangements for a chair and a hospital bed. I’m assuming you want to continue elevation on the leg?”

      David nodded. “Best to keep the swelling down.”

      “I don’t want to stay with you,” Luke said.

      “Sorry, buddy, but it’s your only choice. Don’t worry, I’ll ship you out as soon as I can.”

      “I’m sure,” he said bitterly, then fell silent.

      Bri tried pretending a brightness she didn’t feel. “I need to get things ready.”

      “I’ll help,” David said. “We’ve got plenty of rental stuff here at the hospital. We just need to arrange to move it. Are you sure you have room?”

      “I never use my living room anyway.” Resignation was beginning to set in. A week, maybe two. She looked at Mike. “Can you get all his things from the motel? Eventually I’m going to need his personal care products, and maybe some clothing.”

      “I’ll do that as soon as I’m done with the deputy.”

      Bri reached out and touched his arm. “Come by in a few days. Don’t leave him feeling cut out of the loop.”

      Mike nodded. “I will. As soon as I know how the company wants to handle all this.”

      “They really won’t transport him?”

      Mike shook his head. “We’re all just widgets, ma’am. Every one of us can be replaced.”

      She wondered if Mike knew how sour he sounded. She’d think about that later. She looked again at Luke. “I’m going to need some relief when I have to come back to work.”

      “I’ll help,” Jan said. “My break is coming up soon.”

      Bri would have been happier if someone else had offered, but she didn’t want to examine that too closely. Luke was a closed chapter, right?

      Right.

      * * *

      By five that afternoon, Bri’s living room had been transformed. A hospital bed, complete with a frame-and-pulley system to keep Luke’s leg elevated, had been installed. She’d arranged it so he could see the television, and moved unnecessary items out of the way or into other rooms. Since he was going to have to get around in a wheelchair with his leg sticking straight out, at least for a while, she cleared pathways so he could get out of the living room and down the hall to the bathroom. Any way she looked at it, that part was not going to be easy.

      “Bonehead,” she said aloud. “You should have just stayed in the hospital. Or paid someone to fly you out of here to somewhere else.”

      Except she didn’t know where else he could go. The two of them had been orphans, their parents gone, no other family to speak of. It was either her living room or some rehab facility—and he was likely to need rehab eventually regardless. In the meantime, until the worst of the concussion passed, he couldn’t be trusted on his own or without continual observation. Nor was it as if there were some convalescent facility nearby he could transfer to. One of the downsides of truly being in the boonies.

      She felt ticked at DEL for treating him this way, too. He’d been injured on the job. They should have been all over themselves trying to help instead of saying he could just stay put until he could travel by conventional means. It was as if he had become useless to them.

      Then another thought struck her. Could he lose his job over this? She wouldn’t put it past them. A lot of these large companies looked at employees as interchangeable parts, as Mike had said. Lose one, find another.

      Pulling on her jacket, she went outside to salt her porch, steps and sidewalk yet again. Not much longer now. She put the salt away in the plastic bin she kept on one corner of her porch and stood waiting. The past, she thought, was about to descend with a vengeance.

      The ambulance appeared around the corner and pulled up in front of her house. She knew both the EMTs, of course. Tim and Ted. They joked that they were the “Tim and Ted Show,” and sometimes they lived up to that appellation

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