LITMIR.BIZ

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when they wheeled her in.

      “Hi, Dr. Coltrain,” Sara said, her voice drowsy from the preop meds. “Are you going to carve me up?”

      “Only your appendix, Sara,” he replied with a chuckle. “You won’t even miss it, I promise.”

      “But it feels fine now.”

      “I imagine so. That’s a very bad sign. It means it’s perforated.”

      “What’s that?” she asked, while a capped, gowned and masked woman beside her put something in a syringe into the drip that led down to the needle in her arm.

      “It’s something to make you comfortable,” came the reply. “Count backward from a hundred for me, will you?”

      Sara smiled, sleepy. “Sure. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety…”

      She came to in the recovery room, dazed and completely confused. She wanted to ask them what they’d done to her, but her lips wouldn’t work.

      A nurse came in and checked her. “Awake, are we?” she asked pleasantly. “Good!”

      “Did Dr. Coltrain take out my appendix?”

      “Yes, dear,” the nurse replied.

      Sara closed her eyes again and went back to sleep.

      One of the great unsolved mysteries of small town life is how quickly word gets around if someone local is injured or killed. The process seems to consist largely of word of mouth. Someone who works at the hospital is related to someone who owns a small business, and phone traffic increases exponentially. Soon after the incident, it’s an open secret.

      Exactly how Jared Cameron found out that Sara’s appendix had gone ballistic was never known. But he showed up about the time they’d moved Sara into a semiprivate room.

      Tony Danzetta came with him and stood quietly outside the hospital room while Jared walked into it. The nurse who was making Sara comfortable and checking her vitals did a double take when she saw him and his companion.

      “Don’t mind Tony,” Jared told her. “He goes everywhere with me.”

      Sara peered at him past the nurse. “Don’t worry about it,” she told the nurse in a still-drowsy tone. “He’s not the only man who carries protection around with him.”

      The nurse burst out laughing. So did Jared.

      Sara closed her eyes and drifted off again.

      * * *

      The second time she awoke, it was to find Jared lounging in the chair beside her bed. He was wearing working clothes. He looked really good in denim, she considered through a mixture of drugs and pain. He was very handsome. She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until he raised both eyebrows.

      “Sorry,” she apologized.

      He smiled. “How do you feel?”

      “I’m not sure how to put it into words.” She looked past him at Tony, still standing patiently outside her room. “I seem to have lost my appendix. Do you suppose you could send Tony the Dancer out to look for it?”

      “It’s long gone by now. You’ll improve. While you’re improving, I’m taking you home with me.”

      She blinked. “That will cause gossip.”

      “It won’t matter to your friends and what your enemies think doesn’t matter to you. Or it shouldn’t.”

      “Put that way,” she agreed, “I guess you’re right.”

      “You can’t stay at your house alone, in this condition.”

      “What about Morris?”

      “Tony the Dancer drove over to your house and fed him on his way here,” he said carelessly. “He’ll look after your cat until you’re able to go home.”

      She was too groggy to wonder how Tony had gotten inside her house. The EMTs had locked it. She moved and grimaced. “I didn’t realize that an appendix could kill you.”

      “It can if it perforates. Those stomach pains you were having were probably a symptom of chronic appendicitis,” he said.

      “I guess so. I never thought it might be dangerous. How long have you been here?”

      “Since they took you in to surgery,” he said surprisingly. “Tony and I went out to supper until you were in recovery, then we sat in the waiting room until they put you in a room.”

      Her eyelids felt heavy. “It was nice of you to come.”

      “We’re each other’s family, remember?” he asked, and he didn’t smile. “I take responsibilities seriously.”

      “Thanks,” she said weakly.

      “Not necessary. Try to go back to sleep. The more rest you get, the faster you’ll heal.”

      She stared at him a little drowsily. “Will you be here, when I wake up?”

      “Yes,” he said quietly.

      She tried to smile, but she wasn’t able to get her lips to move. She fell back into the comfortable softness of sleep.

      It hurt to move. She tried to turn over, and it felt as if her stomach was going to come apart. She groaned.

      The big man who went around with the ogre came and stood over her. He had large dark eyes, and heavy black eyebrows. His dark, wavy hair was in a ponytail. He had an olive complexion. He was frowning.

      “Do you need something for pain?” he asked in a voice like rumbling thunder.

      Her eyes managed to focus. He looked foreign. But he had that Georgia drawl. Maybe he was of Italian heritage and raised in the South.

      He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “I’m not Italian. I’m Cherokee.”

      She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. The painkilling drugs seemed to be affecting her in odd ways. “You’re Mr. Danzetta,” she said. “I thought you were a hit man.”

      He laughed out loud. “I prevent hits,” he replied. “I’m Tony. Nobody calls me Mr. Danzetta.” The frown was back. “It hurts, huh?”

      “It does,” she managed weakly.

      He touched the call button. A voice came over it. “May I help you?”

      “This young lady could use something for pain,” he replied.

      “I’ll be right there.”

      Minutes later, a nurse came into the room, smiling. “Dr. Coltrain left orders so that you could have something for pain.”

      “It feels like my body’s been cut in half,” Sara confessed.

      “This will help you feel better,” she said, adding some thing to the drip that was feeding her fluids. “It will be automatic now.”

      “Thanks,” Sara said, grimacing. “I sure never thought losing a tiny little thing like an appendix would hurt so much.”

      “You were in bad shape when you came in,” she replied. She glanced at Tony the Dancer curiously. “Are you a relative?”

      “Who, me? No. I work for Mr. Cameron.”

      The nurse was confused. “Is he related to Miss Dobbs?”

      Tony hesitated. “Sort of.”

      “No, he’s not,” Sara murmured, smiling. “But Mr. Cameron doesn’t have any family left, and neither do I. So we said we’d take care of each other if one of us got sick.”

      “The boss said that?” Tony asked, his dark eyebrows arching.

      The nurse frowned. “How can you be deaf with ears like that?” she wondered.

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