“Do they have food here?” Lucy asked brightly, looking around curiously as she, Abel and Alexandr walked through the sliding doors of the hospital. “Holy cow, it looks like a shopping mall!”

“Yes, Lucy, they have cafeterias in most hospitals,” Abel told her, amusement clear in his voice. “But I can assure you, the food is notoriously bad.”

“I want to try it anyway!” she exclaimed, searching for the mysterious cafeteria.

Abel chuckled and took her arm to steer her out of the path of people coming in behind them while she stared straight up at the glass ceiling high above their heads. She pointed up at the floors above their heads and chattered excitedly about the tiers of potted plants, asking how people got up there to tend the foliage. Abel patted her hand and answered patiently while they waited for Alexandr to check them in with security, then they took the elevator up to the cancer ward.

“Have you never been to a hospital before?” Abel asked her while they made their way down a sterile white corridor.

“No, never,” she told him staring around.

“How is that possible?” he asked, confused as they approached another desk where he was to check in again.

She waited for him to finish talking to the nurse before she answered. “Ummm, I guess you could say I’m a little sheltered. Did Mack tell you much about me?”

They sat down and waited for Abel’s name to be called. “No, I’m afraid he didn’t say much.”

“My family is Amish, I’m here on my Rumspringa actually. Hospitals are not the only thing new to me. Until a few months ago, so were shopping malls, cars, buildings, phones… well pretty much everything that cities have to offer.” She finished with a laugh.

His mouth fell open and the kindly older man looked genuinely speechless for a moment. Lucy grinned at him, flashing him a good dose of teeth. Finally, he straightened up and grinned back. “Well, I had no idea. Welcome, Lucy Miller, it’s a pleasure to have you in our city. You certainly brighten things up around here. I would never have guessed that this is all new to you. You act like an old pro!”

“Quick learner, I guess.” She shrugged. “I freaking love iPhones, they can do everything!” She sighed heavily in appreciation clutching her phone to her chest.

He chuckled and nodded. “Yes, very handy. It took me a few years to give in to those evil devices, but once I did, I admit, I was hooked. Mack and Tawny insisted I get one. They wanted to know I could call if I needed something. Especially once I got sick.”

She smiled and said quietly, “They really love you.”

Their conversation was put on hold when his name was called. They were escorted into a room where Abel settled himself comfortably on a bed, clearly having been through this routine before. He waved her toward a chair next to the bed and said, almost apologetically, “The treatment takes a few hours. They like to keep me here after they administer the drugs in case I have a reaction.”

She nodded, though her smile dimmed a little. “Of course, Mr. Hudson, I have all day. We’ll keep talking.”

After making sure Lucy was settled and there were no threats in the near vicinity, Alexandr excused himself, clearly uncomfortable with his surroundings. He mumbled something about coffee in the cafeteria and retreated. Lucy tried to get him to grab some food for her, desperately wanting to try hospital food, but she didn’t think he heard her. Abel chuckled and assured her they would get some Jell-O before leaving.

She watched warily as a doctor came in to speak with Abel about his condition and the treatment. While they talked, a nurse administered an intravenous needle to his hand. Wanting to see every minute detail of what the nurse was doing, Lucy hovered, getting so close to that the nurse had to ask her to back up.

“Oh, sorry!” she said and backed into the doctor, who smiled indulgently and raised an eyebrow.

Lucy explained again where she was from and why she knew nothing about hospitals. The doctor described the procedure in more detail for her benefit. Then he and the nurse left her and Abel alone. Lucy stood chewing her lip and looking down at Abel, his dark hand contrasting horribly with the too-large clear tube and white bedsheets, making him seem delicate and frail.

“Can I… can I…” she trailed off.

“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” he asked gently.

She nodded and folded herself back into her chair, pulling her knees up to her chin. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal,” she told him.

He shook his head. “It’s not a secret, Lucy. I have colon cancer.”

“Oh,” she breathed and looked down, frowning, lost for words. She wanted to know how bad it was, but knew she definitely shouldn’t ask that.

Abel chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t bury me yet, darlin’,” he said cheerfully, settling back against his pillow comfortably. “I’m on the upswing. Already had my surgery. This is just to catch any leftover bad cells in there.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, unclenching her fist and forcing herself to take a few deep breaths. Things were so different here in the city.

Abel looked at her a little closer. “You okay, Lucy?”

“Yeah… yes,” she assured him. “I just… it’s just. Generally, when someone in my community gets cancer, they die a slow and painful death. The cancer just eats away at them until they’re gone.”

He nodded and looked at her thoughtfully. “No one goes for treatment then? Goes to a hospital like I did?”

She shrugged a little. “They could, if they wanted too, but they could also be shunned if they chose treatment over the community. It’s a risk that not many would take.”

“Ah… and so you were never sick enough as a child to need a hospital?” he asked.

“No, never,” she answered. “I was always healthy as a horse. And our community physician took very good care of the neighborhood families.”

“How very interesting, Lucy,” Abel said. “Tawny had the usual childhood ailments; tonsillitis, colds, regular flu, chicken pox. She would be hardy as a rock one moment, raising hell among the neighborhood boys and then down with something or other the next. Mack was much the same as you as a child. Strong, tough. Physically, he rarely gave me a moment’s worry.”

“Mentally?” Lucy asked, knowing where he was going next.

Abel nodded slowly, his dark eyes lost in the past. “Mentally… he was a messed-up kid. He never really talked about what was bothering him, what sort of things’d happened to him and his sister before I came along. But he sure had a driving need to make sure those things, whatever they were, never happened again.”

“Tawny told me you helped him with that.” Lucy crossed her legs and shifted, finding a more comfortable position in the chair. She liked the cheerful little room. Even though it was a room on the cancer ward, it seemed as though the hospital put in effort to make the rooms seem bright and cheerful. There was a watercolour painting on the wall and Abel’s bed was near big windows that overlooked the river.

“I did what I could for him,” Abel admitted gruffly. “Right or wrong, I don’t know. That boy’s always had so much pent up anger in him, ready to burst free and burn everyone and everything around him. He needed direction and I was just some broken-down old military man. So, I took him under my wing and taught him how to shoot. Boy took to it like a duck to water, never seen anything like it.” Lucy smiled at the note of pride swelling in Abel’s voice. “One of the best marksmen in the world. His longshot talent is damn near unparalleled. “He would be quite high up in the military by now if he hadn’t been discharged.”

“What happened?” Lucy asked curiously.

“That’s one story he’ll have to tell you,” Abel said pleasantly. “One thing I will say is that my boy likes to go his own way. If it hadn’t been for that particular incident, he probably would’ve gotten kicked out eventually anyway for fighting with the higher ups and questioning commands.”

“Did it bother you when they discharged him? Since you were in the military.”

Abel shrugged. “Not really. Mack is his own man. Military suited me just fine, but I respect my son. I’ve always known him to be capable of making his own way in the world.”

Lucy was grateful that Abel was sharing these small peeks into Mack’s life. She was so curious about Mack and what made him tick. After he dropped her off the evening before, she’d stormed up to her loft apartment, tossed her pillow around, stomped and paced and cursed Mack Hudson out. Until she ran out of energy and flopped back on her bed. She’d curled up in her side, tucked her pillow into her stomach and thought about the way Mack had touched her. Thought about how she’d wanted that touch so damn bad, how she burned for it. But she also yearned for the shreds of her self-respect too. Why couldn’t she have both? Why couldn’t Mack Hudson just be the man she needed him to be, so she could enjoy the best of everything she wanted and needed?

She and Abel chatted for a while longer, steering the conversation away from less personal topics. Abel was deeply curious about Lucy’s interpretation of city life and enjoyed hearing of a few of her more outrageous learning experiences with things like city trains and ATM machines. They talked easily until the nurse came back to unhook his intravenous and Lucy asked, “What exactly is Jell-O and when can we get some?”