Chapter Six

When we arrived at the hospital, I told Jase it was okay to leave me and go do whatever he had planned for his evening before I ruined it. 

"I'm not going anywhere until I know you will be okay."

He got out of the truck and walked to my side before he opened the door and scooped me once again into his arms, carrying me through the automatic doors and to the service desk.

"She needs to be seen immediately."

The woman behind the counter stood quickly and went for the wheelchair resting against the wall on the other side of the room. 

"There's no need for that ma’am. Can you just get a doctor, please?"

"Jase, you can put me down. I—"

"What you will do is stop fighting me on this."

I didn't understand why he would want to hold me instead of letting me sit, but the look he was giving me screamed, "Don't you dare say another word." 

The woman must have read his expression the same way I did because she said, "I will go find one now," before she scurried out of sight.

Turning to Jase, I had to ask, "Why are you doing all of this for me?"

Like it was the dumbest question he had ever heard, he blew out a breath and responded, "I'm not the asshole you paint me out to be, Red."

"Says who?"

His head jerked back, and only then did I realize I had spoken my thoughts.

"I didn’t mean that. It's just …"

The doors swinging open to the triage area stopped me mid-sentence when, "Follow me," came from the woman who had disappeared moments before. 

Without hesitation, Jase began walking through the doors, not allowing me a chance to finish my explanation. I felt like a fool passing by the other rooms as onlookers took in the sight of a grown woman being carried like an infant. Grateful to be given a room close by, Jase set me down on the bed and then took a seat in the chair next to me when the woman disappeared. 

Looking over at him, I noticed he was staring at my leg. The one that I refused to put down and was holding in mid-air. My thigh muscles did not love me in that moment, that's for sure.

"Jase, what I meant was—"

"You don't have to explain. I was there through all of it too."

He sat back against the chair, resting in a position that should have been comfortable, but I knew he was anything but. 

"Why?" I blurted it out before I even let the thought register.

He let his head fall back until he was looking at the ceiling before he asked, "Why what?"

"Why did you hate me so much from the very beginning? Did I do something that I don't remember to start all this?" 

I wanted answers before the drugs that I knew were coming would cloud my memory. If I was to blame for it all, I needed to know. I was more than ready to end our feud if at all possible. 

"We don't need to do this."

He never looked at me, as if eye contact would make the situation worse.

"I need this."

He lowered his head to stare me straight in the eye. "Why do you want to drudge all of this up now? It's the past. Leave it there."

I was so frustrated that without forethought, my leg fell to the bed followed by a blood-curdling scream that brought tears to my eyes as I clenched them closed in hopes it would help reduce the pain surging up my leg. The doctor along with staff came rushing in, and when I opened my eyes, Jase was standing, pressed against the wall trying to get out of the way or I scared him half to death, I didn't know which one it was and truthfully didn't care. 

"Miss Carmichael, I need you to calm down."

I hadn't realized the sheet on the bed was held tight in the grasp of each hand or that I was practically hyperventilating until he then said, "We are going to remove the boot now and see what we're dealing with."

At that point, I went into a full-blown panic attack as he grabbed the boot and began to pull. The sound that came out of me was deafening. My eyes were closed as tightly as possible, so when I felt a calloused hand pull it from the sheets and hold it, my heart broke. The little bit of strength I had left was gone.

"I'm here. You're not alone."

I couldn't mutter a response. 

"This isn't working. We need to cut it off."

They are going to cut off my foot. They can't. I wasn't serious about amputation. I need my foot. I scrambled away from the doctor to the back of the bed shaking before I yelled, "No." 

Jase began to laugh which only scared me more. It was like a sick dream, and I was ready to wake-up. How can he even find anything about this comical? 

"They are talking about the boot, Red, not your foot."

A nurse handed the doctor a pair of scissors, and without a word, he began. Those damn things could probably cut through bone with as easily as they sliced through the leather of one of my favorite boots. Within minutes, it was off.  My eyes were closed again, but when I felt Jase jump back, I opened them to see what caused the room to go silent, and then I passed out.

I didn't realize anything had happened until I woke up in recovery. Someone to my left was crying, but to my right they were vomiting. I hated hospitals after spending so much time after the accident with my sister and Canyon. I was still half asleep from the drugs but I managed to sit up enough to look down at my foot. It was completely covered in bandages giving me no knowledge as to what was wrong to begin with.

"Somebody woke up."

I turned my head to see a female walking toward me smiling.

"Can I have a drink? I'm really thirsty."

"Sure, hun, let me grab you some water."

She spun around and walked the other way. Lying back down, I didn't realize I had fallen back asleep until I heard Jase's voice. 

"Hey there, welcome back again."

"Again, what do you mean again?"

"Do you even remember the doctor coming in and talking to you?"

Taking in my surroundings, I found I was no longer in recovery but instead a private room. Jase was getting out of a chair next to me until his six-foot-three frame stood over my bed.

"You were pretty out of it still but you did good, Red. I never knew a person to withstand that kind of pain like you did. Hell, I thought you were just being dramatic until they cut that boot off."

I was still groggy from the pain meds but it sounded like he was giving me a compliment. 

"What did they do to me?"

He sat down next to me and placed his hand over mine.

"They had reset the bones in your foot. What the hell caused that?"

"Caused what? Oh, Nyah stepped on it trying to either crush the snake or get away from it. I don't really know."

"I seriously can't get over the fact you held it together as long as you did. I mean, after seeing that, I am amazed. More soldiers cry over being grazed by a bullet than you did over that."

"What did it look like?"

"Truthfully? It looked like a black, mangled, swollen mess."

I felt my eyes rolling back into my head as everything started to go white again.

"Oh, no you don't." He began to laugh as he sat me up. "Here I am talking about how tough you are and then you go passing out again just with me mentioning your foot." He was still laughing as my vision started to become clear again. 

"They didn't cut it off, did they?"

I knew it was a dumb question to ask, but the drugs were clearly stronger than I thought. 

"No, darlin’, they didn't cut it off."

"Thank God. I was thinking you would have more reasons to make fun of me and call me names."

His laugh stalled. I noticed the silence and stared at him until he met my eyes. Once that happened, I could see the guilt take over him.

"It's okay, Jase. You hated me. I get it. As long as you don't hate me now, we can try to be—"

"I never hated you, Red." His voice dropped to a whisper as he said, "I wanted you."

Never did I see that coming and I knew he had to have been trying to play a joke on me.

"You what? No way! That isn't funny, Jase."

He never looked at me again. With as many times as I begged him to elaborate, he refused, bringing me to the realization that he was somehow telling me the truth.

"How can you say that? Jason Jergensmeyer, you have hated me since you moved here!"

He got up from the bed and sat in the chair across the room, not even willing to sit in the one he was before.

"Don't go quiet on me now. You can't drop a bomb like that and expect me to understand. You—"

"Oh, my God. Shelby," my sister cried as she and my mom ran into the room. "What did you do? How?"

Even with Arianna interrogating me, I couldn't take my eyes off of him as he sat back listening to my mother. 

"Thank you, Jase, for calling us. You saved my daughter, and I will forever be grateful."

"It was no problem, ma’am."

"Are you even listening to me? What the hell did you do to yourself?"

Arianna pulled my focus away from Jase, and when I looked up at her, there were tears in her eyes.

"It was a rattler. It spooked Nyah, and I didn't have a good enough grip to hold on."

"Shelby, my God, that had to be so scary. How long were you out there before he found you?" She asked the question but turned to Jase and mouthed, "Thank you," before she came back to me for answers. 

"I don't really know. The sun was setting when it happened. I'm not sure how long after that."

"I found her around eight thirty, so give or take two hours."

"Thank God you are going to be all right."

My mother came to the other side of the bed and was brushing my hair off my face before she bent down and kissed my forehead, but my eyes found Jase staring back at them.  We held our gaze for what felt like minutes before he broke and stood up from his chair.

"If you all are good, I'm going to get out of here."

"No."

All eyes in the room landed on me before I realized what I had just said, but I meant it. He and I had more to talk about, and I wasn't ready for things to go back to the way they were before. Not knowing what was going on, my mother scolded me, "Shelby, let the poor boy go home and get some rest. It’s three o'clock in the morning."

"No way, is it really?"

There weren't any clocks in the room and time was completely a moot point to me at that moment. 

"Yes. It took forever to get up here to see you. The woman at the desk down there was about to get strangled if I heard one more time, ‘We will let you know when she can have visitors’.” The way she sang it made me laugh whether it was funny or not. And then it hit me. 

"If I couldn't have visitors, why did Jase get to be here?"

He wouldn't look at me, so I knew he had done something he didn't want me to know about, but Arianna was quick to fill me in.

"He said he was your husband, that's how."

"You did what?"

I couldn't understand why he would go to those lengths to stay with me. Clearly, he had given me reason with what he told me, but knowing what he put me through … I'm talking bullying to the furthest tolerable extent. This man had just managed to confuse me more than anything, and the way he looked at me didn't get me any closer to answers. 

"Jase, honey, you can go on home. You did everything you could, and she's here to prove it."

He came over to rest his hands on the end of the bed and looked at me but wouldn't meet my eyes. 

"You’re in good hands now. I'm going to get going. Just remember, you're stronger than you realize."

He didn't give me the chance to say anything to stop him that time. Instead, he walked out the door leaving me with more questions I could only hope to have the opportunity again to get answered. 

"What the hell was that?"

Arianna drew my attention back to the room I was in and the two loving people worried sick about me.

"What was what? I already told you, it was a snake."

"A snake in sheep's clothing is more like it."

"Arianna, stop that. If these two can find common ground, it's better late than never."

"Mom! You know full well what he did to her. Have you allowed yourself to forget junior prom?"

It blew me away that Arianna was taking my side after the conversation she and I had earlier that morning, but she was always the one I ran to after he did something. 

"No, I absolutely have not. But neither of you know everything about everything so maybe taking the lock off the I-know-it-all attitude box would be helpful."

"You are making no sense at all, Mom."

"I guess I wouldn't to two know it alls."

She smiled while Arianna puffed and crossed her arms, resting them on her baby belly.

"Mom?"

"Yes, Shelby?"

"What do you know that you're not telling us?"

Guilt spread across her face when she avoided the question and simply stated, "There is a time to learn the truth and a way to go about it. Neither of those have anything to do with me and everything to do with you and Jase."

"So you're not going to tell me?"

She bent down and kissed my forehead. "I love you is all you need to know in this moment."

I knew ahead of time she wasn't going to crack, and as much as I wished for answers, they may not have been anything I would want to know. She was protecting me. That was obvious. 

"So not cool, Mom."

Arianna was more upset about our mother’s tight lip than I was, honestly. So when a nurse finally came in with discharge papers, I was on cloud nine.

"Do you remember the follow-up instructions your doctor gave you?"

"No, ma’am, I was still kind of out of it."

"That's common. Don't worry, he wrote it all down for you. The most important thing for you to remember is don't bear weight on it until you get approval.  The crutches will get you around until then." 

She had brought a pair in with her and had them lying against the bed.

"Oh, and I almost forgot." She walked over and grabbed a bag from under the bed I was on. "You might want to keep this as a souvenir."

One look at that boot and my stomach turned. 

"No, thanks. I have enough memories from tonight to last an eternity."

The room laughed, but they had no idea I was thinking about what Jase had said the whole time.