Six

Randy managed to move her legs to walk inside the doctor’s office. Jake lay on a long table with just a sheet under him. Randy’s first thought was how hard and uncomfortable it had to be compared to their huge, specially built bed made of black walnut…back home on the J&L…in their loft bedroom…where she could lie in his arms at night and feel so safe…where they’d made love too many times to count. Jake always knew how to make it beautiful…knew how to make her feel beautiful. People didn’t understand why he was so protective, how he could be friends with prostitutes without being untrue to the woman he loved far and above all the others. It all came from his childhood, how women of the night had risked their lives to protect him from his devil of a father.

Why did that fill her thoughts now, of all times? Two nurses and the doctor were working frantically getting Jake’s clothes off. He was a big man, six feet four inches, and not easy to work with. Through it all, one of the nurses pressed gauze tight against the wound in his side.

“Oh my! What happened to his back?” one of the nurses commented.

Randy spoke up. “His father did that to him, with the buckle end of a belt.”

The doctor glanced her way. “I saw you out in the street. Are you his wife?”

“Yes.”

“He asked for you.”

Randy held the jacket closer, taking heart in the comment. “He’s conscious?”

“Randy?” It was Jake!

Randy laid the jacket aside and rushed to stand near him, touching his face. “Jake, I’m here!”

A nurse pulled a sheet up to cover him to just below the hip bones, leaving the wound in his left side exposed. The nurse who held gauze against the wound grabbed even more gauze and pressed tightly to stave the continued bleeding. Randy cringed at all the blood, noticing the skin around the outside of the gauze patch was a deep purple. Internal bleeding? The purple was spreading fast. The deep gash across the left side of Jake’s head had finally stopped bleeding, but his eyes remained closed.

“Jake, I’m here. I’m here,” Randy told him again. “Are you still awake? When I saw you unconscious in the street—”

Jake actually opened his eyes again and managed to reach up and grasp her hand, squinting from pain. “Button?”

“She’s fine. She’s with Teresa at the hotel.”

“That…other lady…”

“She wasn’t hurt. She and her husband are so grateful to you.”

He noticed the bruise on her cheek. “You’re…hurt!”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just a bruise.” Randy squeezed his hand. “Jake, you have to hang on. Don’t you die on me! You can’t leave me! You can’t leave me!”

He closed his eyes again. “Lloyd always says…I’m too mean to die…remember?”

Randy smiled through tears and leaned down to kiss him lightly. “I can’t do this without you, Jake,” she said in a near whisper. “Don’t leave me!”

He kept hold of her hand. “I’m…right here. Don’t be scared.”

“Mrs. Harkner, you’ll have to move out of the way,” the doctor told her. “I’ve got to get the bullet out and make sure there isn’t some serious internal damage. I have to find out where all the bleeding is coming from.”

“But I have to be with him.”

“Then move around to stand at his head. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can stay while I take out the bullet and sew him up.”

Randy found some of her old strength at the man’s remark. “I’ve got the stomach for it,” she answered curtly. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve got the stomach for, the things I’ve been through or the things my husband has been through. He’s a strong, tough man—probably the toughest you’ve ever worked on.”

“His age?”

“Almost sixty-two but going on forty—that’s how tough he is.”

“Most folks know about Jake Harkner, ma’am. You don’t need to explain to me. But I need to stop this bleeding.” He looked at one of the nurses. “Give him some chloroform.” The doctor removed the blood-soaked wad of gauze from the wound, touching around it with his hands.

Jake grimaced and stiffened from pain. “Jesus, Doc, that hurts like hell!”

Randy ached for him, keeping her hands on either side of his face.

“You telling me where it hurts helps me know about where the bullet is,” the doctor told Jake.

One of the nurses gently pulled Randy’s hands away from Jake and laid a damp white cloth over Jake’s nose and mouth. In moments, he went limp again.

“Don’t give him too much,” the doctor told her. “He’s a tough man and can take some of the pain. Too much of that stuff can affect the heart, especially for an older man.”

Randy’s stomach tightened. Could the chloroform kill him? Not Jake! How many old bullet wounds did he already have? His father’s beatings didn’t kill him. The awful shooting back in Guthrie, where he nearly bled to death from a leg wound, didn’t kill him. The wound he’d suffered in the shoot-out back in California didn’t kill him. My God, how long ago was that? Lloyd had only been a baby. Acute pneumonia in prison didn’t kill him. He was the toughest man she’d ever known…and yet the gentlest…with his little granddaughters…with Evie…with her…in the night…

The doctor went to work, and at first, Jake didn’t seem to feel anything. Randy thought about that first time they met…Jake barging into a dry goods store where she’d been shopping. He was a gruff, bearded, wanted man then, an outlaw who’d ended up in a shoot-out right in front of her. She’d been so afraid of him that she shot him herself with a little handgun, and he just looked at her—so surprised. He could have killed her then, but he just ran out.

He’d lived through that wound, too.

“I took a bullet out of Jake myself once,” she told the doctor rather absently. “He was only thirty then. It’s a long story—how it happened.” And later, he saved my life. I was hurt and he was so good to me, so gentle with me, and we knew we were in love.

Jake groaned, and she leaned down and kissed his forehead, terrified he’d wake up too soon and feel the awful pain. “Jake, I’m here.”

“Yo te amo…”

“I love you, too. Don’t you die on me, Jake.” She leaned close to his ear. “Remember that night in the wagon—that first time we made love? We didn’t even know where we were, and you were so scared to love someone. A big, brave, wild outlaw, running from the law and running from love. I was the one thing you couldn’t fight and you couldn’t run from, Jake Harkner.”

Randy felt more of her old self struggling to come back. Most of their life it had been Jake who’d needed her, Jake who drew his strength from her. She’d been his only barrier from going over the edge into darkness. But the last few months, she’d been the one who needed him to keep her from falling. She wasn’t sure she could ever find the woman she used to be, but now she needed to be the strong one. She’d lost some of that strength when Lloyd was shot and she thought she’d lost her son…more when she sat through a hearing that could have resulted in her husband being hanged…and she lost the rest of it last winter…

She shook away the ugly memory. She must not think about it or she wouldn’t be strong enough for Jake right now. She had to find a way to put it all behind her and find the old Randy, the one Jake loved most.

He groaned again, this time louder. Randy noticed him clenching his fists.

“Jake, I’m right here! I’m right here!”

How many times had he told her that very thing over the last few months?

The doctor ordered a little more chloroform. For nearly an hour, he probed and stitched on the inside, then stitched up the outside, dousing everything with alcohol and iodine. Finally, he wrapped the wound, ordering men to come in and carry Jake to a bed in another room. Randy felt sick at his cries of pain.

Through a fog of loneliness and fear, she heard the doctor tell her he thought Jake would be fine, that he just needed to rest now…to sleep. She could stay with him. Everything happened in a shroud of disbelief and uncertainty…strangers…all strangers. All she wanted and needed was Jake.

The doctor walked out and closed the door. Randy realized she didn’t even know his name. She took off her hat, then looked down to realize she still had blood on the skirt of her dress. She should go back to the hotel, wash and change, and see about Tricia, but not yet. Not yet. She had to stay with Jake. He had to wake up and hold her first so she knew he’d be all right.

She removed her shoes, unpinned her hair, and let it fall. Jake liked it long and loose. She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Jake always told her how beautiful she was. Brad Buckley couldn’t change the way Jake Harkner touched her or made love to her or looked at her with those dark eyes and that melting smile.

A nurse brought his jacket into the room, as well as Randy’s reticule.

Shivering from shock, Randy set her handbag aside and picked up the jacket to pull it on, right over the jacket she already wore against the morning’s chill. Putting on Jake’s jacket made it feel like his arms were around her.

She lay down on his good side and nestled herself against him. “Don’t leave me, Jake,” she said softly near his ear.

“Mi esposa,” he muttered from somewhere in his own semi-consciousness. “Tu eres…mi vida.”