“Gray! Gray!” It doesn’t matter how many times I shout his name or how hard I fight to get closer, I’m held back.
“Let her in. She’s the team doc,” a male voice shouts.
I’m suddenly released, falling to my knees at Gray’s side.
Those long thick lashes flutter against his dirt smeared skin. Those deep brown eyes fighting to focus on my face. His hand lifts the slightest, only to slap back against the hard dirt.
In all my years caring for patients, sometimes in emergency situations, I’ve never lost my cool. My hands have never trembled so harshly I can’t still them.
“River,” a large palm cups my arm. “Let the medics get him packaged up, okay?”
“No… hospital…” Gray groans. “Not. Going.” Each word is a struggle for him to produce. His howls of pain to follow the barely put-together sentence shattering my heart.
Gray’s arms barely have the strength to move, or maybe it’s the pain, but he does his best to swat away the medical personnel, strapping him to the backboard and lifting him onto the stretcher.
“Not. Stop.” He groans and growls.
“Gray, baby, you have to go,” I plead, my feet somehow carrying me to his side.
“No.”
And suddenly, a bit of Doctor River Thompson is back. The woman who can command the office and the operating room. “Grayson Garrison, you’re going. You don’t have a choice because if you die, I will bring you back to life and kill you myself.”
The fight drains out of him. Our eyes locking for long moments before the medics attempt to shove past me. “Ma’am, we need to go.”
“I’m coming.”
“Sorry—” A beefy arm strikes out in front of me. “You’re not. He’s too critical for us to have someone in the back.”
“I’m a doctor!”
“And I don’t care,” the woman snarls in my face before circling her finger through the air.
I can only watch them roll him away, Gray fighting the entire time. Then Tate is at my side, dragging me along with him. “Come on.”
Our pace is a hurried rush through the back of the area, following the EMS crew and watching them load Gray in the back of their ambulance. My heart stopping realizing that once again he’s unconscious.
“My keys,” I heave. “I need my keys.”
Strong hands grips my biceps, Tate’s face dipping close to mine as he turns me toward him. “You’re not driving. You’ll come with me.”
I only nod, fighting back the tears. River Thompson doesn’t cry in front of anyone, especially not a man.
The ambulance is long gone before Tate loads me into his truck and tears out of the parking lot.
My body won’t calm. Each inhaled breath like daggers stabbing me with the inflation of my lungs. A sign it’s been too long since the previous one.
“He’ll be fine,” Tate whispers.
I don’t have a response. I don’t know that. As a kid coming to the rodeo, we saw plenty of bad accidents. I’ve seen men thrown from bulls and horses banged up and bruised. Some walked out of that arena, and others didn’t.
But none of them were Gray.
The visual and sounds of him crashing into the fence plays on repeat. An endless, torturous loop of the bull’s grunts and cracking bone against a solid surface. It was easy to point it out. I’ve heard it so many times.
The moment we pull into the parking lot I’m jumping from the truck and racing inside. I’m blowing down the hallways, Tate calling after me, but I don’t stop until I reach the ED reception desk.
“I need you to let me back there for Gray Garrison.”
