Freezing was right, too.
It was pushing ten degrees, and by the looks of the clouds in the sky, we were about to get nailed with another storm.
The newscaster had been talking about it all morning, and I’d hoped to be home, and have Charleigh home, before it hit.
My luck was holding, but just barely.
“Ready, Freddy?” Medina asked as she put the lock on the wheelchair.
“Ready,” I confirmed, getting up with minimal help from her.
I’d found that it was fairly easy to bounce back from having your brachial artery severed, but that didn’t mean that people didn’t still worry like crazy that you were overdoing it.
Charleigh and Creed had been here with me the entire time, and it was only today that Creed had been called out with an emergency involving a couple of aggressive elk on someone’s property.
Which ended up working out really well with me getting discharged.
I didn’t want Creed to feel any more obligation to stay with me after I got out, and thankfully Charleigh hadn’t heard that I wasn’t supposed to be alone for a few days.
I didn’t think anything too bad would happen as long as I took it very easy.
“All right,” Medina said as she helped me get settled. “You take care now. And don’t overdo it, okay?”
“I won’t.” I smiled at my new friend. “Thanks, Medina.”
She patted me on the arm. “I’m headed upstairs to go eat that smorgasbord that your company delivered. That was so thoughtful of them. Tell them thank you for us.”
“What’d Great Dane’s get them?” Charleigh asked as she slowly pulled out from under the awning.
“A little of everything from every restaurant in town,” I replied. “I think they got a shit ton of cakes, too.”
“That’s sweet of them,” Charleigh said as she came to a complete stop before pulling out in front of a snowplow.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t want to get caught behind them the entire way back to Sawtooth.”
“I’m not saying anything,” I said as I leaned back into the comfortable car seats. “How’s work going? Do you like Chris Gates?”
“He’s okay,” she admitted. “He’s very formal and unforgiving. He yelled at Hershel, and I got pretty mad at that. It’s not like Hershel could’ve prevented what he’d done. It was a perfect storm all the way around.”
“I agree,” I said. “Hopefully he’s not always mean. Hopefully this is just a once in a lifetime thing that you’ll never have to deal with.”
“I hope so,” she grumbled as she drove. “Did you ever call your family?”
“Nope,” I answered. “Why bother?”
She bit her lip. “I wouldn’t ever tell them.”
She’d been pretty vocal about her opinions of my family since we’d first met each other—it was kind of hard to hide what was going on when your mother’s issues were so high profile—and she hadn’t changed her opinion much.
Not that I blamed her.
It was starting to dawn on me just how outside of my family that I was.
I mean, every once in a while, I got texts from Mable and Cody, but not in more than just a “hey are you alive” kind of way.
We’d probably never be friends.
There was just too much bad blood between us to ever be okay with each other. These past few days had just cemented the fact that I wasn’t on their priority list.
