And Amanda had no choice but to sit alongside and watch.
She couldn’t even see the night outside. Couldn’t tell what time it was except by the institutional clock on the wall. They’d been at the hospital for three hours. It had taken an hour and a half to get Lee there. During that time, Jake had been like iron. He was the one who’d battled the swollen water to drag her out of the riverbed. He’d held her in his arms all the way back to the ranch and then kept her warm until the rescue unit had arrived. He’d ridden all the way to the hospital with her, refusing to be parted from her or treated for the cuts and bruises he’d sustained getting to her.
He’d only begun to fall apart when they’d arrived and Lee had disappeared into that sterile, alien place. He curled tighter and tighter into himself, refusing to speak, refusing to listen, until Amanda was terrified that it would be Jake they would lose tonight instead of Lee.
“Excuse me, Mr. Kendall.”
Both of them looked up to see a nurse in scrubs standing in the door to the waiting room. Beyond stretched the intensive care units—doors beyond which one had to be invited. Amanda and Jake had not been yet.
“Can I see her?” he demanded, already on his feet. “Is she awake?”
His voice was raw and bleak. He still carried his hat in his hands, and Amanda could see that they shook. She climbed to her feet and stood beside him.
The nurse held a clipboard in her hands. She looked anxious. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Kendall. There’s a problem. We had to call the trauma surgeon back in.”
Jake froze. “Her head?” he asked. “Is it her head?”
The nurse shook her head. “No,” she said. “The scan didn’t show anything acute there. Like I said before, we’re just going to have to wait to know about that. It’s her belly. She’s bleeding. The tests we’ve done indicate that it’s her spleen and liver. Dr. Goldman wants to take her down to surgery.”
“She’s been here three hours,” Jake protested. “Why didn’t you know this before?”
“She was stable until now,” the nurse said. “It happens this way sometimes.”
“What do you need me to do?”
She handed over the clipboard. “If you could read this surgery permit. I’d be happy to answer any questions for you. Since she can’t sign permission herself, we need you to do it as her next of kin.”
Jake just stared at the clipboard, his face like stone, his eyes empty and lost.
“Mr. Kendall?” the nurse prodded.
“My…uh, sister,” he stammered with a little shake of his head. “She’s a doctor. She should be here in a couple of hours. She’d know about this stuff. I just...”
But the nurse was shaking her head. “I’m sorry. We really can’t wait. The surgery has to be done immediately, or we might lose her.”
Amanda took a step forward and held out her hand for the clipboard. “If you’d just give us a minute,” she asked quietly, trying her best to smile.
The nurse looked at her, looked at Jake. Finally, she answered Amanda’s tentative smile and handed over the clipboard. “Surgery’s preparing right now,” she cautioned. “Everything is ready.”
Amanda scanned the form. It was standard, requesting permission for any eventuality, warning that any of the procedures may still result in death.
Amanda faced the nurse again. “We’ll be right out with it.”
That was all the nurse needed.
Amanda waited until she’d closed the door behind her and faced Jake. “We don’t have a choice, Jake. They have to do the surgery.”
He motioned to the paper, his eyes so bleak that it was all Amanda could do to meet them. “What does it say?”
That was when her heart finally broke for him. She wanted to go to him. She wanted to run. She wanted to weep. Instead, she faced Jake with calm consideration and then bent to the task of reading the form aloud as he stood before her, his hat clenched in his hands, his pain a living thing.
He signed it, just like he signed everything at the ranch, with a big K and a scrawl. And then after the nurse had returned for the paperwork and disappeared back into the intensive care units with it, Jake sat down on a hard plastic chair and sobbed.
Zeke and Gen showed up almost at the same time, one trailing Clovis, and the other, Ed Deever. It was now closer to dawn, and Amanda held Jake’s hand, as she had all along.
“What’s happening?” Gen demanded without preamble. She was livelier than she appeared in her photos, with that same saucy cant to her mouth that Lee had. Now, though, that mouth was set in a grim line. Her eyes melted like chocolate when she saw what kind of condition her brother was in.
“Jake,” she soothed, her arms automatically around him. “Honey, it’s gonna be all right. The experts are in the field now. We’ll keep an eye on her.”
