Mitch stared at him. “I’m gonna hit you with a rock.”
He snorted. “You couldn’t pick a rock up right now to hit me anyway.”
Mitch closed his eyes, and Cam swore he could see the stubborn asshole counting to ten. “Look, I’m just trying to appeal to your better nature. I need to go home, be with my girls.”
“And I’m all over that. You think I want to hang out with you and your kids? I don’t. I want to get on the road and get back to roping, but I told my mother I would come up here, and here I am.”
He was here, and somehow he had these little girls thinking he was some kind of a hero, which he was not. Especially that middle one—she made him want to not disappoint her. It wasunnatural. “But I have to see the surgeon so I know everything’s all right.”
It was as good an excuse as any because as much of a shit as Mitch was—and Mitch was a pain in the ass—the man didn’t deserve to be abandoned with three children and a broken back. And, if they had to, they’d figure out some way to come up with the money.
“Fine, fine. You want to meet the surgeon? She’s a harridan. She’s just a money-grubbing harridan.”
“I’ll tell her you said that. You can introduce me.”
Mitch flipped him off and then tried to stand, groaning softly, pain written on his face, clear as day.
“Jesus Christ. Can’t you just sit there? I’ll go up and talk to the folks at the front desk and get them to send somebody out.” He stomped up to the front desk, leaned in close so Mitch wouldn’t hear. “Look, I’m going to be able to convince Mitchell Gonzales to get this surgery. Can you get the doctor here to talk to me?”
The young lady glanced at him, her eyes rimmed with the biggest fake lashes he’d ever seen—it was like she was growing tarantulas. Then she nodded to him, winked. “That’s not a problem, just give us a few minutes. I’ll have the doctor paged.”
“Good deal.” The sooner they got Mitch fixed, the sooner Cam could leave. Get out of this mess of complications and get back to his easy no-stress life.
He might have to block Momma’s number when he went back on the road.
Too bad he couldn’t do it now, but he would need her to help with the kids and the money and all.
He paced while he waited for the doctor because Mitch was sitting there with his head in his hands, which was quite a feat considering he was wearing a back brace, and ignoring him entirely. Sooner rather than later, a trim-looking doctor withseverely pulled-back hair and a stern expression marched out from the back and looked at him. “You’re here about Mitchell Gonzales?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And how are you related to him?”
His brain ran around wildly like a squirrel in a hamster ball. “I’m a friend, but I have his permission to speak to you.” He glanced at Mitch, who wouldn’t look up at them, but he knew the man had to hear what he was saying.
She pursed her lips, glancing over at Mitch and then looking back at him. “All right, what is it you need to know?”
“What’s the deal? What kind of surgery is he going to have? How long is the recovery? What is the basic idea of the costs? He needs to be able to make an informed decision, and personally, I don’t think he was listening to you if you’ve told him all of this already.” Now out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mitch drop his hands and glare, but he didn’t care. It was the truth.
“That’s a lot of information. Your best bet is to have him talk to his financial advisor about the costs, but he is going to require surgery on his vertebra. It is basically starting to fall apart. Ideally, I will be able to do a vertebroplasty. It’s a minimally invasive procedure wherein I go in and inject a bone cement into the bone, and it fills in all the cracks and stabilizes everything.” She met his gaze head-on, waving a hand. “If, however, when we do all of the scans, we find that that’s not going to work, then I’ll have to do some sort of fusion where I go in with screws and plates.”
“This vertebrae-plasty. Is it safe?”
“It’s as safe as any spinal operation can be. The biggest risks are bleeding and blood clots. Whereas the side effects of actually opening him up and putting in screws and plates are far more worrisome.”
He chewed his lower lip, nodding, mulling all of that over. “And what about the recovery times?”
“Well, recovery time for a vertebroplasty is actually far reduced from the recovery time for any kind of spinal surgery. Depending on how well it reduces his pain, he could be back to normal activities in a matter of weeks. A month, maybe less. A lot of people can get back to regular activities within a week or two, but his pain level and the progression of this breakdown of the vertebra have been extreme.”
Cam snorted, “You mean he’s been a stubborn bastard. Pardon my French.”
A smile finally cracked her face a little bit. “That’s exactly what I mean. I would really like to admit him today and just get this done.”
“You have all the stuff to do that here?”
“We do. We do spinal procedures in this hospital. So we just need him to agree to it.”
“Is there a financial person available, do you think?” He knew Mitch would never agree to get admitted to the hospital without knowing what all this was going to cost.
