Rachel ran to him and hugged him, but he thought it was just so she could wipe her nose on his coat. “Is he very sick, Daddy?”
And Mitch was terrified, absolutely nauseated, and hoping to God when Cam did wake up, he was in there. “His momma told me he’s got a concussion and probably some other stuff, but he hasn’t woken up yet. He’s having a nice long nap to get over it.”
Bekka was the one who was old enough to get all the implications of that. She loved to watch movies about people who woke up from comas. So she looked at him with wounded eyes. “He’s just going to have to be better in time for Christmas.”
She grabbed her sisters’ hands and marched them toward the SUV, but didn’t try to walk out into the parking lot until he was there to help look both ways and herd them a bit.
He got them all settled in their car seats and boosters, and then got in the driver’s side. He would stop and get them a snack after they got on the road. The girls loved those truck stop places with a Subway and a Burger King or whatever in them.They liked to browse through the shelves and get things like Slim Jims, pistachio nuts, and Little Debbie cakes.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, and he hated how pale they all were.
“What about Rosie, Daddy?” Sarah asked, her voice very prim and proper.
“Wilder’s going to take care of him, baby girl. He wanted to come with us, but I told him he couldn’t. He had to stay and Wilder said he could go stay at their house.”
She looked relieved. “Is he going to take care of everybody else too? The goats and the chickens and the other horses, and everything?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He turned his eyes back to the road, but he did glance back every so often to make sure the girls weren’t crying or having hysteria.
His baby girls were practical as hell, but they’d been to a lot of hospitals between him and their mom. Well, at least Rachel didn’t remember that part. She just knew she had lost someone.
“Is Uncle Mark driving in to meet us or is he going to fly?” That was Bekka, who had already pulled a tablet out of the webbed pocket in the seat back in front of her.
“He’s going to fly, and he says he’ll get us a hotel, so that we have a place to stay when we get there.” Mitch had a feeling Mark would also get the lay of the land of the hospital, even if the doctors and nurses probably wouldn’t tell him anything, because he didn’t have a claim of being any kind of next of kin to Cam. Maybe if he called Ms. Halley, she could give them permission to talk to Mark.
Rachel swung her legs a bit. He could hear her feet kicking the seat, but he wasn’t going to complain. “We love Uncle Mark.”
“I do too, kiddo, and he’s really helping us out. I’m not sure we could do this without him.”
“Are Granny and Grandpa Halley still sick with the stomach flu?”
He met Bekka’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Everybody in that whole family is still sick with the stomach flu, baby girl, or they’d be coming with us.”
“They have to be real scared, so we need to call them a lot and let them know what’s going on. Okay, Daddy?”
His eyes stung some, and he had to blink them hard to see the road. His babies were the kindest, sweetest girls on earth. He couldn’t be more proud of them than he was right now. “I think that sounds like a real good idea, baby girl. They’re going to need to know what’s going on from somebody who’s seen it with their own eyes.”
She nodded. “That’s okay. We’ll fix it up, and then it will be Christmas, and Santa, and everything will be okay.”
Sarah nodded. “Don’t forget, Aunt Lizzie is a nurse. If you need to answer any questions, Aunt Lizzie will know what to do. She is very smart.”
Bekka took a deep breath, let it out. “She so is. She’s been trained to be a flight nurse, an ER nurse. She’s great.”
“She is, and that’s a good idea, baby.” He nodded to Sarah. “That’s great thinking, kiddo.”
“Do you know what happened?” Rachel asked. “Did he get run over by a horse?”
Mitch shook his head. “No, your Granny Halley said somebody threw a firework into the arena. When it went off it scared the horse, and Cam got thrown.”
“Who would do that? Who would throw a firework with a horse there? The horse could have gotten hurt!” Sarah sounded utterly horrified. “I mean, that’s just mean. That’s awful. Shame on them whoever it is.”
“Did they catch him?” That was Bekka.
He had to shrug. “Honey, I don’t know. I guess when we get there, we can find out, but I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, I hope so. I can’t imagine that somebody would be so evil.”
Sarah tossed her head. “I bet it was a teenager.”
