“That’s good,” she said. “I’m glad that he’s making progress. How’s search and rescue going?”
I thought about my answer for a long moment as I continued to scan the crowd.
“I’ve only been to three meetings,” I said. “And I like it. It’s fun to meet new people. Though a lot of them seem to be bikers that I see here. So maybe it’s not new, exactly. It’s also nice to be able to go onto the trails not alone. I like hiking, I think. But it’s still pretty new to me and I’m not exactly comfortable doing it alone.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “After the bear attack on one of my friends, I’m nervous to go out by myself, and I’ve been doing it for my entire life.”
I winced.
The bear attack had been bad.
I’d been in the ER that day and it was terrifying.
I’d also helped with the patient after the attack. She’d almost died.
That’d been part of my reason for not wanting to go on my own.
I knew nothing about Montana wildlife.
I knew they had a lot of it, too. Bears. Moose. Elk. Mountain lions.
I grew up in the city. The most interaction I had with wildlife was an occasional squirrel and a raccoon that got stuck in a garbage can.
They were about as far from “scary” as you could get.
“Gentry can’t take his eyes off you.”
I followed Mable’s gaze to where she was staring across the wide-open space and found my heart speeding up when I found him.
He was surrounded by a bunch of kids, laughing.
He was holding up a piñata and several of the kids were trying to beat it with their hands.
My heart ached at the picture he made.
His son would’ve been seven this year.
He’d have been right up in the middle of all of those kids, loving and living every second of it.
My mood instantly deteriorated.
That was my fault.
I’d been the reason that Gentry had lost his child.
If he hadn’t saved me…
“Hey!”
I blinked and turned slightly to find someone sitting directly behind me.
“You’re a nurse, right?”
I looked over at the man who was holding a beer to his lips and staring at me with unwavering attention. “I am.”
Odin was a large man. He was very intimidating, and sometimes when he spoke it startled me because he did it so infrequently.
He was the town’s medical examiner, and I didn’t have very many opportunities to run into him.
