Page 36 of Impossible Love

The curtain flies open. It’s Phoebe Travis, a nurse here. Her family owns the closest ranch to ours. We’ve known her all our lives.

Phoebe evaluates the situation in less than a second. Immediately, she starts barking orders. “Back off, MacLaines. Everybody step away.” Phoebe goes to Evander’s side and rips his pant leg up to his groin. “Shit,” she hisses. “All of you need to get out of this room right now!”

Her face has gone pale. We clump together in the narrow aisleway as a nursing assistant runs past us to Phoebe’s side. “We need to get an IV started, stat,” Phoebe tells the young man. She then runs down the hallway, yelling for the doctor. She tells someone else to prep an operating room, and then she runs back to us.

“I don’t like this,” Declan mumbles.

“I’ve never seen Phoebe like this,” Finn says. “She’s usually super sweet.”

“She’s doing her job,” I snap.

We watch her return to Evander’s side. “You need to chill out. Are you hearing me, Evander?”

“Yeah,” he grunts.

“You’ve done an outstanding job of hurting yourself today, but things are going to get a lot worse if you don’t stop flopping around. We’ll get you something for the pain—”

“I’m not taking anything.”

She shakes her head. “Listen up, MacLaine. Being a hard-ass isn’t going to help you in this situation. You know how you always did what your commanding officer told you to do when you were a SEAL because your life depended on it?”

He nods.

“I’m your commanding officer today. Got that?”

He nods again.

“Sheee-it,” Special K whispers.

We all watch Phoebe bend down close and stroke Evander’s hair. “You’re going to be okay,” she says. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Chapter 21

Victoria

Cal is at least six-foot-four, maybe taller. His brothers seem to be all about the same size, except for Kevin. He is built more like a mountain than a man. The four of them take up most of the space in the small hospital waiting room. But as big as their bodies are, their emotions are bigger. It’s as if the air has been sucked out of the place, used up by these ultra-competent men who suddenly find themselves with no control over the outcome of their brother’s surgery.

The sight of Evander’s bone poking a hole through his trousers didn’t seem to bother any of them. I watched them fly into action, working as a team, as if they’d long ago decided what each of them would do in this type of emergency. Maybe they had. All I know is that I watched them operate as a well-oiled machine.

I’m a different story. I’m not the person anyone wants around during a medical emergency. All I could do was run away and try not to be sick. I can’t stand to see anyone suffer, and I shut down when I see anyone in pain.

There’s a reason. At the age of six, I had to witness the last seconds of my mother’s life. My father insisted that I be given an opportunity to say goodbye. He told the doctors it would help prepare me for a life without her.

I’ve never gotten over it.

Even so, it never even occurred to me to run into Cal’s house and hide during the chaos of Evander’s injury. I noticed that Cal’s niece, the little girl I’d seen in the hangar, needed someone to distract her. So when she jumped in the SUV with her father and uncle, I grabbed my bag from the Jeep and slid in next to her in the back seat. I didn’t ask if it would be appropriate.

Cal probably hates me for inserting myself into what is clearly a family matter. I’m sure I’ll hear about it later, and rightly so. I made a spur-of-the-moment decision, and now I realize it may have been the wrong one.

Here at the hospital, I’ve stayed out of the way as much as possible. When the MacLaine men were in the treatment room with Evander, I sat in the row of plastic chairs between Jasmine, Cal’s niece, and Summer, their tattooed and pierced ranch hand. Now that the men are camped out in the waiting room, I’m leaning up against the far wall near the doors, separating myself from a group I’m not part of.

We’ve been here almost two hours. Cal briefly introduced me to his brothers, and they were surprisingly polite, even in a time of crisis. Since that introduction, I’ve focused on making myself invisible.

It’s given me time to observe how the brothers interact. Everyone defers to Cal, who’s clearly their leader. The way they talk—their phrasing and all the insider terminology flying around—reminds me of a military team on a special mission. I listen to them plan for their brother’s discharge. I hear them review all the facts about the accident and discuss what they call the “unknown unknowns” of the surgical procedure.

Once a Navy SEAL, always a Navy SEAL, I guess. I wonder if that’s something a SEAL would say.

Suddenly Cal looks up from the huddle with his brothers to make eye contact with me. He doesn’t seem surprised that I’m here, so he hasn’t forgotten that I sat with Jasmine in the SUV. And he doesn’t appear angry. I’m not really sure what I see in his face, aside from exhaustion and resolve.

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