Pain shot through the lower part of his side just before he went airborne and was flung to the other side of the bull. Wyatt was still fighting to free himself and not succumb to the pain when the bull caught him again, this time across his abdomen just below his safety vest.
This was not good. Really not good.
Wyatt felt like a rag doll, one that might well soon have its guts spilling over the dirt of the arena. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought of dying like this before, but the reality sure did suck a bushel of lemons.
His body slammed against the ground before he realized his hand had finally come loose from the rope. His vision dimmed, and he didn’t think he could move even if he saw the bull’s hooves heading toward his face. But it wasn’t the bull that came into his line of sight but rather the painted face of one of the bullfighters.
“Hang on, buddy.” The man’s words sounded off, as if they were having to move through water or maybe thick syrup to reach Wyatt’s ears. “We’re going to get you some help.”
The bullfighter shifted away to speak to someone Wyatt couldn’t see. Wyatt stared up at the sky beyond the lights of the arena and blinked slowly. He wondered if he looked down would he find that the lower half of his body was no longer attached to the top half and they just hadn’t told him yet.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but it seemed between one blink and the next paramedics appeared. He glanced to the right and saw an ambulance. At least it wasn’t a hearse. Guess that meant he wasn’t dead. They fitted him with a neck brace without too much trouble. But when they started to slip a backboard beneath him, he cried out without even thinking about it. That tended to happen when it felt as if your gut were being sliced open with a flaming hot machete.
In the next moment, the two paramedics and what must have been half the cowboys in attendance were lifting him and carrying him to the ambulance. Somehow the muffled applause of the spectators reached him, and the guy from the chute smiled down at him.
“Hear that? You’re going to get a lot of ladies after this.”
Wyatt wasn’t entirely sure that the body parts that would interest the ladies weren’t long gone. And when they loaded him in the ambulance, causing a fresh hell to tear at his middle, thoughts of the ladies were the furthest thing from his mind.
Everything seemed to send a new shock wave of pain through him. The slamming shut of the ambulance door, the driver climbing into the front seat, the jouncing of the rig as it left the arena. When the ambulance made the turn out of the rodeo grounds onto the road, black dots appeared in front of Wyatt’s eyes.
“To hell with this,” he thought before letting himself pass out.
* * *
DR. CHLOE BRODY dropped the coins into the snack machine then looked through the glass front at her choices. The granola bar or bag of apple slices were the wisest choices, but the chocolate cupcakes seemed to be singing a siren song to her. Come on, you know you want to, that devious package of sugary goodness whispered. You can run off the pesky calories later.
Giving in to temptation, she punched the appropriate buttons and watched the cupcakes drop.
“Hey, Doc,” called Lori Dalton from the ER nurses’ station. “You want to enter the pool?”
Chloe grabbed her cupcakes and walked toward the trio of women behind the desk. “I’m afraid to ask. What’s the pool for?”
Sophie Wells, a petite blonde, looked up and smiled. “On who Verona is going to target next.”
Chloe laughed as she leaned against the wall that separated the nurses’ station from the four curtained trauma and triage areas. Verona Charles was Blue Falls’s version of Cupid. Her favorite pastime was seeing which couples she could match up. While she sent many happily single people fleeing, she did have a remarkably good rate of success. Last year alone, she’d not only successfully matched her niece, Elissa, but also Elissa’s two best friends, India and Skyler. And she’d probably had her hand in a few more couples ending up together.
“You all are tempting fate,” Chloe said.
“I already have a man,” said Lori as she flashed her engagement ring.
Chloe gestured toward Sophie and Jenna Marks, who normally worked at the clinic with Chloe but was picking up some extra hours at the hospital. As usual, the nurse had her dark brown hair pulled back in a thick ponytail that swayed when she moved. “Yeah, but these two don’t.”
“Well, you could help with Jenna,” Sophie said. “She’s had the hots for your brother forever.”
Jenna swatted Sophie’s arm.
“What? You do. Every time you see Garrett, you practically drool all over yourself.”
Jenna huffed. “I do not.”
“Whatever.” Sophie returned her gaze to Chloe.
“Oh, no.” Chloe shook her head. “I’m not getting in the middle of that.” She gestured toward the notepad on which Lori had written several names. “Who are the choices?”
“My money’s on Greg Bozeman,” Sophie said.
Chloe laughed again. “You’ve got to be joking.” Greg was the biggest flirt in town, more so than even her younger brother, Owen.
“Think about it,” Sophie said. “It would be the biggest feather in her cap so far.”
Chloe shook her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it. What are my other choices?”
“Daisy Ford,” Lori said, naming one of the waitresses down at the Primrose Café. “Jesse Bradshaw, Andrew Canton.” Lori read off a few other names before tossing in Bernie Shumaker, who had to be as old as Blue Falls.
“Okay, now I know you all have lost it.”
Sophie shrugged. “Got to do something. It’s a slow night.”
They all froze.
“You did not just say that,” Lori said.
They all looked toward the emergency entrance as if Sophie’s words would tempt a herd of sick and injured to start flooding the ER. When the doors remained free of patients, they breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“What about you, Chloe?” Jenna asked, grinning. “You’re single. Maybe we should put your name on the list.”
Chloe lifted her package of cupcakes. “On that note, my new best friends and I are headed to the break room.”
She’d just sat down and ripped away the plastic wrapping when she heard the siren. Considering one of the hospital’s two ambulances sat outside the ER, this one had to be coming from the rodeo. Leaving her snack behind, she hurried back to the ER just as the paramedics were unloading their patient.
“What have we got?” she asked Dale Marsh, one of the paramedics.
“Male, thirty-one, name Wyatt Kelley. Took a bull horn to the side and the lower abdomen.”
As she got her first look at the cowboy, she noticed his shirt soaked with blood. “Put him in trauma one.”
Chloe started directing the nurses to remove both the cowboy’s protective vest and his shirt so she could assess the seriousness of the guy’s injuries. He’d been out cold when they wheeled him in, but when they lifted him he moaned in agony. As they laid him back, his eyes shot wide open and locked on her.
“Are you trying to kill me?” he asked, his voice breathless and strained.
She smiled, hoping to calm him.