focused on the sound of her son’s voice, and that alone kept her awake until they arrived in a curtained-off room. Someone helped her onto the bed, and someone hooked her up to an IV. People touched her forehead and her chest, her neck, and then her hand.
She cried out when the cloth was torn away from the wound, and she distinctly heard someone say, “Push one thousand milligrams of ibuprofen. This is going to need a lot of stitches.”
“I’ll get Dr. Watts,” someone else said, and then the activity seemed to slow.
Trey filled the empty spot at her side, his warm fingers brushing her hair off her forehead. His other hand filled her uninjured one, and he said, “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me, okay, Beth?”
She put all of her energy into squeezing his hand. He chuckled and said, “Good, sugar. That’s good.” His lips landed on her forehead too, and he started talking about a couple of horses at Bluegrass that were giving Spur and Blaine trouble.
His voice was like the rolling Kentucky hills. Beautiful, and deep, and full of amazing things. Beth could get lost on the tide of it, and he seemed to know it, because he called TJ over and had him start to tell her about the moon rock project he was doing at school.
Eventually—she didn’t know how long—she opened her eyes, and everything stayed stationary. Her hand didn’t hurt as bad, and her head wasn’t throbbing anymore.
“Hey,” Trey said with a smile. “There you are.”
“I didn’t pass out.”
“I know.” He laced his fingers though hers again, and when he gazed down at her now, there was an edge of adoration in those eyes. Her heartbeat sprinted now, and she had the urge to fly from his presence.
Her mind moaned with a single word. Danny.
He’d been gone for thirty-one months now. Over two and a half years. Beth had managed to keep the farm, and it was actually making a little bit of money now. A very little bit. Her father had been helping her for a long time, and Beth really wanted to get out from underneath the bills, the debts, and her guilt that she needed her dad’s money to clothe herself and her son.
The doctor entered, and Trey stepped back. Beth talked to him, and he confirmed that she needed stitches in her hand. “Two layers,” The doctor said, poking at the fleshy part of her hand and the gaping ravine between the two halves of it the knife had made. “It’s a good, clean cut, though, so it should heal nicely.”
“How long?” she asked.
“At least twelve weeks,” the doctor said. “I might put you in a brace to keep it stationary for the first six. You use your hands so much, and you don’t want that to split.” He looked at her. “You’ll have to hire some help, Miss Dixon. You can’t use this hand for at least twelve weeks.” He was the very stern, not-great-bedside-manner type of doctor, but Beth found herself nodding.
“If you try to use it, you’ll just be back here at square one,” he said. “Zero, actually, because it’ll be torn up. You might have permanent damage and lose mobility for a lot longer than twelve weeks if you don’t just let it heal.”
“She’ll let it heal,” Trey said. “I’ll help her.”
“You don’t need to do that,” she said quickly, looking from the doctor to Trey and back. “He’s just my neighbor.”
“Neighbors are the perfect people to ask for help,” Dr. Watts said, and Beth laid her head back. “Let’s get this numb, and I’ll get you fixed up.”
He did just that, with Beth turning her head away from her left hand and clenching her teeth while he did. He finally stood and stretched his back. “I’m going to wrap it tightly for now,” he said. “I want you to follow-up with your primary care physician in seven to ten days and have him check these.”
Dr. Watts continued to give her care instructions for the stitches, including that she couldn’t get them wet when she showered, but she needed to keep them moist with Vaseline so the skin didn’t dry out and pull.
In all honesty, she tuned out after the first couple of sentences. Her brain couldn’t handle any more than that anyway. Trey seemed to know exactly when she couldn’t absorb any more, and he listened to the doctor, tapped notes on his phone, and took the paperwork for how to keep the