head and glared at them. These particular two never took it easy on me when they had a call that pertained to me. Sheriff Cleat, he always handled me with kid gloves.
"Oh Kia." He did a get out hand motion to the deputies and motioned for me to close the door. "Come sit for a second, and then I need to rest as they just gave me pain meds right before you got here."
I pulled the chair up close to his bed and sat leaning forward to listen to him.
"I know your heart is always in the right place, but sometimes you just jump right in with both feet and don't take that second that is needed to look around at your surroundings."
I couldn't deny that. That was me, every time I got into trouble. Every time I would ask myself why I did not just try to take that extra second and think it through. I watched him yawn and fight closing his eyes. I reached out and patted his hand. "Why don't you rest. I'm sure I'll meet the new sheriff soon enough." Mentally, I had hoped not, but I knew that it would just be a matter of time.
A soft laughter escaped his lips as he was fighting the pain meds and how tired they were making him. "I hope not, but when you do, go easy on him Kia. He's a good man. A bit hard headed but I'm sure you two will get along great. Eventually."
That last word had me a bit worried. How tough was this new sheriff? How bad could he be? Would he slam the book at me or have the ability to overlook the chaos I cause, for the fact that it usually came with me only trying to do good somehow?
I pushed the chair back to where it was and slung my purse over my shoulder. By the time I turned to look at old Sheriff Cleat, he was out cold snoring lightly. I stood there for a minute looking at the man who spent a lifetime either rescuing me, scolding me, fixing the paperwork so I didn't get arrested or just driving me around in the back of his police cruiser explaining to me how I might have wanted to handle that particular situation differently. My memories with him started at three, and now I felt a bit sad that this was where our memories would end. I could only hope that the new sheriff wasn't going to be hard to break in.
With all this new information whirling through my mind, I set off from the hospital with a fresh determination. One, I was no longer going to go looking for trouble. Two, I was going to make it damn hard for trouble to find me. My new motto was look the other way, ignore it, and it will go away and run fast in the other direction if trouble starts coming. It wasn't the way I was raised, but it was the new way for me. I was tired of being everybody's butt end of their jokes and tired of trying to do the right thing only to find myself in more of a pickle than I was before trouble found me.
The long and winding road from the back ridge of the mountain range had my head clearing and my heart ready to start anew. If this plan of mine didn't work, then I was bound and determined to move somewhere, anywhere, to get a fresh start. Preferably somewhere, where no one knew me, not a single soul, or knew of me, or about me. I had already passed a stray dog on the side of the road and kept on driving. Although it killed me not to stop, I reminisced about the last time I stopped to help a stray dog find its owner. I never did replace that couch.
I passed an old truck with its hood up and some man leaning in over the engine. I mentally patted myself on my back. I did not stop. The last time I stopped, some crazy man abducted me and held me at a an old abandoned cafe back on route 119 until he keeled over from a heart attack while telling me about the alien abduction that was going to happen. That fiasco lasted for almost three months of conversation around town. Thank God for Deputy Dan's cross-dressing habits getting caught and aired on Utube. That was the