The Wrangler’s Christmas Gift (The Malones of Grand, Montana #4)

Chapter Twenty

“G et in my car,” JP yelled, pulling up alongside her on the street. “This is no weather to be walking.”

“I’ll get my car at the Yellowstone,” Heather said, tucking her head down against the wind stinging her cheeks.

Bayleigh had seemed fine to her, but a mid-forties pregnancy couldn’t be easy. What a horrible night for them to be out.

He yanked the wheel so quickly his SUV jumped the curb and she had to slap her hands on the hood to keep from running into it. “What’s the matter with you?” she shouted.

“What’s the matter with you? Get in. I’m not letting you go alone.”

“Don’t you have mass or confession or something?”

“What are they going to do, fire me? Your son’s wife is having a baby and they need you. Get in, already.”

“Fine.” She didn’t have energy to fight him. Poor Bayleigh. Poor Lucas. He must be going out of his mind.

When they got to the hospital, JP dropped her off at the emergency entrance, then went to find parking. Lucas and Bayleigh hadn’t arrived yet, so she took a seat in the waiting area. She held her phone in one palm, as if keeping it near might make information come to her sooner. Then she keyed in Em’s number.

“Hey, Hetty,” Em said.

“You sound congested. Are you getting a cold?”

Em had gotten strep throat each winter throughout high school until she finally got her tonsils out.

“I’m fine. What’s up?”

Heather gave her the few details she had, explained that she’d be in the hospital for as long as Lucas and Bayleigh needed her.

“Is the baby going to be okay?” Em asked.

“Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know. I hope so. Brade said he’d meet us here.”

Oh, Bayleigh. Please be okay. Please, God, let her baby be okay.

“Want me to come wait with you?”

“No. Father…I mean…JP is here.”

Em was quiet on the other end of the line. “Really? Are you guys…okay?”

“Yes, of course.” Another lie. “I don’t know, Em. Listen, I have to go. I’ll call you when I know more, okay?”

JP walked in, brushing snow off his sleeves. Brade said to come to the labor and delivery ward, so together they headed for the bank of elevators. The hospital was quiet as they made their way through the empty hallways and the silence fell around her, thick and heavy. Heather could hear her heart beating against her eardrums and the taste of metal was sharp in the back of her throat.

Bayleigh and her baby had to be okay. They had to. She was panting as if she’d been climbing stairs but they were on ground level.

“Hetty?” JP said. “Are you okay?”

She would be, as soon as she caught her breath. She stumbled against a yellow sign warning of a freshly washed floor, then leaned against the wall on numb legs. Her teeth chattered. She was so cold but what she felt deeper, inside herself, had nothing to do with the frigid night outside the building.

Bayleigh would be okay, she told herself. Bayleigh and Lucas were fine. They had each other. They were probably already here, getting care. They were strong, their baby was healthy. They would be okay.

Breathe. Breathe, dammit.

Outside the window, snowflakes danced and swirled against the glow of the streetlights, misty, frosty, so beautiful and she was so tired…then she was with JP in the back of his truck, just the two of them, young again, gazing up into the starlit night, not talking, or touching, just together and, above them, the sky was a painting, full of blues and purples—

“Heather!”

She blinked. The dream slipped away like smoke through her fingertips, taking the comfort with it.

JP stood in front of her, gripping her bare hands between his palms.

“Honey, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.” He peered into her face, his eyes wide. Then he looked around the deserted hallway and shouted. “Hello? We need some help, here.”

“No…” She meant to yell but it came out as a whisper. She never wanted to be a patient again. It was bad enough being there for Jolene and the kids, with all the beeping sounds, the smells, the quick urgency of footsteps, the rough hands, the voices, the rasp of tape on her arms…

She shook her head. This wasn’t about her. This was about Bayleigh.

“Try to breathe, Heather.” JP pushed her onto the tiled floor. “I’ll get Brade.”

He took her phone, held it to her face to unlock it, then called Brade. “We’re just outside…” he glanced around again “…radiology.”

He draped his coat over Heather as if she was a child, but Heather barely felt it. Had the night grown darker? Were they having a power outage because of the weather? She wiped moisture off her face. Were the snowflakes getting inside? Were they melting on her skin? She was cold, so cold, so alone, so frightened.

She reached back into her mind for the dream but it was gone, replaced by the nightmare that, even now, had the power to cut her legs out from under her. JP was gone. Her babies were gone.

She swallowed. JP was right there. And her babies weren’t gone. They were all grown up.

They were Brade and Leila and Lucas and they’d been alive the whole time.

It didn’t seem real.

“Hey, Heather,” came Brade’s voice. “What’s going on?”

She couldn’t speak. Her voice was gone. What could she say?

She closed her eyes and felt herself lifted and settled into a wheelchair, felt herself rolling down the hallway. She wanted to sleep, sleep and never wake up, to go back into the dream with JP in the back of his truck—there it was—under the summer stars with the scent of alfalfa and lilacs all around them, the comfort of his presence, the certainty that she was not alone, that he’d loved her, that it had all been real, and everything else was the dream.

Then, a young woman in a pastel scrub suit was with her, helping her climb onto a narrow bed, unbuttoning her blouse, slipping a johnny around her shoulders, draping a blanket over her, fresh from the warming oven.

“Thanks for calling,” a voice said, as if from a distance. “She’s never liked hospitals, but this is something else.”

It was Em. When had she arrived? They’d just spoken, hadn’t they? But Heather hadn’t asked her to come. Had she?

“I am not dying,” she muttered.

“I don’t give a shit,” Em said. “Colt’s on his way, too. Something’s wrong with you and you’re staying here until we find out what it is.”

“But Bayleigh…the baby.”

“They’re being cared for. Hetty, you’re freaking me out here.”

“Me, too.” This voice had a familiar roughness that scraped something deep inside her. “We just found each other. I can’t lose her again.”

JP. And he sounded…bereft.

“Me, neither.” Em sounded so young. “When she was looking after my mom, she was always one hundred percent in control, calm, caring, clear in giving the doctors and nurses information, precise in following through with their directions at home. She’s a natural-born caregiver. I’ve never seen her like this.”

“You love her,” JP said softly.

The silence was broken only by quiet sob. Em wasn’t a crier.

Heather let the heavy heat flow over her, but a sudden jolt made her open her eyes. Her stomach was churning, and the bright lights made her head hurt.

“This isn’t the Yellowstone.” She shook her head, winced.

“Damn straight it’s not.” Em sniffed and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “Welcome back. You scared me half to death. No, no, you stay right where you are. Someone’s going to check you out. In the event you decide to have a stroke, which I was thinking was happening a few minutes ago, you’re going to do it under medical care. Don’t argue with me, Hetty. This is the right place to be.”

“Bayleigh,” she whispered, gripping Em’s hand.

“Brade’s with them now,” Em promised. “Father Patrick, could you get her some water?”

When JP left, Em leaned closer. “I kind of like your cowboy, you know.”

“He’s not my…”

“I think he could be. I saw how he was looking at you. He never meant to leave you, Hetty. Maybe you should hear him out.”

“Someone,” she said, working hard to push the words past the thumping in her chest, “needs…to protect…the babies…”

“Babies?” Em said.

JP appeared with a plastic tumbler and held a straw to Heather’s lips. “Take a sip,” he said, taking her hand. “Breathe.”

Breathe.

“Emma,” JP said. “Could you check on Lucas and Bayleigh? I think she’ll rest easier if she knows they’re okay.”

“I’ll be right back, okay, Hetty?” she said.

“Hm,” Heather said. She reached up and fingered the pendant Em had given her.

Remember who the fuck you are.

But she’d been so many different people. She was Heather Hudson. Heather Scott. Mel Brezo. Hetty Malone. Granny.

Honey.

She sucked a breath deep into her lungs, felt her brain clear, felt the swirling clouds recede.

She was Honey Malone. And she wasn’t going to die without telling her truth.

“I looked for you everywhere, JP,” she said, her voice stronger now. “I thought you were dead.”

“I can’t believe you were pregnant when I…left.” He stroked the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry, Heather.”

“You didn’t just leave. You disappeared.” She struggled to sit up in the bed, then fell back against the pillow. “I was pregnant and in love with you and you disappeared.”

He shook his head as if confused. “If only I’d have known.”

“Known what? That I was in love with you?” She looked away. “You wrote me the most beautiful letters, describing what it was like to ride on the range for days, how the sky looked under the mountains at night, the scent of sagebrush, the purple haze of crocuses in spring, the call of a red-winged blackbird.” She caught her breath at the memories and took courage from them. “You wrote such vivid scenes, so full of beauty that they became the inspiration for my paintings. You made me feel special, cherished. I gave you my virginity. And then you disappeared.”

“Oh, Honey,” he said.

“Don’t call me that.”

He flinched and it felt perversely good to hurt him. There was nothing that could make up for the hurt he caused her, but she could try.

“They wanted me to give up our baby, so I ran. I looked and looked for you. I needed you! I didn’t know I was carrying multiples until I went into labor. My father was never going to let me keep my ‘bastard,’ so I ran and I hid and I looked for you. I knew if I could just find you, we’d be okay.”

“Good evening. I understand you’re having some dizzy spells?” A nurse, Ruth according to the tag on her scrub top, entered the room and slipped a blood pressure cuff onto Heather’s arm. “Let’s see what the numbers say.”

“What’s happening to her?” JP asked.

“Nothing,” Heather said. “I’m fine. I need to find my son and daughter-in-law.”

“Do you know what day it is, Ms. Malone?” Ruth asked.

Heather took a deep breath. “It’s December 26th. My son—Dr. Brade Oliver, he was just here—is getting married on the 29th. My other son, Lucas Landry, is here somewhere with his partner, who is eight months pregnant. I need to find them.”

The nurse nodded, asked a few more questions, then stepped back, assessing her patient. “Your blood pressure is up, but not alarmingly so. Same with your heart rate.” She flashed a light in Heather’s eyes and Heather flinched. “We’re going to take you up for some tests in a few minutes. Brade will make sure you are well cared for.”

“Can you find out about Bayleigh?” she called as the nurse left the curtained cubicle. “Where’s Em? JP, help me up.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” He pushed her back against the sheets, gently but firmly.

“I have to know,” Heather whispered. “She must be so scared.”

*

Em returned to the room, breathless from hurrying across the building. Father Patrick—she really had to get used to calling him JP—leaned over Hetty’s bedside, and the look on his face made her breath catch. As for Hetty, a bit of color had returned to her face but the lines had deepened. She looked, Em realized, terrified. More than terrified. Traumatized. Young and old at the same time. Vulnerable, panicked.

“Brade says everything is okay,” Em said. “They’re trying to stop her labor but it looks like the baby wants to come early.”

“No.” Hetty shook her head, the whites of her eyes visible around irises so dark they seemed almost black. “No. We have to help her. You have to take me to Bayleigh, please. She must be so scared.”

Em had no experience with people having babies, but it seemed like this wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary. “Nobody was panicking. Brade wouldn’t have said not to worry otherwise, right?”

A technician entered the area armed with a plastic bucket of equipment and proceeded to draw several vials of blood from Hetty.

When she was finished, Em’s phone rang. It was Lucas. She put him on speaker.

“They just did an ultrasound,” Lucas said. “Baby is okay, small, but Bayleigh’s water just broke so this is happening. And it’s happening fast.”

“I’m supposed to help. I need to get there.” Hetty tried to swing her legs off the bed, but JP held her back.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Not until we know you’re okay.”

“Where’s Heather?” Lucas said through the phone. “Bayleigh’s looking for her.”

“For Hetty?” Em said. “Why?”

“Labor coach,” Lucas replied. “Or maybe to keep me from passing out.”

“You?” Em looked at Hetty. Hetty had always avoided babies and pregnant women.

“She’s the baby’s grandmother,” Lucas said. “Bayleigh’s got good instincts.”

“I’ll be right there,” Hetty said loudly.

“No, she won’t,” JP said, even louder.

“She fainted, Lucas,” Em said. “Don’t worry, she’s getting checked out.”

“Heather?” Lucas said. Raised voices sounded in the background. “Just come when you can. I gotta go. We’re having a baby!”

And the conversation ended.

“Hey,” Colt said, skidding into the room. “What the hell is going on? The parking lot is a mess with all this snow and nobody’s answering my texts. Hetty? My God, what’s happening?”

“Colt.” Em’s knees went wobbly with relief at his presence.

“Hey, Pony-Boy,” Hetty said. But her face was gray, her lips ashen.

Colt took his coat off, sat on the bed and took her hands in his. His hair was messed up, his shirt was buttoned up wrong, and his eyes were dark with anguish. “What’s going on?”

“Bayleigh’s baby is coming. I promised her I’d be there.” She turned her face into the pillow, and a sob escaped her throat. “It’s too…early.”

“I meant,” Colt said, “what’s going on with you?”

“We don’t know yet,” Em said. “But she’s not leaving this bed until we know she’s okay.”

She didn’t understand the intensity of Hetty’s reaction. Premature babies were born every day. Plus, Lucas might be her son, but they were just getting to know each other. They weren’t close, not yet. Fear jolted her again, the same fear she’d felt as a little girl, watching her mother living a half-life, dying slowly, month after month, until one day she was just…gone. Leaving Emmet alone.

Alone, but for Hetty.

Hetty had always been there for her. Sure, she’d had other kids come and go. But she’d kept Emmet. Emmet was for real, forever. That’s what she’d promised.

“Ms. Malone?” An orderly arrived and helped Hetty into a wheelchair. When he took her away, JP followed close behind.

“I’m going to go find some…a drink or something,” Em said, suddenly desperate to get away from Colt’s questioning gaze.

She stumbled through the curtain and found her way to an alcove with a vending machine containing bottled water and soft drinks. She plugged in coins until a root beer pushed from the coiled slot and fell into the bottom with a thump. But when she stuck her hand in to get it, the bottle stubbornly refused to cooperate.

“Come on,” Emmet muttered. “For—”

“Here,” said Colt, reaching past her. “Let me help.”

He deftly removed the bottle, snapped open the cap and handed it to her. “You look almost as bad as Hetty does.”

Brade came up behind them. “There you are.”

“What’s wrong with Hetty?” Emmet heard herself ask in a little girl’s voice that made her want to punch herself. “You’re a doctor. Please, tell me the truth.”

Brade looked down at his hands. “Physically, nothing. Her tests are all clear. Psychological shock can look a lot like a heart attack or stroke.” He paused. “Meeting Father Patrick has been a huge shock. I should have seen this coming.”

“Maybe.” Em lifted the bottle to her lips but her hands were shaking so she set it down before the extent of her anxiety became visible. “But she only collapsed when she heard about Bayleigh.”

Brade frowned. “Really? Hm. Maybe she’s reliving the trauma of giving birth to us.”

“It was thirty years ago,” she said. “How traumatic could it have been?”

Brade’s brows lifted. “How much do you know?” he asked slowly.

Emmet frowned. “I know what everyone in this town knows by now. Triplets, adopted into other families as infants.”

The Christmas miracle reunion. Some miracle, if it ended up like this.

Brade spoke slowly. “The adoptions occurred without her consent. She was told we died.”

“Yes, I know all this, Brade.”

Except, she’d only learned this when Lucas and Leila appeared on Hetty’s doorstep, forcing the issue. Hetty had never, ever let it slip, in any way, that she’d had a whole other life before foster mother Hetty Malone and her secret identity as artist Mel Brezo. Certainly not that she’d had a whole other family. A couple of them, in fact.

Emmet had been so focused on keeping Hetty to herself that she hadn’t thought about what those early experiences might have been like.

“I suspect Lucas, Leila and I were all sent to separate neonatal intensive care centers under child protective services,” Brade continued. “Heather suffered eclampsia. She almost died, Emmet. She had an emergency caesarean section. You never saw the scar?”

Em thought about all those times Hetty refused to go swimming, how she never let Em see her when she was changing clothes. She’d thought the older woman shy, maybe unhappy with her body, maybe…what? She should have thought harder.

“It was a midline incision,” Brade continued, making a vertical gesture with his hand. “They only do that when it’s a critical emergency, when seconds matter and the life of the mother and baby are at risk. Most C-sections are done horizontally, just above the pelvis. Can barely see them. That’s not what she got. She was seizing, Emmet. In another minute, she might have died. We almost certainly would have. According to the notes I read…” he hesitated and tightened his mouth “…she was unmarried and had no prenatal care, so the nursing staff made some assumptions and judged her accordingly. They called her a runaway, contacted child protection, ran drug and alcohol tests on her, checked her for sexually transmitted diseases. She was negative for everything. She was just a kid, with no partner, no family, no health insurance, in one of the toughest positions a person can be in but instead of helping her, they almost destroyed her.”

“I didn’t know…” Em lowered herself to a squat position against the wall and pressed the cold drink against her forehead.

“So,” Colt said, “Bayleigh’s emergency delivery is bringing all this back to her?”

Brade shrugged. “Makes sense to me. But what do you guys think? You know her better than any of us. You’re her kids as much as we are.”

“Em is,” Colt corrected. “Not me.”

Brade’s unexpected acknowledgment warmed her, but it was the sadness in Colt’s voice that she turned to.

She touched his arm. “She invited you here, Colt. She wanted you.”

He swallowed, then nodded wordlessly.

“As far as what’s happening to Hetty,” she said, “since Bayleigh’s baby appears to have triggered it, maybe seeing Bayleigh’s baby will resolve it.”