From Here to There (15 page)

 "This one really should have stitches to close it," she said, trying to keep her hands from shaking as she disinfected, then applied ointment to his rip.

 "No way."

 "It'll scar."

 "So?"

 She clenched her teeth. Macho men. Had she said that was what she wanted? She must have been out of her mind.

 "I don’t understand how it happened,” she said, mostly to distract herself.

 Phillip didn't like recalling his moments trapped by the wire. There didn't seem to be any simple way to explain the tangle of barbed wire he'd suddenly found himself bound by. "I ended up rolled in it," he admitted finally.

 "Rolled up!" Helene was horrified. "You mean it wrapped around you? How on earth did you get free?" She didn't like the mental image it brought to mind or the peculiar feeling that the thought of Phillip being hurt brought to the pit of her stomach.

 "I had the wire cutters. It took a little maneuvering and a lot of feeling like an idiot, but I cut through it. I just couldn't believe it had happened. You should've seen the disgust on Hobo's face when he saw what I'd done."

 Amos snorted. "That stuff can move faster'n any man. I seen it coming at me afore. It's like a kid heading out on the last day of school. Just whips itself up like it's got a mind of its own and takes a bite out of a fella."

 "It did that," Phillip said, letting out his breath when he saw she was finished with him. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she headed for the counter, then poured him a cup of coffee.

She looked with disgust at the steak on the tray but handed him the salad. “Let me see what else we have. This steak is too tough for anybody but Hobo to eat now.”

He looked at it hungrily. “I will eat it,” he said. He couldn't admit to her or even to himself how the homey scene affected him with a mixture of fear and desire, how his senses had been stirred by her fingers ministering to his torn flesh and now offering him sustenance.

 He began eating, and yes, the steak was tough but it was still good and delicious to a really hungry man.

 "Why didn't you come up to the house right away?" Helene asked, her hands on her hips, an expression of disapproval pursing her full lips.

 It had never even dawned on him to ask anyone to help him, to tend to his hurts, but he couldn't tell her that. Instead he shrugged, aware as he did of the pull of sore muscles and now bandaged flesh.

 "You had a tetanus shot recently?" Amos asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

 "Not that I know of."

 "Then tomorrow--" he looked toward Helene "--take him around to Doc Albertson."

 "I can drive myself into town," Phillip argued, very sure he wasn’t going to let Helene see him in a weakened position if he could help it. Pride was rearing its head again. One of Helene's objections to him was he wasn't man enough. Wouldn't a real man drive himself into town?

 Her quick pivot and the outraged expression on her face told him she didn't see the situation as he had expected. Shrugging again, he gave up to the inevitable. If she was determined to baby him for a day or so, he would submit to it with relatively good grace. Smiling to himself as she cut him a piece of apple pie, he further decided there might be some fringe benefits for a man who played his cards wisely.

#

 Sitting beside Helene as she drove Amos’s truck into Livingston, the fall colors paled by the early morning light and the mistiness coming off the Yellowstone River, Phillip had no inspiration for conversation that would be safe. Since Helene remained silent, he assumed the same was true of her. After twenty miles of silence and two-lane black-top, they turned right and were almost immediately in the small community.

 Livingston appeared to have stepped from a photograph of small town America in the Twenties or Thirties. The business facades weren't designed to mimic an Old West town, they were one, and their function was still practical--banks, hardware, clothing and drug stores.

 Helene pulled into the parking lot behind an old brick building. "Amos says Doc Albertson's been treating Hartzs as far back as he can remember," she told Phillip as they walked toward the building. "He's old but still on top of the latest medical advancements."

 "You expect me to object?" he asked, a little affronted at the tone of her voice.

 "No, I just didn't want you to think this was an inadequate facility."

 "Helene, I'm just after a tetanus shot, but even if I wasn't, I've seen a lot worse doctor's offices in my time."

 "You have? When?" she asked with a note of disbelief.

 Phillip tried to think of an answer that would satisfy her, but suddenly he didn't want to deceive her about his past. She had rejected him when she knew he was wealthy and successful. It hardly mattered now if she found out the story was more tawdry than he'd led her to believe.

 "Did you think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth?" he asked as he opened the door to the old office building.

 "Is that a reference to the fact that I was?" she asked suspiciously.

 "But you were," he answered. Their boots echoed hollowly down the narrow, wooden hallway.

 "All right, so I was. What about you?" She had thought he never said much about his upbringing because it was uneventful. Now she wondered.

 Before he could answer, they were at Doctor Albertson's door. "You're not off the hook," she warned as he opened the door. "I have a memory like an elephant."

 He smiled at her, then turned the full force of his hundred-watt smile onto the elderly receptionist, Alice Temple, who was soon having him fill out forms and talking a mile a minute all the time. A second patient walked through the door and was lucky to receive a hello. "Your poor face," Alice murmured, as though possibly she might be willing to do the examination.

 "It's no big deal," Phillip said, knowing it did sound macho but unable to find a way to cut down on the attention being paid him without the customary demurrer.

 In a moment, the doctor, easily as old as his receptionist, came out to greet Phillip. "Hear you had a tangle with barbed wire," the tall, slightly stooped doctor said, taking Phillip's hand.

 "How'd you hear that?" Phillip asked as he was led into the examining room and ordered to strip to the waist.

 "Amos called to tell me about your accident. How is the old boy, anyway? He was due in for his physical last month. Skipped out on me."

 "Seems spry to me," Phillip said before he had to concentrate on gritting his teeth through the doctor's probing of his injuries.

 "Watch those two for infection," Dr. Albertson instructed, rummaging into a drawer, "otherwise it looks to me like Helene did just fine. You're a lucky man to have a wife who doesn't get sick at the sight of blood."

 Phillip realized it was the first time he'd heard Helene described as his wife. Then he forgot that as he uneasily watched the doctor pull out a long syringe, push it into the top of a small bottle and withdraw a dose of vaccine.

 Rubbing Phillip's arm with an alcohol dipped cotton swab, the doctor chuckled as he saw Phillip eye the needle. "Don't much like shots, eh?" The actual injection only stung for a moment before the needle was withdrawn.

 "I suppose real cowboys take them without a twinge," Phillips retorted resentfully as he pulled back on his shirt.

 Doctor Albertson laughed outright. "Real cowboys. What a phrase. Well, I'll tell you, I've treated and been around
real
cowboys all my life and there's those who faint at the first sight of blood--especially if it's their own--and wouldn't face a needle if their lives depended on it; but then there's those who when they rip open a ten inch gash in their leg, tie it up, ride into town, walk in here, sit back, let me sew it up, and never move a muscle, and when I'm done working on them, they're out the door to get back to work. I'll tell you what I've observed about life, son. Real
anythings
come in all different packages."

 Out in the waiting room, Doctor Albertson took a moment to greet Helene and inquire after her parents. "You get that uncle of yours in here for his yearly physical," he reminded her before they left. "I didn't like his cholesterol count or blood pressure last spring, and he knows he's supposed to come back to have it checked."

 Helene frowned. "He always says he likes doctors just fine... when they come to dinner, but I'll try to get him in."

 "You do that. He's too young to have a heart attack or stroke just because he wouldn't take medication." He beckoned to the old man sitting patiently. "Jake, come on back."

 As soon as they were in the hall, Helene turned to him. "Okay, now about your early experiences with doctors."

 Phillip groaned. "Aren't you going to ask how I am first? Maybe inquire whether or not the shot hurt?"

 "I know it hurt. Now, tell me."

 "You do have a memory like an elephant," he protested as they stepped back out onto the sunny street.

 They hadn't made it ten feet from the doorway when a voice called from across the street, "Hey Helene, Helene Lamont!"

 At first Phillip felt saved by the bell. That lasted only until a tall, lean man wearing cowboy hat, boots, plaid shirt and levis that looked air brushed onto his body, loped across the street to stand in front of them. He had Helene pulled into an embrace before she could do more than let out a yelp. "Wes," she wheezed as he set her back down.

 Phillip looked suspiciously at the handsome man.

 "I heard you'd gotten married to some millionaire, kind of hotshot guy," Wes said, his voice and face showing an exaggerated sorrow at the news. He didn't give Phillip so much as a glance.

 Helene smiled faintly. "Well, yes, I did get married."

 "But if you got married, what are you doing in Montana?" Wes interrupted before she had time to explain. As though suddenly finally willing to acknowledge she was with someone, he glanced for the first time at Phillip.

 Phillip smiled crookedly. He knew he looked anything like that millionaire hotshot. He needed a shave; his new boots were scuffed and dirty; and his clothes were nothing to write home about, not counting the cuts on his face.

 "Wes, I want you to meet Phillip Drummond.” Then she had to ruin it by adding. “Actually my soon-to-be ex-husband," Helene said. "Phillip, this is Wesley Carlson, a good friend of Emile's."

 Wes gave Helene a look of shock, but said nothing before Phillip had reached out to take Wes's hand in a handshake that turned into a small bout of endurance as each man squeezed and both refused to let go.

 "Boys," Helene ordered in a voice that Phillip remembered only too well from grade school, "behave yourselves."

 Wes shook his head as he surreptitiously let his hand fall to his side. Phillip had no idea how Wes's hand felt at this point, but his own had no feeling, something he imagined he would soon consider to have been good fortune.

 "Ex-husband?" Wes asked, looking perplexed as he turned back to Helene. “You two having a friendly divorce right after your wedding?”

 Helene smiled brightly. "It's the modern way, Wes."

 Wes stared at her, then shook his head. "So what are you in town for?" he asked, as possibly the only safe question of which he could think.

 Phillip grimaced as he waited for Helene to regale Wes on all the details of his stupid accident with the barbed wire. "We're in for a few supplies," she said, "and some preventative vaccinations."

 "Good idea," Wes said, broadly grinning and looking again at Phillip with a speculative gleam in his dark eyes. "So, Phil... uh, how do you like it out here?"