Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (29 page)

Nelly didn’t have time to wait.

Madeline had a couple of courses of erythromycin at the clinic, and maybe one or two doses of tetracycline. But a lot of these bacteria were resistant, and if it was a parasite, it wouldn’t do any good anyway.

She glanced in the rearview mirror as she crested the last hill. Tara was keeping the IV up by resting her arm over her head, and Nelly wasn’t convulsing. She’d have to chance the antibiotics, she decided. She couldn’t risk Nelly until she got lab results first thing Monday morning.

Monday seemed a hell of a long way off.

She pulled up in front of the door and unlocked the clinic. Where the hell was Clarence? She couldn’t wait on him. “Tara. We have to get her out of here and onto a bed. You have to carry the bag, okay? Can you do that?”

Eyes closed, Tara nodded. And then shook her head no. “I...” She threw her head out the window and vomited. Madeline grimaced. At least Tara kept the bag up, but how the hell was Madeline going to get Nelly out of the car?

And then the most magical sound of all reached her ears.

Hoof beats.

She looked up to see Nobody Bodine flying in low and fast, with Rebel hot on his heels. Appearing out of nowhere in the dark, they looked like two out of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Any other day, she’d be wetting her pants at the sight of dark riders bearing down on her like they were coming in for the kill. Not today. She’d never been so happy to see them in her whole life. Behind them, headlights shone. Jesse, she realized. Three out of four wasn’t bad.

Focus, girl
, she scolded herself as Rebel and Nobody dismounted at dead runs. Jesse’s truck squealed to a stop behind them. So they weren’t trained medical professionals. They were able-bodied men, and they were what she had to work with. “Nelly—we’ve got to get her out of the car and into the clinic.”

That was all she had to say. Rebel opened one door, Jesse the other, and together they extracted Nelly and Tara. Madeline grabbed the saline bag and they made it in.

“Wash up—now,” she ordered both men. “Strip off anything that got slimed. Wear hospital gowns if you have to. We can’t let this spread.” The men nodded silently and peeled off their shirts.

Any other day, she’d love to just sit back and watch three of the finer chests on the White Sandy duke it out for the title of the hottest hunk. But today—hell, it was still tonight—wasn’t any old day. “Gloves and masks,” she added as she hooked the bag up to the pole. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore.

“Little help here!” Clarence shouted from outside. Nobody and Rebel looked at each other, and then Nobody sprinted for the door. He reappeared seconds later, carrying Tammy. Clarence was right behind him, with Mikey in his arms. “Sorry I’m late, Doc. I stopped to check on these two, and they weren’t doing...so...good.” His voice trailed off as he looked at the carnage the clinic had quickly devolved into. “Shit.” He sounded impressed.

Stick with me
, Madeline thought, although she wasn’t worried. Clarence had seen combat, and everyone here still had all their limbs. “Clarence, get Nelly on the oxygen and then you’re on IV duty,” she ordered, like she was quarterbacking the big play. “Nobody, cleanup duty. Jesse—” But Jesse wasn’t listening to her. He was standing over his daughter, brushing her sweaty hair away from her face.
Okay
, Madeline thought. Two able-bodied men and Clarence. “Rebel, come with me.”

Everyone moved. The clinic was silent except for the sound of retching. Mikey and Nelly were in the hospital beds, while the three Tall Trees women were sprawled out on the exam tables. In less than a minute, the smell of bleach filled the air. Mikey yelped in pain as Clarence ran the IV.
A good team
, she thought as she and Rebel headed for the stock closet.

God, she hoped it was campylobacter or E. coli or something like it as she began to pull what few items she did have off the shelf. “Shit,” she muttered again as she grabbed the suppositories and the antibiotics and piled them into Rebel’s arms. She had enough for the Tall Trees family. How many other people had been at that picnic? Would Nelly be able to keep it down long enough for it to work?

“What?” he asked.

She paused, suddenly aware that he was here when she needed him—when Nelly needed him. His face was calm and focused, but she could see the worry in his eyes. “I think you’re right. But we can’t wait until Monday—she’s in shock, and I’ve got to stop her symptoms from cascading.” At the mention of shock, Rebel got that fierce look, the one he wore when he was going to do battle. She’d seen it more than enough, starting when he shooed Walter White Mouse out of here and ending with the phone call to Leon Flagg. Except this time, he wasn’t battling against her. He was battling
with
her.

“I’m going to do antibiotics, just in case. I don’t have a hell of a lot of the anti-diarrhea meds. We’ll just have to keep pumping her full of electrolytes.”

He nodded as she hauled out the box of half-normal saline. She had the sinking feeling they were going to use the whole thing before much longer. And all the vials for samples. It was going to take time to get them back from the lab, but if this really was some contaminated beef, she’d need all the proof she could get.

“What else can I do to help?” Rebel asked.

She looked at him and all her regret—the slimy phone call, losing her temper, not going to look for him—melted into gratitude. “Pray,” she said simply and headed out to her patients.

The night got better and worse at the same time. Within half an hour, Nelly’s system was responding to the fluids and the intravenous antibiotics. She even managed to keep the Zofran down for a bit. After checking Nelly’s file—easy to find since Tara had organized everything—Madeline made the executive decision to hook Nelly up to one of her precious pints of blood. She couldn’t tell how much the girl had lost, and she was pretty far down on the total fluid count for a girl her size. Warding off shock meant hitting it with everything she had, and she had a bag of B+ blood. The result—a five-year-old girl with two different IVs running into her plus an oxygen tube—was almost as unsettling as finding her in the tub, but Madeline didn’t have time to dwell.

Jesse donned the mask and gloves and then put himself on cleanup detail, giving his daughter a sponge bath and holding the bedpan for her when she threw up. Madeline felt proud of him, although she didn’t have time to stop and think beyond that. Even though he was a toddler, Mikey hadn’t been as far gone as Nelly was—he’d been a mess, but at least he hadn’t been bleeding. He only had one IV, and that was doing its job. And the three women all managed to keep their antibiotics down. All good things. She’d gotten to them in time.

But they weren’t the only ones who were sick. Before long, Madeline was in real danger of running out of IVs. She already had people lying on the floor and sitting in the waiting room, with the patients who could stand acting as human IV poles. Rebel had taken over Tara’s job, answering the phone and pulling files while Nobody made pass after pass of the place, trying to stay one step ahead of the mess. She thought Jesse was washing down all the kids, but she couldn’t be sure.

They were barely keeping their heads above water. The clinic got more and more crowded as people dragged themselves in. Everyone was throwing up, which was bad enough, but the diarrhea seemed to be hitting the kids the hardest. And the story was all the same. Everyone who was sick had gone to the church picnic. Everyone had eaten steak.

For Madeline, each hour had been the same as the one before. Sick people, not enough space, not enough supplies. She felt vaguely like she was stuck in a movie—everyone had had the fish, the pilot was ill and was there anyone on board who could fly a plane? That was just the exhaustion talking, she knew. It had all started to blur in a mess of vomit and saline and bleach when she looked up and saw it was seven in the morning. Dawn had happened at some point, which meant it was morning in Columbus.

It took three tries before Mellie answered the damn phone, but when she heard Madeline’s voice, she didn’t even whine about the ungodly hour. The woman was an Internet-stalking genius. In twenty minutes, Madeline had the home phone number of the owner of the medical supply place in Rapid City. She didn’t have time to do it Mellie’s way, so when the owner, one Mr. Hubert Terstrip, told her he couldn’t possibly make it to the store today because it was Sunday, she broke out the Mitchell sneer with enough force to make half the waiting room recoil in fear.

She sure as hell wasn’t going to let a little thing like Sunday keep her from containing this mess. “If I lose a single patient because you didn’t get me what I needed,” she shouted, not caring who heard her, “I’ll sue your ass back into the last century and then, once you’re there, I’ll sue it again. And I’m talking class action, Mr. Terstrip. Hordes of lawyers, all wanting a piece of you, for years. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to open the damn store on Sunday and give me what I need.”

Even Rebel backed up a step. Well. At least the Mitchell sneer was working again, even with a surgical mask covering her mouth. She’d have to remember this version of it the next time she needed to put that man in his place—but that wasn’t today. She waited.

“Fine,” Mr. Terstrip said, sounding anything but happy about it. “But I’m not going in before nine, you hear me?”

“Fine. Nine it is. I’m sending an associate,” she replied, feeling the sneer crack just a little into something that might be a smile. Rebel’s eyebrows knit together in suspicion. She nodded, and he nodded back. Rebel was the only one who could do it right now. “He’ll pay with my check.”

With a snarl, Mr. Terstrip hung up.

“Supplies?” Was she insane, or did she hear a little joke in his voice as he dug out a pen and a piece of paper?

She snatched them out of his hand and chose to ignore whatever double entendre he may or may not be slinging at 7:46 in the morning on less than four hours of sleep. “Can you do this?” She needed more of everything—dextrose, saline, IVs for both kids and adults, more Zofran for the kids and lots and lots of antibiotics.

“You can count on me,” he replied as she dug out her checkbook.

“Can I?”

Over the top of his own mask, he gave her a look that said, “Oh, come
on
,” and she mentally winced. This was not the time or the place to get into that again, not when she needed his help. His help, she reminded herself. Not him. She signed the check and then looked at her balance. “I can cover four, okay?”

“Thousand?”

Damn, she hated it when he got mildly bug-eyed. Him looking freakish made her feel freakish. “Do the best you can.”

Rebel got himself back under control. After all, Madeline reminded herself, he’d been up for hours on heavens-only-knew what kind of sleep too. He took the list, read through it once and held out his hand for the check.

She paused for a second. This was unfettered access to her back account. But then, he’d already had unfettered access to her body. Was this any different? And she was desperate. Behind her, the wet sound of projectile vomiting hit her ears. Desperation in a nutshell. She gave him the check, and he tucked it in his back pocket. “If he gives you any crap, you have my permission to beat the hell out of him.”

He caught her eyes and held her gaze for a long moment. She tried to read his eyes, but all she could see was something that might be admiration, professional respect.

“I’m going,” he said, his voice low and suddenly intimate.

“Go, then.”

With a nod of his head, he turned and stepped over patients on the floor.

But come back
, she added silently as Jesse’s truck peeled out of the parking lot.

Come back.

Chapter Sixteen

Normally, it took Rebel about an hour and fifteen or twenty minutes to get to Rapid City. Today, he made it in under an hour, which, unfortunately, left him with seven minutes to sit in the Terstrip Medical Supply parking lot and figure out how he wanted to handle this. Madeline had gone in with both barrels blasting, but he wasn’t Madeline. And he’d never met any of these people, so he didn’t know what was coming. Who would he need to be? Rebel or Jonathan?

As he debated, he looked around. He’d never been on this side of the city. When he came in, he stuck to the gallery neighborhoods and the Super-Mart strip malls. A corner grocery that looked like it catered to Mexican immigrants was up the block and a manufactured-home sales lot was across the street. Terstrip Medical Supply took up most of a whole block all by itself. Together, they gave the place a desolate, industrial feel at nearly nine on a Sunday morning.

He wondered what time the grocery opened. No one had eaten anything since he’d shown up, and Madeline probably wouldn’t let anyone eat anything that had already been in the clinic for fear of cross-contamination. But everyone would need something to keep going, or they wouldn’t be any better off that the patients. His stomach managed a small growl in agreement.

At exactly nine, a smooth black sedan with dark windows pulled into the lot and an ill-tempered man who looked dressed for church got out and slammed the door. His comb-over ruffled in the slight breeze as he stalked up to the door, unlocked it and wrenched it open.

He’d have to go in as Rebel, he decided. Nothing about Terstrip said he could be flattered into anything right now. He followed Terstrip into the store.