But when she reached the foot of the bed she stopped and stared.

At some point in the last hour, Carson McKay had crawled into the hospital bed with his wife. The gruff rancher, always decked out in boots, jeans and a long sleeved western shirt, at all hours of the day or night, had donned a hospital gown and a pair of flannel pants. His bare feet stuck out the end of the bed, but she could see beneath the blanket his legs were entwined with Carolyn’s.

Carolyn had curled into him, resting her head on his chest, her left hand clasped in his right. He’d draped his left arm across her back and palmed her butt. The posture couldn’t have been more intimate even if they’d been naked.

Feeling intrusive, Lissa backed out of the room until her shoulders hit the wall. She couldn’t stop the tears.

Justine, the other night nurse was right there. “Lissa? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything is right.”

“Then why are you crying?”

Lissa gestured to the room with her head. “I’ve been taking care of her for a week and watching him. It broke my heart because he was just so…lost without her. Now watching them together? That’s the first time I’ve ever really seen the I-can’t-live-without-you kind of love that everyone talks about. They have it. They’ve had it for half a century.” She sniffled. “Now they’re wrapped up in each other’s arms, sleeping in that small bed, because they couldn’t bear to spend another night apart. I can’t imagine loving someone that much.” She glanced through the doorway to the room. “I want that. I want a man who will be by my side for the next fifty years. I’m done settling for good enough.”

“Good for you. But you know him sleeping in ICU is against the rules.”

“Her vitals have improved in the last hour and that’s all that matters, right?”

“Right.”

“Let them be. After all they’ve been through they deserve this.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Carolyn didn’t know why she was nervous to see her own kids. She’d birthed them, nursed them, raised them and cherished them. She’d let them go when they started families of their own.

Everything was so disjointed.

She still didn’t feel like herself.

She’d lost a week of her life.

A week in which she’d relived her life-long love affair with Carson McKay.

Part of her feared this hospital scene was just another memory. That she was dying and this was her life flashing before her eyes.

Upon waking in Carson’s arms in the small hospital bed, she’d been hit with the dizzying sensation of being plucked out of the void of her mind and shoved into a memory.

She’d panicked and fought against it.

No! I want to stay here, in this time.

Evidently her reaction had sent her heart rate soaring. The nurses burst into her room to see why their monitor screen had gone crazy.

That’s when they’d kicked Carson out of her bed, but he’d refused to leave her room. He’d insisted the doctors check her out thoroughly. Immediately. The stubborn man made a real nuisance of himself until he got his way.

Speaking with her doctors didn’t alleviate her anxiety. They’d performed a complete examination on her—physical and psychological—that took an eternity. Some of the questions they asked her didn’t make sense. But she wondered if that was part of the test—if she could differentiate between gibberish and jabberish.

Was jabberish even a word? But that’s what some of the tests they’d given her had looked like. Gibber-jabber.

She’d drifted in and out as they’d awaited the test results. Finally the doctors had declared her on track to recovery.

Except…the doctors had taken Carson out of the room and spoke to him out of earshot. She’d been a little pissy about that. It was her brain. If there were problems with it she deserved to know.

When the staff delivered her food, she managed to eat half of it, despite the fact it had zero flavor. She stared at the evening dinner menu choices, but again the words on the page were a jumbled mess. She’d have to ask Carson to find her reading glasses.

The therapist forced her to walk around. Moving about had buoyed her spirits even when she’d kept a snail’s pace up and down the hallway.

Carson hadn’t complained. He’d just hovered. Encouraged her. Held her up when her body and her will had started to falter.

Exhausted and sore from working her muscles after a week of no activity, she returned to her room. But her fear about getting lost in sleep kicked in again. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t settle down until Carson climbed in bed with her.

Luckily she’d slept without dreams.

But again she woke in a panic.

Carson calmed her down before the nurses barreled in. “Hey, sugar. Listen to me. If something doesn’t feel right, you need to tell someone. If you’re havin’ headaches or hallucinations or you’re feelin’ paranoid, some of that is a normal reaction as the drugs are getting washed out of your system. Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t try and hide it. The doctors can’t help your recovery process if they don’t know what they’re dealin’ with.”

She closed her eyes and nestled her face in his neck. “I’m scared.”

Carson didn’t say anything; he just trailed his fingers up and down her spine.

After a bit she began to talk. Then it all spewed out, in a fragmented mess. Her emotions were all over the place.