“It’s going to be okay, Davey,” he said as his son stirred under the covers. “I’m here. I’m not going to ever leave you again. I promise.”
Sarah sat beside Jack in the hard plastic chairs that seemed to line every emergency waiting room. It had been almost two hours since Davey had been brought in. She’d hoped that David would be able to come out and update them, but her patience for waiting till he returned was wearing off.
“Maybe you should go back there and check on them,” Jack said from beside her. Her father-in-law had been quiet the whole trip to the hospital and had said only a handful of words since they had arrived.
“I will. Would you like a cup of coffee? I can raid the staff kitchen, they won’t mind.”
“That would be good,” Jack said, then looked down where he had his cowboy hat in his lap. “If Davey’s awake, I’d really like to see him.”
“I’ll be back in just a few minutes,” she said as she patted his arm. She knew that Jack was feeling guilty that Davey had been lost while he’d been watching him, but no one could have expected that the boy would take off on an old rundown pony.
After finding a nurse that she recognized, she’d been able to get the information of which room had been assigned to Davey. Opening the door quietly, she saw David messing with the old blanket that covered Davey.
“Yours?” he asked as she shut the door behind her.
“It was Cody’s,” she said as she looked over the little boy lying on the stretcher between the two of them. Davey’s cheeks had lost their bright red color telling her that the fever had broken and his respirations appeared less labored than they had when she had first found him.
“And the house where you found him, it was yours too?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. She’d tried to ignore the existence of that house, her and Kolton’s forever home, but after walking through those rooms she knew that it was time for her to face the house and all the memories it held.
“Sarah,” said a small voice from the stretcher. Davey’s green eyes stared up at her with confusion. “I had a dream and you were in it.”
“Hey, Davey,” David said to his son. “How do you feel?”
“I’m okay,” Davey answered as he looked over at his dad, and then looked back at her. “It was you that I dreamed about. You and Humphrey, and you too Daddy.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said, it had been more of a nightmare, but she didn’t want to tell Davey that.
“You and Humphrey went on quite an adventure. Do you remember Sarah finding you?” David asked.
“Is it okay to go and get Jack?” she asked and was relieved when David nodded his agreement. She didn’t think he held any hard feelings against Jack, but she knew there were some people that would have insisted on blaming him. But not David, he seemed to be insistent that it was his own fault instead.
When she returned, David had set the head of the bed up and was trying to get his son to take a sip from a straw. She felt the older man tense when the boy’s eyes dropped down to the bed when he saw Jack come in beside her.
“Do you have something to say to Mr. Jack, Davey?” his father asked.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jack. I know I shouldn’t have gone off without telling you.” Sarah saw the boy’s eyes shoot to his father. “And I won’t do it again.”
“That’s okay, Davey,” her father-in-law said as he moved closer to the little boy’s bed.
“Won’t do what again?” David asked his son in a stern tone that left no room for the boy to scout around it.
“I won’t go off without telling Mr. Jack,” the boy looked over at his daddy. A silent message seemed to pass between the two of them. “And I won’t go off on my own ever again until my daddy says I’m old enough.”
“Why did you leave, Davey?” Jack asked.
“I just needed my daddy, but I promised him that I wouldn’t do that again,” Davey said, then yawned.
The speech seemed to have taken everything out of the boy as his eyes once more appeared heavy with sleep. The three adults stood and stared down at him until once more he seemed to have fallen back asleep.
She waited for David to ask her to stay with him, when Jack told her that he was going to head back to the farm, but he didn’t. Still, she wasn’t ready to leave the two of them yet so she made up an excuse to hang around the hospital a little longer.
“I think I’ll get changed and go up on the unit and check on Lindsey and I might as well round on a couple of the new surgery patients too,” she said. “Will you be okay driving back on your own?”
“I’ll be fine,” Jack said. “I’ve spent many a night waiting for a mare to drop a foal. I’ll grab a cup of coffee to go.”
She left the two men talking while she went and got Jack a cup of coffee to take with him, then told David that she would check back with him later.
After rounding on two new patients and writing an admission note for Dr. Benton, she went to see Lindsey. Entering the room, she was surprised to see Lindsey was not only awake, but the large ECMO cannulas that had taken the blood from
