Jenny stared at Hugh’s wound.
“Hugh, do you realize that a few inches higher up …?”
Nobody said anything for a moment. And then everybody laughed.
“Don’t worry, honey. Nothing’s going to stop this wedding. How’s it going, by the way?”
“Let’s go inside and properly take care of your wound, and we’ll tell you all about it,” Martha said.
Mary took Buck to the stable to unsaddle, and feed and water him. She also tended to his wound. She had been caring for horses all her life. It was second nature for her, and she knew just what to do.
Hugh stripped out of his ruined pants – all modesty aside – and his mom cleaned and disinfected the wound.
“You’ll need stitches,” she said. “It’s not deep, but it’s a long graze and needs to be closed up.”
“Well, go ahead and do it,” Hugh told her. “Best not wait.”
While Martha went to get her suturing kit, Jenny told Hugh about the progress in their wedding arrangements.
“It’s set for a week from today,” Jenny said sweetly. “Mom and I have taken care of everything, including sending out the invitations. You just need to get that leg better, and then show up to stand next to me.”
It hadn’t escaped Hugh’s notice how easily Jenny took to calling her mother-in-law Mom.
“Before that, we need to get down to the county recorder’s office to sign the marriage license affidavit.”
Jenny told him they didn’t need to take a blood test, but they would be asked to read an AIDS information sheet.
“That’s all,” she said. “Easy to get married in Idaho.”
As she was talking to Hugh, Jenny was distracted from time to time watching Martha suture Hugh’s wound. First thing Martha did after carefully washing her hands and putting on surgical gloves was inject a local anesthetic around the area to be sutured. After that, she opened a sterile packet containing a needle and suturing thread.
Then she expertly ran a number of stitches up the length of the wound, drawing it closed.
Martha noticed all conversation had stopped and everyone was watching her.
For Jenny’s benefit, she said, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do this – usually for the farm animals. But every person here, even Mary, has had me sew them up at one time or another.”
When Martha finished, the local anesthesia began wearing off. Hugh’s leg was getting stiff and he was feeling the pain, so he said he’d like to go upstairs to his bedroom and lie down. Martha gave him a strong pain killer, and the two Mann men helped Hugh navigate the stairs.
Jenny went with them, ushered everybody else out of the room, then got Hugh undressed and helped him into his bed.
Groggy from the pain medication, Hugh offered no resistance to her administrations, but he was little help either.
When Jenny bent down to kiss Hugh goodnight, he murmured, “I don’t know what I’d do without you. What did I do to deserve you?”
“I don’t know where to even begin with that one,” she said. But Hugh was already out. Dead to the world.
It took a few days for Hugh to get to where he would even try to maneuver the stairs because of the risk of busting out his stitches, so he stayed upstairs, enjoying the attention of the family visits, and having his meals brought to him.
Jenny kept him up-to-date on their wedding preparations. She would chatter on about food for the guests, seating arrangements, decorations, flowers, table settings. Hugh listened politely, but he really didn’t care. Not that he had a negative attitude about it. He just never placed much importance on the trappings of most ceremonies.
On the fifth day, after a day of lightly exercising and stretching his damaged leg, Hugh managed to make it down the stairs for breakfast. The wedding was two days away, and he had places to go and things to do.
Jenny was in the kitchen helping Martha clean up after breakfast. Hugh walked out to the pool deck to use his phone.
“So everything is ready for tomorrow?” he asked. “I’d like to come and check it out, and make final arrangements. You sure you can deliver the next day on time?”
Hugh was assured by the answer he was given. “OK. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Next, he texted Roly, who was somewhere around the ranch working. “We still good for tomorrow?” he texted.
“Still good,” Roly texted back after a short time. “Ten-ish?”
Hugh texted back a thumbs-up icon.
Got to love this technology.
Jenny came out to the pool deck after finishing the breakfast cleanup. “Ready?”
“Yup. Let’s do it,” he answered.
They borrowed Roly’s pickup truck and made the trip into Sandpoint to the county recorder’s office. All they needed was their Social Security cards and their driver’s licenses.
When they walked out, Jenny was grinning widely and clutching their official valid marriage license in her hands.
“I can’t believe this!” she said, shouting. “We are actually doing this!”
“I sure as heck hope so, after all this planning,” Hugh said.
“You know what I mean, silly.”
On the drive back up north to the ranch, Hugh drove past the secondary road that would have led back to the ranch.
“Where are we going?” Jenny asked.
“There’s something I want to show you. You remember back in Phoenix me telling you about the property I own?”
“Yeah.”
“I want to take you there now. The day after tomorrow, when you are Mrs. Mann you will own it with me. It’s time you saw it … again.”
He caught Jenny’s quizzical expression.
A little way farther on, Hugh took a different secondary road, then a graded county gravel road, then what amounted to a logging road, all the time gaining elevation and going
