The crushing weight rolled off him and he moaned at the intense pain in his side. The threat seemed to have disappeared as Cade’s eyelids blinked closed.
I’ll just rest here a moment, he thought as his mind drifted and the world faded away.
Chapter 35
Semi-darkness surrounded Addie as she adjusted the thin, white hospital blanket around her shoulders and pulled a second more tightly over her legs. She glanced into the empty blackness outside the room’s large windows and huddled a little farther into her blankets. Unable to see much else but the night beyond the glass, she could clearly see that snow was falling. The minuscule flakes fell slowly through the pale shafts of the hospital’s sign several yards away. The bleak and lonely image made her heart speed up and for some reason, a flutter of fear danced in her chest.
Averting her gaze, she shifted on the vinyl visitor’s chair. Tucking the blanket’s edges in around her body to keep the chill out of her makeshift cocoon, she settled back into the chair’s thin cushion once again. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable place she’d ever reclined, but she wasn’t ready to go back to her bed in the small room down the hall, nor did she wish to be alone. At least, she had Cade’s presence here, even if he was still unconscious.
Beneath her blankets, a chill prickled her skin, her breath halted, and the cold dread she’d been fighting all day made her check the machines that monitored Cade’s heart rate and respiratory system. All the colored lines looked the same as they had the last time she’d looked at them only minutes ago. He was still alive.
A sigh of relief started her breathing again and she returned her gaze to Cade’s still form.
She’d spent most of the day answering all sorts of questions by the sheriff and the doctors, and then lying in bed, anxiously waiting to discover if Cade would survive the awful damage JR had inflicted with those horrid scissors. The waiting had been tortuous—and still was since he hadn’t awakened from surgery yet, at least not enough to be coherent. The staff hadn’t wanted her in the room, but she’d finally convinced them. In her fragile state of mind, she hadn’t been able to bear not being near Cade. When they’d told her she couldn’t see him, she’d panicked and thrown such a childish tantrum that they’d finally relented.
Humiliation burned her cheeks. Thinking back on the scene now, she regretted acting like a spoiled, angry child. She hadn’t meant to, but she couldn’t have stopped it, either.
Mentally and emotionally, she was a total mess.
The only thing—besides seeing Cade alive—that kept her from slamming the door closed and barricading herself in this room was the fact that JR was dead.
“I had to shoot,” Mark had said when he and the same female deputy Addie had given a statement to after the fire had arrived.
“I’m glad you did,” Addie had said with a little shiver. “I have no doubt he would’ve killed us all if he could have.”
Mark nodded. “Mr. Rivera told us about JR Larsen’s arsenal. He hadn’t exaggerated. We found several handguns and other firearms in the house. It’s a good thing he didn’t have any of them handy, for you and Mr. Brody’s sake, at least.”
She’d smiled and thanked him again for coming to their rescue, but knowing that the situation could’ve turned out so much worse hadn’t made her feel any better, or any safer.
She hated being happy that JR was dead. It wasn’t like her to wish ill on another person, but after bruised ribs, a black eye, a swollen lip, and assorted other cuts, scrapes, and bruises, Addie wasn’t feeling all that forgiving. Especially not once she realized how badly Cade had been hurt.
She glanced at the bed, where his long body lay so still. A white sheet and blankets covered him to his chest and his hands rested on top. His head, on the thin pillow, was turned slightly, but even in the dim light, she could see the discoloration on his handsome face. The beating he’d taken had been almost as bad as hers, but it wasn’t the reason he lay unconscious on that bed.
The doctors had joined the edges of the long slice that had been gouged through his left bicep with three butterfly bandages, and gauze covered his right forearm to keep the two wounds beneath them—that had needed ten stitches to close—clean. JR had been vicious with the blades, but he’d inflicted the most damage with his first strike—when he drove the six-inch shears into Cade’s abdomen. Cade had refused to step out of the way when JR had run toward him with the scissors in his hand. He’d stood his ground to protect her—she had no doubt about that—and it had cost him in blood and pain.
The hospital blankets now concealed the large swath of white that wrapped about Cade’s middle, but Addie had seen it. Earlier, Addie had watched when a nurse pulled back the blankets to examine the area. A little blood had seeped through—not enough to cause the nurse any concern, but it worried Addie. She repeatedly had to fight the urge to check it again herself. To touch him to make sure his skin wasn’t too hot—or too cold—and that his chest still moved.
“What about infection?” she’d asked the doctor when he came to talk to her after Cade’s surgery. “I know an abdominal wound can be very dangerous.”
“Yes, it can,” the doctor had replied as he stood beside her bed, “but the surgery went well and I see no reason to think Mr. Brody won’t make a full and uneventful recovery.” He smiled. “Try not to worry, Miss Malory, he’s in good hands here.”
She had nodded, but Addie was still paranoid. Sepsis could kill him, and the idea of losing
