8
Garner’s plans to catch a ride down the mountain as soon as the storm yielded to morning light were thwarted by the stomach flu.
He had left Cat’s office near four in the morning after warm tea and pleasant conversation, feeling reassured that he would see his long-lost daughter in due time, in the most pleasant of circumstances, which included blue skies and sunlight. All that was left of the storm by then were a few sloppy puddles that didn’t interfere with his brisk walk back home. The fresh air rejuvenated him, and he considered skipping sleep altogether.
Against such optimism, he woke on the floor of his bedroom late the following morning, unable to recall having gotten out of bed. Perhaps he had never climbed into it. He still wore yesterday’s clothes, and the odor of sickness that oozed out from the nearby bathroom was witness to events he was glad to have forgotten.
As a soldier battling liver cancer, Garner was familiar with illness, but this affliction was different. Within an hour of waking, the aches that pooled in his joints spread to his muscles and then to his stomach. He groaned aloud.
There was a pounding on his front door that matched the throbbing in his head. He wished it away. Whoever it was would have to come back later, because he was in no condition to sell tea. He didn’t even know what to advise himself to take.
He cursed under his breath when he heard the front door open anyway. This was the problem with small-town life in which everyone was more neighborly than average; there was no need to lock doors in a place where everyone looked out for each other.
An icy draft swirled into his bedroom and poked him on the floor where he lay.
“Garner?”
The voice belonged to Cat. He had a vague recollection that she’d agreed to pick him up at eleven thirty for the long drive into the valley. Was it so late already?
“What on earth happened to your kitchen window? The carpet’s soaking wet! Garner? Where are you? It’s freezing in here.”
It was terribly glaring too. He hadn’t drawn the bedroom curtains when he came in, and the east-facing window was brilliant with laser-beam sunshine that bounced off the glossy paint on his walls.
Hadn’t he told her about that window? He was sure he had.
Garner said, “Up here,” but the sounds that came out of his mouth sounded like an alien language.
Long seconds like hours passed before the doctor, who had seemed so smart until now, found him lying there in the unwelcome spotlight.
“What took you so long?” he demanded when her youthful figure materialized at his feet. Her bobbed hair from this angle looked like a tortoise shell. He thought she was frowning at him. He wasn’t sure. The glare made him squint. “Move any slower and I’ll be dead before you cross the room.”
“Oh, Garner! What happened?” Cat knelt beside him and started acting like a doctor of the most irritating variety, touching his forehead and his wrist and asking him questions with a tone and vocabulary suitable for a kindergartener. He answered her clearly, but she kept saying, “What? What?”
“You got wax in your ears?” Garner demanded.
Doctors, of course, were not obligated to answer their patients’ questions. She rose and stepped over his body and strode to the window with such authority that her stomping boots seemed to come down right on Garner’s temples. She yanked the curtains’ cord, and the fabric obeyed the order to close.
The relief of a dim room took the edge off his annoyance.
“There will be no trip to the ranch for you today,” she said.
“The dead aren’t in a hurry,” Garner murmured.
“Abel’s not dead, Garner.”
“Yes, he is.”
“No, he’s not. I’m sorry.”
The apology confused Garner. People didn’t apologize for someone kicking death in the teeth. But on second thought, he wasn’t too pleased by the news.
Cat said, as if he hadn’t computed her meaning, “Your daughter is not a widow.”
“I heard ya.” Garner gripped his head with both hands. He thought he might throw up again. “He’s not dead, says who?”
“Says a friend of mine at the county medical examiner’s office. I called this morning.”
“Don’t trust me, huh?”
“I’d trust you with my firstborn child. It’s divine messages by thunderstorm that I don’t bank on.”
See there? He had told her about the broken window. Right?
“But you don’t got any kids, Cat.”
“What’s that? You’re slurring, Garner. I hope this isn’t a stroke. You just rest. Let me figure out what’s going on with you and how we’re going to make it right.”
Garner returned to the sleep that his pain demanded, seeing no point in waiting for the good doctor to get him onto the bed. He didn’t have to be awake for that process, anyway.
A stroke. Honest to Pete.