Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 Read Free Page A

on a new pair of gloves. What had happened to this man? Nobody , she repeated to herself as she began to dig for the bullet. Just nobody. “How did this happen?”
    Nothing. Not even a grunt of pain as she packed the wound with the last of the gauze. It was like performing surgery on a statue. She found her hands shaking as she wondered just who the hell nobody was, and what, exactly, he’d done to get shot. The list was long.
    Okay. So this guy was terrifying. She still had a moral obligation to make sure her patients received the best care, as long as they weren’t ax murderers, right? “You’ll need to come back in within a week for me to check the wound,” she said as she opened the curtain and made notes in a blank file. She thought about writing Nobody on the top. “And I’m required by law to inform the authorities, Mister…” she said, hoping to get something out of him.
    She felt a breeze rustle her hair. That’s weird , she thought as she turned around. The fan doesn’t normally…
    Nobody was gone.
    The trickle became a waterfall of panic. What kind of person just blew out with the breeze—after a bullet wound? Someone who didn’t want to be found, that’s who. Someone who was wanted. Someone who was dangerous. More than just her hands shook as she tried to walk casually over to Tara. “We’ve got to call the police,” she said, hoping her voice wasn’t giving her away—at least not within earshot of patients.
    Tara gently shook her head as she answered the phone again. “It was just Nobody. Tim—he’s the sheriff—he’ll call us if he needs us,” she replied as she handed Madeline another file, like gunshot wounds in unnamed patients were just another day.
    And that was all before lunch.
    Madeline tried to keep upbeat. Clarence was a hell of a good nurse, and the patients clearly trusted him—at this point, more than they trusted her. Tara was a multitasking genius. She could answer the phone, greet new patients and take histories all at the same time. Madeline had a good team to work with. Now if she only had some supplies to go with it.
    “Tara, start a list,” she called across the room upon discovering the only bottle of penicillin was expired.
    “We don’t have any money,” Clarence repeated with a grunt as he lifted an old woman without her feet out of a rusty wheel chair.
    She’d been here for three hours and had already heard that seventeen times. They might not have any money, but she did. “I’ll get it. Just write it down.”
    By the time they stopped for a twenty-minute lunch, the list was up to number forty-seven, and she’d already seen forty-four patients and two emergencies. Tara slipped out with a promise to be back soon, whenever that was.
    She was exhausted. She’d sweat through both her shirt and coat, rubbed blisters on top of blisters in her new cowboy boots, and the artificial smoothness she’d ironed into her hair this morning was all but shot. Even though she was sitting on the floor in front of the fan, she was still hot. She’d done more in four and a half hours than she normally did in a twelve-hour shift in the E.R. “Is it always this busy?” she asked between bites of peanut butter and jelly. She needed to get something closer to real food if she was going to sustain this energy level for long, but she didn’t have any idea where she’d put groceries in her minuscule kitchen. At least she’d guessed right about there being no microwave in the clinic.
    “Nah,” Clarence replied from Tara’s chair. He had his feet up on an exam table and his head leaned all the way back with his eyes closed. She was afraid he was going to fall asleep on her, but a nap actually sounded like a great idea right now. Add coffee maker to the list. “We just haven’t had a doctor for a few months. Kind of a backlog.”
    “You did this by yourself for a few months ?”
    “It’s a paycheck. Sometimes,” he added.
    Things picked up again at one thirty. Tara