Page 68 of Well Aware

“Shhhh,” he said when she started crying. “I got you.”

And he did.

He had her, and I couldn’t tell you how freeing it was to know that I wasn’t alone in this world with Iris. That someone also helped me keep watch over her.

“I fell,” Iris said.

“You did,” Beau agreed. “It was too high for your little legs to handle.”

“I’m sorry, Magnolia.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Denver, you have three daughters. You damn well know that as a parent you can’t control them.”

He winced. “I forget how wild they used to be. I got a little comfortable knowing they wouldn’t accidentally break themselves.”

I patted his arm. “And now you have a grandbaby that’ll be worse. I hear boys are always worse.”

He patted his chest. “God help us.”

Odin finally made his way over to us, holding his medical bag that he’d mentioned once that he kept in his truck.

“What have we here?” Odin asked as he pulled out a four-by-four gauze pad.

He indicated for Beau to move back, and when he did, his white t-shirt was stained with Iris’s blood.

The moment the pressure was gone, blood welled at Iris’s head and started to drip down her cheek again, saturating her hair around her ear.

“At least we won’t have to shave off any of her hair to patch her up,” Odin quipped.

I was a nurse. I’d seen many wounds in my time of clinicals and shifts. However, there was something inherently different from a stranger compared to your own flesh and blood.

He placed the gauze pad on her head and looked toward me.

He gestured toward Iris and said, “Let’s get her inside.”

When I reached for her, she instead threw herself into Beau’s arms.

My lips quirked up at the edges.

“I got her, just do the stitches,” he ordered, her blood soaking his Carhartt jacket.

“Fine with me,” Odin said. “But it’d be easier if we had a table.”

Josephine, Denver’s oldest daughter, gestured toward a picnic table that’d been cleared of food. “There.”

Beau carried Iris to the table and took a seat with her on the tabletop, his feet resting on the seat.

Denver brought a trash can over and placed it next to the table.

Meanwhile, I helped Odin prep for stitches.

In the end, Iris got two more to go with her three on the opposite side of her forehead.

“You look like Frankenstein.” Beau tapped Iris’s nose with one finger.

She frowned. “No way.”

“Yes way.” He laughed.