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He went to the commode and quickly relieved his bladder. Then washed his hands and went back out to Isobel. She was making the bed. Unnecessary, since the maids would only strip it to wash everything once they left. Just habit or was she so uncomfortable around him she needed something to keep her hands busy?
“How long was I asleep?”
“You slept through the night.” She punched a pillow to fluff it. “It’s 7:30.”
“Did you sleep?” Now that he was a little more awake, he noticed slight shadows under her eyes.
She waved a hand like it wasn’t important. “Are you hungry?” She pulled the comforter over the bed and then smoothed out all the wrinkles.
He didn’t miss how she immediately turned the questions back to him. But now that she mentioned it, he was starving. He hadn’t eaten since before lunch yesterday.
“There’s a Denny’s next door,” she continued. “I can go get you something and bring it back over—”
“How’s the mare?” He felt bad for just now thinking of it, but he was a little slow on the pick up this morning.
Isobel’s eyes opened wide at his question. Then she immediately jogged to her purse by the door. She quickly reached inside and rooted around for a moment before coming out with his phone. “They said they’d call this morning but I turned the ringer off so it wouldn’t disturb you sleeping.”
She walked back toward him, touching the screen. “Sorry, I had to use your phone. I didn’t think to grab mine when we—”
She froze in her tracks. “Oh. Crap.”
“What?” Hunter took a step toward her at the alarm on her face.
“Your mom has been calling. A lot.” She looked up at him apologetically, then hurried over to hand him the phone. He hobbled toward her, meeting her halfway. He was getting better at this walking thing. It hurt, but not as much as it had when he got up. No doubt the Vicodin was starting to work.
Still, when he got the phone from Isobel, he leaned against the wall. He looked down at the screen. Shit. There were twenty-nine missed calls from Mom. A bunch of missed calls from other numbers too. He immediately dialed his mom back.
“Hunter?” Her frantic voice answered the line after the second ring.
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Oh thank God. Tom,” she yelled his dad’s name, not bothering to pull the phone away from her mouth, “it’s Hunter.”
“Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“Hunter Thomas Dawkins, are you trying to kill your father?” His mother’s voice was irate. “You know he has a bad heart! We got a call last night from the hospital saying you were in surgery. Then nothing, for hours. We called and called, worried out of our minds. Then when they finally had something to tell us, it’s only that you were out of surgery but that you’d disappeared! You didn’t check yourself out. You were just gone!”
Hunter winced and held the phone away from his ear for a second as she continued her tirade. When he finally bit the bullet and put it back to his ear, she was midsentence.
“—to mention everyone’s been calling the house all night long looking for you. I couldn’t even take the phone off the hook because we were hoping you’d finally remember your poor mother and father. If you weren’t dead in a ditch, that was. Do you have any idea—”
“Why were people calling the house?” Did the whole town know about his little hospital disappearing act? Jesus, that meant the town gossip train would be talking about it for—
“Well what did you think people were going to do when they weren’t getting a response from the emergency clinic line? Mollie Sanders wouldn’t stop moaning about her precious corgi who had mala-something-hooey stress because of the storm.”
“Maladaptive stress response,” Hunter corrected automatically. A fancy term that meant the dog was afraid of storms. Mrs. Sanders was sure it was a life-threatening condition that would shorten her beloved corgi’s life. She called Hunter without fail every time there was so much as a distant rumble of thunder.
“Then Bill Sawyers kept going on and on about his prize heifer having trouble calving. I’m trying to tell them I don’t even know if my son is safe, don’t come crying to me about an animal!”
“Why didn’t they just call Dr. Roberts?” Hunter asked.
His mom let out a huff. “I guess he reinjured his hip when he tried to help Bill with that damn heifer.”
Wow. His mom must be really worked up if she was swearing.
He softened his voice. “I’m fine, Mom. Really.” He ignored the biting pain in his back as he shifted his weight to his other foot. “I’m sorry I scared you guys. It wasn’t surgery, just some stitches. I didn’t realize the hospital had called you.”
“Well they still had us as your emergency contact number on file from when you had your appendectomy there when you were seventeen.”
