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“Don’t, I can handle her.”
“Forget it, Sheila.” The beam of light swept from Emily’s ankle to Sheila’s torn, bloody jeans. “You’ll be doing well if you can get back to the house on your own. I’ll carry Emily.”
“Mommy . . .” Emily wailed.
“Really; Noah, I’m sure I can manage,” Sheila asserted, her gray eyes glinting like daggers.
“Forget it.... Sean, you carry the gear and the flashlights.” Noah carefully extracted Emily from Sheila’s arms, but still gave orders to his son. “Then you walk with Sheila; she’s cut her leg. Now let’s go. The sooner we get Emily home, the better.”
Not even Emily argued with the determination in Noah’s voice. Sheila pursed her lips together and ignored the urge to argue with him. The most important thing was Emily’s well-being, and Sheila couldn’t find fault with Noah’s logic.
“Tell me, son,” Noah said sternly, when the lights of the château were visible. “Just what happened?”
“We were fishing.”
“And?”
“Well, it was getting dark, and I guess I was in kind of a hurry,” Sean continued rapidly. “Emily kept getting behind, and when we crossed the creek, she slipped on a rock. I threw down the gear and reached for her, but the current pushed her off balance and pulled her under the water. It was lucky that the creek was shallow, and I got to her. Then she started crying and screaming about her ankle and, well, I just started carrying her down the hill as fast as I could.”
“You should have been more considerate, Sean. If you weren’t always hurrying to get where you should have been an hour ago, this might never have happened!” Noah declared gruffly.
“I didn’t think . . .”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“Noah, don’t,” Sheila interjected. “It’s not Sean’s fault. Arguing isn’t going to help anything.”
It seemed an eternity to Sheila, but eventually they got Emily to the house. While she cleaned and dried the child, Noah called a local doctor who was a friend of Sheila’s. Sean paced nervously from the living room to the den and back again until Emily was propped up in bed and the doctor arrived.
Doctor Embers was a young woman who had a daughter a couple of years younger than Emily. She was prematurely gray and wore her glasses on the end of her nose as she examined the child.
“So you took a tumble, did you?” she asked brightly as she looked into Emily’s pupils. “How do you feel?”
“Okay,” Emily mumbled feebly. Her large brown eyes looked sunken in her white face.
“How about this ankle . . . does this hurt?”
Emily winced and uttered a little cry.
The doctor continued to examine Emily while Sheila looked anxiously at the little girl, who seemed smaller than she had earlier in the day. Lying on the white pillow, Emily seemed almost frail.
Dr. Embers straightened, smiled down at the child and gave her head an affectionate pat. “Well, I think you’ll live,” she pronounced. “But I would stay off the ankle for a while. And no more jumping in creeks for the time being, okay?”
Emily smiled feebly and nodded. Dr. Embers took Sheila into the kitchen and answered the unspoken question hanging on Sheila’s lips. “She’ll be fine, Sheila. Don’t worry.”
“Thank goodness.”
“She shouldn’t need anything stronger for the pain than aspirin, but I do want you to bring her into the clinic on Monday for X-rays.”
Alarm flashed in Sheila’s eyes. “But I thought . . .”
Donna Embers waved Sheila’s fears away with a gentle smile and a hand on her arm. “I said don’t worry. I’m sure the ankle is just a sprain, but, I want to double-check. just in case there’s a hairline fracture hiding in there.”
Sheila let out a relieved sigh. “I really appreciate the fact that you came over tonight.”
“No problem; what are friends for? Besides, you’ll get the bill.”
Sheila smiled. “Can you at least stay for a cup of coffee?”
