After she’d argued against me discharging myself from the hospital, I would have guessed Josie would want nothing to do with my escape plan, but she hopped up beside me after the paramedics had loaded and locked my stretcher into place in the ambulance. She gave the two paramedics a seriously impressive look when they suggested she ride with Jesse and Rowen, who were heading back in their truck. I knew they’d been planning on heading back to Seattle after the rodeo, but after their friend had gone and broken his back, they probably felt obligated to come get me settled in. Or maybe the obligation rested more with supporting Josie while, as Rowen had made a point of noting, I was behaving like a selfish, defeated asshole.
I was thankful they were coming back for a few days, for Joze’s sake. She’d need someone to lean on as she navigated this new chapter in life, and that person couldn’t and shouldn’t have been me. I wanted to make my removal from her life slow and gradual . . . but that was only for my benefit. The best thing for her would have been a sharp and sudden break because even though it would hurt like hell, that wound would eventually leave no trace of a scar. If I drew it out, I’d only cause a deeper scar to form. I’d already left Josie with enough of those.
When we’d crossed the Montana state line, the driver asked for more specific directions about where we were heading. After I gave him some, I got another earful and a half from Josie, and thanks to the confined space and volume she employed, so did the paramedics. One of them rolled earplugs into his ears at about the five-minute mark of her outburst.
I’d given them directions to Joze’s and my old farmhouse instead of directions to her family’s ranch, and you’d have thought I’d signed the execution order for a litter of puppies. She reminded me that the only bathroom that worked (well) in the farmhouse we were remodeling was the one on the second floor, and since we didn’t have an elevator, I’d have no way to get up there without the aid of fairy dust. I’d been too choked up to reply because she obviously hadn’t wrapped her mind around how a quadriplegic’s “call of nature” routine was drastically different from hers.
After that, she went on to argue that the floors were in such bad shape that I could tumble right through them in my wheelchair, not to mention there wasn’t a ramp to get me inside in the first place. I tried to remind her that her parents’ place didn’t have a ramp either, but she wouldn’t let me get a word in. She went on and on about the farmhouse being too far away from everyone and how I couldn’t be all alone when she had to go do something, and she warned me if I didn’t stop acting like a lunatic, she would start the paperwork to have me declared incompetent so she could take the wheel at the helm of my healthcare needs.
That was more than enough of a threat to get me to shut up and not say a word of protest when she gave the driver different directions. I knew she didn’t understand it, but I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want a stream of people filtering through the Gibsons’ kitchen, dropping off casseroles and sympathy cards while taking a quick peek at the immobile freak show. I didn’t want people’s sympathy or their morbid curiosity or their compassion. I wanted to be left alone, and the farmhouse was the perfect place to do just that. I wasn’t sure how I’d take care of myself or what direction my life would take, but I did know I’d have plenty of time to think about that during my isolation.
By the time the ambulance crunched up the Gibsons’ driveway, I’d had way too much time to ponder my future and contrast it to what I thought I’d have. So I was feeling particularly pissed at the world when the ambulance doors swung open and the paramedics unloaded me.
Josie jumped out behind me, looking almost worse than I knew I did, and she shot a wave toward the house. I didn’t look, mainly because I felt like me showing up at their front door in a stretcher while their daughter followed with red-rimmed eyes was like fulfilling every last premonition and hang-up Mr. Gibson had had when Josie and I had gotten together. He’d seen me for the piece of shit I was and been willing to overlook it when he saw how much I cared for his daughter and she for me. But months later, there I was—a piece of shit being carried into their house on a stretcher, sentencing their twenty-two-year-old daughter to a life as a caretaker.
It wasn’t just Mr. and Mrs. Gibson waiting on the front porch though. Jesse and Rowen were there too, looking not quite but almost as tired as I knew Josie and I did.
“Nice trip?” Rowen asked Josie when she crawled up the porch stairs.
“Don’t ask,” she replied, sounding exhausted.
As the paramedics carried me up the stairs, everyone went into action, though no one seemed quite sure where to go or what to do. Mr. Gibson and Jess opened the screen door. Mrs. Gibson reached out for my stretcher as though she wanted to help the paramedics carry me in. Joze and Rowen swept through the door at the same time, managing to bottleneck in the doorway before Josie wiggled free and led the way into the kitchen.
Rowen hung back, slowing her pace to match the paramedics’. As they guided me through the kitchen, she glanced down at me. An all-too-familiar expression was plastered on her face. It said she was debating whether to rip off my balls and shove them down my throat or kick them so hard they wound up in the same place. Unlike most people, I didn’t doubt Rowen would follow through on whatever choice she arrived at.
“You and I are going to talk,” she said, just barely lifting a brow. “And by talk, I mean I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen, and when we’re done with our little ‘talk,’ you’re going to pull your head out of your ass.”