Her Texas Hero by Marie Ferrarella

Author:Marie Ferrarella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-04-14T12:22:08+00:00

Chapter 3

As usual, the waiting room of Forever’s lone medical clinic was very close to filled. It was the only available medical facility for fifty miles and the people of Forever were grateful for that. It wasn’t all that long ago that the clinic had stood empty, its last physician having moved away thirty years ago. There was something comforting about having someone to turn to because they felt ill, or just because a husband or wife had nagged them into availing themselves of an annual—or bi-annual—exam.

Startled by the combined, unnerving sound of screeching tires and squealing brakes, everyone in the clinic’s waiting room turned in unison toward the noise. As a rule, Forever was thought of by its residents as a sleepy little town that no one outside of the area ever really noticed and where nothing of consequence ever happened.

That meant that no one, either out of boredom or a sense of competitiveness, engaged in car races or harrowing displays of one-upmanship.

So when the teeth-jarring noise pierced the morning air, every patient within the waiting room, as well as the one nurse manning the desk, Debi White Eagle, instantly glanced in the direction of the bay window. The window looked out toward the front of the clinic.

“What the hell was that?”

Rancher Steven Hollis jumped to his feet, verbalizing what everyone else in the room was thinking.

The question didn’t go unanswered for more than a couple of quick beats. Almost immediately thereafter, the roomful of patients witnessed what all would have readily agreed was a very unlikely sight: a bare-chested Deputy Cody McCullough bursting into the clinic with what appeared to be a newborn baby in his arms. The baby was wrapped in his uniform shirt.

Debi, a surgical nurse by vocation as well as one of the most recent additions to Forever’s population, vacated her desk and rushed over to Cody.

“What happened?” she asked.

Cody quickly transferred Layla into her arms. “The baby’s mother is in the truck. She’s lost a lot of blood and I need help.”

“Holly!” Debi yelled over her shoulder toward the rear of the clinic. “We need a doctor out here, STAT!”

It was an order she was accustomed to issuing when she worked at the hospital in Chicago. Here, however, the word left more than one of the patients looking at the others in bewilderment.

Grabbing the fresh lab coat she’d brought in for one of the doctors, Debi quickly removed Cody’s shirt from around the tiny body and rewrapped the newborn in the lab coat. Acting in the interest of practicality, not to mention cleanliness, she figured the doctor would forgive her.

“Here,” she said, giving Cody back his shirt. “You don’t want to be out of uniform, Deputy.”

With that, Debi immediately turned toward the most maternal patient available to her, Anita Moretti, who had five children and a brood of grandchildren of her own. “Anita, hold the baby,” she requested, then looked at Cody. “Where’s the mother?”

“Out here.” He threw the words over his shoulder as,

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