Raging Love (30 page)

Through his
cries, I heard him
say ‘Mommy’. She crouched down at his side and rubbed his little head.

“Mommy’s here, baby. Mommy
’s here.”  She helped me remove the rest of his clothes and
watched his body tightened up as we moved the shirt away from his injured arm. From Noah’s shoulder down to his elbow
was black and blue, and I could tell from one single glance that it was completely dislocated.

Savanna and I looked at each other, while behind us we heard Conner. “I will drive.”

If things
weren’t
such an emergency. I may have worried about Conner’s sobriety, but he seemed like he had his head on straight and was determined to get us there safely.

He knew, as well as everyone in the
house
, that Noah needed immediate
medical attention.  I looked over
at
Ty and Miranda and got a good look at Bella. She had some dried blood on the side of her head and some scratches on her
arms. Miranda had a washcloth and
was trying to clean the mud off of the child to see the extent of her injuries. Ty turned around to face me. “We need to take them both to get checked out. They could have concussions and shit.”

I was trying to
remain
calm
around
the children, and I knew Ty didn’t like to curse around Bella, so he was obviously in
a
nervous wreck. “Let’s go then. I think Savanna needs to get checked out as well.”

She nodded and walked over to grab some shoes. I got Noah some dry pants on, but wrapped a blanket around his bo
dy instead of trying to dress him
with a shirt. The boy was in
excruciating
pain.

We ended up having to take two of the ranch trucks to the hospital to accommodate the whole family, and even my mother and Aunt Karen showed up moment
s later
.

We were thankful that the hospital wasn’t too crowded and took the kids and Savanna back within
fifteen
minutes of us arriving there.

Although we were put into separate rooms, we were able to keep checking on each other since the emergency room was not crowded with patie
nts. Bella had minor scrapes and
some bruising from where she fell off of the horse.
They
did some x-rays and other tests to check for concussions and any internal bleeding, but she seemed to be just banged up.

Savanna was immediately
hooked up to monitors and seen b
y an OBGYN. The baby was fine and
t
hey even left the monitor on so everyone
could hear the heartbeat. Just as an extra precaution they did a sonogram and offered to keep her overnight for observation.

Noah was the worst off. He had a gash on the back of his head, that required two stitches. His shoulder was dislocated. He had one broken rib and a broken arm, in two places. They had to re-set his arm and I can’t even explain the agonizing sound that came out of my son when they did. They gave him something for the pain that also seemed to relax him and allow him to rest. Even though he did not have a concussion, they were having him stay overnight as well.

With Bella being discharged a few hours later, The family started to head out, leaving me with just my immediate family. Once Savanna knew that the baby was okay, she became adamant that she be able to share a room with Noah. I think under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been possible
, but the nurses were very kind and got Noah moved into Savanna’s room. He didn’t really need to be hooked up to any monitors, so it wasn’t necessary to transfer all of the equipment over.

Once Savanna had Noah by her side, she started to relax. Her blood pressure had been high due to the anxiety of the night, but it went back to normal almost at the exact moment our son came into the room. She held his hand and kept watching him.

I was still pretty angry that she had gone out and risked her safety, but I knew we wouldn’t have found Noah otherwise.

I tried to sleep while my family slept, but I think my adrenaline was still in full force playing out every moment in my head. When all this was done and we were home safe, I was determined to get to the bottom of why my son thought it was okay to sneak on a horse he
wasn’t
familiar with.  I never wanted to bust his little butt until this stunt he pulled. That boy had put not only his life, but his cousin Bella’s life, in danger.

The thoughts of punishing my son were interrupted when I heard Savanna’s voice.

“Hey Baby.”

“How you feelin’ Darlin’?”

“
My legs are killing me, but I feel better now that I know everyone is okay. Colt,
I’m
so sorry that I
went out into the storm. I couldn’t sit at home just waiting. I had to go out and look for them.”

I shook my head. “I’m not goin’ to say I’m not angry with you. What you did was reckless and you put not only yourself but our baby in danger. If something would have happened to you I couldn’t
li
ve with myself.”

“Nothing happened. Well, nothing terrible. We are all okay Colt.” Savanna knew things had happened and she could have lost that baby. I was pissed and she needed to know it, but at the same time, I was so damn happy that they
were safe now.

“Savanna, what you did was careless, but you are the reason the kids are safe
now. I don’t know how to feel
about
it when you’re the only reason for that. I love you Darlin’, but please be more careful.”

She started to cry. I watched her look over at Noah and caress his little hand with hers. “I just love him so much, Colt. I couldn’t spend one more second not knowing he was safe. I’m not
sorry
for what I did and if I had to make the choice again, it would be the same. I’m his mother and it is my job to protect, even if it means risking my own safety.”

I figured that it was best if I just dropped the conversation all together. Savanna was pretty clear
about her feelings. None
of us
could
get much sleep at the hospital, so when it came
time
for them both to be released, we rushed out of there to get home to our comfortable bed. Of course Savanna wasn’t ready to let Noah anywhere out of our sight. She put the boy right between us in bed and had her arm around him immediately.

She loved that boy so much, it brought tears to my eyes.

The family started
showing up some time after lunch. My mother and Lucy brought a whole spread over to feed everyone. Bella was attached to Ty and she and Noah hadn’t really said much to each other.

Savanna put a show on for Noah and Bella to watch and they sat there together not saying much to one another. We all just kept watching them, wondering why they couldn’t talk to each other. Finally Miranda went over and squatted in front of them. “Hey, you two. What’s goin’ on? How come you aren’t sayin’ much to each other?”

They both shrugged but refused to look toward the other.

“I think we would all like to know what exactly happened yesterday. Who
had the idea to get on those horses?”

They finally looked at each other before looking back at Miranda. Savanna had sat down across from them, while the rest of us stood behind the couch. I leaned down and patted Noah on the shoulder. “Buddy, you need to tell us all what happened. I know last night was scary, but we need to know what happened.”

“
I don’t want to get in trouble,” he said sadly.

Miranda grabbed his knee. “Noah, Sweetie, we aren’t askin’ because we want to yell at you. We just want to know so it never happens again.”

The little guy put his head down and stared at his knees. “Bella wanted to. She said she knew how.”

Bella started crying and we all turned in her direction. “Bella, did you tell Noah you knew how to ride?”

“I’m sorry, Mommy.” Bella cried harder and Miranda put her hand over her mouth in shock. Ty came up beside her and lifted his daughter’s face.

“Izzy, Honey, why would you do something like that? You know better than to do something like that.”

“I know, Daddy. Please don’t be mad.” The little four year old leaned forward against her father’s chest. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and kissed her head.

“Iz, you can’t do anything like that ever again.” He pushed her away to be able to look her in the eyes. He took his thumbs and wiped them away. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.” She put her head down again and continued to cry.

“You need to apologize to your cousin.”

It seemed like Bella found it to be hard to look over at Noah. I suppose it was the first time she had ever lied to him and it made her feel awful. “Sorry, Noah.”

“Okay,
”
he said quietly.

I cut off the apology. “How did the two of you even get up high enough to saddle the horses?”

“We stood on the feed buckets,” Noah replied.

I shook my damn head and let out a chuckle. Of course he knew to do something like that, he was my child after all.
“Well, you know you shouldn’t have done it, even if Bella said she knew how. Neither one of those saddles was tight enough to ride.”

“I won’t do it again, I swear.” Noah looked so sad, even after Savanna came over and kissed him on the head.

“So who fell off first?” Conner asked from across the room. Of course, when I looked over at him I couldn’t help but notice the beer bottle in his hand. My focus was on the kids today, not my cousin.

“I did. Thunder got spooked from the storm and threw me off. He took off right away. Bella hopped down to help me, but Atticus ran away too. We were scared of the storm and kept hearin’ noises, so we hid,” Noah explained.

“Honey, how did you maneuver over those rocks while you were in that much pain?
The embankment was slippery.” Savanna waited for Noah to reply.

“Bella and I held hands. Once we got inside, it was too slippery to get back out.”

“Noah, we should all be so angry with you, but since you both are home safe and went through so much, we aren’t goin’
to
punish you. This will never happen again, Son. Do you understand me? You could have been killed. Both of you.”
The more I looked at my injured son, the more grateful I was to have him home.
Last night had been rough on everyone, I couldn’t imagine being a little child and going through that dark storm with those injuries.

Two pregnant women had battled weather and horrible conditions to save their children. We were physically and mentally drained. Even though Savanna and I had taken a nap, I could tell she was still tired.

The kids settled down and finally started talking to each other after they
realized they weren’t in trouble. It was kind of cute how they were protecting each other. I wondered if they sat in that protected spot and talked about it.

The family all seemed to calm down after lunch and we spent the rest of the day together. It was still raining outside and with Noah’s arm in not only a cast, but also a brace, he could
n’t
play with much. After they ate, he and Bella cuddled up on the couch and watched some movies. Us adults played some cards in the dining room and sat around catching up.

Ty and Miranda were leaving first thing in the morning to go home, so after everyone except for them left, we sat down and talked about our idea for Conner. At first, Miranda didn’
t like our idea,
but after we really explained the situation, she seemed to ease up and agree with us about it. 
She knew that it would benefit not only Conner, but the whole family if he moved out to their farm.

Conner may have been going through
some hard times, but he was damn good at his job and he knew exactly what to do to get Ty started up and running. It would be easy for us to talk him into going there if he didn’t think it was just to get him clean. We had talked about this business opportunity for a long time. He would never suspect it to be anything else.

Everything was going to work out with Conner and our new business venture. At the end of the day our decisions were about protecting our family.

Chapter 24

Savanna

It was hard to say that Ty and Miranda’s visit was
n’t
disastrous
. I felt horrible and wished I could somehow make it up to them. I kept trying to replay the kids disappearing in my head. There was no way of knowing they would pull a stunt like they had, but maybe I could have prevented it if I were paying more attention to them.

Even though I talked to Miranda almost every single day, it was still different when they came to visit. So, when they came for weekends, I got so excited and spent all of my time trying to entertain and make sure we all had a good time. I knew the children weren’t
just
my
responsibility
, Miranda was there as well and she would never have blamed me for it. I just felt horrible that it had
happened
.