MacKenzie Fire(47)

“I can walk, you know.” I’m totally humiliated that he’s carrying me and my pee-pee jeans in his arms. We are bonding way too much. How is he ever going to sleep with me now? Every time he looks at me, all he’s going to see is the girl who wet her pants when a cougar showed up. That’s not sexy. Not sexy at all. It makes my headache worse.

“It’s probably better if you don’t walk right now.”

Something warm is trickling down my arm. Please don’t let that be my blood. “Is that snow?” I ask. “I hope it’s snow.” I’m wet everywhere. It’s probably snow.

“Never thought I’d hear you say that,” Ian says, breathing hard with the effort of getting both of us across the field.

I’m about to correct him since he misunderstood me, but I’m distracted by the fact that we’re alone in this place. For some reason, all the cows are gone. Maybe I’m just confused. Maybe none of this is really happening. Nothing is in focus and those damn brain stars are back, dancing around my head. Ping! Ping! Ping! Fireflies in my skull.

“Where’d all the cows go?” I ask, trying to focus on reality.

“They’re not fans of cougars. They beat it out of here. We’ll round ‘em up later.”

“I can help.” I really want him to put me down. Maybe he hasn’t smelled my pee-pants yet.

“Nooo, I don’t think so.” He chuckles and then his expression shifts into something more serious.

“I have a gun,” I say, wondering where it is. “I can help protect you.”

He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.

I keep talking because I can’t think of anything else to do. “I can, you know.”

He sets me down by the passenger door of the truck and opens it up. “And so you did,” he says, picking me up again and heaving me up into the seat.

I bounce up once before settling into the still-warm seat. Holy brain explosion. I push my hands down on the seat to steady myself. It’s then that I notice how much my injured arm is throbbing.

“Did you say the cougar did this to me?” I look down at my arm. I’m afraid to touch it, not even sure it’s my arm. This whole situation is ludicrous. Why am I wearing so much camouflage? Green is so not my color. How’s Ian going to fall under my spell if I look like a zombie woman? I swear, green makes me look undead.

I’m sleeping in the truck, that’s what’s going on.

I let out a sigh of relief and smile. Perfect explanation. Ian went out to check cows, I fell asleep waiting for him in the truck, and this is the dream I’m having. I have very realistic dreams that I could swear are real until I actually wake up. I can’t wait to tell Andie about this one. She always finds great entertainment value in my dream stories, and this one’s a doozy. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one where I suffered actual injury pain.

I’d pinch myself to be sure, but this fake lion injury is stinging badly enough that a pinch wouldn’t make much of a difference. As I try to noodle that through, Dream-Ian moves around the front of the truck and climbs in on the driver’s side. He turns the key and gets the heater going.

My body trembles as the warmth starts to sink into my frozen bones. My teeth chatter and it makes my head throb even more. I feel like letting my eyes cross just to take some of the pressure off.

“I’m going to take your jacket down from your arm. I don’t think it’s going to be too bad. There’s not too much blood.”

“This dream seems super real,” I say, smiling at him as I tip my head back to rest on the seat. I have to move it sideways to keep the lump back there from hurting too much.

“Keep telling yourself that,” he says, helping me out of my jacket.

I slide my eyeballs sideways to look out the windshield, not interested in what my crazy brain has cooked up for me in the form of a dream injury. For all I know, there’ll be robotic arm parts in there. Sometimes in my dreams my brain turns me into one of those Austin Powers fembots. Normally I like being a fembot shooting bad guys with my boob-guns, but not today. Today I just want to be awake, hanging out with Ian, rescuing cow babies. I hope Candy wasn’t part of this dream too, but now that I think about it, she probably was. It’s kind of hard to believe I bottle fed a gorgeous baby cow named after me. That sounds more like something I’d make up. Maybe Ian was right about my brain being like a Mexican jumping bean.

“It’s going to need stitches,” he says. I think he’s touching my skin there but I can’t really feel it, just the pressure as his finger pushes down. My head is getting all my attention right now.

“Are there robot parts in there?” I ask with a sigh.

“Robot parts?”

“In my arm. Am I a fembot? Just tell me.” Sometimes my dreams are very dramatic too. I go along with this one since it’s pretty unique. Maybe I should rustle up some tears to make it really good.

“You’re going into shock aren’t you?” He puts his hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel warm. And you’re pale. That’s probably a bad sign.” His hand falls away as he places it on the wheel. “Come on, we need to get you to the hospital.”

“Yeah. Let’s go visit Andie and Sarah.” I smile as I think about my little godbaby waiting for me. “I need to go bond. I’m her second-in-line momma, you know.”