Hannah followed the nurse’s directions to Marsh’s room and knocked on his door, which was partially open, and peered around it. The curtains were drawn, and at first, she thought he must be sleeping, but a strong, alert voice called from the gloomy interior for her to come in.
Marsh was a tall man, although she had to guess at his height because he was tucked into a narrow hospital bed like a sausage in a bun. A cotton blanket covered his cadaverously thin frame from the waist down. Long, narrow, blue-veined hands rested at his sides. His freckled scalp peeked through sparse patches of neatly side-combed white hair. When he rolled his head toward the door so he could see who disturbed him, bright blue eyes regarded her with a fierce, shining intelligence that seemed so out of place in such a frail body.
Immediately, she understood why Dallas found his situation concerning. She could easily visualize him sixty years younger, sitting on a horse, wearing the worn leather hat currently hanging from a hook next to his bed. Seeing him in that bed made her think of a wild animal with its leg caught in a trap. A nursing home wasn’t for him.
“Hi, my name’s Hannah,” she said brightly, and stepped into the room. “Dallas Tucker asked me to stop in and say hi for him while I’m here.” She didn’t want him to think she’d made a special trip because it might hurt his pride. No one liked pity.
Life flickered in the old man’s eyes. “Did he, now? Dr. Tucker’s a good man.”
He had a lovely rural Montana accent, very soft and slow, with the stress on the first syllable. Not many people spoke like that anymore. Now all she had to do was come up with some way to keep him talking.
“It makes me laugh when people call Dallas ‘Dr. Tucker,’” she said. She dug her cell phone out of her purse. “Here. Let me show you why.”
She did a quick YouTube search and found the video her sister-in-law Jess, Damon’s wife, had uploaded after the wedding, showcasing the dance Dallas had choreographed for the groomsmen to perform for the bride. It now had more than a half million hits. She didn’t intend to show Marsh the line dance the whole wedding party had performed, however, even though it was all over the internet, too. She’d had a few drinks and her panties had made several unscheduled appearances. She cringed with embarrassment whenever it was brought up by her brothers and sisters, which was often, and Marsh, who was from a different era, might disapprove.
But the video featuring the men—it was a real work of art.
“How about if I raise your bed so you can sit up and see better?” she suggested.
He nodded. She adjusted the bed using the touch controls at the base, then passed him the phone and showed him how to hold it so he didn’t push any buttons by mistake. His hands trembled, so she placed a pillow on his lap so he could prop the phone on it.
“Here—let me open the curtains,” she said.
A few seconds later, daylight dappled the room, she’d pulled up a chair to the side of the bed, and Marsh’s bony shoulders were shaking with laughter.
Her favorite part of the video—and she’d watched it far more than she should—was when Dallas swung his jacket around his head and shook his pelvis Magic Mike-style, then the men all slid across the floor on their knees. Alayna told her later that he’d tried to convince the other guys to wear tearaway tuxedo shirts, but that was where their brothers Damon and Blaise, who were far more reserved, had drawn the line.
“That boy surely knows how to have a good time,” Marsh wheezed.
Hannah couldn’t help but agree. He’d made the wedding a lot of fun, especially for her, since she was there without her plus-one and was nursing a badly bruised self-esteem. Unfortunately, not everyone had his ability to let loose, then shake it off later. She regretted showing him her panties in private a lot more than flashing the wedding guests and hundreds of thousands of internet users.
A photo on Marsh’s nightstand caught her attention, mostly because she’d been on the lookout for it.
“Is this your wife?” she asked, indicating the silver-framed photo of a young woman with her dark hair rolled up in the style of the day. A single curl on her forehead, paired with bright-colored lips spread in a wide smile and long-lashed, sparkling eyes, made her look sassy and pert and more than a match for the young, wild cowboy Marsh likely had been. “She’s beautiful.”
The old man’s eyes softened. “Thank you. She could ride and shoot as good as any man, too,” he said proudly. He touched the photo’s glass frame with a finger, then looked at Hannah. “Doc Tucker was right—you do have her smile.”
Silently, she thanked Dallas for asking her to visit. She loved Marsh already.
“If so, then I’m flattered,” she said, sincerely. “How long were you married?”
“Seventy-three years.”
She spent an hour with him, listening to him tell stories about what it was like for a young married couple starting out in Montana in the mid-1940s. His face took on renewed life as he stared into the past and the decades slipped away.
Wistful tickled Hannah’s heart. This was what she wanted. What she’d expected to have. What she’d planned for. A rich, full life shared with someone who loved her, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad. Was that too much to ask?
When Marsh began to show signs of fatigue, she got up to leave. She paused at the door.
“Would it be okay if I come visit you again next Sunday?” she asked.
“I’d like that.”
She was in the parking lot and behind the cracked and worn wheel of her truck before she realized that Dallas hadn’t shown up—not that it mattered. She no longer had any doubts that he’d asked her to come here for Marsh’s sake alone.
She just didn’t know how she felt about it.