A Husband's Watch. Karen Templeton

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      Darryl slouched in one of the plastic chairs in Ryan Logan’s home office waiting room, tapping his heel against the dark, scuffed wooden floor. Except for the chairs, nothing much had changed since this’d been old Doc Patterson’s office, even down to the worn set of wooden blocks stacked in one corner. Magazines were a trifle newer, though that wasn’t saying a whole lot. But the same wooden blinds covered the mullioned windows, the walls were painted the same manila-folder color, the rug taking up most of the bowed floor was the same multicolored patterned number he remembered from when his mama used to bring him and his brothers here for his shots, except it was more faded now. And now, as then, he couldn’t sit in this office without a sense of trepidation, a suspicion he wasn’t going to feel better for having been here.

      “Darryl! Didn’t know you were here already!” Ryan, who’d taken over for the old doc after his retirement, stood in his office doorway, looking more like a cowboy than a doctor in his jeans and denim shirt. Lines fanned out around bright blue eyes as the doctor’s dark-blond mustache curved up at the corners. Clearly, marriage and fatherhood—Ryan had married a young widow with three little kids a couple years back, then added one of their own to the brood—agreed with the former recluse. “Come on in, come on in!”

      Darryl pushed himself to his feet. “I really appreciate you seeing me. I know I should’ve gone out to the clinic and not bothered you on your day off—”

      “Forget it,” Ryan said, leading Darryl into his office. “Those your records from the hospital?”

      Nodding, Darryl handed them over.

      “Can you get up on the exam table on your own speed, or you need some help?”

      “No, no, I’m good,” he said, although it was no mean feat getting his butt up on the paper-covered vinyl with only one hand to steady himself.

      “So,” Ryan said, “all things considered, how’re you feeling?”

      “So-so. The ribs still ache, but not as bad. And the stitches are itching like hell….”

      “Yeah, let’s just take a peek at that.” The doctor carefully removed the dressing, nodding in approval before tossing the bandage in a metal can. “That’s healing up real nice. You don’t need to keep it covered anymore if you don’t want to. We’ll yank those stitches out in a couple days, and that’ll be that. No headaches, I take it?”

      “Not from the accident,” Darryl muttered, which drew a curious look from the doctor. “No,” Darryl said, more clearly. “No headaches.”

      “You still taking the Vicodin?”

      “Not since the first day. They made me…I don’t know. I didn’t feel like myself on ’em.”

      “Your arm’s not paining you, then?”

      “Actually…that’s why I’m here. I remember breaking my other arm when I was a kid, and it hurt like hell for a couple days, till the bone started to set. What I don’t remember, though, is losing the feeling in my fingers.”

      The doctor’s brows crashed together. “Some of the feeling, or all of it?”

      “It comes and goes. There’s times when it feels like my hand isn’t even there. Other times it tingles like it’s on fire.”

      Ryan walked back to his desk and picked up Darryl’s folder. For several seconds, he read silently, flipping a couple of the pages back and forth, the seriousness of his expression making a cold, hard knot form in the pit of Darryl’s stomach.

      “Doc? What is it?”

      “The good news is it’s not as bad as you might think.”

      “And…what’s the bad news?”

      Ryan’s sympathetic blue gaze met his and Darryl came real close to blacking out.