Free Jodi Thomas by A Husband for Holly

little room for life beyond the hospital walls, and for Addison that seemed perfect. One bad marriage had taught her all she wanted to know of the world outside.
    “Harley phoned in from the bar.” Georgia moved closer, as though looking through the night for trouble. “Appears we got a pickup load of roughnecks coming in all bleeding and cussing.”
    A year ago she wouldn’t have known what the nurse was talking about. She’d learned that roughnecks were oil field workers. “Who’d they fight?” Addison asked without any real interest. Half the time the drunks couldn’t answer that question themselves.
    “One man apparently, but the caller said it was Tinch Turner. From what I hear, he never joins in a fight unless the odds are five to one.”
    Addison understood. “Get six rooms ready.” She’d be stitching up the load of roughnecks and probably operating on the fool who took them all on. “I’ll go scrub up. You know what to do.”
    The head nurse nodded. She’d start the staff cleaning up blood and giving shots while their drunken patients turned from fighters to babies. The nurses and aides would comfort the boys in grown men’s bodies as they sewed them up and called someone to come get them.
    Addison knew Georgia would send the one who was most seriously hurt to the first room. She would be waiting there, ready to do her best one more time.
    As she moved inside, Addison stopped long enough to pour a strong cup of black coffee. She hated coffee and yet seemed to live on it lately. Going into her twentieth hour on her feet, she needed something to keep her awake. Odds were good that in a few minutes she’d be going into surgery trying to save the life of some jerk who should have gone home to his wife and family after work.
    Some doctors loved the emergency room and practiced there for their entire career, but Addison knew only that she wanted to be a doctor. Her father had spent years pushing her toward what he called a more promising career, meaning more money, more praise, but no matter how hard she tried, she never measured up to his standards. If she’d told him she simply wanted to practice medicine, he would have screamed his disappointment. But these past few months in Harmony had allowed her to love her career again and to think about what
she
wanted.
    The latest problem between her father and her, the one that had driven her here, might be over by the time she returned home and she could finally tell him of her plans. If she was lucky, the career path he’d planned for her would no longer be an option.

Chapter 2
    Tinch Turner waited in his pickup for all the oil field workers to pile out and go into the ER. They’d have a few black eyes, a few stitches, but he knew from experience that none of them was hurt bad enough to be admitted. Tinch just had to break up the fight as fast as he could, and sometimes the easiest way to get trouble’s attention is to hit it between the eyes.
    Next week he’d buy the boys a drink and explain to them that if they were in Harmony they needed to behave. Howard Smithers shouldn’t have started calling them oil field trash, but every one of the roughnecks had been flirting with Howard’s wife. She was barroom beautiful and tended to forget she was married when she drank. Tinch had seen her flirt before, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she wanted Howard to be jealous or dead.
    Closing his eyes, Tinch told himself he should have stayed out of it. Several others in the bar could have stepped in to help Howard. But Tinch had tossed caution out the window about the time he gave up on caring whether he lived or died. Somehow, taking a few blows reminded him that he could still feel, even if it was only pain.
    Not that he wanted to feel again. He wanted to die and lie next to his wife in the cemetery. He just wasn’t able to kill himself. It bothered him that he was just one breath away from her. All he needed to do was not breathe and he’d be with his