WORTHY, Part 1 (3 page)

The night and the light of the moon might transform everything around
me, but it wouldn’t change one thing. The sun would come up and reveal everything as it really was—yellow and pink and purple and white wildflowers in the field, birdsong, and the ugly scarring on my face. I couldn’t fool myself. It was more painful than reality. I didn’t need to play pretend in a mirror.

I
wasn’t a child anymore.

Feeling suddenly tired
—so exhausted I gave a passing thought to sinking down into the long grass and going to sleep right then and there—I made my way back through the field and to the cottage. I didn’t need to turn on any lights in order to make it to the bedroom with my shins and toes unscathed. I knew the place like the back of my hand.

Bed. That was what
I needed. Respite from this long night.

“You look so beautiful,
Michelle,” Mom said, kissing my forehead. “Like a young woman already.”

“No, you’ll always be our baby girl,” Dad maintained, snaking his arm around
my middle and hugging me to him.

I
looked into the mirror. My hair was beautifully done, my face smooth and gorgeous.

Oh, well. A girl could dream, couldn’t
she?

One morning,
I woke to thunder.

“Finally,”
I mumbled sleepily, peering out the window. The clouds were low to the ground and ominous.

I
skipped breakfast to try and beat the rain at my chores. I gathered eggs in record speed but kept the chickens in the coop so they wouldn’t get scattered by the impending storm. There were ripe tomatoes on the vine, so I gathered them as well, dropping them into a five-gallon bucket as the wind began to pick up, bending the trees at the edge of the woods and whipping my hair around.

With
no need to haul water from the barn spigot to the garden, I secured the bird netting as tightly as I could and dashed back to the cottage, eggs and tomatoes in tow, just as the first fat drops of rain plummeted from the sky. By the time I got all the windows closed, it was really coming down, and I whooped for joy. The land needed this rain. I needed this rain.

I
gave in and cracked a window just to have the cool, wet breeze blow through the house, laying a towel down on the floor to catch the dripping water. Thunder boomed through the room, making me jump, and I hoped the power wouldn’t go out. I wouldn’t have a way to contact the company, and it would probably be one of the last transformers to be repaired because of how remote it was.

Just in case,
I emptied out the ice trays into a bowl in the freezer and filled them again, knowing I could keep anything perishable in a cooler if I had enough ice.

The thunder boomed again, making
me jump and laugh. It’d been so long since I’d experienced an honest-to-God storm that I’d practically forgotten what it was like.

I
experienced a momentary flashback of being a little girl when a storm swept through my hometown in the middle of the night. Terrified, I’d fled to the safety of my parents’ bed. I shook the thought from my head. It was too sad to dwell on, and there was nothing I could do to change it. There was no one to go running to anymore. I was all alone.

When the worst of the storm passed and the clouds lightened from blue black to gray,
I decided that I’d celebrate the needed rain with a walk through the woods. It had been a while since I’d seen the creek run at anything other than a trickle, and everything would be glazed with rain. It was too much for me to resist.

Wearing an old rain slicker and some rubber boots,
I squished out to the tree line before plunging into the woods. It was still raining lightly, but the canopy above me kept me mostly dry. Only the occasional drop pelted my hair, cooling my scalp beneath the curls.

It was like a different place after the rain. Silvery drops glistened on every surface of every leaf, and even spider webs grew more beautiful
when festooned in rain. Looking up was like being beneath a green umbrella. The trees’ color had improved immensely with the water, and I appreciated every moment of beauty I witnessed.

I
also wasn’t disappointed when I reached the creek. It gushed over tree roots, its normally clear water brown with mud and debris. It was exciting to watch the rare occurrence—my creek usually meandered instead of rushing. I began following it to the river to see how large the pool had grown, when I stopped.

I
thought I’d heard something over the running water.

I
paused and tilted my head, keeping still so I wouldn’t make any more noise than possible. There. There it was again. Just discernible over the creek’s roar was a voice.

The voice of someone else in the woods.

I knew it was ridiculous, but my first reaction was one of fear. Who else could be out here with me? I’d never seen anyone in these woods—not ever. But there was someone there, and they sounded like they were in pain. Like they needed help.

Treading carefully over the wet tree roots and leaves,
I stepped closer to the raging creek. Keeping my head cocked toward where I’d heard the voice, I quickly realized that I’d have to cross the creek in order to reach it.

The swift, swollen creek.

I had been up and down this creek for years and felt like I knew it intimately, but it was practically a stranger to me now. I didn’t think I could simply wade across. The current looked far too strong.

“Hello?”
I called, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Hello?”

I
tilted my head again, cupping my hands to my ear this time to help capture any other sound, but there was nothing.

Maybe
I’d only been imagining things, a small voice inside of me suggested. But it was the same voice that was urging me away from the dangerous creek, begging me to turn back and spend the rest of the afternoon baking or cleaning the house or doing anything else than this risky business.

I
hated that voice, the one that didn’t want me to have adventures.

I
darted upstream, estimating myself to be at a place in the creek that was normally shallow and studded with rocks. Today, after the sudden downpour of rain, it was a mess of whitewater. Could I withstand it?

Picking up a fallen branch,
I pushed it into the water’s flow, holding it tightly. There. The water was perhaps a foot and a half deep. I could surely do that, couldn’t I?

Using the branch to feel out
my next steps and help steady myself, I forged out into the flood. I moved as fast as I could without getting out of control, the water gushing over the edges of my boots and soaking my feet inside. It was unpleasant and weighed my steps down, but I had to keep moving. I could do this.

When
I scrambled up the muddy bank on the other side of the creek, I felt a breathless exhilaration. I never took risks like that. I was a cautious and careful planner, and my foray into the unknown—and the danger—surprised me.

“Hello!”
I called again, starting to move back down the creek bank toward the voice I’d heard earlier. “Hello! I’m coming for you. Hello!”

I
bit my lip. Maybe that was a weird thing to say to someone in trouble. “I’m coming for you” reminded me of some hokey horror movie.

“I’m coming to help you!”
I amended. “Hello?”

Then,
I saw something on the ground. The closer I got, the more I realized that it was a someone, not a something. Hurrying despite the treacherous ground underfoot, I fell to my knees beside a man with a badly bleeding head wound.

“Can you hear me?”
I asked, shaking his shoulder and putting my hand up against his neck. His pulse thumped beneath my palm, making me sigh with relief, but he didn’t react. I really didn’t like the look of that gash on his head, just at his hairline.

I
only hesitated a minute more before dragging him upright and pushing up with my legs, effectively hoisting him onto my back. He was too close to the creek, and who knew how much farther it would rise before the storm passed? Besides, he obviously needed medical attention.

“You’re going to be all right,”
I said. I couldn’t tell if the assurance was more for me or for the man draped over my shoulders. He was heavy, but I was strong. I could do this. I had to do this. There wasn’t another option. This man needed my help, and there wasn’t anything I could do but offer it.

Walking back to the shallows
I’d forded to get across the creek in the first place, my knees shook. I wouldn’t be able to use a branch to help me across this time. I needed both my hands to hold the man in place. I didn’t want to even consider the consequences of failing—of failing yet another person in my life. Failure wasn’t even an option.

“Hold on,”
I said, and stepped into the water. I gave my complete focus to making sure that each of my steps was steady and secure before shuffling my other foot along to follow the first. Gradually, I made my way across the roiling water and to the opposite shore.

From there, it was just a test of endurance.
I had spent the last five years basically doing hard manual labor. I’d hauled lumber to the roof of the cottage, tilled the soil in the garden with nothing but a hoe and a spade, and lifted all manner of bags of feed and other heavy things. All I had to concentrate on doing was putting one foot in front of the other.

I
distracted myself from my exertion by thinking about the man I bore on my back. Where was he from? What was he doing out in the woods? How did he get there? What had happened to him to give him such a deep head wound?

I
had taken it upon myself to learn first aid after a particularly nasty gardening accident had left me with a bad cut. I had managed without stitches then, using suture strips and making sure to keep the cut cleaned and bandaged. The entire experience had influenced me to maintain a very thorough first aid kit.

When
I broke free from the tree line and had the cottage in sight, that first aid kit was the only thing on my mind. All I wanted to do was set the man down in the grass for a few moments and regain my breath, but I knew time was of the essence. I was almost done. I was almost there.

I
burst into the cottage with my burden and set him on the couch in the family room as gently as possible. Hardly taking notice at the mud I was dragging throughout the clean house, I hurried to the bathroom and retrieved the first aid kit, shrugging off the rain slicker and stepping out of my boots before washing my hands and jogging back out to the man.

He was groaning again, and shivering, and
I was afraid he could become hypothermic. As agonizing as it would be for me, I needed to get him out of his wet clothes and get him warm and dry.

“Can you hear me?”
I called gently, seizing the hem of his shirt and blushing wildly as my fingers brushed his bare stomach. His skin was cool to the touch, which worried me and gave me the urgency I needed to complete the task.

“This is nothing personal,”
I said. “I just need to get you warm again.”

His intermittent groans worried
me. What could he be thinking about? Was he in that much pain?

I
worked the shirt off of him, pulling him up to a sitting position to pull it all the way free, and tossed it aside. I noted with concern that he had some pretty bad bruising on his right side—the same side of his head that the gash was on. Perhaps he’d fallen, but from what?

Now, the pants.
I felt terribly guilty. Maybe I should start by staunching the bleeding from that head wound, but I shook myself. I needed to get a grip. It wouldn’t do him any good if I fixed that head wound and he died from hypothermia because I was too shy.

Squeezing
my eyes shut, I unfastened his buckle and soaking wet jeans before pulling them to his ankles. Stupid! I forgot his shoes.

I
opened my eyes to a squint to see what I was doing, unlacing the boots he was wearing before yanking them off, along with his sopping socks. How long had he been out there before I’d come along? I shuddered to think of what would’ve been inevitable if he’d remained out there, or if I’d never stopped to investigate what I now knew was his voice.

With a wet thud, his pants joined the rest of his sopping clothes on the floor and
I dashed to my bedroom for the quilt. Even as I ran, the image of him naked stayed seared in my mind. Those long, fit legs, the muscular abs and torso, his … his … well, his penis.

I
wished I could curl up in a ball of shame, but I couldn’t afford that luxury right now. I had an injured—and handsome—man on my couch who needed my help. I couldn’t deny him that because of my apparent squeamishness—or attraction.

Blushing and happy, for the first time,
that the poor man was unconscious and couldn’t see my embarrassment, I tossed the quilt over him and rubbed him down, taking care to steer clear of his injured ribs—and his crotch. When there was a flush back across his pale face—and when my flush had finally faded, I felt confident enough to start tending to his head wound.

Opening the first aid kit and dabbing at it with a little hydrogen peroxide-soaked cotton
ball, I was relieved to find that it wasn’t as deep as I’d thought it had been in the woods. It was jagged, though, and would likely benefit from the same suture bandages that had held my own cut together all those years ago.

Heaving
a grateful sigh that I tried to be prepared for whatever life threw at me—including sexy, unconscious strangers in the woods—I finished cleaning the wound and held it together while I attached the suture bandages. That would smart, but hopefully it wouldn’t scar too terribly.

The thought of scars made
me recoil just after I’d attached the final suture bandage. He was asleep now, but what would happen when he woke up? Would he be horrified that his caretaker was horribly disfigured? Could I handle it if he did?

I
deftly attached a gauze pad over the gash with a couple of strips of tape and leaned back to judge my handiwork.

His eyes were open.

My first inclination was to run and hide, but I was rooted to the spot in fear. I slowly turned my head to the right so that the scar was out of sight, giving him only my good side. He’d already been through enough traumas. I didn’t need my scar contributing to his pain.