Wyoming Winter

Wyoming Winter - Chapter Thirty-Four

Sam had been sitting in the waiting room for nearly three hours, curled up in a chair with her coat over her like a blanket. Hooked to the wall across from her was a large screen television playing old classic movies. A tap on her shoulder startled her, she jerked away as she looked up. 

"Sorry." A short man stood beside her. His dark brown curly hair was messy and overgrown and his dark brown eyes were hidden behind thick black rimmed glasses. 

Poindexter came to mind as Sam stared up at him, "What?" 

"I'm Bart. Erick called me. He said your phone broke. Do you have it with you?" The man's voice was high pitched with more of a female tone than expected from a man. 

Digging into her pocket, Sam found the device, "Yeah, but..." 

Bart held up a small white box, "I brought you a new one. I just need to get your SIM card." 

"Oh, um..." 

The man laughed, "Erick said you weren't very trusting." He held out the phone box. "If you know how to switch the SIM cards, I'll leave it with you." 

Sam looked down at the broken phone in her hand. She had no idea how to switch phone cards. Usually, she trusted the people at the phone store to do that; not that she'd had many phones in her life. "I guess it's okay." 

Bart took the phone from her and sat a few seats away. She turned back to mindlessly watching the black and white while her thoughts swirled around the children. She cursed herself for not moving the glass cabinet or even taking it in the first place. She should have known it wasn't safe to be in a house full of children. 

"Do you backup to a cloud?" Bart asked. 

"Um, yeah." Sam answered. "My friend Joey set it up." 

"The computer dude, right? Erick told me about him. I sent him a bunch of computers." 

"Oh, I remember him telling me about you." 

"When you get home, you can have Joey get the backup downloaded," Bart stood and handed her the new phone, "but for now, you're all set. Same phone number." He handed her the phone box. "I put your old one in here. I'm sure Joey can do something with it to get anything that didn't get into the last backup." 

"Thanks." As soon as he walked away, Sam tried to call Erick. He didn't answer, so she left him a message. "I know you've heard what happened. Scott's doing the surgery. I haven't heard anything yet. Call me when you can."

The operating doors opened, and Scott stepped through carrying Jennifer against his chest. Her long dark hair was messy, and caked with blood as was the once white shirt she wore. The red cape she'd been wearing was still hanging from her shoulders. When she left the house, she hadn't been wearing shoes, and was now wearing a pair of bright pink hospital socks with white grips on the bottom. Her right arm was heavily bandaged from her wrist to her elbow.

"Hey, sweetie." Sam jumped up and hurried over to take Jennifer from the doctor. She hugged her close, "Oh, my goodness, you scared me." 

"She'll be fine." Scott told her as he followed her into the waiting room where she sat with Jennifer on her lap.  

"Thanks, Scott." Sam hugged the little girl tight. "Thank you so much." 

He sat across from her, "She's a very lucky little girl." Turning to the nurse at the window he said, "Hey, Stacy, I promised Jennifer she could pick something from the treasure box, would you take her over?" 

"Sure." The nurse disappeared and came through the operating doors a moment later. With a bright smile, she held out a hand to Jennifer, "Come on, kiddo. Let's go find the treasure box."