Read Online The Eye of Moloch by Glenn Beck - Free Book Online Page B

conscious. Exhaustion and running yourself half starved for weeks on end begins to play some havoc with the mind.” She looked at him, with the slightest frown on her face. “You really can’t recall?”
    He shook his head, then pushed himself up through some sharp aches and pains to sit back against the headboard. “I don’t even remember getting into this bed.”
    “Last night, while I was looking after some of the others, the men came to let me know you’d fallen asleep in the shower. So, we cleaned you up real good and dried you off and I found something for you to sleep in, and then we put you down for the night.” She checked the clock on the wall. “That was about twenty hours ago.”
    He felt his face getting red. “You all got me dressed?”
    She smiled at him, took his wrist, found the pulse, and turned her head aside again so she could watch the second hand as she counted the beats. “I was married for eleven years, I’m a rancher’s only daughter in a family of nine, and I’ve been called upon to patch up farmhands and cowpokes since I was a teenager. Don’t you worry, Mr. Hollis, you can rest assured I came across no undiscovered country.”
    “Try as I might, I’m finding little solace there.”
    “Do you have a headache at all?” Now she was running her hands over his unkempt hair, as though checking for signs of an unreported blow to the skull.
    “No.”
    “The boys tell me that you fainted out there, when they found you.”
    “I wouldn’t put it like that, exactly. Just let myself get stretched too thin, I guess, and the burden got the better of me.”
    “And they also said that even after that you insisted on walking back into the woods all alone to bring out your people.”
    Hollis nodded, though much of the memory was there only in bits and pieces.
    “This loss of consciousness, has anything like that ever happened before?”
    “I’ve had a . . .” He sought the proper words for a moment. “Since I got back from the war I’ve had a bad spell or two. Hadn’t happened in years, though. They told me that stress could bring it on. And I guess I’m just not as young as I used to be.”
    She frowned a bit, and the transition from casual conversation to thinly disguised bedside exam was smooth and professional. As she continued he answered her questions and complied with each prompt and instruction, following her moving finger with his eyes, extending his arms and touching his nose, pressing against her outstretched palms with his own when so directed.
    “Do you feel any nausea, or dizziness?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    A young lady arrived with a small wooden tray of fruit, bread, sliced cheese, and a tall glass of water. She handed the food to Cathy Merrick, the two exchanged some quiet words, and then the girl left again the way she’d come.
    “Mom thought you’d be hungry,” Cathy said, “but don’t eat too much too fast.” She rearranged some things, slid the tray onto the nightstand within his reach, and then walked over to the window. “You missed lunch already, so some of that can tide you over until dinnertime. Now, are you ready to see some sunshine?”
    “I think I am.”
    She pulled the heavy outer drapes aside to the edges of a large bay window behind them, then drew the inner curtains by their braided cord. “There you go,” Cathy said. “That’s the best view we’ve got.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I’ll send Tyler by to see you when you’ve had time to take care of your necessities.” She retrieved her basket and started for the door. “He’s my son, and he’ll walk you around the place a bit, just so you can get your legs underneath you again.”
    Hollis was so absorbed in the magnificent view of the grounds beyond the window that he managed only a slow, inadequate nod in answer to her question. “Thank you,” he heard himself repeat after a while longer, though when he glanced her way he found she’d already slipped out by then to leave him