Unable to resist any longer, he rolled toward her, his big body moving her onto her back. Then, with his hand cupping the side of her head, and his fingers threaded through her hair, he bent near and covered her lips with his own.
Her hands were curling over his shoulders, pulling him closer, when a thunderous bang startled them both, and they jumped.
He heard panicked shouts as the metallic ring faded.
As one, they sat up and searched for the source.
“Oh, my stars, Beck. Look!”
He looked where she pointed. What he saw sent dread knifing through him.
A man hung upside down from a cable six stories high. He cursed the breeze he’d appreciated earlier because as it blew, it sent the inverted man swinging perilously close to a steel girder.
Instantly on the move, he called over his shoulder, “Reopen the clinic, Adria. If he’s injured—”
“He must be. He doesn’t appear to be moving,” she exclaimed in a horrified voice as she descended the hill on his heels.
“Exactly. He’ll need you there.”
Beck didn’t wait for her response as he broke into a run.
ONCE INSIDE THE CLINIC, she tried to alert Juno on her communicator but got no response. She attempted to reach the emergency response team next with the same result.
Worried, she went to the door and looked up and down the street. There were no flashing lights or sirens to indicate someone else had gotten to them first.
A glance upward revealed the situation hadn’t changed. The man still hung nearly 100 feet in the air. If the cable snapped or he slid free of whatever was holding him, she couldn’t imagine he’d survived the fall. That he wasn’t moving could mean he was unconscious from a blow to his head or that he’d injured his spine.
If they got him down without stabilizing his neck, they might cause more damage.
She gazed down the street, straining to see red lights.
“Dammit, where are they?”
Adria made up her mind she couldn’t stand idly by and simply watch. She had to do something. She ran inside and grabbed the large red box stocked with as many emergency medical and trauma supplies as it could hold and still be portable, and was out the door in seconds. Beck had told her get to the clinic and be ready, but without medical help on-site, the injured man didn’t have the luxury of waiting.
As she arrived at the frame structure, the civil alert sirens sounded.
“It’s about time,” she uttered as she headed for the lift that would take her to the top of the structure. “That should get response team’s attention.”
“That’s not for us,” a man advised as he rushed in alongside her. “It’s the mine emergency signal.”
“How can you tell?”
He gave her a disapproving look. “You live here and don’t know?” Then he held up his hand. “Never mind. Three short and one long means fire, two and two means a cave in at the mine.”
“The mine is shut down. That makes no sense.”
“I don’t know what’s happening other than poor Ray up there is in trouble if they all responded to the other call.”
“You’re wrong. He’s got me,” she replied. “I’m a technician from the clinic, soon to be a physic. Show me how to go up.”
They were at the caged platform in seconds, but the man hesitated before pressing the red button she assumed would open the doors.
“What are you waiting for? Time is crucial.”
“I don’t know,” he replied uncertainly. “There’s an unbreakable rule of no unauthorized personnel in a safety zone. We’ve already got trouble.”
“I’m sure poor Ray won’t care about protocol when they get him down from that cable. What if he’s hemorrhaging or has multiple compound fractures or, worse, a spinal cord injury?”
His eyes rounded in alarm. “None of it sounds good to me.”
“If I’m not there to help him, it could be fatal.”
He jabbed the red button with his thumb, and the metal doors clanged open. “C’mon with me, then, Doc, and stay close. The last thing we need is for you to fall, too.”
It seemed to take forever for the lift to ascend six stories. When it opened, not onto a floor but a series of narrow beams with nothing except air between them, she hung back. Her escort was out the door without hesitation, however. Once he noticed she wasn’t with him, he turned.
“Doc?”
“I, uh...”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been up this high before.” She peeked over the edge and quickly retreated.
“Stay where you are,” he muttered. “Once we haul Ray in, we’ll bring him to you.”
“Excellent idea,” she replied, but the man had grabbed the cable overhead, hooked it to a clamp on his vest, and was already navigating the beam on his way to where the man still dangled.
He wasn’t alone. A dozen men lined a crossbeam at the far edge, facing empty space and a cable swaying in the wind. She knew what was at the end of the cable, or rather, who. She heard Beck’s deep voice barking orders, except when she scanned the group, she didn’t see him.
“We’re ready when you are, boss,” a man called. His gaze was fixed over his head. When she looked up, a wave of nausea struck because, at that exact instant, Beck dropped from a beam overhead by a cable and descended parallel to Ray. Another cable, this one bright orange—why she noticed the colors was beyond her—ran from his waist to a man who held the other end. She didn’t know what kept him from being pulled off his beam and over the edge with them, until she saw that it was wrapped several times around a wide metal vertical girder. The orange cable apparently acted as a stabilizer to keep Beck from swaying and spinning wildly like the inverted construction worker.
As Adria watched the death-defying rescue unfold, her heart thudded painfully. As seconds passed and she became slightly dizzy, she realized she was holding her breath. Gasping for air, she prayed both Beck and Ray would come through this unscathed.
She lost sight of his sandy-brown head and broad shoulders behind the line of men the next moment. They were murmuring words of encouragement. “You got this, man,” one called, another shouted a split second later, “He hooked him! I told you with Kincaid’s mile-long arms he was the only man for the job.”
Beck’s head reappeared next to a pair of legs and boots that belonged to Ray. A little higher and she saw he’d wrapped attached a silver clamp and cable from the injured man’s safety harness to his, securing him. Several men passed a backboard to the center and strapped the injured man to it. Then they hauled him to safety. Well, as much safety as the eight-inch steel girders provided.
Her physic-trained eyes began assessing the man. His face was ashen, his lips blue. At the very least, a rib fracture had punctured his lung. The men transferred him onto the board and to an intersection of cross girders, the most stable place for him as far as she could see until they got him into the lift. One man stayed with him, talking to him reassuringly as the others went to help haul Beck in.
The man left behind who patted Ray’s cheek, trying to get him to speak, obviously had no medical skills. Acting on instinct, Adria slipped the strap on the emergency kit over her head and slid one arm through, so it crisscrossed her body. Then she moved out, grabbing the cable above her head as she’d seen the other man do. Although her eyes were on her patient, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and not looking down.
It took her only minutes to reach him, at which point she lowered herself next to him, straddling a connecting beam.
“What the hell?” the man with Ray exclaimed when he looked up and saw her. “Great day, gal, are you nuts?”
“He’s turning blue, which means he isn’t getting air,” she announced as she ripped open his shirt. Bruises covered the left side of his chest and, when she palpated the area, sure enough, she felt the fractures and the subcutaneous bubbles of escaped air. With each wheezing breath he to
ok, she could see the paradoxical movement of his ribs.
“His lung has collapsed. Give me your hand,” she ordered.
“Huh?” he replied dully.
“Your hand,” she snapped. “I need you to splint the area while I reinflate his lung.”
“I don’t...”
She reached out and grabbed his wrist when he still didn’t cooperate. Then she placed his hand where she needed it. “Hold it there. He has multiple rib fractures. You’re keeping the detached portion of bone from moving opposite to his lungs.”
Once he’d done as she instructed, she dug through the kit to find the portable oxygen canister. She shook it, popped on the mask and turned it to activate it.
“Can you hold this over his nose and mouth while still splinting his ribs?”
“Yeah,” the man agreed.
“Good, because I’ll need both hands free to treat his tension pneumothorax.”
“Uh...”
Adria didn’t offer more of an explanation; she needed to focus. After retrieving a needle from the kit, she quickly ran an antiseptic swab over the area she intended to pierce. Ordinarily, she would have been more thorough, but his life was on the line.
Using two fingers to locate the intercostal space between his second and third ribs, she inserted the needle.
The man assisting her gagged.
“Don’t you dare pass out,” she warned. “There’s only one of me, and Ray has my full attention. Not to mention, look where we are.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he moaned quietly.
Once the tip popped into the pleural space, there was an audible release of air. A few moments and wheezing breaths later, her patient’s color turned from ashen to pale and his lips from blue to pink.
“You did it!” the man marveled.
“Impressive work, Doc,” a deep voice said from behind her at the same time she felt an arm slide around her waist. She was glad for it because she jumped and twisted in surprise and would have teetered over. “Let’s get you both down from here.”
“I need to secure the needle for transport first, Beck.”
“Hang on a minute, and let me get a safety harness around you. Hands up,” he ordered.
Adria felt much better once the wide leather strap was around her waist and two more looped under her arms and over her shoulders.
“You’re secure. Hurry and do what you gotta do. The wind up here is brutal, and it isn’t safe for any of us.”
Until he mentioned it, she hadn’t noticed the breeze, which had been blowing gently while she was napping on the hill, was now a strong, sustained wind. It whipped her hair into her face and, for all she knew, could have been doing so since she’d stepped out of the lift, but she’d been focused on saving her patient.
Once she had him ready for transport down, she glanced up at Beck and nodded. He looked as pale beneath his usually tanned complexion as her patient did.
“Did you hurt yourself in the rescue?”
“I’m fine, let’s go.” With his hands on her waist, he helped her rise then hooked another cable from her harness to the one overhead, the same one she’d used to get out here. “If you have all these safety cables, how did he fall?”
“I intend to ask him once he wakes up. But let’s worry about that later. Focus on getting to the freight elevator in one piece, okay?”
Once she reached the lift, Beck with her every inch, they loaded Ray in first then filled in around him and descended.
NEVER SO TERRIFIED in all his thirty-two years, Beck’s insides quivered like a bowl of Jell-O. It wasn’t from rappelling six stories up. He’d hung from buildings and bridges much taller than this one. But when he got on solid footing and looked up to see Adria straddling a girder, unsecured and in a skirt, his heart had stopped. He didn’t say much as he strode alongside her on the short trip to the clinic.
A dirt-covered Dr. Juna popped into the hall when they arrived.
“What happened to you?” Adria asked the usually tidy physician.
“There was a cave-in of tunnels from the old mine, and men were trapped.” She looked over at the man on the stretcher, her eyes immediately homing in on the large bore needle protruding from his chest. “What’s his status?”
“Blunt chest trauma, multiple fractures, a flail chest, and a tension pneumothorax, decompressed in the field,” was her reply. “He was cyanotic when I got to him and hasn’t regained consciousness with oxygen.”
Beck saw the older, more experienced physician’s eyes widen. “I’ve got three victims with crush injuries. One is in the Optimed now. The others are stable and can wait. Your man is priority and goes in next.” She waved at one of the nurses down the hall. “Set up room four and get scans. Doctor Adria will give you lab and pain-control orders.”
“Oh, but I’m not a doctor,” she protested. “Not yet!”
Intelligent green eyes swung her way. “You’ve had eight years of training and less than two months before you’re through. On Earth, that would make you a senior resident, and you’d be pretty much on your own. There are more injured on their way in. Until help arrives from the Intrepid, it’s just the two of us. So today, you’re Dr. Adria in my book.” Juna turned and grabbed a paper gown from a wall rack, putting it on as she headed down the hall. “Holler if you need me. Which, if I know you, won’t be necessary.”
She looked somewhat dazed, which surprised Beck after the way she’d taken control of Ray’s situation less than an hour ago. She’d even given Bruce, his senior construction foreman, orders. Other than him, Bruce didn’t take orders from anyone on the planet—literally.
“When you’re through here,” Beck told her, “I’ll find you. I’d like a word.”
Her head jerked slightly. “Why?”
His eyes locked with hers. Did she really have to ask?
She’d taken a huge risk walking out on what equated to a balance beam without a safety harness, and in a cumbersome skirt. One misstep, or a strong wind gust, and she’d be splattered all over the ground at the base of the new residence hall right now.
The gruesome image made his stomach queasy. He wanted to hug her close while offering thanks to the big man upstairs for watching over her. She also deserved praise for saving one of his men, except the end didn’t justify the peril to herself. He didn’t know whether to hug or throttle her.
She had a patient to see to, so the ass chewing he intended would have to wait until later. If her luck held, his anger would cool by that time, though he doubted it. He didn’t know how long it would take to erase the images of her straddling that beam as the wind plastered her clothes to her body and whipped her hair out behind her like an unfurled flag, but it would be a helluva lot more than a few hours.
“We’ll talk later,” he insisted. “You’ve got injured men to tend to.” Then, because he was only in the way of another patient being brought in, he retreated to the lobby to wait.
Chapter Six
Six more victims were brought in with bruises and lacerations, and a few had broken bones, all quickly healed in the Optimed Healing Accelerator II. One man complained of chest pain, which turned out to be anxiety from almost being buried alive. Justifiable in Adria’s estimation. Several suffered from respiratory distress due to inhaling copious amounts of dust and dirt in the air, but between her and Juna, they were all stabilized and discharged, except for Ray.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, his fractured ribs were healed, as was the hairline skull fracture sustained when his head sparred with inflexible steel and lost. Since the extraordinary machine also worked on soft tissue, his punctured lungs were mended, and his oxygen levels were normal on room air. The only lasting injury was a concussion—brain tissue didn’t respond to the Optimed II’s restorative powers, something their scientists continued to work on every day—and Juna wanted him under observation overnight
“You can go on home when you finish your documentation,” she told her when she joined her in the office.
; Adria glanced up from where she was entering clinical notes of the events into her tablet. “I can stay. I don’t have any plans.”
“Beck might have some. I saw him waiting out front.”
She’d seen him, too, and the confrontation he seemed intent on having was what she was trying to avoid.
“Are you sure? I really don’t mind staying.”
“I’m the physician on call, so it’s my responsibility. Besides, you can only hide out in here for so long. Might as well go face the music.”
Of course, she was right. Putting off the inevitable usually made things worse. After logging out of the database, she headed up front, relieved when he wasn’t in the lobby.
But her relief came too soon. Not a second later, the door opened, flooding the room with sunlight and, with it, came a very unhappy-looking Beck Kincaid. Even displeased he took her breath away especially with his hair glinting gold in the light and his eyes snapping with blue fire.
As soon as he saw her, his fists found his hips, and his angry words snapped like a whip. “What in the ever-loving-hell were you doing up there? Christ, Adria, you could have easily fallen six stories to your death. We’ve got trained emergency response teams for a reason.”
She glanced around the room, glad no one had lingered to witness her scolding.
“Research shows trauma patients’ mortality rates decrease significantly with rapid response. The ERTs weren’t responding, so I grabbed the kit and went up to help. Granted, I had no idea there wouldn’t be a floor to step out on. When I saw it was only a network of cross beams, I intended to stay put until they brought him in. His lips were already blue. In my medical judgment, he couldn’t wait.”
“Safety measures are taken first, then the rescue happens; otherwise, we end up with a whole passel of disabled rescue workers. Worse, a whole passel of dead ones.”
She hadn’t a clue what a passel was and didn’t dare ask. She kept her voice even in the face of his anger, hoping her calm would transfer to him and defuse the situation. “I know what I did wasn’t correct protocol—”
Bound by Fate Page 10