Tough Enough

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  She closed her eyes as he touched her shoulder. “Yes … my head and my foot. I—I think I’ve got a bump on my head.”

  His touch was immediately soothing to her, though he wore latex gloves. But then, so did she when she had to examine a patient. With AIDS, HIV and hepatitis B all being transmissible via blood and fluids, medical people had to protect themselves accordingly. As he moved his hands gently across her head, she could feel him searching for injury. Something in her relaxed completely beneath his ministrations. She felt his warm, moist breath, his face inches from hers as he carefully examined her scalp.

  “Beautiful hair,” he murmured, “but you’re right—you’ve got a nice goose egg on the left side of your head.”

  One corner of her mouth turned up as she lay against the car seat. “If that’s all, I’m lucky. I hate going to hospitals.”

  Chuckling, Jim eased a white gauze dressing against her hair and then quickly placed a bandage around her head. “Yeah, well, you’ll be going to Cottonwood Hospital anyway. If nothing more than to make sure you’re okay.”

  Groaning, Rachel barely opened her eyes. She saw that he’d unzipped his jacket and it hung open, revealing ing a gold bar over the left top pocket of his dark blue shirt that read J. Cunningham. Cunningham. Frowning, she looked up at him as he moved his hands in a gentle motion down her neck, searching for more trauma.

  “Cunningham’s your last name?” she asked, her voice sounding faint even to her.

  “Yeah, Jim Cunningham.” He glanced down at her. She was pasty, her forest-green eyes dull looking. Jim knew she was in shock. He quickly pressed his fingertips against her collarbone, noticing her pale pink angora sweater and dark gray wool slacks. Under any other circumstance, she would turn a man’s head. “Why?” he teased. “Has my reputation preceded me?” He quickly felt her arms for broken bones or signs of bleeding. There were some minor cuts due to flying glass from the windshield, but otherwise, so far, so good. He tried not to show his worry.

  “Of the Bar C?” she asked softly, shutting her eyes as he leaned over her and pressed firmly on her rib cage to see if she had any broken ribs. How close he was! Yet his presence was utterly comforting to Rachel.

  “Yes … how did you know?” Jim eased his hands down over her hips, applying gentle pressure. If she had any hip or pelvic injuries, they would show up now. He watched her expression closely. Her eyes were closed, her thick, dark lashes standing out against her pale skin. She’d had a nosebleed, but it had ceased. Her lips parted, but she didn’t answer his question. Looking down and pushing aside the deflated air bag, he saw that her left foot was caught in the wreckage. Damn. That wasn’t a good sign. His mind whirled with possibilities. He needed to get a cuff around her upper arm and check her blood pressure. What if her foot was mangled? What if an artery was severed? She could be losing a lot of blood. She could die on them.

  He had to keep her talking. Easing out of the car window, he reached into his bright orange EMT bag. Looking up, he saw his partner, Larry, coming down, along with four other firefighters bringing the stretcher and ropes as well as auto-extrication equipment.

  “Well,” Jim prodded, as he pushed up her sleeve and slipped the blood-pressure cuff around her upper left arm, “am I a wanted desperado?”

  Rachel needed his stabilizing touch and absorbed it hungrily. Consciousness kept escaping her. For some reason she would slip away, only to be brought back by his deep, teasing voice. “Uh, no …?.”

  “You sound like you know me. Do you?” He quickly put the stethoscope to her arm and pumped up the cuff. His gaze was focused on the needle, watching it closely as he bled off the air.

  Rachel rallied. Opened her eyes slightly, she saw the worry in Jim’s face. The intensity in his expression shook her. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said, trying to tease back. Her voice sounded very far away. What was going on? Why wasn’t she able to remain coherent?

  Damn! Jim kept his expression neutral. Her blood pressure wasn’t good. Either she had a serious head injury or she was bleeding somewhere. He left the cuff on her arm and removed the stethoscope from his ears. She lay against the seat, her eyes closed, her body limp. Her breathing was slowly becoming weaker and weaker. His medical training told him she was losing a lot of blood. Where? It had to be that foot that was jammed in the wreckage.

  He had to keep her talking. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I don’t remember you. I wish I did, though.” And that was the truth. She was a beautiful woman. Stunning was a word Jim would use with her. Her dark brown hair was thick and long, like a dark cape across her proud shoulders.

  “Listen, I’m going to try and get this door open.” Jim made a signal to Larry to hurry even faster down the slippery incline. Studying the jagged cliff, Jim realized that if the car hadn’t wrapped itself around this fir tree, it would have plunged another three hundred feet. More than likely, Rachel would be dead.

  Larry hurried forward. He was a big man, over six feet tall, and built like a proverbial bull.

  “Yeah, Cougar, what are the stats?” He dropped his bag and moved gingerly up to Jim.

  Scowling, Jim lowered his voice so no one but his partner would hear. “She’s dumping on us. I think she’s hemorrhaging from her left foot, which is trapped beneath the dash of the car. Help me get this door open. I need to get a cuff on her upper leg. It’ll have to act like a tourniquet. Then those extrication guys can get in here and cut that metal away so we can get her foot free to examine it.”

  “Right, pard.”

  Rachel heard another male voice, but it was Jim’s voice she clung to. Her vision was growing dim. What was wrong with her? She heard the door protest and creak loudly as it was pulled opened in a series of hard, jerking motions. In moments, she heard Jim’s voice very close to her ear. Forcing open her eyes, she saw that he was kneeling on the side of the car where the door was now open. She felt his hand moving down her left leg, below her knee.

  “Can you feel that?” he demanded.

  “Feel what?” Rachel asked.

  “Or this?”

  “No … nothing. I feel nothing, Jim.”

  Jim threw Larry a sharp look. “Hand me your blood-pressure cuff. We’re going to apply a tourniquet.” In the gray light of the canyon, with snowflakes twirling lazily around them, Jim saw that her left foot and ankle had been twisted and trapped in the metal upon impact. With Larry’s help, he affixed the cuff around her slim calf and then inflated it enough to halt the blood flow in that extremity.

  Four other firefighters arrived on scene. Larry put a warm, protective blanket across Rachel. He then got into the backseat and held her head straight while Jim carefully placed a stabilizing cervical collar around her neck, in case she had an undetected spinal injury. He was worried. She kept slipping in and out of consciousness.

  As he settled into the passenger seat beside her, and the firefighters worked to remove the metal that trapped her leg, Jim tried to draw her out of her semiconscious state.

  “Rachel,” he called, “it’s Jim. Can you hear me?”

  She barely moved her lips. “Yes …”

  He told her what the firefighters were going to do, and that there would be a lot of noise and not to get upset by it. All the while, he kept his hand on hers. She responded valiantly to his touch, to his voice, but Jim saw Larry shake his head doubtfully as he continued to gently hold her head and neck.

  “You said you heard of me,” Jim teased. He watched her lashes move upward to reveal her incredible eyes. Her pupils were wide and dilated, black with a crescent of green around them. “Well? Am I on a wanted poster somewhere?” he asked with a smile.

  Jim’s smile went straight to Rachel’s heart. It was boyish, teasing, and yet he was so male that it made her heart beat a little harder in her chest. She tried to smile back and realized it was a poor attempt. “No … not a wanted poster. I remember you from high school. I’m Rachel Donovan. You know the Donovan Ranch?”

  Stunned,
Jim stared. “Rachel Donovan?” His head whirled with shock. That was right! He recalled Jessica Donovan telling him over a month ago that Rachel, the middle daughter, was moving home from England to live at the ranch.

  “That’s me,” Rachel joked softly. She forced her eyes open a little more and held his gaze. “You used to pull my braids in junior high, but I don’t think you remember that, do you?”

  Jim forced a grin he didn’t feel at all. “I do now.” And he did. Little Rachel Donovan had been such a thin stick of a girl in junior high. She had worn her long, dark brown flowing mane of hair in braids back then, like her mother, Odula, an Eastern Cherokee medicine woman. Rachel was the spitting image of her. Jim recalled the crush he’d had on little Rachel Donovan. She’d always run from him. The only way he’d get her attention was to sneak up, tweak one of her braids and then run away himself. It was his way of saying he liked her, for at that age, Jim had been too shy to tell her. Besides, there were other problems that prevented him from openly showing his affection for her.

  “You were always teasing me, Jim Cunningham,” Rachel said weakly. Her mouth was dry and she was thirsty. The noise of machinery filled the car. If it hadn’t been for Jim’s steadying hand on her shoulder, the sound would have scared her witless.

  “Hey, Cougar, we’re gonna have to take the rest of this windshield out. Gotta pull the steering wheel up and away from her.”

  Jim nodded to Captain Cord Ramsey of the extrication team. “Okay.” He rose up on his knees and took a second blanket into his hands.

  “Rachel,” he said as he leaned directly over her, “I’m going to place a blanket over us. The firefighters have to pull the rest of the window out. There’s going to be glass everywhere, but the blanket will protect you.”

  Everything went dark before Rachel’s eyes. Jim Cunningham had literally placed his body like a wall between her and the firefighters who were working feverishly to free her. She felt the heat of his body as he pulled the blanket over their heads. How close he was! She was overwhelmed by the care he showed toward her. It was wonderful.

  When he spoke, his voice was barely an inch from her ear.

  “Okay, they’re going to pull that windshield any moment now. You’ll hear some noise and feel the car move a bit. It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

  “You’re wonderful at what you do,” Rachel whispered weakly. “You really make a person feel safe … that everything’s going to be okay even if it isn’t … ?.”

  Worried, Jim said, “Rachel, do you know what blood type you are?”

  “AB positive.”

  His heart sank. He struggled to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “That’s a rare blood type.”

  She smiled a little. “Like me, I guess.”

  He chuckled. “I have AB positive blood, too. How about that? Two rare birds, eh?”

  Rachel heard the windshield crack. There was one brief, sharp movement. As Jim eased back and removed the blanket, she looked up at him. His face was hard and expressionless until he looked down to make sure she was all right. Then his features became very readable. She saw concern banked in his eyes.

  “Listen, Jim, in the backseat there’s a kit. A homeopathic kit. It’s important you get to it. There’s a remedy in there. It’s called Arnica Montana. I know I’m bleeding. It will help stop it. Can you get it for me? Pour some pellets into my mouth?”

  He frowned and looked in the backseat. There was a black physician’s bag there on the seat next to Larry. “You a doctor?”

  “No, a homeopath.”

  “I’ve vaguely heard about it. An alternative medicine, right?” He reached over the backseat and brought the leather case up front, resting it against his thigh as he opened it. He found a small plastic box inside along with a lot of other medical equipment. “This box?” he asked, holding it up for her to look at.

  “Yes … that’s the one. I’ll need two pills.”

  Opening it, Jim located the bottle marked Arnica. He unscrewed the cap and put a couple of white pellets into her mouth.

  “Thanks … ?.” Rachel said. The sweetness of the small pellets tasted good to her. “It will help stop the shock and the bleeding.”

  Jim put the bag aside. Worriedly, he took another blood-pressure reading. She was no longer dumping as before. He suspected the tourniquet on her lower leg had halted most of the bleeding, and that was good news.

  “Did I hear someone call you Cougar?”

  Distracted because the extrication team was finally prying the metal away from her foot, Jim nodded. “Yeah, that’s my nickname.”

  “H-how did you get it?” Rachel felt the power of the homeopathic remedy begin to work on her immediately. “Listen, this remedy I took will probably make me look like I’m unconscious, but I’m not. It’s just working to stabilize me, so don’t panic, okay?”

  Jim nodded and placed himself in front of Rachel to protect her again as the extrication equipment began to remove the metal from around her foot. “Okay, sweetheart, I won’t panic.” He watched her lashes drift down as he shielded her with his body. Her color was no longer as pasty, and that was promising. Still, her blood pressure was low. Too low.

  Looking up at Larry, Jim said, “As soon as we get her out of here, have Ramsey call the hospital and see if they’ve got AB positive blood standing by. We’re going to need it.”

  “Right.”

  Rachel savored Jim’s nearness. She heard the screech of metal as it was being torn away to release her foot. She hoped her injury wasn’t bad. She had a wedding to attend in a week. Her foot couldn’t be broken!

  “What’s the frown for?” Jim asked. Her face was inches from his. He saw the soft upturn of the corners of her mouth. What a lovely mouth Rachel had. The spindly shadow of a girl he’d known was now a mature swan of indescribable beauty.

  “Oh … the weddings—Katie and Jessica. I’m supposed to be their maid of honor. My foot … I’m worried about my foot. What if I broke it?”

  “We’ll know in just a little while,” he soothed. Instinctively, he placed his hand on her left shoulder. The last of the metal was torn away.

  “Cougar?”

  “Yeah?” Jim twisted his head toward Captain Ramsey.

  “She’s all yours. Better come and take a look.”

  Rachel felt Jim leave her side. Larry’s hands remained firm against her head and neck, however.

  Cunningham climbed carefully around the car. The temperature was dropping, and the wind was picking up. Blizzard conditions were developing fast. Jim noted the captain’s wrinkled brow as he made his way to the driver’s side. Getting down on his hands and knees, squinting in the poor light, he got his first look at Rachel’s foot.

  He’d been right about loss of blood. He saw where an artery on the top of her foot had been sliced open. Quickly examining it, he placed a dressing there. Turning, he looked up at the captain.

  “Get the hospital on the horn right away. We’re definitely going to need a blood transfusion for her. AB positive.” Rachel had lost a lot of blood, there was no doubt. If he hadn’t put that blood-pressure cuff on her lower leg when he did, she would have bled to death right in front of him. Shaken, Jim eased to his feet.

  “Okay, let’s get her out of the car and onto a spine board.” When he looked up to check on Rachel, he saw that she had lost consciousness again. So many memories flooded back through Jim in those moments. Good ones. Painful ones. Ones of yearning. Of unrequited love that was never fulfilled. Little Rachel Donovan. He’d had a crush on her all through school.

  As Jim quickly positioned the spine board beneath Rachel with the help of the firefighters, he suddenly felt hope for the first time in a long time. Maybe, just maybe, life was giving him a second chance with Rachel. And then he laughed at himself. The hundred-year-old feud between the Cunninghams and Donovans was famous in this part of the country. Still he wondered if Rachel had ever had any feelings for him?

  Right now, Jim couldn’t even think a
bout the past. His concern was for Rachel’s loss of blood and her shock. The clock on the car had stopped at 7:00 a.m. That was when the accident had probably occurred. And it had taken them an hour to get here. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, her life hung in a precarious balance right now.

  “Hey,” Ramsey said, getting off the radio, “bad news, Cougar.”

  “What?” Jim eased Rachel onto the spine board and made her as comfortable as possible.

  “No AB positive blood at Cottonwood.”

  Damn! “Try Flagstaff.”

  Ramsey shook his head. “None anywhere.”

  Placing another blanket across Rachel, Jim glanced up at his partner. “You tell Cottonwood to stand by for a blood transfusion, then,” he told the captain. “I’ve got AB positive blood. She needs at least a pint or we aren’t going to be able to save her.”

  “Roger,” Ramsey grunted, and got on the radio again to the hospital.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE FIRST thing Rachel was aware of was a hand gently caressing her hair. It was a nurturing touch, almost tender as it brushed across her crown. Unfamiliar noises leaked into her groggy consciousness, along with the smell of antiseptic. Where was she? Her head ached. Whoever was caressing her hair soothed the pain with each touch. Voices. There were so many unfamiliar voices all around her. Struggling to open her eyes, she heard a man’s voice, very low and nearby.

  “It’s okay, Rachel. You’re safe and you’re going to be okay. Don’t try so hard. Just lay back and take it easy. You’ve been through a lot.”

  Who was that? The voice was oddly familiar, and yet it wasn’t. The touch of his hand on her head was magical. Rachel tried to focus on the gentle caress. Each time he followed the curve of her skull, the pain went away, only to return when he lifted his hand. Who was this man who had such a powerful touch? Rachel was no stranger to hands-on healing. Her mother, Odula, used to lay her hands on each of them when they were sick with fever or chills. And amazingly, each time, their aches and pains had disappeared.

  The antiseptic smell awakened her even more—the smell of a hospital. She knew the scent well, having tended many patients at the homeopathic hospital in London. Her mind was fuzzy, so she continued to focus on the man’s hand and his nearness. She felt his other hand resting on her upper arm, as if to give her an anchor in the whirling world of gold-and-white light beneath her lids.