A Holiday to Remember

by Helen R. Myers

  Mack parked directly behind it and started running across the street, dread gripping him. The plane had gone into what looked like the sheet-metal shop. Mack knew that there would be any variety of gas canisters in there that could blow at any time as the fire spread.

  “Ally!”

  At the same moment he heard the shrill wail of sirens. Another vehicle with its roof lights on arrived and it stopped in the middle of the intersection to block whatever oncoming traffic would approach from the north. A cop emerged from the vehicle and Mack started running for the building again.

  “Hey! Get back here!”

  “Ally’s in there!” Mack yelled back.

  The instant he entered the metal building, he started coughing. The scene was a mangled mess of plane, building and inventory. He stumbled over channel iron and sheet metal, then hoses that undoubtedly were connected to tanks. That filled him with as much dread as the flames that put Alana in a momentary silhouette as she tried to drag a man out of the remains of the burning plane. Seconds later she was lost in smoke again.

  The heat was intense, and the smoke gagging, but Mack fought his way to her. “Alana!” he yelled above the roar of gas and material burning.

  “Here!”

  She was struggling with breathing, too, and Mack followed the sound of her coughs, until he came upon her as she tried to haul a barely conscious man from the wreckage.

  “I’ve got his other side,” Mack said, taking the bulk of the weight of the man who was almost his own height and a good thirty pounds heavier.

  “I’ll get the others.”

  Others? Mack swore silently and tried to make a grab for her, but she evaded his grasp. He wanted to go back for her, but the man was bleeding profusely from a head gash. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but he knew he was obligated to get the man out of danger.

  Sirens and lights greeted them as they emerged from the wrecked building and stumbled to clearer air. Mack handed off the man to two approaching EMTs, but when he began to run back inside, the pilot clutched his arm.

  “I was...alone.”

  Those words should have been the best news anyone could hear, but Mack was suddenly sick to his stomach. With barely a nod of thanks, he bolted back into the building.

  “Get out of there!” firemen yelled as they began spraying water onto and into the building.

  “There’s a police officer in there!” he shouted back to them. As he continued onward, another fireman stopped him.

  “Sir! This place is going to blow. Leave!”

  Mack jerked free. “The chief’s niece is in there!”

  Behind his mask, the fireman grimaced and motioned to Mack to leave anyway. He at least had oxygen and protective clothing. But that meant nothing to Mack.

  He lunged away and reached the plane, where Alana was struggling to see into the backseats. Locking his arm around her waist, he started carrying her out.

  “Let me go! I have to get them!”

  “There are no others—he’s alone, Ally!”

  Water was now as much an enemy as the smoke and fire, making the floor slippery. They slid and stumbled as though navigating on ice. But the fireman that had first stopped Mack appeared and helped them get out into better air.

  It was another world outside. A strange abstract of noise, lights and people in assorted uniforms. Alana seemed oblivious to it all, still inconsolable in her despair, even as she struggled from all the smoke she’d inhaled.

  “You both need to get on oxygen,” one EMT said, as a pair of them took over. “This way.”

  One stout technician noted Alana’s condition and lifted her into his arms, while the other helped Mack get to an ambulance. Mack was relieved to see them put a mask on Alana, even before urging her to sit down on the bumper of the ambulance. Just as another mask was put over his own face, the chief appeared.

  The older man looked from Alana to Mack. His eyes were red rimmed and suspiciously wet, but all he did was grip Mack’s arm before hunkering down to press a kiss on Alana’s forehead.

  “Baby, thank God. You did really well.”

  She just shook her head and choked on sobs.

  Duke Anders looked up at Mack in confusion.

  Mack understood that reality hadn’t registered with her yet. Removing his own mask, he leaned close to her ear so she could hear him above the cacophony. “Alana, listen to me—that wasn’t your family’s plane. The pilot was alone. We got him out.”

  She went as still as her condition allowed. Slowly lifting her gaze to his, she blinked as though she wasn’t even sure who he was.

  “It’s true, Ally,” the chief assured her, stroking her hair. “The man’s got a nasty cut that will require stitches, and his leg is broken, but he’s going to be fine.”

  Watching the truth sink in was like watching an avalanche in slow motion. Alana crumbled into herself, bending over and covering her face with her hands. From relief or embarrassment? Mack was afraid of the answer.

  “Wait, don’t do that.” An EMT gently but firmly took hold of her hands to inspect her burns.

  “How bad?” Mack demanded before taking another few breaths of oxygen.

  “Amazing. She has a couple of third-degree spots, but she’s getting away with mostly second-degree burns.”

  Just then there was an explosion that sent everyone instinctively ducking, even though they were protected by the ambulance. As calls of “Move it back!” sounded, Mack made a decision.

  Certain he’d gotten all the oxygen he needed, he gave up his mask and said to the chief, “I’m getting her out of here.”

  “She should go to the hospital,” Duke said. “Her lungs...”

  “If she continues to have trouble, I’ll get her there, believe me.” His compelling look to Alana’s uncle supported the solemnity of his promise. Surely the older man could understand that she’d been through enough reminders of the day when life as she knew it had ended? He believed what she needed right now was escape from these sounds, and privacy as she came to terms with what she’d just been through.

  As people and vehicles all around them started to retreat as ordered, Duke nodded. “Go.”

  Grateful, Mack started to reach for Alana, but the chief stopped him. What now? he wondered.

  “Ah...” Duke glanced around and signaled the bigger of the two EMTs. “Steve, Mack here is a vet and he doesn’t need to be doing any lifting right now, catch my drift? Would you mind?”

  “No problem, sir,” the burly medical technician said to the chief. Lifting Alana into his arms, he said to Mack, “Lead the way, sir.”

  Leveling Duke a speaking look in the hopes that explanations stopped there, he started for the pickup. It was inevitable that a crowd had collected, and many of them were participating in the new global pastime whenever something out of the norm was taking place—they were holding up their phones taking photos and video of what was going on. Then Mack saw one guy with an actual camera—probably from the local newspaper that Alana had worried about.

  “Alana!” the man with glasses and bad skin shouted. “Are you okay? Were you in the building? Can we get a few words?”

  While he knew he should be grateful that there hadn’t been enough time for reporters from larger cities to reach them yet, Mack wondered if the fool was blind. Couldn’t he see what shape she was in, covered in soot, her face streaked by tears, her hands held near her chin swollen from the blistering? Instead, though, he just ducked his head. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Alana did, as well.

  Once settled in the truck, he thanked the EMT, who was invaluable in also helping them make a U-turn through the crowd. It took another few minutes to navigate around other vehicles; finally, however, Mack had open road and accelerated.

  Now that it was safe to take his eyes off the road, he glanced toward Alana. She sat with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted. She was trying to breathe shallowly, but even so she coughed after several breaths.

  “If it hurts too
much, I’ll detour and get you to the hospital,” he told her.

  “No. God, no.” She coughed again, but then added a quick “I’m okay.”

  But the way she was trying to discreetly flex her hands that lay palm up in her lap told him that she was hardly that. “We’ll get those in ice water and get you relief soon.”

  Right after that, he passed Pretty Pines’s driveway.

  “What are you doing?” she wheezed. “Take me home.”

  “Like hell,” he replied calmly. “The chief is going to be tied up for hours, you know that. You can’t be left alone for that long.”

  Alana’s response was a deep sigh that sent her into another coughing fit. Clearly aggravated with him, when she recovered, she returned to leaning her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.

  By the time Mack parked at the side door of the house and unlocked it, he came to her side of the truck and found her trying to release her seat belt. “Let me help you, please.” He did get the belt off her, then asked, “Do you feel stable enough to walk?”

  “I’m crazy, not incapacitated.”

  The dull reply hit him like a wet towel in the face. Is that what she thought? “You’re in shock,” he replied firmly. He ached to take her in his arms, but knew how quickly she would reject that in her current state. “You may even have some PTS issues going on. We’ll deal with that later if necessary, but you are not crazy—got it?”

  She cast him a brief, but tearful, look. “I could have sworn I saw and heard other people in that plane.”

  His heart all but shredded at her usually husky, confident voice sounding meek and uncertain. “Hell, sweetheart, when I entered that building, I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a fire-breathing dragon or terrorists with flame throwers. The important thing is that the collateral damage is minimal.”

  “Not for Monroe Davis,” she replied, easing from the truck. “His welding shop is toast and I doubt he had insurance. In fact he’d recently lost his lease—” she paused to cough again “—and he was hunting a new location. Someone finally realized a welding shop shouldn’t be so near a gas station/convenience store. The only reason there’s still an Oak Grove or us is because the majority of those bottles in his shop were probably mostly empty.”

  Heartened by that news, and that Alana was speaking in a way that showed her thought processes were coming back, Mack stayed close as they entered the house. “It’ll be easier if you come to my bathroom and sit down, then I’ll get the ice for the water so you can soak your hands.”

  When he flipped wall switches and the kitchen lit with fluorescent light, she cringed. “Please don’t. I can’t imagine what I look like.”

  Mack was heartened by that bit of vanity. “You’re definitely doing better if you’re worrying about how you look.” He did, however, alter the lighting to the one by the oven and then the lamp in his room where the dark shade cast only a minimal light. “We’ll have to settle for this, though,” he said, turning on the secondary bathroom light.

  While it wasn’t as bad as the bar of bulbs over the mirror, Alana grimaced, then groaned when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Her uniform was ruined for sure, seared in a few places and blackened by soot. There was also soot on her heat-reddened, tearstained face and her hair, which looked frizzy in spots where the flames had singed it. But it was her hands that had suffered the most. Red and swollen from the heat, with a number of blisters, although thankfully only two or three were third-degree burns.

  Looking as though she didn’t know where to start, Mack said, “You have to be alive to look that good.” His own T-shirt and jeans were filthy, too, as were his face and arms; however, he’d suffered little of the burning that Alana had.

  Groaning, Alana turned her back to the image and muttered, “I need a shower.”

  “First things first. Let’s get cold water running over your hands.” He took a stool from around the corner in the bedroom and set it by the sink so that she could sit while doing that. “Wait,” he added before she sat. “I’ll get your belt off. Then I’ll get some ice. Even your well water isn’t optimum to take the heat out of your burns.”

  “Mack, go take care of yourself. I’ll get this.”

  “My house, my rules.”

  Although he spoke gently, she turned her head away as he unhooked her belt and set it in the bedroom. He understood. This was trying for a woman who, for all of her life challenges, strived to remain independent, loathing to become an inconvenience to anyone. On the other hand, they’d come close to losing her tonight and any small thing he could do to make her more comfortable helped him deny himself what he really wanted to do, which was drag her into his arms and kiss her until he no longer saw the images he had in that burning shop.

  When he returned with the bowl of ice, she did have her hands under the tap, but she was resting her head on the marble vanity, and her eyes were closed. Mack could tell by her breathing that she was almost asleep and he lightly caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers.

  She bolted upright. “I’m okay.”

  “I know you are.” She’d only coughed twice—he had listened and counted. “But you have to stay awake. You know from your own first-aid training that sleepiness is something to watch for, as well as nausea.”

  “I’m not nauseous.”

  While he pulled the drain lever, the water started filling the basin. As it did, Mack added the ice he’d carried from the kitchen in a salad bowl. He’d washed his hands while in the kitchen to cut infection concerns for her, and gently directed her to put her hands back in that soothing cocktail.

  Her gasp and shiver told him that the ice would make the difference. “Sorry about that, but the discomfort will end soon. Let’s do ten or fifteen minutes in there and then we can go to phase two.”

  “Yeah, a shower,” she replied.

  “You can’t,” Mack replied.

  “Mack, my scalp is itching worse than it did when we came out of the woods this afternoon. I’m ready to take a rake to my head. And if I have to smell this smoke and soot on me for much longer, I am going to be sick to my stomach. I know there are plastic bags and rubber bands in the kitchen. If you’ll get them, I can—”

  Understanding what she planned, Mack was still having none of it. “Alana, the only way you’re going in there,” he said, nodding toward the shower stall, “is if I’m with you. We’re not going to take any chances of you passing out and adding a head injury or broken bones to this.”

  “If you’re gambling on me being too shy for that, you’re underestimating how desperate I am to get cleaned up. Besides, it would take an armless blind man to be attracted to me at this point. Make that a deaf armless blind man, since I also sound like a chain smoker.”

  It was no surprise that her declaration triggered a coughing fit. Feeling frustration merge with dread, Mack got a washrag from the drawer beside her and wet it in the cold water, then he squeezed out the excess and held it to her forehead. “Stop trying to hurt yourself more—and putting yourself down. We’ll try the damned shower,” he added, heading for the kitchen before she saw just what the idea of being naked with her was going to do to him.

  Minutes later, with Alana’s patted-dry hands in gallon-size bags, Mack removed the band holding her ponytail. “Let me turn on the faucet,” he said brusquely. “Make yourself useful and toe off those shoes.”

  By the time he turned back to her, she had managed to get her socks off, too, but her attempts to manage the buttons on her shirt were fruitless. Her winces indicated the pads of her fingers hurt too much.

  “I guess you won’t be satisfied until you’re bleeding,” he all but growled, as he helped her to her feet, and took over the task himself.

  “Don’t be angry with me.”

  “I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with myself. I was doing just fine disliking women in uniform. I like to compartmentalize, you know? Women weren’t worth trusting, they were good for one thing. Entertainment. Go ahead and call m
e a Neanderthal. I call it keeping things simple.”

  “Then I came along.”

  “Yeah, you did.” He focused on each button as though performing neurosurgery, despite knowing full well the shirt was going into the trash. “You might be feeling your least feminine since your days enduring the academy’s physical trials, but the fact is that no amount of dirt can hide how beautiful you are, and your bravery makes you every bit sexier—and I wish to hell it didn’t.”

  With her shirt unbuttoned, he began to ease it from her shoulders, only to see the flirty little white-lace bra she was wearing that lovingly cupped her breasts. Even dry, he could see her nipples through the material. Helpless not to, Mack uttered a one-word epithet, knowing her panties would match it.

  “And I suppose that was a compliment, too?”

  Mack ignored her. He was thinking that there was no way he could get this done without going into the shower himself fully clothed. He knew better than to trust himself otherwise.

  Grim-faced, he removed her slacks and took no pleasure out of seeing that he was right about her panties. “Okay,” he said, sliding the frosted glass door open on the stall. “Get in there and sit down. Rest your hands on the shelf to keep the spray out of the bags.”

  “Get this, too,” Alana replied, turning her back to him so he could reach her bra clasp.

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  “Mack, this little ensemble probably cost more than everything you brought here in your duffel bag. It could be ruined by what comes out of my hair.”

  “I’ll buy you a new set,” he intoned.

  “And what am I supposed to put on afterward?” she countered with weary exasperation. “Your briefs?”

  Mack would have chuckled at the mental image, thinking she’d need a safety pin to hold them up, but just then she used the heels of her hands to slide the panties down over her slim hips. His mouth went dry—and he’d taken a moment to take a swig from a bottle of beer while in the kitchen. She was going to test every ounce of his mettle. All but gritting his teeth, he unhooked her bra.