Love by Design

by Christine Johnson

  Dan thought madly. The fix should have worked. It wasn’t cold enough for icing, especially since they were on the warm side of the coming storm. That left the fuel mixture as the likely culprit. Jen had noticed that earlier, and they hadn’t adjusted the mix since fixing the engine.

  He adjusted the mix a little at a time until the sputtering stopped.

  Jen shot him a grin.

  He gave her a thumbs-up, but she had again focused on Mrs. Hunter. Whatever was going on there could not be good.

  Dan eyed the storm front again. It was moving fast. Ugly black clouds trailed misty fingers toward the ground. He gripped the control wheel. Tornadoes. He’d seen them sweep across the open plains. He glanced again. There wasn’t any rotation to the clouds. No, those fingers weren’t tornadoes. More likely they were dense cloudbursts. Maybe even hail.

  He accelerated as fast as the motors would go.

  Jen gave him a questioning look. Then she must have spotted the storm, for she nodded and turned back to her patient.

  If this storm caught him, he’d never see the field. Cloudburst and hail meant strong updrafts and downdrafts. They would be tossed around like a child’s rubber ball.

  He scanned the fields below, hoping to spot the airfield. The storm was getting closer. This plane could fly high, especially light, but those cloud tops were too high to get above. He needed to outrace it.

  Then he spotted the airfield. It lay immediately in the path of the storm. Even pushed to maximum velocity, the plane might not get there before the storm.

  Lightning crackled to the ground.

  “Come on, God,” he muttered. “I have two women and an unborn baby on board. We could use some help here.”

  His answer was a boom of thunder followed by a bolt of lightning off to his right.

  Dan could have used any number of choice expressions, but he was in the presence of ladies—even if they couldn’t hear—and appealing to God for deliverance. Sweat dripped down his forehead despite the cooler air at this altitude.

  He had to begin the descent. The storm would arrive at the same time. He might not see the runway until the last moment. He decided to bring the plane in low and slow, on an even trajectory that would give the softest landing.

  Down they went. He eased off the fuel and used every trick he knew to slow the speed.

  The first raindrop splattered on the windshield. Then the next and the next. The black sky blotted out the light. He couldn’t see the runway, so he brought the plane lower.

  Lightning exploded close by. Its blue light revealed trees ahead.

  Trees!

  He was too low. Just like in November’s accident. The scrape of branches echoed from that fatal day. He pulled on the control wheel to lift the nose. It wouldn’t budge. He tried again. It was jammed.

  They were going to crash.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dan Wagner flew as one with the plane. Jen had to admire his skill and instinct. He’d fixed the sputtering in the left engine with no problem. He looked as calm as a man sitting down to read the evening newspaper.

  But even Dan Wagner couldn’t fix this dilemma.

  Once the labor pangs began, Jen attempted to get Darcy to move to the back. She didn’t respond. Judging from her expression, the pains weren’t close together yet. Jen decided to leave Darcy in place for the short flight.

  Then another seizure struck. Jen pulled off her belt and shoved the leather between Darcy’s jaws. In the meantime, Darcy grabbed the copilot’s wheel and pulled it with shocking strength. Jen pushed with all her might just to keep the plane level.

  Jen saw the trees approach, saw Dan attempt to lift the nose. The wheel didn’t budge because of the tug-of-war Jen was having with Darcy. She could let go, but that would send them into a steep climb.

  Dan tried again to lift the nose. If he would just yank harder, it might be enough, but he didn’t. He stared at the approaching trees with an expression of horror.

  The accident. Of course. According to the newspaper article, a wing had clipped the trees. He was reliving the accident.

  Please, God, give Dan strength. Help him realize it wasn’t his fault.

  Just as it wasn’t her fault that Daddy had died? The thought startled her. She looked down at Darcy, still locked in the seizure. Jen was here, but she could not prevent Darcy’s convulsion. If she’d been with her father, she wouldn’t have been able to save him, either.

  Mother had told her over and over that it was simply his time. Jen hadn’t understood until now. No amount of nurse training would have changed what had happened.

  The seizure eased and with it Darcy’s grip. The wheel shot forward, but the nose didn’t dive. In fact, they cleared the trees and began a proper descent to the runway. Dan must have disconnected the copilot’s controls somehow. Maybe Jack had installed the same sort of mechanism they used in the trainers. However, Dan had done it, Jen was relieved beyond words.

  At that moment, the storm hit. The gusts pushed against the plane, threatening to drive them sideways, but Dan kept it in line with the runway. That took strength and nerve, more than she would have had in the same situation. Seconds later, he nestled the plane on the ground as easily as if it was a calm summer afternoon.

  What skill! No wonder Dan Wagner was famous. He was also heroic. She could have flung her arms around him with joy. Then she felt another contraction beneath her hands. Darcy cried out.

  Dan taxied the plane to a waiting ambulance and stopped. By now, rain lashed the plane, and the wind buffeted them.

  Jen wrapped an arm around Darcy’s shoulders. “We’re here.”

  Darcy said something that Jen couldn’t make out over the drone of the engines.

  “Hold on,” Jen yelled. “You’ll be at the hospital soon.”

  Darcy didn’t say anything, but at least she wasn’t combative like the last time. Another labor pang twisted her features, and she gasped with the pain. Jen held on, doing her best to comfort her.

  After the engine noise died down, Jen removed the cotton from Darcy’s ears. The ambulance men hovered below. Somehow she and Dan would have to carry Darcy down the ladders to the ground. After that, they would load Darcy into the ambulance and race to the hospital. Was there enough time?

  Dan stepped over her and opened the door. The wind whipped rain into the cabin as he slid out the ladders. Jen instinctively shielded Darcy with her coat. In seconds, Jen was drenched. Icy water ran down her face, dripped off her nose and trickled down her back. She started shaking. The flight must have been cold, but she hadn’t noticed, focused as she was on Darcy.

  Another man joined Dan. He picked up Darcy’s wrist to take her pulse. Darcy yanked it away.

  “There’s no time,” Jen shouted. She gave him her latest reading. “She just came out of a convulsion. Labor pains have begun.” In no order whatever, she barked out everything she’d observed during the flight.

  The man didn’t ask for her credentials. He didn’t question her information. “Let’s get her into the ambulance.”

  He and Dan lifted Darcy and carried her off the plane to the waiting attendants. In short order, Darcy was put into the ambulance, and it left, siren howling.

  Jen didn’t move. She knelt on the cold floor of the plane, numb.

  Dan touched her on the shoulder. “You did great.”

  She hadn’t even seen him return. “Was it enough?”

  He pulled her close, whispering into her cotton-plugged ears. “With God’s help.”

  Something inside Jen began to break. It started slow, like a trickle leaking through an earthen dam. She could bury that hint of emotion in Dan’s cold wet leather coat, but a leaky dam eventually breaks. As the memories of her father and Marie and the dying man at the hospital mixed with thoughts of Darcy, she lost the
last bit of control and sobbed.

  “She’ll be all right,” he whispered into her ear. “You have to believe that.”

  Jen couldn’t. She had seen death, knew when it was about to visit. “I found my father dead.”

  His hand, which had been rubbing her back, stilled.

  “I went to the flight school.” She choked on the memory, yet for some reason she had to get it out or drown under the weight of it. “The flight school of all places! I was supposed to stay with him, but I’d left my study materials at the school. I wanted to show him what I was learning.” This was the hardest thing to admit. “When I returned, he was dead.”

  “You couldn’t have known that would happen.”

  She squeezed her eyelids shut. “That doesn’t matter. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I left him for something trivial.”

  “It wasn’t trivial. You shared an interest in aviation. He loved you. He would have wanted to hear all about your studies.” He lifted her chin. “Is that why you want to fly on the polar expedition? Because of your father?”

  She didn’t dare look into those blue eyes or she’d lose control. “I did. I thought it would change things, that I would feel better, but it won’t, will it?”

  “No.”

  “Just like all this.” She waved at the plane. “All this work, all our efforts, and it doesn’t mean a thing, not without Darcy.” She shook uncontrollably. “What if it’s not enough? What if we were too late?”

  Dan pulled her close again and held her.

  * * *

  The memories of the crash that had plagued Dan since November disappeared tonight. He held Jen and let her cry out her pain, but he had never seen her more courageous. She had taken charge in a crisis. The broken girl he’d brought home from the hospital had become a strong woman. Her compassion shone. She cared deeply, and he loved her more for that. Maybe that depth of compassion was why she’d put up the prickly barrier that few could break through.

  Dan hoped he was one of those few. Her arms around his waist felt so good. Her clean, spruce scent was better than sunshine.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “I don’t usually fall apart like this.”

  “It’s all right. I was scared, too.” It felt good to admit that.

  Everyone thought Daring Dan was fearless, and he’d had to maintain that image. Jen had always seen through the smoke screen. She knew the daredevil flier was a charade, that deep at heart he was still a country boy. He liked small towns and Sunday chicken dinner, boots and a cowboy hat. The spotlight had been fun for a while, but he’d discovered its cold shallowness soon enough. Jen knew that. Jen had always seen who he really was.

  “You stayed so calm.” She sniffled, and he dug out a handkerchief, clean but not exactly dry after all the rain. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  Funny how even that made him smile. “I wasn’t calm. I was probably just as scared as you. In fact, I thought you were the calm one.”

  She shook her head.

  He wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “I’m starting to think that I might have been wrong about you.”

  “Oh?” That perked her up. “Dan Wagner, wrong?”

  My, how he loved that side of her. “Once. Just a little.” He held his fingers an inch apart.

  “Confess, Wagner.” Her feistiness was returning, and along with it came the grin he’d grown to love.

  “You would make a fine nurse.”

  She barked out a laugh. “No, no, no. You were not wrong about that. I like to fix things, but I can’t fix people.”

  He cupped her face in his hands, never more sure. “Only God can heal.”

  Her mouth opened in surprise and then closed. “I didn’t know you believed in God. You never mention your faith. I’ve never seen you in church.”

  “I took the wrong course for a while but I’m navigating my way back.”

  She smiled. “I like that.”

  He traced the curve of her chin with his thumb. “And I like you.”

  She gasped, ever so softly. Her eyes softened, and her lips parted slightly.

  He wanted to kiss those expressive lips, to ask her to share a life together, but that was selfish. What could he offer? She needed a home right away. He couldn’t give her that. He’d carefully orchestrated a solitary life. After the polar expedition—if it pulled off—he would go to whatever remote outpost needed a supply or airmail route.

  Between now and then, he was homeless. Well, he could always go back to the family ranch, but it was bursting at the seams with his parents and two brothers’ families. Sure, they’d gladly accept her, but he couldn’t drag her away from everyone she loved and leave her with strangers while he started a business capable of supporting a wife and family. He most especially couldn’t do that while she was so vulnerable.

  So, rather than give in to the selfish desire to kiss her, he looked out the windshield. The rains had stopped, and the skies were growing lighter. “It looks like the storm is over.”

  Her disappointment was palpable.

  He tried to hold on, but she broke free and skittered toward the door.

  “We should go to the hospital.” She crawled onto the wing. “If we can find a way to get there.”

  This time Dan had to rein in disappointment. He had blown his chance.

  * * *

  Jen’s emotions were running out of control. It was easier to move, to do something, than to think about what Dan had said. He liked her. Only he hadn’t said it like one friend to another or a brother to a sister. No, his words had carried deeper meaning. Then, instead of kissing her, which she’d expected, he looked away and talked about the weather. That man was too infuriating to deal with when a greater crisis was underway.

  She had to know if their efforts had saved Darcy.

  Fortunately, they found a taxicab near the airfield and within minutes arrived at the familiar brick edifice that Jen had called home not that long ago. In the dreary light of a storm-filled late afternoon, it looked no more hospitable than the day she had left. The little coffee shop down the street was nearly empty. Student nurses would be hard at work at this hour preparing the supper trays.

  This time Jen and Dan went in the main entrance and checked with the nurse on duty. No word on Mrs. Hunter had come to her yet, but she directed them to the waiting area. Though that room was filled with people, Jen saw no one she recognized. Blake hadn’t arrived yet with Darcy’s parents. Jen suspected Mr. Kensington would drive Jack to Grand Rapids. It was anyone’s guess whether father or son would get there first.

  Jen had never been in this portion of the hospital. Her training had been confined to the wards and the nursing program wing. The elegant waiting area could have been from a posh hotel except for the faint scent of disinfectant that hung in the air. Crystal chandeliers graced the high ceiling with its sculpted molding. Wingback chairs and plush wool rugs dotted the marble floor. The room hummed with anxious whispers. All eyes trained on the massive doors leading to the emergency ward and operating room and the nurse sitting guard at the little table in front of those doors. When a white-coated doctor emerged from behind the doors, the hum turned to an expectant hush. All hoped the nurse would call for the family or friends of their loved one.

  Jen was no different. She clasped and unclasped her hands. She shifted in the chair. She stood and paced to the windows, looking for Jack or Blake or Mr. and Mrs. Shea. Seeing nothing, she returned to her chair.

  She only made the mistake of checking with the nurse once. After being informed that the patient’s family would be called only when news arrived, Jen returned dissatisfied.

  “She didn’t care that I was a probationer here.”

  “Probationer?” Dan looked up from the book he had taken from the ample bookshelves beside the unlit fi
replace. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, the very model of calm.

  “When a girl applies to the nursing program, she is on probation for three months before she can be accepted into the program.”

  “Sensible.” He returned to his reading.

  “How can you be so calm when a woman’s life hangs in the balance?”

  He looked up again. “What do you propose I do? I’m not a doctor.”

  She gnawed a fingernail, a disgusting habit she’d broken at the age of fourteen, and glanced at the doors again. “What’s taking so long?”

  “You said Mrs. Hunter is in labor. How long does that take?”

  Jen thought back to her experiences at the hospital. “It can be quick, or it can take hours and hours. Sometimes a day or more. But I don’t think it’ll be that long. Doc Stevens told me to...” She really oughtn’t talk about such things to a man. “He suggested I might have to hurry it along.”

  “Then there’s no reason to worry.”

  Jen blew out her breath. She knew too well the number of things that could go wrong. Marie hadn’t survived. Her lifeless body and that of the unborn child would have been placed on a gurney. The lowest-ranking attending nurse, generally a probationer, would accompany the body to the morgue where it would be bathed and shrouded.

  She choked back a sob. That couldn’t happen to Darcy. Please, God, not Darcy. That would be too much to bear.

  “It’s all right.” Dan squeezed her hand. “She’s in good hands now.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so unconcerned.”

  “I’m concerned, but there’s nothing we can do but wait.”

  “You’re right.” She did hate admitting that. When had Dan Wagner started being right about things?

  He laughed. “I love the ring of that.”

  His calm was driving her to tears. “I guess I’m not very patient. I need to do something.”

  He had the grace not to mention that she’d given up the opportunity to work on the opposite side of those massive doors. “Have you prayed?”

  Her jaw dropped. Dan Wagner suggesting prayer? “You want to pray?”