His Motherless Little Twins

by Dianne Drake

  “Ten,” he came back one more time.

  “Eight,” they finally agreed, smiling like the victory was theirs.

  Eric took another sip of coffee, thinking what a lucky man he was as he watched The Canary head into its landing. Coming about, it made a sweeping circle and headed directly for the middle Sister then dipped its nose to start its descent. Then, all of a sudden… “Oh, my God!” He dropped his half-full coffee cup on the table, as half the people in the restaurant gasped and screamed. Then he bolted to his feet.

  Immediately, Dinah flew from the kitchen. “What is it?” she yelled out over the cries of practically all the people dining there, who were transfixed on what seemed to be nothing outside.

  “Plane crash,” Eric whispered, hoping the girls hadn’t heard. But, of course, they had, for they had their faces pressed to the window, the same way another thirty diners in the restaurant did. “Johnny Mason’s plane went down,” he choked out, already dialing on his cell phone.

  Without missing a beat, Dinah threw her chef’s hat onto the table and was untying her apron as she spun around. “I’ll be ready to go in two minutes,” she called behind her, running as hard and as fast as she could on her way to her room to get ready.

  “Neil,” Eric said, when his partner answered. “Johnny Mason’s plane just went down. As best as I could tell, it’s over the landing strip or close to it. I’m already halfway there, so I’m on my way.”

  Neil agreed to call a full-out rescue, but before he hung up, Eric reminded him, “Fallon’s on that plane.” It was a sobering thought, yet one he couldn’t dwell on as he dialed his sister’s number next. “Janice, there’s been a plane crash—The Canary’s down. I’m up at the lodge on Pine Ridge with the girls and I need you or someone to come and get them.”

  “Daddy!” Pippa and Paige cried together. “What’s wrong? Why are the people yelling?”

  “Because there was an accident up on the middle Sister,” he said, as he punched in Jess Weldon’s number, keeping his fingers crossed that Jess was home and ready to go. Jess had a helicopter, kept it parked in a field behind his house. He was usually ready to go at the drop of a hat. “And they’re afraid people might be hurt.”

  “Are you going to go help the people who might be hurt?” Paige asked.

  “Yes, sweetheart, Daddy’s going to go help the people.”

  “Could you have an accident, too, like they did?” Pippa asked. “And get hurt?”

  That was the question he never, ever wanted to answer. The reason he’d never told the girls what he did, other than being a doctor. It would scare them, and he didn’t want that. It would also raise the inevitable question—the one Pippa had just asked. So he’d avoided the truth, but he’d never lied to the girls, and he wasn’t going to start now. “I’m always very careful that I won’t get hurt. It could happen, but Daddy’s very safe and he doesn’t want you to worry about him.”

  “Aunt Janice does,” Paige said.

  His girls were so perceptive. It amazed him, scared him and made him proud at the same time. “Look, we’ll talk about this when I get back. It’ll probably be some time tomorrow. OK?”

  Both girls nodded a skeptical, frightened agreement, and Eric pulled them into his arms and hugged them. “We’ll finish making those cookies when I get back, and I’ll call you later tonight. Promise.”

  “I’m ready,” Dinah shouted, on her way back through the dining room. She was dressed in jeans and boots, wearing a heavy sweater over a T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was carrying her medical kit, looking every bit the rescuer.

  Eric simply stared for a moment. She was in her element, doing this. In her element being a nurse, too. Something about her life had to change and, God willing, he had to be the one to do it. He had to be the one to make her see that she could trust him but, more, that she could trust herself.

  Pippa and Paige were left in Jeffrey’s capable hands until Janice could get there, and once Eric knew they were going to be fine, he ran to his truck, motioning Dinah to follow.

  “Do you know where it went down?” she asked, finally catching up to him. He was already halfway out of his suit, getting ready to change into the clothes he always kept with him in the event of an emergency. While he unbuttoned his shirt, she helped him get the necktie off. While he was pulling off his pants, she was holding out a pair of jeans for him to put on.

  “I’m pretty sure he was on his approach to the little landing strip up on the middle Sister. Oh, and Fallon O’Gara was supposed to be flying in. She’s been on a holiday in Salt Lake City. Falling in love, I think.”

  “Oh, no!” Dinah gasped, grabbing Eric’s boots for him.

  “I talked to her earlier. She said she was going to try and catch the last flight in. Which was Johnny Mason’s.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Johnny’s plane that…” She couldn’t bring herself to say “crashed”. Plane crashes signified such awful things.

  “His plane is yellow, bright yellow. There’s no mistaking it.”

  “Was the plane you saw yellow?”

  Eric nodded.

  Dinah grimaced. “Since it didn’t flame, that’s good. Maybe they made the airstrip after all.”

  “Neil’s already had a call from Ella Clark. She runs the landing strip up there. She said the plane’s down.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes now.”

  “How long will it take us to get there?”

  Eric glanced up as Jess Weldon’s helicopter came into view. “A few minutes,” he said, bending into the back of the truck, pulling out equipment—ropes, bags, tools.

  “The drive would take thirty minutes, this will take less than ten.” Eric waved Dinah toward the chopper and led the way, leaving Dinah to run after him, her arms loaded with the supplies he hadn’t been able to carry. But when she got to the helicopter, she was surprised to find its pilot stepping out.

  “It’s a two-seater,” Eric yelled. “And I need you more than I need Jess.” He said something to Jess, tossed him the set of keys to his truck, and Jess turned and ran toward the parking lot.

  “What are you doing?” Dinah practically screamed, her eyes still fixed on the departing pilot.

  “Get in!” He yelled the command then climbed into the pilot’s seat. Blindly, Dinah obeyed, but once she was strapped in, she shut her eyes and refused to open them.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she yelled, gripping the edges of her seat so hard her knuckles turned white. She could feel the lift, hear the rotors pick up velocity as they headed straight up. But she still couldn’t look down. Couldn’t even get her eyes open to look, even if she’d wanted to. “Are you really a pilot, too?” she shouted. But he didn’t answer. So she ventured a peek in his direction, only to find him talking into a headset. Before she could close her eyes again, she caught sight of the ground, saw dozens of people down there looking up…at them. They were getting smaller and smaller, which meant… Dinah gulped hard. Of all the incredible things not to know about a person, this had to be the most incredible. Because he was a pilot, an honest-to-goodness pilot, and a very skilled one judging from the way he handled the aircraft.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she shouted at him when he had finished talking into the headset.

  “It never came up,” he shouted back.

  Her hands loosened their grip a little as they turned and headed for the middle Sister. But she couldn’t sit back and relax.

  “See if you can spot the crash site,” he shouted, then added, “With your eyes open.”

  “My eyes are open.” Becoming more and more open all the time. Eric was an amazing man, the man of any sane woman’s dreams. Of course, climbing into a helicopter with him might be pushing the sanity point a bit far, but this was a man who kept getting better and better. Maybe the man to make her believe that she could believe.

  “It’s just ahead, but I’m not seeing…”

  “They didn’t make it,” Dinah shouted, prac
tically jumping out of her seat. “I can see it. It’s just to the…” She didn’t have her bearings. Didn’t have a clue which direction was which. “Over there.” She pointed.

  Eric brought the helicopter round, hovered over the spot for a moment then turned the helicopter in the opposite direction, descending just on the edge of the landing strip. “Watch your head when you get out,” he shouted, as they touched down. “Give the rotors a minute…”

  The words fell on deaf ears. Dinah bolted out, grabbed her medical bag and a few of Eric’s tools, and took off running across the end of the landing strip, heading into what was, essentially, a cleared area at the base of an old ski slope that had shut down years ago, when the Cedar Ridge Lodge had been built on the other side of the mountain. No one was up there yet, except a single truck she saw ahead of her. It was parked off the gravel road, its driver’s door open.

  “Dinah,” Eric called, from behind, running hard to catch up to her.

  “I can see it, Eric.” But not for long, as it was getting dark. And that didn’t bode well for the rescue, if the victims weren’t all contained in a small area.

  He caught up to her, and they paused together at Ella’s truck. Looked. Then, as if there was an unspoken agreement between, ran to the crash site, Dinah going to the left, Eric to the right.

  “Full plane,” Ella cried. She was on her hands and knees next to a passenger, feeling for a pulse. “I called it in.”

  Dinah dropped to her knees beside the woman, but Ella gave her a grave shake of the head. “I don’t think this one will be needing your services this evening.”

  After she’d confirmed what the old woman already knew, Dinah stood back up, looked around. Saw someone sitting up, way off to the side of the crash. “Are you going to be OK?” Dinah asked Ella.

  “I’ve been running one airstrip or another for fifty years. Sorry to say, this isn’t my first crash. I’ll be fine.”

  The next two people Dinah checked were injured, but stable enough. And grateful to be alive. But she came upon the pilot, at least she assumed him to be a pilot because he wore a bright yellow T-shirt with the word Pilot across his chest in blue. Except Pilot was covered in bright red blood, and poor Johnny had no pulse. In a quick assessment, Dinah counted three serious conditions, and her stomach roiled. Johnny had a puncture wound to the thigh that was leaking a fair amount of blood, a gash to his head which had rendered him unconscious, and a huge bruise to the chest, which was going to be the injury she had to fight hardest. Death was never easy, and she didn’t like losing to it. It wasn’t inevitable for Johnny, though.

  “Dinah!” Eric shouted from somewhere on the other side of the wreckage. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine! Doing CPR,” she shouted back. She was starting chest compressions now, hoping it would be enough. “What’s the estimated arrival on anybody getting here?”

  “Ten minutes tops.”

  Ten minutes. She could do this for ten minutes. But what if someone else here needed those ten minutes, too? “Then I’ll be good over here.”

  “Do you need anything?” he shouted.

  Other than their first right and proper date? It seemed something always got in the way, that they always had more important things to do. What an amazing team they made. A team…she’d never thought of her and Eric in those terms. “I’m good. Oxygen would be nice as soon as we get it up here, though.” Yes, they were an amazing team. Maybe with some kinks to work out. But amazing, all the same. “Well, Mr Pilot,” she said to Johnny Mason. “You’d better make this worth my while, because it’s just you and me for the next ten minutes, and I don’t want you letting me down in the end. I have expectations, and you’d better not ruin them for me. You hear?”

  Expectations. She looked across the crash site as Eric was about to climb through the plane wreckage. Yes, she did have expectations. “It’s just you and me,” she whispered. You and me, meaning Eric and herself.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “NEED some help with that?”

  Dinah looked up, saw the silhouetted shadow of a large, looming mountain man. To her, he looked like a grizzly bear.

  “You know CPR?” she asked him, wondering where he’d come from.

  “In my clean-shaven days I was Dr. Walter Graham, obstetrician. Formerly a full-time doctor at the White Elk Hospital and currently part-time when I take a notion to work. In my unshaven days, I’m Walt. I was up on the overlook, getting ready to hike down the other side, when I saw the plane come down.” He knelt, nudged Dinah aside and assumed his place doing CPR. “You’re faster than I am, can get to more people. You go on. Johnny and I will be fine here.”

  “Rescue crew should be up here any time now.” She grabbed her medical bag and stood. “Call me if you need something.” Then she ran for the crushed fuselage, wondering if Eric was still inside. But halfway there, the faint call of someone in the distance caught her attention, so she stopped, listened. Couldn’t pinpoint it.

  “Hello,” she called. “Can you answer me?”

  There was no response.

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  Again, no response. The only sound she could hear was the crunching of truck tires on the gravel road. Help was here but, damn, she really needed silence. Really needed to be able to hear. “Hello?” She tried one more time then held her breath, hoping, praying…

  A faint moan, coming from somewhere to the side of the crash site. But where, exactly? “Eric, over here. I’ve got someone over here and I can’t find them.”

  No time to wait for the portable lights to be set up, no time to wait for the rescuers to be organized. Dinah dashed off to the wooded area on the edge of the clearing, and started her search. “I’m coming,” she called out. “Don’t give up. I’m on my way.”

  “Dinah, where are you?” Eric called.

  “Just at the tree line,” she yelled back, flashing her light in the direction of his voice. “I heard someone moaning.”

  “Any other response?” he asked, once he’d caught up to her.

  “No. And it was just the one moan. I mean, it could have been an animal, but… Is everybody accounted for at the site? All the victims?”

  “Everybody but Fallon. And there’s some confusion about whether or not she took the flight. It turns out that Johnny had her on the manifest for tomorrow morning. Her cell phone is off, but we’re trying to contact her friends right now.”

  “Then she could be out here.”

  “And we’ll find her if she is.” For the next few minutes they made their way slowly through the underbrush, pushing back branches, climbing around bushes, in places practically dropping to their knees to crawl, the undergrowth was so dense. They stayed apart, not talking but close enough to see one another, except Dinah couldn’t look at him. Because to look was to admit her feelings. And to admit them was to change everything.

  But changing because she was in love? That wasn’t such a bad thing, was it?

  After all, she did love Eric in a way she’d never known. Not with anybody, ever.

  “One small step,” she whispered. But, really, wasn’t it more like one gigantic leap of faith?

  “Eric, come in,” Neil radioed from the crash site. “We’ve heard about Fallon.”

  He clicked on his radio. “What?”

  “She was on the plane. And she’s not one of the victims. We have eleven, not including the pilot. One fatality and ten survivors, three of them critical, one extremely critical, six stable. Fallon’s not one of them and we’ve looked everywhere inside the grid we laid out. She’s not here, and there’s nothing to suggest she’s buried in the actual plane wreckage somewhere.”

  Eric stood up, brushed the dirt off his knees. “Then she’s here somewhere, where Dinah said she was.”

  “I’ll get another team in to you right away,” Neil said, then clicked off.

  “Fallon,” Dinah called from somewhere off to his left.

  “I think so.”

  “No, it’
s Fallon. I’ve found her.”

  He didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know.

  “She’s alive, Eric. Unconscious, pretty badly injured, but alive.”

  In mere seconds he was at Dinah’s side, assessing the pupils of Fallon’s eyes. “Responsive,” he said, so relieved he nearly went weak at the knees.

  “Can’t get a blood pressure on her,” Dinah said, and immediately started probing Fallon’s belly. “It’s rigid. Probably internal bleeding.”

  Eric was checking for bone injuries and gaping wounds. “No compound fracture, but I think she’s got several facial fractures, probably a shoulder fracture…can’t tell about her neck and spine.”

  “Eric.” Dinah leaned in close to him. “She’s losing her airway. Her breath sounds are diminishing pretty quickly.”

  “Damn,” he muttered, immediately putting a stethoscope to her lungs. Dinah was right. Her breathing was being compromised…shutting down. But before he could say anything, Dinah was already pouring an iodine scrub on Fallon’s throat—an iodine scrub he kept in his medical bag.

  “You have a blade?” she asked him, as he took Fallon’s pulse.

  “In the pocket on the right side.” He bent closer to Fallon. “You stay with me, you hear? It’s going to be a rough one, but I’m going to pull you through it…Dinah and I are going to pull you through it, Fallon. And what we have to do now is trach you…” Cut a hole in her windpipe to allow her to breathe. “You’ve got too much swelling in your trachea, but hang in there with me. We’ll get you to the hospital in just a few minutes and get some pain meds into you.”

  Dinah handed the scalpel over to Eric, and squeezed his hand at the same time. Without a word, she poised herself with a flashlight, ready to provide light for the procedure, but Neil arrived with several volunteers, who all carried flashlights and spotlights. And in the blink of an eye, Eric had performed the life-saving procedure, sliced a tiny hole into Fallon’s throat, through the skin, through the cartilage. With no time to spare.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Dinah whispered, as Neil handed her a plastic tube to insert into the tiny incision Eric had made in her throat.