by Linda Turner
If she heard him, she gave no sign of it. Her pulse was steady, but growing weaker by the second. And the blood…God, she’d lost so much! He had to stop the bleeding.
But when he bent to inspect her side and got a good look at the wound for the first time, his fingers weren’t quite steady. The branch, which was a good two inches in diameter, had splintered off from the main tree when they crashed into it, but what was left was firmly embedded in Rocky’s side, just under her rib cage. If he pulled it out now, she’d bleed to death before he could even find his medical bag in the wreckage.
He had to operate.
Emotion seized him by the throat, denial twisting in his gut, but there was no avoiding the inevitable. She was losing blood steadily. If she was going to live to see the sunrise, he had to do something and do it now.
The decision made, he reached for the radio mike and called for help, citing their approximate location, even though he wasn’t sure the sheriff or anyone else heard him. When he waited for a response, all he got was static. “Damn!”
Slamming the transmitter down, he found some flares under Rocky’s seat and stuffed his pockets with enough to completely encircle the helicopter’s wreckage. He didn’t light them, though, until he was sure there wasn’t a fuel leak anywhere. If anyone came within sight of the old abandoned cabin, which the sheriff knew was their last known destination, they wouldn’t be able to miss the crash site. It was lit up like a birthday cake.
After that, there was nothing left to do but carry Rocky to the back of the helicopter and carefully lay her down on one of the stretchers that she always carried for emergencies. He’d found his medical bag buried under the rubble that had once been the cockpit and sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he kept it well stocked. In spite of that, he knew it was going to take all his skill, plus help from the man upstairs, to pull off a major operation under what could only be described as the most primitive of conditions. It was cold and dark and far from sterile—he didn’t even want to think about the infection she was going to get from that damn tree. But that was something they could deal with later. First he had to save her.
“You’re going to make it, honey,” he told her fiercely as he positioned the flashlight he’d found with her emergency supplies. “Do you hear me? I’m right here, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She moaned, but didn’t regain consciousness, which was probably a blessing in disguise. All he had to deaden the pain was a local anesthetic. It would help, but if she woke up, she would be in agony. Washing his hands in rubbing alcohol, which was the only disinfectant he had, he set out everything he could possibly need, then reached for the tree limb, knowing that the second he pulled it out there would be no time to lose.
“Don’t die. Don’t die. Please, dear God, don’t let her die.”
The prayer falling like a litany from his tongue, he drew in a bracing breath and pulled the limb from her torn flesh.
Ten
What followed was like something out of one of his worst nightmares. The wind whistled through the broken windshield of the chopper, blowing snow everywhere, and the flashlight beam seemed to grow weaker and weaker. Cursing, he bent closer to Rocky’s still body and tried to hurry, praying that she wouldn’t wake up before he finished. But his fingers were numb and clumsy from the cold, and he had to stop every few minutes and blow on them just so that he had feeling in them. And with every tick of the clock, time seemed to be running out.
His brow damp with the sweat of worry, his concentration focused on finding all the bleeding veins, he never heard the mumbled prayers that fell from his own lips. He made God outrageous promises, pleaded with him, and begged. A proud man with a proud heritage, he begged as he had never begged in his life. And when he was finally finished and the last bleeder was found and repaired, the torn skin stitched, there was nothing else he could do but wait.
It was the longest night of his life.
Her vital signs were strong, but when she didn’t regain consciousness, the worry eating at his gut like a cancer intensified a thousand times. She was so still. And white as death. He packed the thermal blankets around them both and hovered close to keep her warm, but still, she didn’t waken. His eyes never leaving her face, he stretched out beside her and went over the operation again and again in his head. If he’d missed one bleeder, which would have been easy to do with the poor lighting, she could be in trouble.
That thought alone kept him awake for what seemed like hours. He heard every moan of the wind, every creak of the helicopter wreckage as the weight of the falling snow built up outside. By morning, they would be completely covered and nearly impossible to spot from the air if the flares ran out. But that was something he couldn’t worry about now. Now his only concern was getting Rocky through the night.
Considering that, he shouldn’t have been able to sleep a wink. But exhaustion caught up with him sometime after midnight, numbing his mind and weighting his eyelids until he could no longer keep them open. But even in sleep, he didn’t relax his guard where Rocky was concerned. On some unconscious level, he was aware of her beside him, the warmth of her under the covers, the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing. And when she stirred, shifting ever so slightly, he was instantly awake and on his knees beside her, his fingers finding the pulse in her wrist before he’d even blinked the sleep from his eyes.
“Rocky? Sweetheart? Can you hear me?”
She moaned—it was a low groan that was nearly lost in the wailing of the wind—her face etched in furrows of pain as she moved restlessly, searching for a position that was free of pain. But there was none, and with a weak sigh, she finally went still, giving up the fight. Cursing his inability to do any more for her than he already had, Lucas leaned over her and pressed his stethoscope first to her heart, which was strong, then to her abdomen. In his ears, the baby’s heartbeat was faint, but steady. Relief washed through him like a flood, bringing a thick clog of emotion to his throat. They were both going to be okay. They had to be! Nothing else was acceptable.
He started to draw back then, but he’d only moved a fraction of an inch when she moved suddenly, covering his hand and stethoscope with her fingers, trapping them against the warm skin of her belly. In the dim light provided by the rapidly fading flashlight, her eyes met his.
“The baby’s fine,” he assured her thickly.
She nodded, a bare whisper of a smile gliding across her dry lips as her fingers tightened around his. “I know,” she whispered in a faint, husky voice that he had to lean closer to catch. “I knew you’d take care of us.”
Her confidence in him, especially considering the circumstances, rocked him back on his heels. She was seriously injured, and it might be hours, possibly days, before a rescue team could find them. She had every right not only to panic, but to be worried sick about the baby. Instead, she closed her eyes on a sigh and drifted back to sleep, her hand still clutched around his as if she would never let him go.
Stunned, Lucas stared down at her and felt his heart turn over. God, she was something. And he loved her. More than he’d ever thought possible. Just the thought of her in pain tore him up, but she hadn’t even mentioned it. If he could have, he would have wrapped her up in his arms and drawn her right inside his heart to protect her from harm, but all she needed was his hand in hers. And for now, that was all he could give her.
Stretching out beside her, his fingers still twined with hers, he lay there for hours, just watching her sleep and listening to the rhythm of her breathing. The flashlight batteries finally gave out. Then, one by one, the flares he’d set out right after they crashed sputtered out, making the darkness complete. He didn’t want to leave her then, but he couldn’t take the chance that their rescuers, when they finally got there, would fly over them in the dark and miss them. Quietly slipping away, he found more flares and set them out, cursing the cold that seemed to freeze the very blood in his veins, then hurried back to the helicopter and Rocky.
&n
bsp; When the storm began to blow itself out, he couldn’t have said. He must have fallen asleep, because he jerked awake abruptly, sometime near dawn to find himself curled around Rocky and a silence that seemed to scream echoing in his ears. A frown wrinkling his brow, he was trying to figure out what was wrong when it suddenly hit him that the wind had died. Finally, the storm had passed.
Sighing in relief, he glanced down at Rocky and frowned at the bright spots of color singeing her cheeks. Considering the cold, he wanted to believe that her heightened color was nothing more than windburn, but the second he laid his palm against her forehead and felt the heat rolling off her in waves, he cursed softly under his breath. She was running a temperature, and from the feel of it, it was sky-high. A slightly elevated temp wasn’t that unusual right after surgery, but there was nothing slight about this, and it could mean only one thing—an infection.
She shifted restlessly under his hands, her eyes, weak and clouded with pain, fluttering open at his first touch. “Lucas?”
“I’m right here, honey. How are you feeling?”
“Like I went three rounds with a tree and the tree won,” she joked faintly, shivering. “I have a fever, don’t I?”
“Just a slight one,” he lied, tucking the blankets closer around her after he gave her a shot of antibiotics to counter the infection running rampant through her. God, she was so pale! If she hadn’t been flushed from the fever, she wouldn’t have had any color in her face at all. “You’ll be fine once I get you back to the hospital. Can I get you anything?”
Unable to keep her eyes open any longer, she let them close and sighed. “Just an electric blanket. Wake me when this is over. Okay?”
“You’ve got my word on it,” he promised, but she didn’t hear him. She’d already fallen asleep again.
Worried and no longer able to pretend to himself that she was going to be just fine, Lucas had never felt so helpless in his life. He’d missed something—he knew that now—but to go back in and open her up again, when his resources were limited and she’d lost so much blood, would leave her even weaker and put the baby at risk. Dammit, where was that rescue helicopter from Jackson? It should have found them hours ago.
Restless, unable to just sit there and watch her slip slowly away from him, he packed the covers around her, then moved to the cockpit of the chopper and grabbed the radio transmitter. The second he hit the power switch, it was obvious it was dead. Which meant the only hope they had of being found was his transmission of their location to the sheriff last night, he thought grimly. A transmission he wasn’t even sure the other man had received because of the storm.
His gut clenched at the thought. “No, dammit,” he muttered to himself. Even if the sheriff hadn’t gotten the transmission, he’d known they were searching the south face of the mountains and they’d never made it back to Clear Springs. He would have already sent for help, and even now rescuers had to be searching for them. The only trouble was that he’d run out of flares hours ago, and with all the snow, the helicopter wreckage would be nearly invisible from the air. If he didn’t do something, and damn fast, help could fly right over them and not even know it.
“A fire,” he said suddenly. In the clear morning air and against the white background of snow, a fire would be visible for miles.
Hurrying outside, he grabbed some of the broken branches that still stuck through the shattered windshield and piled them up for a bonfire. The wood was green, however, and damp from the snow, and wouldn’t burn without help. Swearing, he was digging in his medical bag for the bottle of alcohol he’d used last night to clean his hands when a faint, far-off droning sound seemed to set the air humming. At first, he hardly noticed. Then he heard it. A helicopter! The sound of its rotors carried easily on the clear, crisp air as it approached from the southeast.
He glanced up, searching for it, the beginnings of a broad smile of relief starting to stretch across his mouth. Then he finally found the chopper, just skimming the treetops on the horizon. If it keeps its present course, it would miss them by a good ten miles.
“No!” Swearing, he finally found the alcohol and snatched it up, reaching the pile of brush in three long strides. In less time than it took to draw several deep breaths, he’d doused the wood with the alcohol and struck one of the matches he’d found in the chopper’s emergency supplies. With a low whoosh, the broken branches went up in flames, sending smoke climbing straight as an arrow into the air.
Time slowed to a stop. He never knew how long he stood there, staring at the chopper in the distance, fiercely willing its pilot to notice the smoke and come and investigate. But the helicopter continued farther to the east.
“No, dammit! This way! We’re over here!”
His thunderous roar seemed to echo through the trees like the cry of a wounded bear. There was no way the pilot could have heard him, but the chopper suddenly lurched, almost hesitating in midair. Then it was racing right toward him. Sinking down on his knees in the snow, the fire crackling just a few feet away, Lucas sent up a silent prayer of thanks.
The pilot was a crackerjack sky jockey from Jackson who could have set the chopper down on a pinhead if the need arose. With his help, and that of the two paramedics he’d brought with him, they got Rocky loaded on a stretcher, put out the fire Lucas had started and had everyone back on board within ten minutes. A heartbeat later, they were racing for Clear Springs and the hospital.
The ride took twenty minutes. It seemed like an eternity. Worry clawing at him, Lucas hovered close to Rocky’s side, murmuring to her to hang tough, but if she heard him, she gave no sign of it. Her face ashen, her body as hot as a furnace and her pulse too fast under his fingers, she lay unresponsive, totally unaware of her surroundings.
Then the pilot set the helicopter down right in the middle of the hospital parking lot, and the emergency room doctors and nurses came running. There was no time for goodbyes, no time for a kiss that might be their last, before she was being wheeled away. Staring after her, dread spilling through his bloodstream like a frozen arctic wind as he gave Roy MacDonald, the admitting physician, the details of the crash and the emergency surgery he’d had to perform, he watched the double doors of the emergency room swing shut on Rocky. Deep inside, he had the god-awful feeling that he was never going to see her again. And if he lost her, he had no one to blame but himself.
“Lucas?” Roy prodded when his words trailed off. “Are you okay? It looks like you took a pretty nasty blow to the head yourself. Maybe you should have it x-rayed.”
Jerking back to attention, he said flatly, “I’m fine. Rocky’s the one who’s in trouble. I think I must have missed a bleeder. She’s pregnant, Roy. If she loses the baby, she’ll never forgive me.”
“Now don’t go talking that way,” his friend growled. “She wouldn’t have made it this far if you hadn’t been with her, and you know it. So quit second-guessing yourself and go get yourself a cup of coffee while we check her out. You look like you could use it. I’ll find you when we’re finished.”
He wanted to argue—wanted to say he wasn’t going anywhere but into the examining room with Roy, to find out exactly what was wrong with Rocky—but he knew his friend was right. He was exhausted, on his last legs, his mind numb from worry and lack of sleep. He’d done all he could for her. It was time to let someone else take over.
He headed for the cafeteria and bought himself a cup of coffee that he couldn’t get past his tight throat. Staring down at it, he stirred it until it was cold and didn’t see Rocky’s cousin, Kyle Fortune, and his wife, Samantha, hurry in until they were almost upon him. He didn’t know them that well, only well enough to nod when he passed them in town, but they were the only family Rocky had in Wyoming, and he should have at least called them to let them know she was hurt.
Cursing himself, he got stiffly to his feet. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I should have called you. I just didn’t think.”
“We heard it on the radio,” Kyle said. Pale under his tan, his hawkis
h features sharp with worry, he asked, “What happened? How is she? The nurse in the admitting room wouldn’t tell us anything.”
“They’re still examining her.” Offering them both chairs, he said, “You’d better sit down. This isn’t going to be easy to hear.”
He told them everything, from the moment they’d taken off in search of the missing hikers, to the seconds after the crash when he’d come to to find Rocky impaled on a branch and lying in her own blood. “I had to operate, or I would have lost her right there,” he said huskily. “She’d lost so much blood, and there was no way to stop the bleeding with that damn tree stuck in her side—”
Samantha cut in quietly, her green eyes earnest as they met his. “You don’t have to justify your actions to us, Dr. Greywolf. It sounds like you saved her life.”
“We’re just damn grateful you were there,” Kyle added gruffly. “And I know the rest of the family will be, too, as soon as they hear about this. Especially Uncle Jake and Aunt Erica.”
Lucas winced, guilt pulling at him. He was no knight, and the sooner they knew that, the better. “You might not be so grateful when you hear the rest of the story. Rocky’s pregnant with my child.”
He just blurted the words out with no finesse, then wanted to kick himself when he saw their start of surprise. “The baby’s in no danger,” he hurriedly assured them, “at least not so far. But Rocky’s lost a lot of blood. Conditions weren’t exactly sterile up there in the mountains for an operation, though, and she’s developed an infection.”
Kyle, his deepset blue eyes narrowing unblinkingly on Lucas’s face, said bluntly, “Once she and the baby pull out of this, I presume you’re getting married.”
It wasn’t a question, but a demand, one that once would have been almost comical coming from a man like Kyle Fortune. He was a second son and a one time playboy, and it hadn’t been all that long ago that he’d raced through life in fast cars bought with his family’s money, avoiding responsibility and commitment as he went from one beautiful woman to another like a man who hadn’t a care in the world. Then his grandmother had died, leaving him the family ranch outside of Clear Springs with the stipulation that he had to live there six months in order to inherit it free and clear. None of the locals had expected him to stay longer than a couple of weeks, let alone the full time, but then he’d met and fallen in love with Samantha Rawlings. Lucas had heard he was a changed man—apparently it was true.