Yeah. He couldn’t deny it anymore.
Timing be damned.
He was in love with Jenny Vance.
***
Logan was catching up on a lot of sleep, that was sure. He woke up disoriented, blinking up at the underside of the forest canopy, over an hour after his romp with Jenny, according to his plastic-wrapped phone. He turned his head to find her, still on her stomach, rising out of her own pleasant doze.
Under the blanket he slid a hand down the incline of her sloping back, then over one still-bare buttock. “For a lady who was so concerned with public decency laws,” he said, squeezing the fullness of one plump globe, “you sure are reveling in the rule-breaking.”
She raised herself on her elbows, rewarding him with a view of cleavage beneath, and the weight and wonder of her breasts.
“Your fault,” she said. “You’ve corrupted me.”
“Excellent.”
“I used to be such a law-abiding citizen.”
“Now you’re a rebel.”
Her grin widened. “It is liberating.”
“Care for a swim?” Hell, it had been an hour. Just breathing the same air as Jenny made him want her again. “I could use some cooling off.”
“You’re just trying to get me out of the rest of my clothes.”
“Is it working?”
She laughed. “It’s not a very deep stream, you know.”
“All the better.” He ran a hand across her flat belly, to rest on the lightly protruding bone of her hip. “Are you game, Jenny?”
“Yes.”
His pulse leapt. Was it his hopes rising? Was she really saying yes to more than just a naked swim? He wasn’t imagining that look on her face. But he didn’t have much time to contemplate it, because she leapt up, pulled off her tee-shirt and bra. Tossing a dare over her shoulder, she raced naked to the stream.
He followed more leisurely, enjoying the view as he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside. The water only came hip-deep on her in the middle of the stream. She bent down until her head went under, and then surged up, water sluicing over her body. He nearly lost his footing, so distracted. He couldn’t wait to join her and pull that water-slick body against his own.
Time had lost all meaning by the time they’d had enough of swimming and emerged to dry each other off with the clean side of the picnic blanket. Jenny had slicked her hair off her face and he found his attention drawn to the hollow beneath her cheekbones, the shape of her earlobes. Raking his own wet hair off his forehead, he turned away to grab her clothes and get a handle on himself
“Dress, you shameless thing.” He pressed a tee-shirt against her naked, grass-flecked belly, “before I think of a new way to break decency laws.”
“Promises, promises.”
He pulled on his own underwear and shorts to the sound of her soft laughter reaching for his tee-shirt just as the laughter died with a yelp.
He turned to find her grimacing. “What is it?”
“A darn bee,” she said, in a strained voice, as she clutched her upper arm. “I didn’t see it lurking in the sleeve.”
He reached for the wallet in his back pocket as he strode to her side. “For a botanist, you get stung a lot.”
“Only the second time. Okay, maybe the third.” She danced a little, wincing. “And the last two times happened when a certain swaggering man was around, stripping me naked and distracting me from stinging insects.”
He raised a brow. “I didn’t strip you down the first time.”
“You stripped me with your eyes, Logan, and you know it.”
“True enough.”
She flashed him a wicked look, twisted slightly by pain, then offered up her arm. He pushed up the short, capped sleeve, seeking the welt. He edged her out of the shadows, and once the sun hit her arm he saw the black dot of the stinger. He scraped it out with a flick of an edge of a credit card.
She said, “You’re very good with your hands.”
“At your service, darling.”
She frowned at the spot. “It looks bigger than last week’s sting.”
“Size matters,” he teased, but his attention was diverted by a splotch on her throat.
“You brought antihistamine this time, right?”
She blinked, looking sheepish. “Um…maybe?”
His breath hit the back of his throat. “You don’t have any.”
“I meant to pack it.” She tilted her head. “I’ve had a few other things on my mind this week.”
He took a good, hard look at her face, irritation rising, at her, and at himself. He was probably overreacting. He’d overreacted so much in the months after the incident in the Amazon, he’d stopped diagnosing patients altogether. That pink splotch on her throat could be anything. Atypical dermatitis. Blotching from the heat and humidity. Stubble burn.
“Okay, I get it.” She pulled a grimace. “I’ll take some as soon as I get home.”
“Not good enough, Red.” He pressed back of his hand against her forehead. “Are you feeling hot?”
She gave him a sexy grin. “Sure am.”
“Jenny.”
“What?” She laughed. “You’re so intense and serious all of a sudden. Is this your doctor face?”
He forced his face neutral as she absently scratched at her throat again, making the alarm bells in his head clang a little louder.
“It’s just muggy and hot,” she said, “And I’m within a few inches of a sexy guy, so of course I’m feeling warm.”
“Sit down—back in the shade.” He led to the damp, crumpled picnic blanket, where he urged her down to sit
“Are these hives?” She frowned at her thighs, blotched faintly in spots, as she glanced down. “I haven’t had hives since I was ten years old and ate some crab cake in Marseille. It sucked. I had to take oatmeal baths for a week.”
The ground squelched beneath as he pressed a knee into the ground and began yanking stuff out of his backpack. He carried a small first-aid kit everywhere—old habits die hard—but his heart kicked an uneven beat, and a rapid pulse beat in his brow, as he tried to find it, struggling to contain a rising anxiety. He was overreacting, he was sure of it. Even if she was breaking out in hives, she would probably experience no other symptoms beyond hives. Later tonight, he would rub ointment over her body to ease the itch and discomfort and she would laugh about it, ask him to kiss his way across the welts. Hives were a common allergic reaction, nothing to be concerned about. The only throat swelling too tight right now was his own.
He closed his hand over the first-aid box with an exhale of relief. Snapping it open, he rifled around the samples for a packet of antihistamine tablets, wishing he had his other doctor’s bag, the one with the adrenaline shots, the tourniquets, the Epi-pens—no, he wouldn’t need any of that once he got medicine in her. He found the oral antihistamines with a grunt of victory.
“Here,” he said, holding them out. “Take these right now.”
She stopped itching long enough to pluck the packet out of his palm. Ripping it open, she shook out the pills and tossed them in her mouth. He handed her a bottle of now-warm water and watched as she washed the meds down. Tendrils of her fiery hair lay against her temple and neck. The color of her cheeks intensified.
With a sink of his stomach, he knew her change in color wasn’t from the sex, or the swim.
“Damn it, Jenny.” The words came out harsher than he intended. “You shouldn’t be out in the woods without proper medicines.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Doctor, sir.” She set the bottle on the ground and swiped her forehead. “Fortunately, I have you here to help me. Though this itching is driving me crazy, can you do something else about that?”
“The meds will kick in soon.”
He turned away on the excuse to rifle again through the first aid kit, but he knew he’d find nothing there that was of any use. He just didn’t want her to see his rising, irrational panic. Stop seeing Zebras instead of horses, Logan. Stop acting like
a first-year medical student, diagnosing melanomas in common freckles, predicting cardiac arrest instead of gas pains, and anaphylactic shock in every fire ant sting. Yet his mind raced forward to all the worst possibilities. He glanced at his phone to check the time. In thirty minutes, the antihistamine would seep into her blood stream and reduce the body’s overactive immunological response. The meds would kill the swelling, reduce the possibility that her airway would be blocked, if she didn’t go into anaphylactic shock first.
“Logan.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “You have a terrible bedside manner.”
“I’ve been told that before.” He turned his face to stone as he took her wrist in his hand. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers. Her eyes fluttered close for a moment, and she swayed back.
Panic surged. “Jenny?”
She opened her eyes then gave her head a shake, her eyes unfocused. “Maybe we should pack up and get out of here.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
She frowned, touched her temple, and then flattened a hand behind herself to brace upright. “The world is…spinning a little.”
With black spots exploding in front of his own eyes, he heard it, then: The damning wheeze. That tell-tale sign of her lungs laboring to suck air through narrowing channels.
In that blistering second, he stopped trying to push down his panic and remembered everything, all at once.
Venom from Vespids and insects of certain orders contain several vasoactive substances, are hemolytic and neurotoxic and highly potent sensitizing agents. The allergic reaction is usually the result of previous stings, with the immunologic basis being an IgE response—
He sucked in air between his teeth. She had just been stung last week. A classic sensitizing exposure.
Individuals stung by such insects may exhibit the following responses: 1. A local reaction with pain, generally swelling and redness confined to the sting site. 2. Hives, itching and swelling in areas other than the sting site. Symptoms may stop here but could advance swiftly into 3. Hoarse voice, tongue swelling. 4. Dizziness or a sharp drop in blood pressure. 5 Unconsciousness and death.
With his heart pressing against his throat, he realized the woman he loved was going into anaphylactic shock.
Time slowed. The breeze seized, the pattern of dappled light went stony on the forest floor. The birds dimmed to silence. He had to get her to a hospital. But his truck was parked near the entrance to the reservation, three long hiking miles away. EMTs couldn’t get a truck through the woods to this remote spot. There were no roads wide enough, the trail was a winding path. He glanced down at her, the knot rising between her brows as the venom flooded her system. The wheezing was intensifying as she labored to draw in deeper gulps of air. If he didn’t use every ounce of his skill and knowledge to keep her alive.
Anaphylactic shock could kill in twenty minutes.
Then time sped up, stuttering back and racing, ticking off quick seconds in his head, a deadly metronome, and the reflexes he’d thought had abandoned him kicked in like punches. Seizing his phone, he dialed 9-1-1, barking information to the dispatcher, demanding a helicopter, summoning up coordinates to this exact location, probing his memory of the walk here for a clearing wide enough for a copter to land. Help couldn’t come soon enough.
“Logan.” She rasped, her pupils dilating. “I don’t…feel right.”
“You’re having an allergic response.” He laid his palm on her hand, mentally thinking through the gear in his pack. “Try not to scratch.”
“I’m just…” She licked her lips and labored to swallow. “I’m really…tired.”
“Keep talking to me.” A pen, he thought, he could use parts as a straw. “I need to hear you speak, Jenny, it’s important.”
He laid the phone aside, with the dispatcher still on the other end, so she could hear what she was going to do when he did it. Jenny’s tissues were swelling up rapidly. The antihistamine wasn’t yet working.
“Logan?”
“I’ll take care of you.” He pulled off his tee-shirt, balled it up, and used it as a pillow for under her neck, as he eased her down, as she sank into unconsciousness. “Trust me, Jenny.”
When her eyes fluttered closed, he reached in his pack to curl a hand around his Swiss army knife.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Ms. Vance?”
Jenny tried to blink her eyes open. Her lids were heavy. It took a concentrated effort to peel them apart and focus on the clicking, beeping, bright white world around her.
An unfamiliar face loomed in the brightness, and then receded just as fast.
A woman’s voice. “She’s coming around this time, Doctor Nguyen.”
Jenny heard footsteps, sharp heels on a hard floor approaching, and then a beam of light blinded her.
“Ms. Vance,” said a second woman, in a higher voice, “do you know where you are?”
Jenny scraped a dry tongue over cracked lips but her tongue was too sluggish to talk.
“You’re in Spruce Woods Memorial Hospital,” the second woman said.
“Hos…pital?” Was something stuck in her throat?
The bright light clicked off. It was replaced by a big floating black spot, and beyond that, a woman about her age, tucking something in the breast pocket of her white doctor’s coat.
“There you are.” The doctor nodded, pleased, and swiped a drooping pink tress back into her messy, pulled-back hair. “I’m Doctor Nguyen. That’s Nurse Schultz checking your saline bag. And you, Ms. Vance, are the luckiest woman in the world.”
Jenny blinked a few sticky times, confused. Why was every gulp of air scalding its way down her gullet? How did she get to this hospital, in this bed, under these scratchy sheets pulled up to her chest, surrounded by all this strange equipment? The last thing she remembered was being naked in the stream with Logan.
“Logan.” Jenny winced at the soreness in her throat.
“Dr. Macallister left not twenty minutes ago.” Doctor Nguyen leaned over to peer at something on Jenny’s upper chest. “He’ll be disappointed that he missed you. He spent the last few hours at your side. Do you remember what happened?”
She probed the fog in her mind. She remembered the wet, green woods, the gurgle of the stream. She remembered the pull of the stream’s current, the slipperiness of the rocks beneath her feet. She remembered a naked Logan stepping into the water, and the rumble of his laughter.
“You were stung by a bee,” Doctor Nguyen explained. “You had an allergic reaction that led to anaphylactic shock.”
What was this about shock and stinging? Stinging. A bee. She raised her arm to glance at the sting site, but her neck yanked with sharp pains before she could check if the welt still remained. Logan had scolded her, she remembered, playful at first, but then his expression had turned wary. On his cell phone he’d become all clipped and direct and commanding. Talking about…what? She couldn’t recall. Her chest had ached so much. Her whole body had felt squeezed.
“Dr. Macallister administered antihistamine,” the doctor continued, settling back on a swivel-stool by the bed, “but unfortunately that didn’t kick in soon enough to mitigate the allergic response. Your tissues swelled and you had trouble breathing. Do you remember what happened next?”
She shook her head, sensed the tug of something plastered on her throat. She probed her throat with her fingers.
“That’s a blessing,” the doctor said. “In the woods, Dr. Macallister performed an emergency tracheostomy to insert a tube into your windpipe.”
The word hit a gong in her head. Her fingers hit a patch of tape, the crinkle of a bandage.
“You were then transferred to our Medivac helicopter, but it took some time for the unit to find you and Macallister in the national forest, as well as a safe place to land. By the time you were airlifted, you’d gone into cardiac arrest. Dr. Macallister administered CPR right up until the helicopter landed on our helipad, when our doctors took over.”
Jenny pushed up—sure sh
e wasn’t hearing what she’d just heard. She winced at a new soreness, this time in her chest.
“Don’t.” The doctor steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. “You took a beating from the CPR. You’ll have a bruise the size of Kansas, but fortunately, nothing’s broken. We checked. Dr. Macallister insisted we check everything.”
Jenny settled back down into the pillow. Too much all at once, she could hardly keep up.
“But…” Ouch. Swallowing felt like an elastic-snap. “It…was just a bee.”
“I know. Such a severe response is rare.” The doctor rolled back to pull a chart from a hook at the end of the bed, talking as she toed the chair back in place. “If you had been anywhere else but off-road, EMTS would have come by ambulance in time to give you a shot to counteract the venom and your inflammation response. That’s what usually happens in these cases.”
“I’ve been…stung before.” She sounded like a lifetime smoker.
“Dr. Macallister did note that sensitizing event in the admission notes. The first sting a week or so ago alerted your immune system of the danger of the venom. When you got stung again so soon after, your immune system launched all weapons full force. Your body overreacted, in other words.”
“What…” Her blood went cold. “…you’re saying…”
“Yes.” Dr. Nguyen delivered the word without a hitch in her voice. “You almost died in those woods, Ms. Vance.”
Not possible. Botanists don’t die of bee stings.
“That’s why you are the luckiest woman in the world.” The doctor braced the chart on her lap, two hands on the top. “You weren’t in the deep woods with just any doctor. A dermatologist or a radiologist or almost any kind of –ologist couldn’t do what Dr. Macallister did for you. I’m not sure even I could have done it, without botching the job. But you’re not exhibiting any of the secondary complications we might expect from surgery with rudimentary tools in the back woods. It’s a miracle, considering the risks he took. I bet you’ll hardly have a scar.”
A miracle.
“You won’t remember, but when the two of you showed up yesterday, it was quite a scene. Most of us here in the emergency room have read Dr. Macallister’s papers, at one time or another. They read like thrillers. He’s an emergency-medicine rock star.”
Alone With You (Cabin Fever Series Book 1) Page 13