Hideaway

by Hannah Alexander

  “I heard. Rosie?”

  Blaze stopped, and a sob escaped his throat. “There was no saving her. She was in the stall where the fire was the worst, right in the middle of it. I couldn’t let her suffer like that.”

  “I know you couldn’t, son. What about her babies?”

  “I put them in the pump house last night because she was getting rambunctious. I thought she might hurt one of them.”

  There was a tense silence as his words registered.

  “You knew they weren’t in the barn,” Austin said.

  Dane sighed heavily. “Better give me the rifle, son.”

  Blaze took two steps toward them and tripped. There was a loud crack. He jerked, then fell hard on his side and lay silent.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Blaze?” Dane rushed forward.

  “Hold it!” Austin grabbed him by the arm.

  “What are you, crazy?” Dane jerked away. “He’s been hurt!”

  “You’re about to get hurt, too.” Austin grabbed him again. “Cheyenne, you stay right there. Everybody stay back! Don’t you see that electric line? I caught sight of it in the beam of my flashlight. Blaze didn’t get shot, he took a hit from that line.”

  He pulled his flashlight from his rear pocket and aimed it at the pole. A line had fallen across Blaze’s path and now lay about a yard from his feet.

  “You’ve got a live wire and wet ground,” Austin said. “You can’t help him if you’re lying there beside him. Tell me where your switch box is and I’ll cut the power.”

  “I’ll get it,” Dane said. “Cheyenne, get to Blaze as soon as I tell you. Austin, you help her.” He ran up the steps and through the back door, yanked open the switch box door in the mudroom and pulled the switch that ran power to the barn. “Okay, it’s clear!” he shouted through the open door.

  He ran back out and found Cheyenne on her knees beside Blaze, with Austin standing over her holding his flashlight. Cheyenne had turned Blaze onto his back, and was bent forward with her ear close to his mouth, with two fingers on his throat, feeling for the carotid artery.

  “He isn’t breathing, no pulse!” She looked up at Dane. “He’s in full arrest.”

  Austin pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call 911.” He handed his flashlight to Dane. “Here, you hold this for her.”

  Dane took the light and held it on Blaze’s lifeless face while Cheyenne worked over him.

  “Somebody get my kit from the living room table, I need my stethoscope,” she called over her shoulder as she placed her right elbow in the center of Blaze’s abdomen. “Do we have a paramedic here?”

  “No,” Austin said, then spoke into his phone. “Yes, hello?”

  Cheyenne raised her right forearm about a foot, and quickly struck Blaze’s chest with her fist.

  “What’s that for?” Dane asked.

  “Precordial thump.” She felt again for a pulse at Blaze’s throat. “It isn’t used much anymore, but I’ve seen it work in cases like this.” She nodded. “Got it.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Hold it.” She leaned over Blaze’s face again. “Dane, do you know how to do rescue breathing?”

  “Yes, I’ve taken a CPR course.”

  “I may need you to take over.” She positioned herself at Blaze’s head, cradling his lower jaw with both hands. She lifted slightly, then bent forward and listened, with her cheek next to his mouth.

  “Anything?” Dane asked.

  She shook her head as she positioned herself closer to Blaze’s face. She pinched his nose shut and sealed her mouth over his, gave two slow, deep breaths, then straightened.

  Jason brought Cheyenne her stethoscope, and she used it to listen for breath sounds in Blaze’s chest. “Still nothing.” She breathed for him again.

  “I’ve got the 911 operator holding,” Austin said. “What all do I need to tell him?”

  “You already told him we have an electric shock victim?”

  “That’s right. What’s his status?”

  “He still isn’t breathing,” she said. “We need the earliest available chopper they can get here.” She breathed for Blaze again.

  “Okay,” Austin said quietly into the phone, “our patient is still not responding to…” He strolled away from them, keeping his voice low.

  “Dane,” she said, “I’d hoped once I restarted his heart and opened his airway by moving his tongue out of the way, he’d start breathing on his own.”

  “It hasn’t happened?”

  She shook her head and pressed her mouth against Blaze’s again and breathed for him. “Austin,” she called, “we’ve got to have that chopper as quickly as possible.” Two more breaths. “Dane, see if the firemen have oxygen and a bag valve mask in their trucks.”

  Dane turned to find Cook standing behind him. “Would you do that for me, Cook?”

  “I’m on it, boss.” He took off through the crowd that had gathered in a group around them.

  “Just a moment, please,” Austin said over the phone, then stepped back over to Cheyenne. “The guy says the nearest air ambulance is on its way to another call. He can dispatch another one, but it’ll be at least twenty-five to thirty minutes en route.”

  “We need the closest chopper here immediately,” Cheyenne said.

  Austin relayed the request, listened, then shook his head, grimfaced. “Cheyenne, he says he can’t reassign an air ambulance that’s on call unless a trained paramedic has assessed the patient.”

  “Then why did the guy even mention the other chopper?” Cheyenne muttered.

  Dane knelt beside her. “I’ll take over here. I can do what you’re doing. You talk to the dispatcher.”

  “Okay, just be careful not to move his neck.” She stood and took the phone from Austin. “Hello, this is Dr. Cheyenne Allison. I’m not a paramedic, but I’m a specialist in emergency medicine. Our patient was electrocuted approximately five minutes ago. He was in full arrest initially. I did a precordial thump and got a weak pulse, but the patient remains in respiratory arrest, still unresponsive. He is a sixteen-year-old with a history of hemophilia…that’s right, he’s a bleeder, which puts us in double jeopardy. We have no intubation equipment here at the accident site. I’m not sure about allergy history, but—Yes, thank you. I’ll have a landing zone set up and relay that information to you. What’s the ETA? Twelve minutes? Thank you, we’ll keep you advised of any change in the patient’s condition.”

  She handed Austin’s telephone back to him. “The nearest chopper is on its way.”

  “Oxygen coming through!” Cook called, parting the crowd that had formed around them. A fireman came behind him, holding the equipment Cheyenne had requested.

  Dane sat back, relieved when Cheyenne placed a bag valve mask over Blaze’s frighteningly still features.

  “You have excellent form,” Cheyenne told Dane quietly as she worked. “You could teach a class on it.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. What was the dispatcher hassling you about?”

  “He wasn’t hassling me, he was following proper procedure.”

  “What kind of procedure?”

  “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard of a panicked caller who tells the ambulance dispatcher the patient is unresponsive or isn’t breathing, and then the ambulance arrives and finds out the person was only sleeping soundly. Would you expect a 911 dispatcher to divert an air ambulance that’s en route to a heart attack victim or to a bad wreck until they knew for sure it was a patient in more serious distress?”

  “I guess not.”

  Again, she listened to Blaze’s heart with her stethoscope and felt the left side of Blaze’s neck. “Hey, I think his pulse is stronger.”

  A few seconds later, Blaze’s eyes opened. He coughed into the mask, then went nearly cross-eyed looking down at the apparatus on his face.

  “Blaze!” Dane could have cried with relief.

  “Well, hello there,” Cheyenne said. “Blaze, can you hear me?” She reached for a pu
lse at his wrist. “It’s strong, though a little irregular. Blaze?”

  “Yeah.” His voice was weak. “What happened? What’s this thing?”

  “You were electrocuted and went into cardiac arrest,” Dane explained.

  “Electrocuted?” Blaze reached up and tried to grab the mask.

  Cheyenne gently restrained him. “Leave that alone, it’s helping you breathe. Just lie still and stay out of trouble for a few minutes, if you can manage to do that. We don’t know how badly you’ve been hurt yet. You may even have broken your neck.”

  “My neck isn’t what hurts,” he said.

  “What does?” she asked.

  “My chest is killing me.” He raised a hand toward his head.

  Dane stopped him. “Try to lie still, son. What else hurts?”

  “My head.” He grimaced. “My neck’s the only thing that doesn’t hurt.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Cheyenne said, “considering what your body went through.”

  She punched in a number on Austin’s cell phone and contacted the air ambulance dispatch again. She updated him on Blaze’s condition, then told the dispatcher to hold and handed the set to Austin. “You need to give him all the information he needs to set up a landing zone for the helicopter. And make sure you keep everyone away from the chopper. Those rotor blades are deadly if you aren’t careful.”

  “Consider it done.” Austin took the phone and ran to the house. Dane could hear him speaking to both the dispatcher and to Cook, who continued to play bouncer to keep the crowd at bay.

  “Please don’t tell me you saved my life or something,” Blaze said, watching Cheyenne with solemn dark eyes. “You’d never let me live it down.”

  “You’re right. And you know what’s even worse?” she teased, pointing at Dane. “He helped. You’re beholden to both of us, and I expect to receive full credit for my services.”

  Blaze groaned.

  “You’re not out of the woods yet,” Dane said. “You need to continue to lie still until the chopper gets here.”

  “But are you sure I have to go by helicopter? I hate heights.”

  “Sorry, you’re flying,” Cheyenne said.

  Blaze was still arguing when Cheyenne heard the first thrust of rotating helicopter blades as they slapped the air. Moments later it hovered over the ranch, preparing to land in a hay field east of the house.

  Blaze had fallen uncharacteristically silent by the time the huge bird landed and the crew emerged.

  Cheyenne stayed in the periphery of the action as the flight crew strapped Blaze to the board, hooked monitor leads to his chest and established an IV. Cheyenne noticed with approval that the paramedic was drawing up an antiarrhythmic medication to treat Blaze’s irregular heartbeats.

  When they prepared to lift him, however, he called out, “Dane! I can’t do this! Please don’t—”

  “It’s okay, son. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “But can’t you come with me?”

  “Blaze,” Cheyenne said, stepping to his side and putting a hand on his shoulder, “we’ve been through this. Every muscle in your body just endured grueling punishment, and that includes your heart.”

  “But I’m better now.”

  “Not better enough.” She glanced at the monitor, taking care to stay out of the way of the paramedic and EMT. “Hear that beep? I know you can’t see the monitor, but every time the beeps lose rhythm, that means your heart is feeling irritable. You need to get to a medical center with people who know how to handle this.”

  He closed his eyes and groaned. “I hate flying. I think this is overdoing—”

  He suddenly stopped talking. His head went slack, eyes slid shut. The heart monitor shrieked the alarm for ventricular fibrillation. The crew stopped and put him down. The paramedic switched the Lifeback 12 monitor to the defibrillator mode, hitting the charge button.

  “What’s happening?” Dane asked, moving past Cheyenne toward Blaze.

  She put a hand on his arm and felt the tension as he tried to pull away. “No, Dane, let them work. His heart lost rhythm. They’re restarting it.”

  The unit surged with sound as the electrical charge built within it.

  The paramedic said, “Everybody stand back!” He pressed the defibrillate button. Blaze’s body jerked within the confines of the straps. The monitor once again beeped a strong rhythm.

  Blaze’s eyes opened. “—things a little, don’t you?” he said, finishing the sentence he had begun before losing consciousness.

  Cheyenne leaned close to the paramedic. “I think I would give him the high dose, four milligrams-per-minute lidocaine drip.”

  “Agreed.” He looked at her and nodded as they pushed Blaze toward the chopper.

  Dane stepped up beside her and took her hand, as if seeking reassurance from her. She squeezed it with both of hers.

  The helicopter lifted off with Blaze in a storm of sound.

  “Life is never boring around here, is it?” Cheyenne said as the noise once more grew bearable.

  He glanced over his shoulder toward the people who continued to work around the burning barn. “Never.”

  “Do you need someone to ride with you to Springfield?” she asked.

  “If you’re offering, I’d appreciate it very much.”

  “I’m offering. They’re going to Saint John’s in Springfield. How long will it take to drive there?”

  “A little over an hour. I need to call Clint and have him get in touch with Blaze’s mother.”

  “Give me the number,” Cheyenne said. “I’ll call while you clean up and change.”

  Dane turned his ten-year-old Volkswagen coupe onto Highway 86 fifteen minutes after the helicopter lifted off, gripping the wheel so tightly his fingers felt numb.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Cheyenne asked. “I can do a manual shift, and I stuck my driver’s license in my pocket before I left the house tonight.”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Liar.”

  He tried to loosen his grip on the steering wheel. Oh, God, please take care of Blaze. Please keep him safe, please keep watch over him. He isn’t ready for You yet, Lord. Please.

  “Dane?”

  “Yeah.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Try to relax, okay?”

  “I want to relax, I just can’t seem to do it right now.” Highway 86 curved through the night with such abandon that he didn’t dare try to look at Cheyenne through the dim glow of the dash lights.

  Her hand remained where it was. “You know, if our roles were reversed right now, you would probably make some insane comment about trusting God’s mercy.”

  He risked a glance at her then, and caught the imprint of her dark eyes and hair, the strongly chiseled features of her face.

  He returned his attention to the road. She was right. He probably would have made that comment. Guilt added itself to the mix of his emotions. How could he talk about the peace and love of God, and then fail to exhibit that peace in his own attitude when the life of someone dear to him was in danger?

  And yet, to paste a smile on his face and act as if nothing bothered him would be the ultimate in hypocrisy at this moment.

  “Watch closely for deer, would you?” he said. “There’ve been several accidents along this section of the highway.”

  “Okay, I’m watching, but seriously, if you do believe God will take care of everything, then what are you worried about?”

  He risked another quick glance at her. “I’m human, not a perfect, God’s-in-His-box Christian. I love Blaze, and I want him to live. I can’t be assured that he will. Can you?”

  For a moment, she didn’t answer. He didn’t risk looking at her again.

  “There’s never any assurance,” she said at last. Was there a slight catch in her voice? “None of life, and none of justice.”

  He heard the thread of darkness in her voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to discourage you. I know
you’re going through a rough time with that lawsuit, and I also know you care about Blaze.”

  He hadn’t been much encouragement to anyone lately. Just last week he’d been trying to teach the boys the concept of turning the other cheek, and tonight he’d nearly socked Austin in the nose—his knuckles had tingled with anticipation. What kind of an example was that?

  “You know,” he said as he negotiated another curve, “I’ve never quite grasped the impact of your job before tonight. You really do save lives for a living.”

  In his peripheral vision he saw her look at him. “ER docs don’t have a corner on that market,” she said. “Trauma surgeons would be more likely to claim the slogan.”

  “But you try. I could see that tonight.”

  “All I can do is try,” she said. “It’s never up to me. Sometimes it seems to me as if when I most wish for good results, the worst ones happen.”

  He thought about her sister.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a discouraging remark, and I didn’t mean to sound that way.”

  “You have a right to say what you think. Tell me why you decided to get into medicine.”

  “I’ve wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. My parents started taking me seriously when I discovered my sister’s mitral-valve prolapse.”

  “Her what?”

  “It’s a heart condition.”

  “And when did you become interested in emergency medicine?”

  “I became addicted to the adrenaline rush during my rotations. I think that’s the case with a lot of us in that specialty. The schedule is crazy, and it can be overwhelming when five patients all present at once, all with true emergencies.”

  “All that adrenaline,” he said, trying for a light tone and failing. “And here I had the audacity to suggest you might want to consider a solo practice in Hideaway. What could I have been thinking?” What, indeed?

  Again, from the corner of his eye he saw her look toward him. She didn’t say anything.

  He slowed at the intersection of Highways 86 and 13 and turned south. He couldn’t keep his thoughts from returning to Blaze, and with the thought came still more worry. Now, with Blaze’s life hanging in the balance, didn’t seem like a good time to suspect the teen’s activities earlier tonight. But questions nagged at Dane. For instance, was it coincidence that had impelled him to remove his racing pigs from their mother? Intuition?