The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle

by Amalie Berlin

  The guard winced, but Penny managed to keep her face placid even if her guts were wincing in tandem with his face. She grabbed the rope and found a nearby pillar to secure it.

  “Have you been on the phone with Dr. Jackson?” she asked the guard.

  “Yes. I’m supposed to call when we get you in.”

  Of course he was. Gabriel would be doing all he could to help from his end, even if she was certain there’d be another showdown as soon as they got home later. She’d have rather had him with her, but there hadn’t been time. The window would’ve passed before she could’ve gotten him to come up from Emergency, and he probably wouldn’t have come anyway.

  She slung her heavy bag around her again, the one with the oxygen and IV paraphernalia, and took the rope, saying to the guard before she stepped over the edge, “When I get down, I want you to toss me the second bag and hand me the board.”

  He nodded, and he looked so pale she’d have thought he was the father, but dutifully input numbers into his phone and got ready to hit Send.

  It was only about ten feet down, but the rope made her feel more secure, even if she only had to rappel about seven feet before she put her foot down on the top of the elevator.

  Which bounced when she stepped onto it.

  “Penny?”

  “It’s okay, that’s just me. I’ll be right there. If you’re feeling like you have to push, try not to... I don’t know where you are yet.”

  And all she remembered from her training involved full dilation being needed before the pushing...but the urge to push often came earlier.

  The guard lay on the floor above and stretched the board down, then, when it was still braced against the side of the shaft, dropped the softer bag of first-aid supplies onto it so it slid toward her. Then called down instructions on how to open the top hatch.

  She threw the end of the rope through with her heavier bag tied to the end, then dropped in the light bag, and then realized she didn’t know how to get the board through.

  Dangit.

  Planned badly... Assuming she was still a team, that she could slide in and have someone, Gabriel, hand it to her. She grabbed it, turned it diagonally so it would fit through, and then began to lower herself to her knees, and further, and further, until she was lying on her belly, hanging through the top, finally getting it to touch down so she could lever it to the side in a way that wouldn’t hit her patient.

  Her patient, who was lying on the floor, red faced and breathing heavily. Immediately, she got worried. The elevator still had lights, which was a blessing, but it meant she got to see how terrified Andrea looked, and the amount of pain she was in.

  “Tell me how you’re doing, Andrea. Have you been timing your contractions? What are you feeling?”

  While waiting, she pulled back out of the elevator and climbed in feet first instead of head first.

  “Pain,” came the woman’s one-word answer, and when Penny looked at her, she had rolled onto her side and was obviously trying to breathe through another contraction.

  “Everything’s going to be okay. You have me, and we have the complete focus of a doctor at the hospital.” Which was when she rang Gabriel for help, confirming with the puddle on the floor that the water had gone. “Dr. Jackson, I’m in. She’s...mid-contraction, and her water has broken.”

  Kneeling down, she pressed her fingertips to Andrea’s neck and counted, then reported the elevated pulse.

  He began asking questions, and as the intermediary she relayed answers and performed different checks. Getting the backboard down, she spread a blanket on it and then helped Andrea onto it, where she’d be a tiny bit more comfortable, but mostly because it would be easier for transport after help came. She rolled another blanket for a pillow before getting gloves on and following Gabriel’s instructions to check dilation.

  Confirmed: total.

  Did she need oxygen?

  Wouldn’t hurt.

  These were things she’d have done, but it was less scary to have someone else backing her on this one. Not because she didn’t know the basics, but because his instructions were like a safety net, not for her but for Andrea and mini-Andrea, whenever it came out.

  “I’m calling you and putting it on speaker. Get off the phone with anyone else. I can’t keep pushing the button on this to talk if I’m gloved for sterility.”

  “Dialing you now.”

  She heard her phone ringing, got it out of her pocket, put it on speaker and set it to the side before tossing the radio onto the floor.

  With his help, in between calls from the security guard above, they proceeded to deliver that baby.

  Every single milestone felt like it was projected on a big screen in front of her and running in slow motion.

  Crowning.

  Someone called from above, a new voice. A new crew. They were going to try to open the door on floor twenty-four, it might be down enough to crawl through...

  The baby spiraled further out, until there was a head visible.

  Then there were shoulders, and Penny helped...

  Then she was the first person to ever hold that baby.

  “Lay the baby on the mother’s stomach.” Gabriel’s voice came through the speaker.

  The baby wasn’t moving, wasn’t crying. Every atom in her body seemed to seize, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming. Not breathing.

  “I... Gabe...he’s...uh...”

  She heard a sound she knew was from the guard getting into the shaft above, someone was opening the doors to the floor below, and it sounded close.

  “He’ll breathe if you lay him there and get him warm. He’s got a few minutes to start breathing on his own. There’s oxygen still coming through the cord. It’s okay. Get him warm.”

  She laid the baby on his mother’s belly and began rubbing his back with another of her blankets, holding her breath until he started to squirm, and finally let loose a scream that made both her and Andrea start to cry.

  “He sounds good.” Gabriel’s voice had gentled, and just hearing him made her heart soar. He’d be there when their baby was born, he’d be there, and he’d talk just like that, and he’d make this not scary, because it was scary. It was scary and not even the kind of scary thing she had always felt compelled to face down.

  “He’s beautiful,” she confirmed, her voice croaking the words out as she wrapped the wonderfully screaming baby in a fresh, dry blanket.

  Gabriel talked her through clamping the cord off, cutting it, and she finished by covering Andrea in the final blanket.

  The elevator doors opened with about two feet of clearance onto the twenty-fourth floor.

  “How are you guys doing in there?” a man’s voice called through, and when she looked over, she could see his head.

  “We’re perfect. So is—”

  “Bowie.” Andrea filled in the baby’s name and Penny smiled.

  “She’s on the board. Baby Bowie is wrapped up and ready too. If you two can take the bottom of the board and lower her down, I can strap them in and push her through the opening.”

  The paramedics and firemen—she now saw—on the other side of the elevator all agreed and she began readying her patients for transport.

  Which was when she saw the blood.

  “Andrea?” She said the woman’s name, and noticed the distinct fuzzy quality to her eyes when she opened them at hearing her name.

  “Uh, she’s bleeding. Gabe? She’s bleeding.”

  “She’ll be bleeding...”

  “No. She’s bleeding. There’s a lot of blood.”

  She heard him swear and then picked up Bowie to hand him through the opening to one of the crew, then went back to her patient.

  “She needs to get here, honey. I don’t want... I don’t know if she has...
The ground...”

  Time. She knew that sound in his voice. He was trying to tell her that Andrea needed to get to the hospital fast. She needed to fly, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “Would a line and saline help?”

  “Yes.”

  “On it.” Glad she’d passed the baby to the other crew, she dug into her bag and came out with tourniquet, a number twenty catheter, line, saline, a flush, and felt for a vein.

  She didn’t need to be talked through that. And inside a minute she had a line in, flushed, and hung the saline from her shoulder so she could shove the board toward the opening and they could get her out of the elevator.

  A paramedic she recognized helped her out as well, and she transferred the saline to his shoulder as she would’ve Gabriel.

  “Saline buys a few minutes, but we need to get her to the hospital. How do you two feel about flying?”

  Neither of them hesitated, just picked up the board. She took Bowie, held him close, left all her junk in the elevator, and gestured to a second elevator beside the malfunctioning one. “That one working?”

  “Yes.”

  The button was pressed, and she went ahead, just like always, hitting the stairs, this time with Bowie in her arms, to get to the chopper and get it ready to take off while they got the patient to the roof.

  Once there, she got the chopper started, rotors spinning, and watched from inside where she could keep the baby protected from the cold and wind. If they came out with their gurney, she’d have to dump theirs on the roof.

  When they came out, they were still carrying the board, which left her free to settle in. She laid Bowie in the co-pilot’s seat, opened the side door, then went to her seat. In a flash, she got the headset on, buckled in, and picked the baby up again while they loaded Andrea. It was when they opened the door again that she fully realized how strong the wind had grown.

  Only when the doors were closed did she hand Bowie back to one of them, and skipped the radar. The snow, no longer falling as lightly as it had been when she’d made the flight out, swirled around them. It wasn’t as heavy as it could be, but no way would she normally fly in these conditions. Truly, the wind was worse than the snow. She knew the skyline so well she could practically fly it blindfolded, but the wind added a wildcard she didn’t want to consider. There was nothing she could do about the wind, and not going would mean Andrea died.

  She took a breath and lifted off, calling through the headset to Gabriel that they were airborne, and updates as the paramedics relayed them to her. He’d need two teams on the roof, one for Bowie and the other for Bowie’s mother.

  It wasn’t that far.

  She’d be able to see the lights, and she knew the way well enough to fill in any gray areas.

  They’d be okay. She wouldn’t panic and they’d all be okay. Gabriel would help them once she got them there.

  They’d be okay...

  CHAPTER TEN

  LONGER EVEN THAN the three minutes he’d waited to hear from her crawled the five that passed after she lifted off.

  He’d assembled two teams in that time and herded them all up to the roof. Obstetrician and team, emergency surgical suite on standby. Neonatologist with team and incubator. He saw the wind blowing in the hair flying from the team members, but he didn’t hear it. He felt his own clothing ripple and slap at his body, but it felt like watching the drawn-out roil of the canvas on a sailboat. But the air around him sounded dead.

  Falling snow muted the air and the sound of beating blades he waited for, hanging his sanity on. His head fell forward and he took a deep breath, clinging to hope like a tangible thing, fists balled and gripping nothing.

  Too much snow. It blew hard enough to sting his cheeks, and he immediately flashed to the storm they’d outrun to Schenectady, where she’d had to fight the wind at times, and flown with it at others. But that had been more or less open terrain, not between buildings. If she’d needed to bank to the left or right to work with the wind, she’d had room. She shouldn’t be flying in this, not in the city.

  “There they are,” someone said, and he didn’t even know who, just looked at the sky to see the lights of the chopper through the gray gloom.

  As she started to descend, a powerful wind gust came from the southwest, blasting the chopper off target toward the building.

  His heart stopped dead.

  “Are they gonna...?” Someone else said the words he couldn’t even bear to think, and all he could do was force frigid air in and out. He closed his eyes.

  If she hit the building, he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see her die.

  The snow deadened the air so much he couldn’t even hear the blades beating. It took several painful heartbeats to realize he hadn’t heard a crash either, and hadn’t heard screams from anyone on the teams he’d assembled.

  He opened eyes again, noting that she’d pulled the chopper up and now flew above the buildings, circling again.

  He didn’t have his radio. He hadn’t brought it, not that he could distract her, but as much as he struggled to force himself to watch, he needed to hear her voice. Just to know how she was. Was she freaking out like he was? Was she asking for help?

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the neonatologist’s nurse cross herself and bow her head, and he was thankful that someone had the peace of mind to pray.

  The chopper began to sink again, but at a much faster speed. He watched, horror again shooting up as quickly as the chopper fell. It looked like she intended on slamming the thing into the roof, but now the sight held him gripped and nothing could make him close his eyes.

  Close, closer...

  Every muscle in his body strained, his lungs growing so tight he could barely breathe, everything else so tight he shook.

  She pulled up just in time to soften the landing, and touched down, with only the smallest bounce at the end. He had to clamp his mouth shut to keep a sob of relief from escaping.

  The other doctors took the lead, charging out with the incubator and to fetch the woman on the chopper’s gurney. He did the only thing he could. He raced with them to help if needed, but his assistance mainly consisted of helping with a tricky latch that locked the stretcher in place, and once they were out, the lot raced back for the building.

  Penny was still shutting down. The motor went quiet and he climbed into the chopper and closed the door behind him.

  Alive. She was alive, and all right, and when she looked at him, he took in bright, shining eyes and glowing cheeks. The relief he’d briefly experienced fell to his feet. That was excitement, exhilaration, she hadn’t been afraid. He had been afraid. He had been petrified—his insides still shook. But she looked rock solid.

  When she stepped out of her seat and walked back to him, even as his hands curled over her shoulders, he didn’t know whether he was going to shake her, strangle her, or just grab tight.

  As soon as he touched her, the need to be closer took over and he pulled her with him to fall into the rear seat. His hands found her face, and he kissed her, every aching inch of his heart needing to feel her life, to taste her sweetness, to blot out the past agonizing hours.

  Outside, the wind hit them again and rattled the chopper, chilling the already cold vehicle further, but it wasn’t going anywhere now. He angled his head and slid his tongue into her mouth, every second touching her, breathing her in, like a balm, reassurance against what the fear still seeping through him still vibrated with: she was going to die.

  “Hey.” Something made her pull back, and her own small hands on his face made him open his eyes and look at her. “You’re shaking. We can go inside. Are you cold? Are you okay?”

  The denseness of the question pulled him out of that need to get closer, like the wind rattling the doors, jarring and cold.

  “You damned near died
.” The words croaked out. But saying them once gave him strength, gave him back the anger that had first seized him. The second time, he shouted it. “You damned near died!”

  Even shouting, it wasn’t enough.

  During the hours apart he’d learned what was worse than Nila leaving.

  “But I didn’t. I’m okay. See? I’m okay.” She stroked his face, like she could pet his worry away. The brightness in her eyes dulled a bit, the color faded, like she was just starting to see how horrible the past few hours had been for him.

  “You could’ve died. You had to know how dangerous it was to go. You know better than that. How could you do that?” He pulled her hands from his face, needing her to focus on his words, not soothing him. “How could you put yourself in that much danger?”

  The words had no sooner left his mouth than he knew the answer. It didn’t matter what she said, this was just how she was. This was what Penny’s life was, rolling the dice and always expecting a seven.

  She did foolish things, mostly because she wanted to make things better for others, he knew that, had always known that. Even understanding that didn’t give him any way to deal with it. All he could do was deal with what was before him right now, and that was a woman who, although he might love her, lived on the edge of disaster.

  He put her away from him and climbed out of the chopper, unable to summon any other words. She sat dazed, and he could see her mentally scrambling for the right thing to say, but there was nothing to say.

  * * *

  Penny watched Gabriel climb out of the chopper, senses reeling. The exhilaration of saving a life—of actually knowing this time that she was the one who’d beaten the storm and saved lives, not just luck, faded. She was messing this up with Gabriel. She was messing them up.

  “I did it because she needed help. If I hadn’t gone, she’d have had that baby alone, and probably would have died. They couldn’t have ever gotten her back here fast enough.”

  “Her life is not more valuable than yours. And that baby, that precious baby you helped deliver, is not more precious than our baby.”