“Good way to avoid burnout.” She stopped when she saw the number of patients already sitting in the waiting room.
Speaking of burnout…
Fawn felt sick again. And guilty. Because of her, an innocent guy had missed the bus, and would have to pay for another ticket, and even though he hadn’t come charging onto the bus before it pulled out of the parking lot, she still wondered if he might say something to the ticket agent about his lost ticket—if he got out of the bathroom some time today.
When Casey Timble—her unwitting ticket donor—had entered the men’s room, she’d found a disgustingly simple trick to delay him. Instead of following him inside and announcing that the bus schedule had changed, she’d noticed the layout of the door, with a molded metal handle on the outside, although the door pushed inward.
The setup had been impossible to ignore. Too simple, really. All she’d had to do was get a long mop handle in the hardware section nearby, and jam it through the door handle. When he tried to pull the door open from the other side, it would be snugged shut.
Not that she’d waited to see how it worked. She’d made a run for the bus, rushed inside, handed the driver her ticket and found a seat with a view to make sure she wasn’t followed.
She’d barely breathed until the bus snaked its way past Celebration City theme park on the western end of town. She’d leaned back in her seat and taken a deep breath, and then panicked when they pulled off the road at the first overlook for a photo shoot. Several passengers had jumped from the bus, cameras ready, while the rest sat and waited in air-conditioned comfort.
And now she wasn’t the only person on the bus who felt sick. A lady across the aisle from her, who looked at least eighty, rested with her head against a pillow, holding her hand to her forehead. She didn’t look too great. A couple of seats behind her, someone had mentioned not feeling well, and a couple of minutes later, Fawn heard the awful sound of an airsick bag being used. She’d heard it before, on a bumpy flight with Bruce, but they weren’t in the air now.
Fawn dug into her backpack and pulled out her bottle of aspirin and unopened bottle of water. She stepped across the aisle.
“Hey, lady, you okay? Can I get you something?” She might have stolen a ticket in desperation, but Fawn wasn’t going to let a bunch of old geezers suffer if she could assist them. After all, she might be an old geezer herself someday—if her luck held out.
Chapter Twelve
Taylor returned to the intersection of Elm and Maple and parked across from the silent dozer. In the past hour the small rental had been decimated and stacked in sections, each section ready for the recycle bin. The guy had even taken out a couple of the smaller trees, their roots raised toward the sky in helpless defeat.
Beaufont Corporation. Everywhere Taylor looked, he saw the top-heavy triangle logo. Not to mention the damage they had done in the name of their beautification campaign. He knew many Hideaway natives were getting sick of it, too.
Beaufont for Beautiful. What a sick joke. The idiots were actually trying to make the lakeshore east of town look like a tropical beach by importing sand and tearing out trees and boulders, destroying the natural beauty of the wilderness area in order to bring in more tourists.
It was working. Crowds flocked to the sand volleyball courts and unnatural beaches, the jet-bike stand and the windsurfing boat. And now they were destroying perfectly good historical buildings. For what?
He got out of the truck and strolled across the street. Silence hovered over the lot, where the dozer had so recently ripped. The air was fragrant with freshly turned earth. Taylor stepped across the loose dirt toward the place where the foundation had been, but before he reached it, someone yelled at him from the road. He turned to see a man jogging toward him from the direction of the condo construction site.
The man wore a carpenter’s coveralls and a bill cap with the same upturned triangular logo. “Don’t you see the postings?” He slung his hand toward the No Trespassing signs planted in the four corners of the lot as sweat dripped from his red face. “What do we have to do, string razor wire around this place?”
Taylor hadn’t seen the signs here an hour ago. “It’s an empty lot.”
“Private property,” the man snapped. “The Beaufont Corporation doesn’t want any lawsuits.”
“What kind of lawsuit?” Talk about overreacting.
The man glared at him, and Taylor relented, still curious. As he drove away, he glanced into his rearview mirror and saw the man striding carefully across the lot, as if afraid he might stumble over something breakable. Or harmful.
Taylor seldom smoked on duty, and never in the truck, but this afternoon he made an exception as he drove along the curving, forested road toward his favorite overlook, with the windows wide open and a warm breeze blowing through. He inhaled deeply from the low-tar cigarette between his fingers.
He remembered in detail the incident he blamed for inciting his resumption of this old habit. He’d arrived home to find a note from Clarice attached to the refrigerator with a magnet. After years of placing notes in the same spot, he’d expected something like, Home late. Dinner in fridge.
Instead, she’d been so callous—after seventeen years of marriage, of raising Chip, of loving one another!—as to leave a refrigerator message for him to read, alone, when he got home. In the end, she’d been too much of a coward to tell him to his face that she couldn’t stand to look at him anymore, that she blamed him for Chip’s death.
His marriage and family had been relegated, in the end, to a refrigerator magnet.
A week afterward he had been served the divorce papers, and had been forced to endure the stares and sympathy of his co-workers. It was the final humiliation. That was when his partner, Carl, had offered him a smoke, and he’d taken it.
He knew now, as he hadn’t realized then, that his acceptance of the cigarette was a silent admission that he had truly given up on his life. After all, what was left?
That same day, he’d stepped to the edge of the canyon rim and stared toward the north, realizing he would never share this experience with his wife again. The sense of loss, the loneliness and the anger had made him stumble backward for fear that he might intentionally pitch forward onto the rocks, a couple hundred feet below.
He knew this resurrection of a bad habit from his youth was an act of rebellion, although he wasn’t sure who he was aiming it at. God, for taking Chip away? Clarice, for leaving him? She’d vowed to stand beside him until death parted them. At the time, he hadn’t realized that the death wouldn’t be his or hers, but the most precious life of his son.
Reaching the overlook, Taylor parked between a tour bus and a small red sports car. Obviously, he wasn’t the only one who liked the view. He climbed from the truck and stepped to the edge of the paved pullout to stare across the sunlit edges of the forest, thick with undergrowth.
Chip would have enjoyed a float trip down the gentle Flat River. Clarice would have photographed a hundred sunrises and sunsets by now, rhapsodizing about the shades of pink and gold and orange and purple and blue. Missouri had a grandeur all its own.
By now, back on the South Rim at the Grand Canyon, smart hikers would be staying out of the heat on the trail, and rangers would be kept busy rescuing those who thought they were tough enough to make it to the river and back in the heat of summer.
He didn’t miss it. Much.
Here around Hideaway, the only hiking trails besides this new one were logging roads in the Mark Twain National Forest, and the only hazards were copperheads, rattlesnakes and poison ivy—and the meth labs, but those were everywhere.
This place was a gentle, healing garden compared to the Canyon. So why did he still feel so lifeless sometimes?
“Hello?” came a timid, hoarse-sounding voice at his right elbow.
He turned and looked down to find a teenage boy standing beside him. The kid sported round, wire-framed glasses and a baseball cap pulled down low on his forehead. He had on baggy
denim jeans, an equally baggy Hawaiian-print shirt with a Branson logo on the sleeve and running shoes that looked too big for his feet barely peeping out from beneath the hem of his jeans.
“Are you a ranger?” the kid asked.
“Yes.” He felt immediate heat rush to his face. A ranger caught smoking by a teenage boy. Great example you are, Jackson.
“Well, I’m on this tour bus?” The teenager spoke in a rushed, breathless voice. “And there’re these old geezers who are getting dizzy and sick and stuff. One old guy in the seat in front of me almost keeled over on top of me. Could you do something?”
Taylor glanced toward the bus the teenager indicated. “Where’s the driver?”
“He’s in one of those ugly plastic Porta Potties, I think. He’s old, too, and he’s kind of a porker. Do you think maybe they got food poisoning from their lunch?”
Taylor turned and walked beside the boy toward the bus. “Possibly. Where’d you come from?”
“Branson, but we’ve been out awhile, you know? It’s like the bus can’t even pass a curve in the road without somebody hollering for the driver to stop for pictures.” The kid’s tone of voice effectively relayed his impatience with the trip so far.
“And you’re not feeling sick?”
There was a long silence. The boy’s face was pale, and moisture beaded his chin. “I’m fine.”
“Are you traveling with your grandparents?” Taylor asked. The kid seemed young to be traveling alone, judging by the soft-husky sound of his voice.
“Grandparents?” He sounded offended.
“I’m sorry. Your parents? Friends?”
“I’m by myself.”
“My mistake. What’s your name?” Taylor asked as they drew near the tour bus parked in the first spot.
“Casey.” The kid raised a hand to his stomach, and his eyes shuttered closed for a moment.
Taylor heard the sound of wheezing before he stepped onto the bus. The lady in the front seat sat with her head braced against an inflated pillow. Her eyes opened when Taylor entered, but she didn’t move.
“Ma’am, are you feeling okay?” He leaned toward her.
“I’m fine. I just need to rest a few minutes.” Her voice sounded weak. “I’ve got half a roll to take by the time we get to Bella Vista.”
Taylor noticed the pallor of her skin, then glanced around at the others. Of the twenty-something people on the bus, he doubted if more than three or four of them, besides Casey, were under the age of sixty. He knew why, too. Bella Vista was a popular retirement community just over the state border in Arkansas. Why was a kid like Casey on a bus headed for Bella Vista?
An elderly man two seats back leaned out into the aisle. He didn’t look much better than the woman did. “Are you a ranger?”
“Yes. Are you feeling ill?”
The man scooted forward, gripping the armrest on his padded seat. “They say Hideaway’s got the most picturesque town square of any place in the Ozarks.”
“It’s true, and I think you’re going to get some good shots.”
There was a slight shifting of the floor and a heavy grunt behind him, and he turned to find an extremely heavy uniformed man struggling his way up the bus steps, his face drenched with perspiration.
The man sank into the driver’s seat. “Is there a doctor’s office around here anywhere?”
Karah Lee had just finished discharging a patient with an infected tick bite on his ear, when Blaze hung up the telephone at the front desk and turned around, eyes filled with the excitement of a child in a new playground.
“That was Taylor Jackson. You know, the ranger? There’s a busload of elderly sightseers with flu symptoms on their way here. A couple were having breathing problems, one guy says he has chest pains.”
“Breathing problems and chest pain?” Karah Lee asked. “That doesn’t sound like flu symptoms.” Besides, this was June, not flu season.
Blaze shrugged. “That’s just what Taylor told me.”
“How big a busload?” Karah Lee asked, fighting down a rising concern. No way could the three of them handle a crowd like that.
“Twenty-some, Taylor said,” Blaze told her. His voice quivered with sudden excitement. “What do you think’s wrong with them? Should we—”
“Taylor’s coming with them, I hope,” Karah Lee said.
“He’s leading them here.”
“They’re all sick?” Karah Lee asked.
“Yes, but Taylor didn’t have time to give me every patient’s symptoms.”
Karah Lee took a deep breath. Oh, great. Terrific. Cheyenne was working in Dogwood Springs. She couldn’t just drop everything and come charging back here for this. “Make sure a couple of the rooms are set up with nonrebreathers for the ones with breathing problems. You’re sure Taylor said flu symptoms?”
Jill came rushing from the supply room with a look of panic. “Did I hear you say there’s a bus coming here?”
“That’s right. We’re all they’ve got.” Karah Lee reached for her stethoscope. “Set up exam room one for the chest-pain patient.”
“Gotcha.” Jill pivoted and returned down the hallway.
Karah Lee followed to make sure the equipment was in place. “I’ll have the patient brought straight in. Put him on oxygen, start an IV, do an EKG. Follow our chest-pain protocol if you think his pain is cardiac.”
“Okay, but where will you be?” Jill asked.
“On the bus, doing triage. Blaze will be with me.”
“All right!” Blaze grabbed a spare stethoscope from the central supply counter along the east wall, looped it around his neck and turned back to Karah Lee with a grin, rubbing his hands together. “Finally I get to triage. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this day?”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Blaze,” Karah Lee said. “If it’s too bad, we’ll have to try to send them on to Branson in spite of what Taylor Jackson says.”
“So really, Karah Lee, what do you think’s wrong with them?” Blaze asked. “Some kind of epidemic? Smallpox maybe?”
“I’d say food poisoning,” Jill called from the other room. “Although food poisoning doesn’t cause breathing problems.”
“SARS? Anthrax?” Blaze suggested. “Oh, I’ve got it, West Nile—”
“Blaze,” Karah Lee said, “would you relax? We can’t afford to have you freak on us now.”
“I’m not freaking, honest, but I’d like to know what to look for.”
“I’m telling you,” Jill called from the other room, “on a busload like that, it’s probably food poisoning. Maybe the breathing problems are unrelated, a reaction to the air-conditioning on the bus.”
“That wouldn’t cause chest pain, would it?” Blaze asked.
“Acid reflux, most likely,” Karah Lee said. At least that was the case in the majority of patients she’d seen when she moonlighted in the E.R. in Columbia. She wasn’t going to blow this situation off, but she wasn’t going to panic. She couldn’t panic. She was the only available physician.
As she issued further orders for preparation, she ignored the insidious voice inside her head that reminded her what a disaster this could become…and that she was freshly out of residency, with no one more experienced to call. No backup. She was in charge. Dad would be apoplectic by now.
What colleague would he call to get her out of this mess?
But it wasn’t a mess. She could do this. They were well stocked for a small clinic. Because they were so far out in the middle of nowhere, they had to be prepared for anything.
Everything would be okay. It had to be.
The rumble of a diesel engine reached them from the street, and Karah Lee led the way to the front door to find Taylor parking his Jeep a few yards away, leaving plenty of space in front of the clinic entrance. A large red and black bus with the title Happy Trails blazoned across the side pulled onto the lawn across the street in a conflagration of heat and diesel fumes.
“Let’s go,” Karah Lee said, pushing out the fr
ont door. “Blaze, bring the wheelchair.”
“Coming, boss.”
Taylor jumped from his vehicle and reached into the back seat for his “tool kit,” which looked like a tackle box and which Karah Lee knew would hold basic medical equipment and supplies.
“Sorry to do this to you, Karah Lee,” he said, “but I didn’t think they should try to make it to Branson or Dogwood Springs without triage and some stabilization. Some of them look pretty sick.”
Karah Lee turned to walk with him across the street. “What’s your best guess on this?”
“I’m not sure yet. It’s confusing.”
Karah Lee glanced up at his grim profile. Get this. A man willing to admit he’s confused by something?
“Typically, with something like this, especially with more than half the group traveling together, I’d suspect food poisoning,” he said as they reached the other side of the street. “But not all the symptoms fit.”
“Beep. Coming through.” Blaze rushed past them with the wheelchair, obviously eager to become part of the action.
“Where’s the patient with the chest pain?” Karah Lee asked Taylor. “We’ve got a room set up for him.”
“He’s near the back,” Taylor said. “I’ll carry him out.”
They stepped up into the air-conditioned bus, and a moment later Taylor was carrying an elderly, overweight man from the bus as easily as if he were carrying a small child. The elderly man clutched his chest and murmured something to Taylor.
“It’ll be okay,” Taylor said softly. “We’re going to check you out and take care of you.”
In triage mode, Karah Lee continued down the aisle as she saw motion-sick bags, pale, miserable faces, and people holding their heads in obvious discomfort.
Taylor was just stepping back onto the bus, when Karah Lee caught sight of an elderly couple, also near the back of the bus, who appeared to be asleep in spite of the activity going on around them. She made her way to them and knelt, touching the woman’s arm gently.
“Hello? Are you all right?” she asked.
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