“What?” he demanded, sitting up quickly. “What’s wrong?”
First she picked up the ringing phone and told Lois she’d found him. Then she quickly filled him in on the emergency.
He took it in stride with his usual calm efficiency, already collecting extra surgical instruments and supplies for his leather jump kit even before she finished speaking.
“Get plenty of sterile gauze, sponges and alcohol wipes,” he instructed her. “Bring clamps and silk sutures and number-three catgut for closing up. It doesn’t have to be fancy work up there, it just has to hold until we can get them stabilized in a hospital. Looks like you’ll be doing some sewing tonight, Becky.”
Becky.
It startled her, coming from his lips.
“The big problem,” he worried aloud, “will be anesthetic. I can do locals, but that won’t be enough. I wish we had a general anesthetic to put them under.”
“I was taught the emergency procedures for administering chloroform with a pad,” she told him. “We have a few bottles.”
“Sure, that’ll help. It’s a little crude and risky, but better than nothing if the choice is life or death.”
As they let themselves out into the nighttime chill, he asked her if she knew the way to the accident scene.
She nodded.
“My car is pretty quick,” he worried out loud, “but I’m almost out of gas and there’s no place to fill up close by.”
“I’ll drive. My Bronco’s probably more useful up there, anyway. It’s got four-wheel drive.”
“How far away are we talking?”
“Twenty minutes north on Route 23.”
“If those victims are lucky—” he hoped out loud as they climbed into the Bronco “—they’ll be airlifted before we even get there.”
Up on the slope of Copper Mountain, luck was in short supply. A dozen or more emergency vehicles, lights winking eerily, had assembled just off the shoulder of a sharp, nearly vertical embankment. The new arrivals learned that the military-rescue team from Fort Mackenzie was still en route. A mix-up had caused the request to be delayed.
“We just now managed to lower a couple of paramedics down there,” a state trooper explained. “That’s helped some. But neither one of the guys down there is a surgeon, and they’re at wit’s end. They’ll be mighty glad to see you, Doc.”
Even in the lurid glow of the police vehicle lights Rebecca could see how tired John Saville looked. Far below, flares and a few smaller lights marked the accident scene.
“This rig looks pretty roomy,” John told the cop, meaning the doughnut harness the trooper was buckling around him. “Will it hold two people?”
The trooper nodded. “It’s designed to hold up to three, actually.”
The doctor looked at Rebecca.
“Then lower both of us at one time,” he suggested. “You said it takes five minutes to descend. I can’t get to work without my assist nurse, and we’ve already wasted enough time.”
It’s a purely practical arrangement, Rebecca reminded herself as she snuggled up close to her employer. He stood behind her, arms encircling her, as the harness was buckled.
“Keep still,” the trooper called out as they were lowered over the berm of the drop-off. “You don’t want to start twirling—keep the embankment in front of you. Any problem, just give us a holler.”
At first her nervous jitters kept Rebecca from thinking about how intimately close they were—so close she could feel every muscular contour of his body pressing against her. But the going was easier than she’d expected—in part because he did most of the work to keep them balanced, and the cops up above were handling the weight of descent.
“Piece of cake,” he assured her, lips so close to her ear she could feel the warmth of his breath. “I’m a rock climber from way back.”
His words jolted her memory of what Hazel had told her. It was during a rock-climbing vacation that he supposedly met Louise Wallant.
She chastised herself when she felt a little inner spasm of jealousy—here she was, being lowered down a mountain in the middle of the night, with people hurt and dying below, yet she had time to feel jealousy for a man who saw her as a social inferior.
All that, however, could not prevent her from physically reacting to his nearness. The hand not clutching his jump kit kept brushing her breasts, unintended caresses that nonetheless triggered tickles of desire—especially since, in her hurry to find him tonight, she hadn’t worn a bra. And each time they dropped farther down, gravity made her surge against him. Before long it was obvious he was aroused.
Moments later they reached the scene below, and Rebecca felt her heart sink when she saw the badly mangled and crumpled bus lying on one side, its progress finally stopped by a line of trees. Everywhere she looked, troopers were holding flashlights while various members of the medical team worked over the injured. Almost the only sounds were occasional pitiful groans and the stacatto crackling of radio static.
Dan Woodyard, a pediatrician Rebecca knew slightly from her days at Valley General, took a quick break to help them out of their harness and fill them in.
“Thank God for you two,” he greeted them. “We’ve treated most of the visible trauma wounds. But there are several with internal bleeding—severed arteries and, in one case, I think a ruptured spleen. Hell, the only surgeries I do are tonsils. All we’ve been able to do is give them clotting factor and treat them for shock.”
Woodyard sounded close to losing it. Even medical school, Rebecca realized sympathetically, couldn’t harden him for something like this.
John gripped one of his shoulders and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“You’ve done great, Dan,” he assured his colleague in a firm, calming tone. “Who’s the other doctor, and what’s his specialty?”
“Jim Routan from Lutheran. He’s a semiretired G.P. with little surgical experience, mostly does screening physicals. He’s over on the other side of the bus with the burn victims and spinal traumas.”
While this report was forthcoming, Dr. Woodyard led John and Rebecca to a group of four patients lying under blankets.
“They’ve been sedated,” Dan reported. “The elderly woman on the right is the possible ruptured spleen.”
While Rebecca checked each patient’s vital signs, John made a quick check of each victim’s injuries to set his priority of treatment. She had already noticed something—his arrival on the scene, his calm, confident competence, had created a sense of purpose and control. Dan and the others seemed to settle down, inspired by John’s unflappable manner under duress.
“We’re not really operating, this is surgical intervention to control their bleeding,” John reminded her in a low tone. “They require complicated repairs and a team of surgeons. All we can do now, though, is just open them quick and place clips on any severed arteries, pack them with sponges and close them with wide stitches and pressure dressings. This isn’t even E.R. stuff, it’s basically battlefield first aid. You okay?”
She expected fear to show in her voice, but she spoke up firmly. “I’m fine.”
“Just hang in there and don’t let anything get to you. Got your chloroform ready?”
Feeling like a beleaguered Civil War nurse, Rebecca soaked a gauze pad and carefully administered a general anesthetic to the first patient. She concentrated on counting out the seconds accurately, removing and then again applying the pad, while John worked.
She was not normally a surgical nurse, and the sights before her became even more stark in the glare of the flash-light being held by an ashen-faced trooper.
But the need to stay strong for these tragic victims kept her steady, focused and alert. So, too, did John Saville’s steady hand and manner. She steeled her nerves, and after each patient’s internal bleeding was controlled, Rebecca closed with deliberately wide stitches and dressed each wound, while John administered a local to the next patient.
“What’s the word on that evacuation team?” John asked
the cop as they were finishing the last patient. “I’m not too impressed by their response time.”
“Let me check,” the trooper holding their light offered. “Last I heard, they had some delay locating their chopper pilot.”
He spoke into his radio handset, then listened for a minute. “Choppers are just now passing over Disappearing Lake, Doc,” he reported. “Still another twenty-five minutes. Fort Mackenzie is practically on the Canadian border.”
Dan Woodyard had joined them again. “Think she’ll make it?” he asked, meaning the elderly woman with the possibly ruptured spleen.
“Her pulse is fluttery and her breathing rapid and shallow,” Rebecca reported. “Systolic blood pressure is fluctuating between eighty and ninety.”
“My God,” Dan muttered, “she’s barely pumping blood.”
“I think she may have a preexisting heart problem,” John added tersely. “Going into third-stage shock has taxed it to the limit. We could lose her at any moment. There are ambulances topside—how quickly could they get her to Lutheran?”
“Less than ten minutes,” Dan replied. “And the E.R. is prepped and waiting. I even got their blood types called in.”
“That settles it, then. At best, it’ll be well over a half hour before that rescue team can extract her and get her into surgery. If I take her up now, we can have her under the scalpel in maybe half that time.”
“Man, that’s one rough climb going up,” Dan said, his voice heavy with doubt.
“Don’t I know it? And it might well kill her. But do you agree she probably won’t last a half hour?”
“I do,” Dan affirmed. “I haven’t watched many people expire, but she sure seems close. She’s practically without blood pressure.”
“How ’bout you, Becky?” John inquired, turning to her.
“Think we should move her now or wait?”
It startled her that he was actually turning to her for help in this decision.
“If you both believe she may well die, anyway, then isn’t it better to take some action? Judging from her vital signs, I vote for taking her up.”
“That’s the girl,” he approved. “No waffling.”
While the trooper notified the officers up above, Rebecca and Dan helped John into the harness rig. All three of them carefully lifted the unconscious woman until John had her in a fireman’s carry.
“You two come up behind us as a safety net,” he instructed Rebecca and Dan. “One on each side of me. Be ready in case she starts to slip from my grasp.”
When the other two rescuers were buckled into safety harnesses, the trooper gave the signal and they started up the steep slope. Although the men above were doing most of the pulling, John still had a grueling struggle supporting the injured woman. Rebecca saw him straining up ahead of her, his breathing growing deeper and more labored.
But his superb physical condition saw him through it. They got the injured woman above and into an ambulance in amazingly quick time. They returned below to help with the rest. By the time the rescue team from Fort Mackenzie arrived to medivac the rest, the elderly woman was already undergoing surgery.
“She’s critical but stable,” reported a jubilant Dan, who was in touch with the hospital on his cell phone. “Looks like you didn’t make that climb for nothing, John. Early word is she’s going to make it.”
“Question is, will I?” John groused as he and Rebecca trudged toward her Bronco.
It was nearly 6:00 a.m. Rebecca felt weary and physically depleted and knew he must feel even worse.
But she also felt an inner swelling of new admiration for this man she thought she had already neatly pegged as conceited and coldhearted. Even half-dead with exhaustion, he rose to an incredible challenge. His quiet, calm, unassuming leadership had steadied the rest of them. He had been selfless to a fault, and suddenly she wanted very much to make sure he was fussed over a little, too. He certainly deserved it.
“You need some sleep,” she told him. “Why don’t I just take you straight to your place? Lois can call your morning appointments and cancel. Then one of us can come pick you up later.”
He mulled this over, then shook his head as Rebecca performed a U-turn, heading back toward Mystery. “Actually, I don’t feel all that tired. Besides, I hate it to no end when doctors cancel out on patients. Anyway, as I recall, my last appointment is at noon. It’s better if I just tough it out and stay awake, then go to bed this afternoon. Assuming, that is, that my nurse can make it, too?”
She smiled at him. “I’m not really tired, either. Nothing a quick shower can’t fix.”
He returned her smile with a grateful one of his own. “Two workaholics strike a bargain. Just take me back to my car, and I’ll find someplace to have breakfast and coffee.”
“Nothing’s open right now,” she reminded him. “This is Mystery, remember? If you insist on staying awake, why not come on back to my place? I’ll fix us some breakfast, then give you a ride to your car so you can go home and shower and change.”
“Breakfast—and at least a gallon of black coffee?”
“Cowboy coffee,” she promised. “Strong enough to float a horseshoe.”
They both laughed, enjoying the feel of mirth after their ordeal on the mountain.
“Best offer I’ve had all night,” he assured her.
Rebecca watched the newly risen sun flame on the eastern horizon of Mystery Valley, a salmon-pink blush. Just a day ago she’d been trading insults with John Saville; now she was taking him home for breakfast.
Oh, what a difference a night can make.
Seven
The early-morning sun was bright but the air was still chilly when they arrived at Rebecca’s efficiency apartment. She brewed a big pot of coffee. Then, feeling self-conscious in such close quarters, she selected a change of clothing and excused herself for a quick shower. She changed into a seawater-blue knit dress, then started working on a couple of western omelettes.
Although he had no clean change of clothing, John accepted her invitation to shower. He emerged, hair freshly slicked back, just in time to enjoy a well-earned hot breakfast.
“Pardon my 5:00 a.m. shadow,” he quipped, rubbing his scratchy, blue-black beard stubble.
“I like it,” Rebecca assured him sincerely. “Makes you look like a soap opera hunk.”
“Please, lady, no autographs until I’ve eaten.”
They both laughed.
She cast a rueful glance around her little cubbyhole of an apartment, sorry now that she had procrastinated in finding a bigger place. Partly it was a sort of spite that made her keep it, for she suspected the nothing apartment and the lack of good background were the reasons Brian had dumped her.
“You must be feeling claustrophobic,” she apologized. “I’ve been inside your house before you owned it. This entire apartment is about the size of your breakfast nook.”
“Yeah, but you know what?” he retorted between forkfuls of steaming omelette. “My place is about as homey as a post office lobby. Your place is cozy. And even two showers in a row didn’t use up all the hot water. I’m lucky to finish one at my house. Seriously, it must have a one-gallon water heater.”
He didn’t say all this to be patronizing or merely polite, she realized, but seemed sincere. Ever since her crushing experience with Brian, she had possessed an invisible antenna for detecting snobbery and rejection. But she spotted none in John’s manner with her now.
As she topped up his coffee, he nodded toward a framed photo on the television set.
“Nice-looking couple. Especially the woman. From the way you favor her, I’m guessing it’s your mom and dad?”
She nodded. “My mother died of a brain tumor when I was in junior high.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he told her with sincere feeling. “She was taken so young, it must’ve been tough on you.”
“I don’t know what I would’ve done without Hazel. My dad’s on the road a lot, especially since Mom passed away. Hazel practi
cally adopted me after her death.”
Realization sparked in his eyes. “So that’s why she takes such an interest in you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.
He seemed to realize, however, that he’d misspoken. Instead of answering, admitting that he and Hazel had been discussing her, he diplomatically changed topics. “You said your dad’s on the road a lot. Is he in sales?”
“Uh-huh. That and consulting. He sells and installs security systems, mostly for small businesses. He works a three-state area.”
She didn’t add, however, that he had often been unemployed when she was younger, or that his drinking and womanizing had started more than one rumor wave rolling through Mystery Valley.
“How ’bout your father?” she asked. “You already told me he retired from the military. Did he start a second career?”
“Not really,” was all he told her, his eyes suddenly grave and evasive.
She’d noticed how he seldom gave any information on his own background, but only elicited it from others. “This omelette,” he added quickly, “is the best I’ve ever had.”
“Thanks,” she replied, not fooled by his diversionary tactic. He didn’t want to talk about himself, and she would respect that. It wasn’t the kind of thing two professionals took to work, anyway, and she knew she’d do best to remember it.
She gathered up their plates from the L-shaped counter that served as a kitchen table, rinsed them and set them in the dishwasher. His intensely blue gaze followed her.
“That backless stool can’t be too comfortable,” she said, mainly to break the awkward silence. “You’re welcome to take your coffee into the living room.” She glanced apologetically at the fold-out couch that was still a knot of blankets and sheets from last night’s frantic dash out the door. “But maybe I should pick up first—”
“Forget about it. Even a messy fold-out looks good after that mountain climb.” He paused. “I guess I’m more bushed than I thought. I hardly slept at all this weekend.”
The M.D. Courts His Nurse Page 7