Protecting the Flame Page 7

  “My dad did.” A pause. “My real dad. He and Mom were trying a really long time after me, and then my dad died, and Scott…anyway, it’s Joshua. Can you tell if he’s okay?”

  “I’m not a doctor, Mattie.” Although she knew a baby’s heartbeat could be heard through a stethoscope, which she didn’t have. A baby also moved. She’d read that at about twenty-five weeks, a mother should feel those first signs, that flutter or little bubbly sensation. “How active is your brother? How much does he move around?”

  “A lot. Sometimes, when he kicks now, you can see his foot.”

  That sounded pretty wild. She carefully placed her hands on Rachel’s abdomen which was swaddled in both a wool sweater and the woman’s down parka. Closing her eyes, she concentrated. C’mon, Joshua. Give me a sign here. She’d read somewhere that unborn babies responded to their mother’s touch, but she was a stranger.

  “Is Joshua all right?”

  She was about to say I don’t know when, all of a sudden, there came a teeny-tiny thump against her right palm, and her heart leapt.

  “You felt him. I can tell from your face.”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Both Rachel’s sweater and parka were thick, and so it was tough to be certain. In a few seconds, there came a second, harder thump, and she saw the parka move from right to left. “He’s rolling.”

  Mattie smiled. “Mom always says it reminds her of making a cat up in a bed. You know, under the sheets?”

  Despite everything, Emma grinned because the description was so perfect. Well, hey there, Joshua. As the baby shifted and Rachel’s belly bunched, she wondered what it must be like never to be alone. Wake up in the middle of the night, stroke your belly, and there was someone there, floating up to—

  Will moaned.

  Chapter 2

  “Will?” Emma’s heart kicked. Scuttling across the aisle, she put a hand on his. His skin was icy. “Will?”

  “Is he awake?” Mattie asked.

  “Getting there.” She hoped. She got right into his face. “Will, can you hear me?”

  “Uhhh.” He stirred and then, as he pulled his head up, he sucked in a sharp, hard breath that came out in another panting groan. Sudden tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “Oh, shit.”

  “What is it?” Mattie demanded.

  “I don’t know. Will, Will, what is it? Where are you hurt?” He was scaring her. Jesus, no, you can’t die. You can’t be hurt. You can’t! Hot panic bolted up her throat. She gripped his hands. “What is it?” Her frantic eyes darted to his face, his head, his chest. Was he bleeding, was something broken? “Where do you hur—” The word evaporated on her tongue.

  “Emma?” Mattie called.

  His parka was askew, the garment draped oddly as if arm of the hangar on which it hung had broken. But, of course, the equivalent of a hangar on a person was his shoulders.

  Will’s shoulders were all wrong. Where the hump of his right shoulder should be, there was, instead, a steep drop-off. An odd bump poked midway between where his shoulder had been and the center of his chest.

  “Dislocated.” Will forced the word between clenched teeth. Despite the chill, his forehead was beaded with sweat. “Can’t move it.”

  “Can you fix it?” she asked and then wanted to kick herself. That was like asking if he could take out his appendix by looking in a mirror.

  His head rolled back and forth on his headrest. “Not by myself.” He fixed his eyes, glazed with pain, on hers. “I’ll talk you through it. But how are you? I don’t like that cut over your eye. How’s your head? Are you hurt anywhere else?” Before she could answer, he asked, “What about Mattie?”

  “I’m okay,” Mattie called. “My seat belt’s stuck, that’s all.”

  “I have something in my pack we can use to cut you out. Won’t take but a jiffy. What about your chest, Mattie? Your stomach?” Will looked at Emma. “Did you check her?”

  “No,” she said, a little stung as if he’d caught her in a mistake or falling down on the job. “I was worried about Rachel.”

  “I told her to, Will,” Mattie called. “I’m okay, really. I’m cold, but I’m good.”

  “Are you feeling sick?” Will persisted. “You going to throw up?”

  “No, I told you, I’m fine. It’s my mom who’s hurt bad. You have to help my mom.”

  “We’ll help her.” Panting, Will let his head fall back against his seat. “Emma will do it, and then we’ll get you out and fix me up, get a fire going or at least block off this wind.”

  “What?” Emma asked. “Will, I don’t know what to do for Rachel.”

  “Then it’s good I’m here. I’ll talk you through it. Emma, you have to. No choice. Now, tell me about her.” He listened, cheeks still moist with tears of pain, as she told him about the cut on Rachel’s scalp, the baby’s movements. “What about her pulse?”

  “It was fast.” She couldn’t remember a number. Had she even bothered to count? “Is it because she’s lost a lot of blood?” That slick on her face and puddling on the floor sure looked like a lot.

  “Maybe. Head wounds always bleed like stink. We’ll stop the bleeding first.”

  “We?” A bad line from The Lone Ranger floated through her brain. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “But you’re military. You know battlefield first aid, right? Hemostatic dressings?” When she nodded, he said, “Great. I’ve got a bunch of QuikClot in my pack. You should put some on that cut you’ve got, too.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Then we get my arm into a sling, slap a couple splints around her neck to brace her spine, work her out of her seat, and lay her flat.”

  There was that we again. “Will, your shoulder’s dislocated.”

  “My left arm still works. Don’t worry, I’ll let you do most of the work. I’ll even let you superglue her wound.”

  Superglue? “That is not funny.”

  “Trust me when I say that, at the moment, I am completely incapable of humor.”

  “Get me out, and I can help, too. And don’t tell me that you have to check me out first,” Mattie added. “You’re letting Emma move around and do all this stuff. You’re not yelling at her to lie down even though she’s cut and her chest hurts and it took forever for her to wake up.”

  Despite everything, Emma felt her mouth curl into a grin. “She’s got you,” she said to Will.

  “Of course, I do,” Mattie said, irritably. “Now, cut me out of this thing before we all freeze to death.”

  Chapter 3

  “Hunh.” Will’s grunt smoked in the chill as he sat back on his heels. “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “What’s interesting?” Emma kept her gloved palms firmly clamped on a wad of QuikClot layered over Rachel’s scalp wound. Although Will had already checked for a fracture, feeling carefully through blue latex with his good left hand as she swabbed away blood so he’d have a decent view, she was still leery of pressing too hard. A lot of her training had come back, though. Most of the medical stuff was pretty basic: applying a neck brace and then hefting Rachel out of her seat and onto the sleeping bag Mattie unfurled. Will did the best he could, and he was strong, but with every move that jarred his shoulder, which meant about every move he made, she could tell from the way he sucked in through his teeth that the pain had to be bad. (After dry-swallowing two acetaminophen, he had her slip on a sling from his emergency medical kit so that right arm wouldn’t flop around. He said they’d fix him as soon as he checked her out. Oh. Joy. She was looking forward to both with about as much enthusiasm as a root canal.) She was actually too cold to be much interested in anything except something hot to drink…Wait. I still have that disgusting tea. “What is it?”

  Draping his stethoscope around his neck with his working hand, Will regarded Rachel’s abdomen with a speculative eye. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it the baby?”

  “What?” Mattie was at the front of the ruined fuselage where she’d been dragging luggage from the ca
rgo hold to block off the opening but now turned and said, with a new note of alarm, “Joshua isn’t hurt, is he?”

  “As far as I can tell, your brother’s fine. Good movement, heartbeat’s steady, but there’s something.” Will’s frown deepened. Haahing into his left hand to warm it, he placed his palm along the lower margin of Rachel’s belly and gently followed the curve. “I think only your mom can tell us for sure.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Emma watched Rachel’s abdomen swell and shift as the baby responded to Will’s touch. “Tell us what?”

  “If the baby’s dropped at all. It’s been a long time since my ob-gyn rotation. I know how to deliver a baby, but as for whether that’s imminent…”

  “Imminent.” The word dropped from Mattie’s mouth like a stone. “You mean, Joshua’s going to be born? Now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe? Or maybe not, and this is the way she carries him. The problem is this is the first time I’ve examined your mom. I don’t know where Joshua likes to hang out, on the second floor or the first. We’ll have to wait for your mom to tell us.”

  “What if she doesn’t wake up to tell you?” Mattie’s eyes welled. “What will happen then? Why are we awake and not her?”

  “Because as far as I can tell, she’s got a really bad concussion.”

  “Scott watches football. Players with concussions get up all the time.”

  “And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re knocked out. That’s what’s happened to your mom, but I don’t think anything worse is going on.”

  Mattie looked stricken “What could be worse?”

  “A couple things,” Will said. “None of which I think your mom has.”

  Mattie’s eyes narrowed. “But you don’t know for sure.”

  “No, I can’t possibly. To be sure, I’d need access to a whole bunch of diagnostic tools I don’t have. But let’s not panic yet. It’s only been a couple of hours. Your mom could wake up by nightfall or in the middle of the night or tomorrow morning.”

  Or maybe not at all. Emma studied Rachel’s placid features. If this were a Hallmark special, a week would go by, and they’d be on the brink of starvation. Wolves would descend at the moment Rachel went into labor, leaving Emma to deliver the baby because something would’ve happened to Will or maybe he was fending off the wolves or rescuing Mattie or fending off wolves and rescuing Mattie when—cue soaring music—a helicopter miraculously appeared, scattering the wolves and whisking them all away in time for Christmas but not before Emma had swaddled a perfect baby boy in a blanket or something and handed him over to Rachel. She was, in fact, almost positive there’d been an episode like this several years back on NCIS, only Gibbs had delivered the kid while Ziva David kicked butt as only a Jewish Mossad ninja warrior could. God, what a great character. Ziva being Israeli was icing on the cake. For a while there, when she’d been with Ben, and he was doing his undercover work, Emma had toyed with the idea of learning how to fight like that on general principle. She’d even daydreamed of she and Ben taking on the bad guys together.

  You’re an idiot. She had to get a grip. Not everything had its correlate in a movie or show. This is reality, Greg—and then she had to wrestle the smile into submission before it settled on her mouth. Gosh, E.T. had been one heck of a good flick.

  “Is my mom in a coma?” asked Mattie.

  “I’m afraid so, honey. Here, let me show you, okay?” Pulling out a penlight, Will clicked it on then flicked the light into Rachel’s open eye and then away before repeating the maneuver. “There, see how her pupil doesn’t get smaller when I shine the light. That’s what happens to people in a coma. And if I do this?” Pushing up a sleeve of Rachel’s jacket to reveal bare skin, Will gathered a healthy pinch between thumb and forefinger and squeezed. Rachel’s face remained placid, and her arm didn’t move away. “Unconscious people respond to pain. Comatose people don’t.”

  “So this is really bad.”

  “It’s better not to be comatose, yes. I would love it if she would wake up, and if I knew why she was out or how long she’ll stay this way, I’d tell you. But that sometimes happens in traumatic brain injury. The body’s not dumb. It knows when to take a rest.”

  Well, woo-hoo. Let’s hear it for the body. So long as Rachel kept making like the Eveready Bunny, the baby would keep ticking, too. But what if Rachel’s body up and quit? What would they do about the baby then? Will knew medicine, but did he know how to save an unborn child even as the mother’s body gave up the ghost?

  And then there was this, the fact of the crash, that they were stranded in the middle of nowhere. She glanced toward the front of the fuselage. There was precious little to see, other than snow. The light had gone a bluish sharkskin gray as the day slid toward dusk. A little while back, Mattie had stamped outside to look for the cockpit, but the snow was too thick, and Will shouted at her to come back before she wandered off and got lost. Even so, Mattie had lingered, yelling for her grandfather, for anyone, but all she got back was the hiss of snow on metal and plastic, the hollow groan of wind, her own voice. Hours had passed with no thump of choppers, no hails from intrepid rescuers risking life and limb.

  So where was everyone? Their plane was overdue. All of them were expected and now hadn’t arrived. Hank Cooper should be waiting, and so should this Kujo character. When it got dark and no one showed up…when someone tried calling Burke’s plane and got dead air…they’d know to start looking, right?

  Right?

  Chapter 4

  “Snow’s still getting in,” said Mattie, hunching her shoulders against a fresh gust as Emma ducked back inside. The girl had positioned herself between the barricade and her mother, whom they’d cocooned in Will’s sleeping bag. Clutching Emma’s travel mug in both hands, Mattie gave the low barricade she’d formed with their luggage a forlorn look. “There’s not enough to keep out the wind and stuff.”

  “We’ll find something.” Maybe unbolt the seats and use them? That would at least give them more room. She huffed out a breath, grimacing against the grab along her left ribcage.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” A lie. Her head ached, probably a combination of her scalp wound, being banged around, and hanging out in air that was brain-freeze cold. She was also winded from having dragged the heavy avgas bladders from the fuselage. She’d worried every step of the way that she’d snag fabric and spill fuel everywhere. If she’d done that, they’d be sunk. While she’d been outside, she’d caught that very odd scent again, the one reminiscent of smoky late-night bars, which, though not as strong as before, seemed concentrated near the tail. There weren’t any standing puddles of spilled fuel or anything on top of the snow at all. Still, maybe a leak in the belly tank? She’d have to check, especially if they decided they needed to start a signal fire.

  Brushing snow from her shoulders, she felt melt trickling down her cheeks. The fuselage wasn’t toasty in the slightest, though it was warmer than before, and that was already an improvement. Now, with the bladders gone, they could at least fire up Will’s portable cooking stove, a Jetboil Flash which was essentially an insulated cooking cup screwed onto a small fuel canister which could be lit with a match. What she really wanted was a soft bed, a good pillow, warm covers, and a steaming mug of hot cocoa. Oh, and to be off this bloody mountain.

  But she had to take care of Will now. No getting around it. Relocating his shoulder really was the last thing she wanted, but they needed Will. She didn’t know a damned thing about arms and even less about anatomy, but she assumed the shoulder was put together the way it was for a really good reason. There were nerves there and blood vessels. Who knew what kind of damage had been done already? Will was important. The rest was…

  “What are you smiling about?” Will said.

  “Nothing,” she lied. Her bubbe once told a story about Rabbi Hillel who’d been challenged by a heathen to teach him everything in the Torah while the rabbi stood on one foot. Hillel reportedly thought a second
then said, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The rest is commentary.

  Will was important. The rest was commentary.

  “I got to do your shoulder, Will. It’s worse for you the longer we wait, right?” When he nodded, she said, “Then, okay, tell me what to do.”

  Mattie piped up. “Can I help?”

  “No,” they both said at once and then Will continued, “This isn’t a job for you, Mattie. I appreciate it, but you’re not strong enough.” Will looked back at her. “I’m not sure you are either.”

  “No better time to test that theory than right now. Come on. I presume you got to be lying down for this?”

  “Normally,” he said. “But that won’t work here.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s mechanics,” said Mattie. “It’s a ball-and-socket joint, right?”

  “So?”

  “So, his arm is long. Think about it. In order to slip the ball of his shoulder into his joint, there has to be enough room for his arm to dangle and then some. Otherwise, you can’t stretch the muscles enough to get the joint to slide back in.”

  “She’s right,” Will said. “I need to be higher off the ground. If we were in a hospital or ER, I’d be on a gurney or in bed. You’re also not strong enough on your own.”

  “What does strength have to do with it?” she grated. She felt vaguely ganged up on, too. These two were starting to get on her nerves. “We’re not going to arm wrestle, for God’s sake.”

  “With an injury like this, the muscles go into spasm and don’t relax. They can’t because they’re being stretched, and a stretched muscle responds by applying a counterforce. My muscles are trying to help by making themselves as rigid as possible so they can hold my arm in place. It’s protective. They’re trying to keep the damage to a minimum.”

  Damage? “How much damage? Will you be able to use your arm at all after we get it back into its socket?” Because, please God, she had to.