Charlie seemed to think the Calder boy, who was actually a man of forty, would be the better choice. He told Jenny that, too, before he returned to his plate of fried chicken with Jenny thanking him for his advice.
In Maple Mountain, there was no such thing as a private conversation in public. Not when the people around knew you and felt they could help.
The phenomenon had seemed terribly intrusive to Greg when he’d first arrived. But then, when he’d first arrived, everything about this town had been foreign. With their set ways and reluctance to change, the people had seemed as different to him as he was to them and it had been a while before they’d figured each other out.
He hadn’t been accepted easily. Especially by the older folk like Charlie. Charlie hadn’t trusted anything about him, including his “newfangled” methods of treatment. At least, not until his last bout of gout had driven him to desperation and Charlie discovered that the new doc’s methods had cut the time of the flare-up in half. The fact that Greg had incorporated some of Dr. Wilson’s older methods to ease Charlie’s mind had helped, too—and surprised the heck out of Greg when he’d discovered that the combination worked even better than the modern way alone.
He sat back in his chair, looked up at the fragile lines of Jenny’s face. Now he accepted friendly interference as nothing but the sign of a caring neighbor. “I’d listen to Charlie,” he admitted. “He’s never steered me wrong.”
Silverware clanked against a plate as a toddler decided to turn the dishware into a drum. His young mother snatched the spoon away while his dad handed the child his milk to thwart an outburst.
At the table ahead of them, two older men were discussing the pros and cons of running lines to tanks to collect maple sap for syrup and the old-fashioned method of hanging buckets from taps.
“So.” Pulling his glance from the vee of creamy skin exposed by her blouse, Greg glanced at the chalkboard by the kitchen where the daily menu was written. As long as he was sitting there, he might as well stay and eat. “What do you recommend tonight?”
The grateful smile in her eyes made its way to her mouth. She recommended the meat loaf, since the chicken and dumplings were gone. He would have asked her recommendation for dessert, too, just to keep her there a moment longer, but the toddler decided that pouring his milk on the floor made rather interesting patterns when it splashed.
Within seconds of the mom’s horrified gasp, Jenny promised she’d get his dinner right to him, tossed a sympathetic glance at the mom and grabbed the spare napkin from his table to wipe up the mess on the floor.
Chair legs scraped as a party of four rose to leave.
Jenny thanked them for coming and cleared away their dessert plates on her way to the kitchen.
Nothing about her gave the impression that she was hustling. She moved with an almost gracious ease that made those around her as comfortable as she made his patients in the office. But then, he told himself, she knew many of these people, just as she’d known nearly everyone who’d come to clinic the past few days. It was only natural that her manner around them would seem so effortless.
He didn’t question why it seemed necessary to excuse anything he found special about her. He just told himself that what she did away from the clinic really was none of his concern. She did need to get out of debt. And heaven knew she could use electricity and a roof that didn’t leak. As long as her evening job didn’t interfere with her day job, she was free to do whatever she wanted.
The side benefit to him was that he’d feel a lot better about where she was living once she had power and a decent roof over her head.
The gratitude Jenny felt toward Greg was growing to embarrassing proportions. Afraid she might be making too much of what he’d so thoughtfully done for her last night, she didn’t know if she should thank him for being so understanding about the second job or just let it go. There was no time to indulge the minor dilemma when she arrived at the office the next morning, though. Rhonda had finally gone into labor.
Many of the babies born in and around Maple Mountain were delivered at home, or in the single hospital-like room in the back of the clinic. Women with expected complications were sent to the hospital in St. Johnsbury at the first sign of labor, provided it wasn’t the dead of winter and the roads weren’t closed.
Fortunately, over the years such crises had been rare. The women in the north country were healthy stock. So were their offspring.
Rhonda was no exception. She would have her baby at home, in the sleigh bed she’d inherited from her maternal grandmother just as she’d had her others. She had called in before nine to put Bess on alert, since Bess doubled as a midwife. Between panting breaths she’d also reminded Jenny to order more toner for the copy machine so it could be on the Thursday UPS truck. As small and rural as they were, they only received deliveries every other day.
Jenny had promised that she would, told her to call if she needed anything, wished her good luck and prayed for a little luck herself.
Jenny couldn’t remember who had mentioned the phenomenon, Rhonda or Bess. But illness and accidents tended to come in waves for the clinic. During the lulls it wasn’t unusual to have no patients at all. If someone came in, it was just to say hello because they were passing by.
Today wasn’t one of those days. Seven back-to-school appointments were scheduled along with two follow-up appointments. Joanna McNeff, Sally’s mom, was in for blood tests. She was next after a three-year-old who’d awakened with a fever and a sore throat who was already in with Greg. Bess, on standby for Rhonda, had started the first of the immunizations so that left Jenny to make sure everything out front ran smoothly.
She suffered only minor glitches until Bess left at four because Rhonda’s pains were two minutes apart and the dispatcher from the sheriff’s office called to say that Joe had just called in.
“Hey, Jenny. Heard you were back,” came Lois Neely’s laconic greeting. “Listen, there’s a bad accident at the quarry. A couple of kids were at the swimming hole diving off the cliff. Joe said they’re not locals,” she relayed, since everyone’s first concern would be who had been hurt. “Said he didn’t recognize either of ’em. The one boy dove in after his friend and pulled him out, but the first one’s not conscious. Sounds like he’s broken himself some bones, too. The one who did the rescuing hit his arm on the way down and is bleeding all over the place. He managed to get to the road, and flagged down a couple from North Stratford. They called Joe.”
Jenny’s first thought was that Lois needed to hang up and call 911. Her second thought was that Lois was the local equivalent of emergency response, and it was now apparently up to Jenny to get the victims help.
No one had explained this part of the job. “I’ll call for an ambulance,” she said, hurriedly searching the lists and sticky notes of phone numbers taped to the shelf above the desk.
“I already did that,” came the amazingly calm reply. “It’ll be an hour and half before they can get there. Joe needs the doc.”
Of course he did, she thought. “I’ll tell him. They’re at the quarry swimming hole?”
“Down by where they closed off the road so the kids wouldn’t go down it.”
“Got it,” she replied, and hung up to hear two sets of footsteps in the hallway. One heavy and even, the other muffled and clipped.
“Set Mrs. Buell for a follow up next week, will you, Jenny?” Greg asked when he appeared at the front office doorway. “She’ll need instructions for a fasting-blood sugar test, too.”
His eyes met hers. An instant later his eyebrows merged.
Bertie was frowning at her, too. But the head of the community women’s league always looked as if she’d been sucking the fruit for the lemon pies she took to every function.
“I’m sorry,” Jenny said, aware that her expression must have caused theirs. Worry was something she never could hide well. “There’s been an accident,” she said to Greg. “Joe needs you as soon as you can get there.”
Bertie’s narrow features pinched. “Who’s been hurt?”
Jenny told them both they weren’t locals, her attention on Greg as she then told him everything the dispatcher had relayed to her.
His glance cut to the waiting room. His last two appointments of the day were coloring on the little table in the corner.
“Tell their moms you’ll call tomorrow and reschedule. “I’ll get what we’ll need while you explain that we have an emergency. You’ll have to help me with the backboard,” he told her, patting Bertie on her thin arm as if to apologize for cutting her short. “We’ll leave as soon you lock up.”
“We?” Jenny called, as he disappeared.
“I’ve only got one hand,” he called back. “Bess isn’t here. You’re going to have to be my other.”
The road to the quarry was narrow, winding and for much of the way had no shoulder. In winter the road could be positively treacherous. In summer, the drive was lovely, if not slow.
It took twenty minutes to get to the turnoff that led to the swimming hole. It took a few more to bounce down the abandoned road of crushed gray granite.
This end of the quarry hadn’t been mined since the eighties and the trees and vegetation had grown back along the top. Below, the gaping hole had filled with snow melt and rainwater.
The appeal for the kids was in the near wall where staggered blocks of uncut granite allowed perches of various heights for the brave and the brainless to plunge into that cold, crystalline pool.
Every year, a new barrier or barricade went up.
Every year, kids managed to find a way over or around it.
“Hey, Doc! Over here!”
Joe’s voice rang out from below them, echoing off the stone walls as Greg grabbed his bag. Snatching up a paper sack he had filled with supplies, Jenny scrambled after him, heading to where Joe had stepped from behind a boulder.
“Man, am I glad to see you.” Looking apprehensive, the beefy deputy sheriff motioned to the two boys on the ground.
Both looked to be somewhere around seventeen. Both had the olive-green wool blankets Joe had taken from his Jeep draped over them. The blond one propped against the boulder held a blood soaked T-shirt to his arm and looked scared to death. Seeing the one lying a yard from his soaked athletic shoes, Jenny could understand why.
The only color about the youth was his pale red eyebrows and the mat of red hair sticking to his head. His lips and skin were as pale as milk. It was the unnatural angle of his legs that had her going still, though. There was no question that they were broken.
Greg had already crouched beside the boy’s head. His fingers moved deftly to the side of his neck before he lifted one eyelid with his thumb. He’d just checked the other when he pulled back the blanket.
His remarkably unreadable expression didn’t change by so much as a blink as he noted the awkward position of the legs, quickly probed the boy’s belly, then looked to the young man watching anxiously from the rock.
“Did he go in head first, or feet?”
“Feet.”
“Did you see him hit the water?”
The boy gave a quick nod. “He looked fine going in.” He swallowed. “He just didn’t come up right away. When he did, he was floating.”
“How about you? What hurts?”
“Just my arm.”
“Joe,” Greg said, his tone amazingly calm. “We’re going to need the backboard from the truck. Jenny, I need you over here. Kneel at the top of his head.” He looked back to the boy sitting as still as the stone holding him up. “What’s your name?”
“Brady.”
“And your friend?”
“Jake.” His voice cracked. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Well, Brady,” he said, reaching into the bag of supplies Jenny set beside him. “Your friend is lucky to be alive right now. It’s good you were a strong enough swimmer to get him out.”
Jenny saw Greg’s lips tighten as he turned his full attention to the lean young body before him. It seemed that he wasn’t a man to give false hope. Or, to beat a person when he was down. What the kids had done was foolish. But Brady was clearly afraid his friend was going to die. Short of being able to assure him that he wouldn’t, Greg had focused on the only positive aspect he could find.
His deep voice dropped as, wincing, he wedged the cervical collar under his sling and opened it with his free hand. “I need for you to grasp his head in your hands so we can get this on him. Gently,” he emphasized, catching her glance to make sure she understood. “I’m going to keep my hand on the back of his neck so I can feel what’s going on. If I tell you to stop, stop right then and just hold it where it is. Okay?”
She didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help. She just didn’t want to do further damage. The boy’s neck could be broken. “Greg, I’m not trained—”
“We can’t wait for more help. If this kid’s going to make it, we have to meet the ambulance. You did great helping me before. Don’t let me down now.”
Don’t let him down.
“You can do this, Jenny.”
Dear heaven, she thought. She had no confidence for risks anymore. No desire at all to venture beyond her comfort zone. But as she looked from the conviction, or maybe it was determination, in his eyes, she figured she didn’t have to have any. She’d just borrow the confidence he seemed to have in her.
Without another word, she positioned her hands on either side of the young man’s smooth face. His skin felt cold against her palms.
She was just as conscious of the warmth of Greg’s hand on hers when he positioned her fingers under the boy’s jaw and checked his neck.
Jenny didn’t release her breath until the boy’s neck and head were supported by the wide, stiff collar. Even then, there was no time to feel relief. She acted as Greg’s other hand, following his quick and clipped directions so he could start an IV in the boy’s arm. She held vials of drugs so he could fill the syringes, then held the IV port steady so he could administer the life-preserving medications.
Hearing Joe return with the board, still working on his patient, Greg asked the deputy to radio the ambulance, find out where they were on their route and tell the driver they would be meeting him. Enlisting Brady, he had him hold the IV bag high above his friend’s arm, then motioned her with him to where he checked over the boy’s legs.
Greg’s expression was grim. One of young Jake’s knees jutted at an odd angle. Midway down the other calf, broken bone protruded. Mercifully, it hadn’t broken the skin enough for bleeding to be profuse, but the bleeding Greg worried about was on the inside. The kid had hit rocks beneath the surface of the water.
With Jenny kneeling across from him, Greg carefully eased the first leg straight.
“Breathe, Jenny,” he said, fearing she was holding her breath again. “I can’t afford to have you pass out on me.”
“I’m just afraid it hurts him.”
As intently as Greg was concentrating on his patient, her quiet response caught him off guard. He was accustomed to maintaining professional distance in such situations. In a crisis, it was imperative that the ability to assess and act not be impaired by emotion. That didn’t mean he was insensitive to suffering. He just didn’t allow himself to consider what could cloud his judgment.
The woman who gamely responded to his every request didn’t have his professional detachment to fall back on. There was no guile about her as she held his eyes. Nothing but the unmasked concern he’d seen when she had helped him. She had been afraid of hurting him, too.
Even after having her heart handed to her on a platter, her sense of compassion and empathy remained untouched.
The thought tugged hard. The soft curve of her mouth beckoned.
The need to detach had never seemed so necessary.
“He can’t feel anything,” he quietly assured her, and jerked his glance to his patient.
The concentration that so impressed Jenny looked more like dispassion
to her in the trying minutes that followed. She managed to help Greg apply an inflatable splint to one leg, stabilize the other and with Joe’s help, ease the backboard under their young victim. With the safety straps fastened over the boy’s body to hold him in place and his friend Brady carrying the IV bag high, she, Greg and Joe carried the still unconscious boy to the back of Charlie’s truck.
Brady needed about a dozen stitches himself, but the worst of his bleeding had been staunched with gauze pads Joe had secured with an elastic bandage. After Greg climbed into the back of the truck bed with his patient and took the IV bag to hold himself, Brady climbed into the Jeep with Joe.
Joe led, siren blaring. Jenny followed, driving the truck.
With the siren clearing the way, they made it to and through Maple Mountain in fifteen minutes. They met the ambulance forty minutes later, a mile from the highway cutoff. In the time it took to open the boxy white vehicle’s back doors and carry the most injured victim from the truck while Greg related his treatments and suspicions to the paramedics, both boys were transferred.
The back doors of the ambulance had barely closed before Joe slapped Greg on his uninjured shoulder, gave Jenny a nod and said he was going back to write up his incident report. He’d see them back in town.
Jenny hadn’t moved from where she’d stopped at the back of the truck. With the emergency suddenly over, she listened to the ambulance siren fade in the distance. Joe’s Jeep had disappeared in the opposite direction when she watched Greg plow his fingers through his hair and walk toward her.
He had thrown off his lab coat on the way out the clinic door. The collar of his chambray shirt lay open against the darker blue sling.
Remembering how he had used the hand and arm of his injured side, thinking of how he’d grimaced with the movements, she nodded toward him. “How is your shoulder?”
He looked as if he hadn’t give it a single thought. “Doing fine,” he replied, stopping in front of her. A smile sneaked into his eyes. “You did good, Jenny.”
Trading Secrets Page 9
