Protecting What’s Mine: A Small Town Love Story

by Score, Lucy

  Linc’s shoulder sang, his knuckles throbbed. But he grabbed Skyler’s arm. “Everybody move!”

  There were sirens. An entire opera of them. Help was coming.

  They moved as one, snaking between the stopped cars to the other shoulder of the highway. Skyler’s braid was no longer neat and tidy. Black flyaways escaped from all angles, and her dark skin was smudged with soot and dirt. She grinned at him.

  “Not a bad day’s work, chief,” she said.

  Nelson, arms draped over the shoulders of the glass-breaking golfers, limped ahead of them. Linc stole a glance over his shoulder, and just like that, the gas tank finally blew, shooting orange flames thirty feet into the air.

  The flowers clutched in his hand were wilted and browning. But they’d survive, just like the man who’d bought them.

  No. Not a bad day’s work at all.

  2

  On the side of the road, Linc used his left hand to apply pressure to a motorcyclist’s leg wound while an EMT worked to stabilize the unconscious woman’s spine.

  He could feel, rather than see, the web of emergency responders as they infiltrated the chaos and began to carefully restore order. Fire crews would control and re-route traffic. Police departments would begin the painstaking investigation. EMTs and paramedics triaged and treated victims, arranging for transport to the nearest hospitals. Wreckers, an army of them, would be staging now, ready for the mop-up. More help arrived by the minute.

  He could feel the environment shifting around them. Men and women in uniform brought with them a sense of calm, a perception of control.

  But here on this scrap of crispy brown grass stained with blood, it was still life and death. The girl had been found fifteen feet from her crushed bike. Unconscious, unmoving.

  The waterfall of sweat that had started in the car had yet to cease, though Linc had stripped out of his jacket. He was going to need six showers just to feel human again.

  His shoulder throbbed. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, flesh still pulsed with the painful burn. But every hand with medical training was a necessity right now.

  Fire departments and cops converged and dispersed around them, each with their own tasks. Traffic control. Clean-up. Patient transpo.

  Linc looked down at the pale, bruised face of the woman. He didn’t recognize her. Had this happened in Benevolence, odds were he would have known her first name. Maybe even what street she lived on.

  “Chopper coming?” he asked the EMT. The gauze he held to the victim’s leg was already saturated. She wouldn’t last in an ambulance.

  “En route. Two minutes out.”

  “She the worst?” he asked. He’d only witnessed a small corner of the carnage.

  The paramedic spared him a quick glance. “Sure as hell hope so.”

  But it was likely there were worse. The skeletal remains of minivans and sedans all around them predicted it.

  No tarps yet, he thought grimly. But given the dozen mangled vehicle corpses, it would be a miracle if the coroner wasn’t needed.

  Accidents happened. People died.

  But what kept him going, what kept them all going, was what else happened at every scene.

  Between twisted metal and over broken glass, strangers helped strangers. Bystanders became heroes on someone else’s worst day. They fetched water bottles and corralled pets. Applied pressure to wounds, lent cell phones and shoulders. They offered strangers hard hugs and whispered promises that everything would be okay.

  A pretty young thing in a green dress gently cleaned blood from an elderly man’s face with a napkin while an EMT checked his vitals. The man’s wife clutched his hand to her chest. Silent tears tracked down her lined face.

  Linc didn’t care for the hero label when others applied it to him. He was trained for this. He had years of experience. He chose this profession. But the woman, probably on her way to meet a friend for lunch, hadn’t. The truck driver supporting a limping teenager and the teenage girl whispering jokes to the man on a stretcher? Those were the real heroes.

  “Chopper’s coming.” The paramedic fastened the leg strap on the spine board. “Let’s get her closer to the landing zone.”

  Linc gripped the board with his left hand and winced when they stood.

  “Sorry, man, didn’t know you were banged up,” the paramedic said. “Yo! Someone with two good hands!”

  “It’s nothing,” Linc insisted. His shoulder took exception.

  “Shit, chief. Must have been one hell of an extension cord.” Brody Lighthorse, the bald, tattooed, Benevolence FD captain and Linc’s best friend, appeared out of the wreckage and grabbed the end of the spine board.

  “Never a dull moment,” he shot back. Linc jogged alongside, still applying pressure to the leg wound while Brody and the paramedic quickly made their way through cars and casualties.

  The helicopter touched down nice and neat on the west-bound lane dotted line. The cargo door was already opening, and a doctor jumped out.

  “What’ve we got, gentlemen?”

  Even over the sound of the rotors, the huskiness of her voice made him forget about the ache in his shoulder. And that was before he saw those eyes. Cool, bottle green. An old scar ran under her left eye, adding an interesting asymmetry to an already arresting face.

  The paramedic recited the particulars—internal bleeding, possible spine injuries—while the doctor whipped off her stethoscope. She was long-legged and sure-footed. Her short dark hair was pulled back in a messy, stubby tail. Loose, wavy strands had already escaped and framed that face. She wore red, red lipstick.

  “Looks like you’ve got a mess on your hands,” she shouted over the rotors to Linc. “Glad there’s only one for me.”

  He opened his mouth, but words failed him.

  “Real miracle, doc,” Brody called back. He tossed an elbow into Linc’s side. “Cat got your tongue, chief?”

  “Let’s see if we can get ourselves another one of those,” she said. “Load her up.”

  As the flight nurse and paramedics shoved the spine board into the chopper, the doctor’s gaze slid Linc’s way again in cool assessment. His tongue felt two sizes too big for his mouth.

  He’d never had trouble talking to women. Hell, he’d flirted outrageously with his kindergarten teacher on the first day of school.

  As the flight nurse—a big, burly, bearded guy—started an IV, the doc’s eyes zeroed in on Linc’s limp arm. “You getting that checked out, Lefty?” she asked.

  His tongue finally loosened. “You doing the checking, Doc Dreamy?” he croaked.

  She paused for a second and arched an eyebrow. “Haven’t heard that in a long time,” she said. “Nice try, but I don’t play doctor.”

  With an emphasis on the word play and a wink, she was climbing back aboard. “Let’s get this bird in the air!”

  They hightailed it away from the rotors as the engine whine increased. Linc gave himself a moment to watch as the helicopter hovered off the ground, then headed off in the direction of the hospital. Taking the green-eyed doctor with it.

  “A distinct improvement over Doc Singh,” Brody decided. The usual flight doc on-scene was short, round, and always looking for an argument over Northeast sports franchises.

  “Yeah,” Linc agreed. A definite improvement.

  “You got little hearts in your eyes.” Brody grinned.

  “I think I’m in love.”

  3

  Dr. Mackenzie O’Neil hovered over her patient as the bird lifted fast enough to tickle the floor of her stomach. Flight medicine came with its own brand of challenges, and she thrived on them. Communication with her patients en route to the trauma center was usually impossible even when they were conscious.

  It was a high-stakes guessing game. A high-wire act of stabilization and being prepared for when things went to hell.

  The unconscious girl before her, early twenties, good physical shape, was a mystery to be solved and saved.

  Mack continued her quick,
careful physical exam while Bubba, flight nurse extraordinaire, cut through the jacket and the t-shirt beneath. Bubba was just an inch and a few pounds shy of the max size limits to practice medicine in the cramped quarters of the EC145. But he was light on his feet.

  “Patient’s abdomen is hard as a rock. Significant bruising on the chest,” Mack reported, pressing on each quadrant.

  “Bleeder, doc?” Sally chirped over the headset from her seat behind the controls. Ride Sally, or RS, as she was known to the air medicine team at Keppler Medical Center, was the best damn pilot Mack had ever had the privilege of flying with. Whisper-soft landings, lightning-fast reflexes, cool under pressure. She was also so petite, she sat on a cushion to reach the controls easier.

  “Looks like it,” she confirmed into the headset’s mic.

  She heard Sally relay the information to the hospital over the radio

  “Bubs, what’s the BP?” Mack asked.

  Bubba was the exact physical opposite of their tiny pilot. Black to her fair freckles. Burly to her waif-like stature. Mack had found the opposites amusing. He still looked like the college football player he’d been while studying nursing. He shook his head. “Tanking.”

  “Let’s push the fluids, see if we can’t get her BP stabilized.” Mack ran through the mental calculations. They were ten minutes out from the hospital. For now, her sole job was to get the girl there alive.

  She took another listen to the chest, eyeing the monitor next to her. “Tachycardic. Decreased breath sounds on right side.”

  “She’s hypoxic,” Bubba said, reading the oximeter. “Intubate?”

  She could feel the patient slipping away. “Yeah. Let’s do this,” she said.

  They moved quickly and in tandem. This was only her third shift and fifth call in a new job in a new place. But she liked and respected her team. Bubba had no problems taking orders from a woman who wasn’t afraid of giving them. And RS was happy to chauffeur them.

  When they’d come in for a landing, the devastation on the highway beneath them was grimly fascinating. Mack had started her medical career flying in and out of battle, hauling injured soldiers. She’d been on choppers under fire, even survived two emergency landings. But seeing this kind of carnage on domestic soil was oddly unsettling.

  From the looks of it, the eighteen-wheeler hadn’t seen the construction signs and was unprepared for the slow down, plowing into multiple vehicles and causing a chain reaction wreck.

  The people on the ground hadn’t been deployed to a hot zone. They didn’t have military training under their belts. They were soccer dads running errands, businesswomen taking lunch breaks, teens playing hooky. Or, like the girl before her, just young women enjoying a nice summer afternoon on a motorcycle.

  “ETA, RS?” she called.

  “Nine minutes,” came the reply.

  “You ever intubated en route, Bubs?” Mack asked.

  “Virgin. Be gentle with me,” he said.

  “She’s crashing,” she noted. “Stay with us, kid.”

  They worked quickly, speaking only when necessary. Sweat coated her brow, and her back grumbled a complaint from her hunched posture. The adrenaline hummed its familiar tune in her bloodstream. It was a siren song. One she was going to have to start resisting…eventually.

  The heart monitor reading flatlined.

  “Hell,” she said and grimly charged the paddles while Bubba started CPR.

  Life and death. She’d grown accustomed to walking that line daily. To seeing the disasters only small percentages of the human race would ever witness firsthand. A retrievalist, a flight doctor, like other first responders, was wired differently. They sought out the crises, made themselves tools. There were protocols in facing down death and gore and trauma. Protocols organized the chaos, gave the brain something to think about besides the horror of young lives slipping away.

  Her hands shook, and she tightened her grip on the paddles.

  “Clear.”

  Bubba danced back.

  It still surprised her how a man of his stature could move so gracefully in the confines. Working in close quarters wasn’t easy, but it did make things convenient. Everything she needed was within easy reach.

  Mack positioned the paddles, sent up her superstitious prayer of “please,” and shocked the hell out of the young heart in her hands.

  “Got beats,” Bubba yelled.

  Thank you, baby Jesus.

  “Let’s intubate,” she said. She swiped an arm over the sweat on her brow and blamed said sweat when she stood too straight and smacked her forehead—the part not covered by her helmet—on the metal shelf above the stretcher.

  “Fucking A,” she muttered.

  The blow surprised the shake out of her hands, and she cleanly slid the trach tube into her patient’s airway.

  “Nice job, Mack,” Bubba said in the headset as their patient’s vitals stabilized.

  They made quick work of one of the leg wounds as the hospital loomed into view, sunlight bouncing off its glass. Hundreds of cars dotting its parking lots. People scurrying in and out like ants.

  Her stomach dipped again as the helicopter descended toward the rooftop helipad. The patient was stable. She’d done her job.

  The trauma team, white coats flapping in the air kicked up by the rotors, waited just inside the doors.

  “Good save,” Bubba said, offering her a fist bump over the patient.

  She returned it. “Back at you, man. Really nice work.”

  The skids touched down almost simultaneously in a slick, smooth landing. “Honey, we’re home,” RS sang.

  Bubba released the door from inside, and Mack jumped out, ducking low. She helped the roof team unload the stretcher and filled them in on the details.

  “Polytraumatic patient, female early twenties, motorcycle versus car. In shock. Intubated.” She rattled off the information to the trauma team. “Lost her and brought her back. One shock.”

  “We got her from here, doc,” the trauma surgeon shouted with a nod. He grabbed a rail on the gurney, and together the team wheeled the nameless girl inside.

  “Another day, another good karma point,” RS said, joining them on the roof.

  “Think she’ll pull through?” Bubba asked.

  “She’s young and otherwise healthy. She’s got a good chance,” Mack predicted. She stretched her arms up and over her head.

  “That her blood?” RS asked, nodding at the smear on Mack’s forehead.

  “Smacked my damn head on the shelf again.”

  “That’s twice now,” Sally said, cracking her gum. “Third time, and we get you one of those giant bubble helmets.”

  Bubba joined them at the edge of the helipad and tapped the scar through his eyebrow. “At least you didn’t need stitches en route,” he said cheerfully.

  Sally checked her watch. “Looks like that’s a wrap, folks. Anyone wanna grab some grub?”

  Mack’s first instinct was a firm no. She was bone tired, and the shake was back in her hands. She clenched them into fists and slid them into the pockets of her flight suit. She was here for a change of scenery, a break while she figured out next steps. Fraternizing with her crew was a good thing, she reminded herself. Normal even. She was forcing herself to embrace normal.

  “Yeah. Sure. Lemme grab a shower first.”

  “And a Band-Aid.” RS smirked, tapping her own unblemished forehead.

  “I’m out. Promised the little lady I’d take the kids grocery shopping tonight to give her an hour of peace,” Bubba said, throwing them a salute. “Great work, Mack.”

  “You, too, Bubs.”

  “Meet you downstairs in thirty? I gotta do some post-flight checks,” RS said, jerking her chin toward the helicopter.

  Another thing Mack appreciated about the pilot. She’d flown with pilots who focused only on pre-flight checklists then walked away from the bird without a backward glance after landing. Ride Sally took her job seriously, beginning to end.

  Mack headed i
nside and down three flights to the locker room where she indulged in a five-minute, scalding hot shower. Her muscles loosened as she washed away the layer of dried sweat. When she was sufficiently clean, she threw the knob to cold and counted down from sixty, letting the iciness reinvigorate her brain.

  She wanted a tall green tea and a sandwich with a mountain of cold cuts. She’d play a little getting to know you with RS, then head on home. Maybe unpack another box, catch up on another study or journal. Bed early. Wake early. Workout. Breakfast.

  And then head into the small-town family practice—God help her—where she’d be spending the next six months of her life.

  She stepped out and toweled off. Examining the cut on her forehead in the mirror, she rolled her eyes. “You were the one who wanted normal,” she muttered to her reflection.

  She ran a comb through her hair, gave it a blast with the hair dryer, and stepped into her civilian clothes. A glance at the clock on the wall told her she still had fifteen minutes.

  For the first time, her thoughts flitted back to the firefighter on the ground.

  Her brain always sifted through calls and responses in odd, dreamlike ways. Rather than replaying the action during the flight, she was thinking of the blue-eyed firefighter with the bum shoulder. He looked more like a lifeguard. Tanned, blond, easy charming grin.

  A pair of nurses in scrubs wandered in and gave her a nod. The one with a short cap of silver-blonde hair popped open her locker and toed off her clogs with a grateful sigh. “I hate twelves.”

  “They’re not all bad when you get to work on Chief Sexy Pants.” The other nurse, willowy and weary, flopped down on the bench. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a sleek tail. “Hear what he did on-scene?”

  “I got the broad strokes from Javier. Something about climbing into a car on fire like a sexy superhero?”

  “He used that beautiful body of his to block the driver from the flames while sawing through the guy’s seatbelt. Dislocates his shoulder, burns his hand, but stays put. Had some Good Sams pull the man through the sunroof. Then his own rookie is hauling his fine ass up, and he stops to grab the flowers the guy got for his wife’s birthday off the front seat.”