Her Denali Medicine Man

by Denise Gwen

  She took first one faltering step, then another, but still no sign of Jake. She climbed across the twisted hulk of the helicopter and was peering into the wreckage when she saw an outstretched hand.

  “Jake!” Her heart thumped hard. “Oh, Jake!”

  Nothing.

  Was he dead?

  Her spirits dropped. She was all alone out here in the Alaskan wilderness. She was alone, and she didn’t have the first idea as to how she’d extricate herself from this scrape.

  And then it hit her.

  Jake is dead.

  It suddenly occurred to her that she couldn’t bear the idea of a world without Jake in it, and yet, a cool, hard part of her brain knew that the unthinkable happened every day. Sisters died, parents divorced, and one went on with one’s life.

  But Jake.

  She climbed over to where she saw the hand, and the wreckage screamed as she climbed over it, with bits and pieces of metal falling apart and clanging and scraping as she reached the hand and put her fingers to the inside of the wrist.

  And inhaled.

  A pulse.

  A pulse!

  Jake’s alive! Oh, thank the merciful heavens!

  She looked down and saw Jake, still strapped into his seat, and her heart leaped alive in her throat. Not only was he alive, but his body appeared unharmed, and not only that, but he was regaining consciousness.

  “Jake! Oh, Jake, you’re alive!”

  In this moment, in this moment of awareness, of awakening, and upon finding Jake, she was overcome with emotion and gratitude, love and joy.

  I love this man.

  He opened his eyes and looked up at her and smiled. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  “I guess we crashed, huh?”

  “We did.”

  “Help me get out of this thing, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Sarah dove forward, pushed some debris away, and bent down to push hard on the button that contained the five-point harness. She pressed, harder than she thought possible, and the buckle unsnapped, and Jake reached down to pull the harness up, and as he did so, he fell out of his seat and landed, screaming, on his stomach.

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God,” she cried. “What’d I do?”

  “Arghhhhh,” he cried. “Oh, God, I think my leg’s broken.”

  She looked at him, lying on his stomach, and she saw the right leg it looked fine, but when she looked at the left leg, she noticed it’d bent at a bizarre and painful angle.

  Yes, he’s broken his left leg.

  “It’s okay,” she said, bending down. “It’s only a broken leg, and I’ll splint it up for you, and we’re really not that far away from help, and we’ll get you to a hospital and get you fixed right up.”

  An absurd flash of hope and her joy at the future filled up her heart. Jake’s leg was broken, it needed mending. She was a doctor, she could easily mend Jake’s broken leg.

  Any obstacles life presented to her, she’d handle, and she’d handle them well.

  That’s when she noticed something moving, just outside her peripheral vision.

  She looked up sharply.

  Something darted between the shadows in the woods.

  Probably a bear. Of course, why not throw a bear at her? Sure, why not? She could handle anything, but perhaps not a bear. Well, a bear might be doable, but please, dear God, don’t let it be a grizzly, please? She knew things about bears. The more noise a person made, the better. The less food one left lying around a campsite, even better. Well, she wasn’t about to leave food lying around, and she certainly wasn’t going to be a quiet little mouse as she tended to Jake’s injuries, but surely, surely, the bear might leave them alone?

  Dare she to hope?

  And dare she to hope that it really was a nice, ordinary black bear, and not a grizzly?

  Dare she?

  In the last moments before the copter crashed, the only thing Jake remembered were Sarah’s bright green eyes as she gazed at him, a look of horror on her face.

  If I have to die, I guess I can die a happy man.

  And then the copter crashed, Sarah screamed, and his mind went blank.

  He floated, he knew he was alive, but he existed neither in time nor place. He sensed . . . nothing. He heard things: an anguished cry, a scream of pain, the cracking, searing, wrenching sounds of a helicopter falling apart, and then he heard an animal shriek of surprise and pain.

  Slowly, by degrees, he grew aware of his body—the clammy skin, the heavy, lead weight of his body strapped in the seat, but weirdly the seat was no longer connected to the copter base, but was firmly lodged in a pile of debris, and only the wide open expanse of the wild Alaskan wilderness to serve as a ceiling.

  Jake didn’t know how, but miraculously, his life had been spared. He found himself strapped in this seat, his legs dangling in the air, and his arms flailing around him. He was trapped like a bug on its back. He smelled the wet earth, the rotted leaves, the damp soil. He became aware of a dull throbbing, a growing awareness that something was wrong with his left leg, but still he remained hopeful.

  I’m still alive, there’s that, at least.

  He tried to move, to lift his left arm, but couldn’t, and under normal circumstances, this would’ve upset him. But he seemed to hover in this strange, yet not entirely unwelcome, black space of time and silence.

  Time passed . . . his eyelids closed, the sunlight streamed across his face, and he basked in the warmth, his extremities turned cold, and his skin broke out in a clammy sweat. If he didn’t get out of this seat soon and warm his body he’d die of shock.

  “Jake!” Sarah’s voice called out. “Oh, Jake, you’re alive!”

  Even without the benefit of an x-ray, she could clearly see that his left leg was broken.

  “Jake, honey, we need to turn you over and get you out of this wreckage, and stretched out on the grass so that I can splint your leg, okay?”

  “O-O-Okay,” he shuddered out.

  She jumped down into the tight space with him and bent down to put her hands under his shoulders. “We need to turn you over.”

  “Unnnngh,” he groaned, and she decided the best thing to do was to just get it done, and, with a strength she never knew she possessed, she flipped him over onto his back and he screamed again. Yes, the left leg surely was broken, for it flopped around grotesquely and made spastic, jerking movements that no human being could possibly make.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now, let’s get you out of this cockpit.”

  “Wait,” he said. “I need some pain relief.”

  “You might be going into shock and it’s a bad idea to give you an opioid.”

  “I know, but I really need something, Sarah.”

  “Oh, you poor man.”

  “Oh, my God, let me rest a minute, hold on, let me stop.”

  She peered up and above the shattered debris of the helicopter and saw a small clearing where she might just be able to help walk him free of the broken helicopter, but once she did that, where would they go?

  She saw another darting movement in the deep woods, and her heart trembled. Were they safer here, in the copter, or was it safer to get clear of the copter and set up a base camp? She didn’t know what the best decision was, but the first thing she had to do was get Jake stabilized.

  The irony of the situation did not escape Jake. Here he was, in a quiet, secluded setting, with a gorgeous girl running her experienced doctor’s hands up and down his thigh, probing as gently as she dared, to find the point of the fracture and there was absolutely nothing romantic he could do about it. Because, number one, he was in pain. And number two, he had a funny feeling there’d be some furry visitors to the site before too much more time passed, and he didn’t want to scare her, but they needed to leave the crash site, and soon.

  After she finished working her hands up and down the left leg, she put her finger at a point on his jeans above the fracture, and, with her finger
still placed on the fabric, she turned around and reached into her backpack and pulled out a pocketknife. She unsnapped it, put her finger to the point, pulled the fabric up while digging the knife down, and cut the pants leg open as if making his jeans into shorts. It wasn’t until she’d exposed the leg that she let out a deep sigh of relief.

  “The skin’s not broken,” she said at last.

  “That’s good,” Jake said.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered.

  Thank goodness for small miracles, eh?

  “How soon can you start giving me some pain relief?” He started with surprise at how blurry his voice sounded. He realized that he was floating in and out of consciousness.

  “Okay,” she said, “let me see what I can do.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a bottle of fentanyl. She grabbed a syringe, a cotton ball, and some iodine. He watched absently, feeling strangely removed from the scene, as she scrubbed his arm where she planned to administer the injection. She loaded the syringe then injected him with 50 mcg of fentanyl. His brow furrowed, then cleared, as the fentanyl seeped into his body, and he couldn’t help it, he fell asleep.

  Sarah breathed out a sigh of relief when Jake fell asleep. The poor guy was so accustomed to taking care of others, she’d half expected him to grab the syringe himself and administer the dose of fentanyl, so she was grateful that she’d relieved his pain, at least, for the moment.

  It gave her the freedom to do her job.

  Now to set the splint.

  She climbed to her feet and climbed out of the shattered copter and scrabbled around in the brush and muck and the debris of the crash, until she found two slender saplings, of sufficient thickness, and some shards of metal. She brought the saplings and metal back to Jake’s side and said to his closed eyelids, “I’m sorry to do this to you, but it’s necessary, so here goes.”

  She took ahold of his left leg and, gently yet firmly, moved the leg into the correct position, with a great deal of crunching and cracking that killed her ears to hear.

  I’m so glad I gave him pain relief before I started working on him.

  As he slept, she placed the splints and the metal around the broken leg and bound it all together with duct tape. There. For the time being, at least, his leg was secure, and, if need be, he could be moved, although any kind of movement at all needed to be avoided.

  All this work made her break out into a cold sweat, so she pulled off her parka and set it over Jake as a blanket.

  She sat back on her haunches and studied her work. Not bad, not bad at all.

  But if she didn’t get Jake to safety, and soon, he’d die from exposure.

  Now to radio for help.

  Tears filled her eyes, but she still had work to do. She reached over the cockpit and rummaged around the control panel and the area below it, until she found what she’d been looking for, the satellite box. It’d be ages before help arrived if she couldn’t dig it up out of the wreckage.

  From behind her, a weak voice stirred her to an awareness that she wasn’t alone.

  “Try the knapsack at your feet.”

  He gazed up at her with bleary eyes.

  I don’t believe I’ve ever in my life seen her looking more beautiful, nor more luminous.

  She was the only bright spot in this dusky Alaskan wilderness.

  She gazed down at him, her bright green eyes glowing, and jumped over a pile of debris straddling him with her legs. He longed to make a sly joke, but refrained, and she put her hands on either side of his face.

  “Jake, Jake, oh Jake! Oh, my goodness, oh my goodness, oh, this is wonderful, I’m so glad you’re awake!” She dashed the tears off her cheeks.

  “I don’t want to frighten you,” he said, gazing up into her tear-streaked face, “but we’re going to need to leave this site soon. I’m sure we’re going to be visited by bears, before too much time passes.”

  “I did see some movement,” she said. “Off in the woods.”

  “I figured,” he said.

  “Will there be very many?” she asked anxiously.

  He opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated. He didn’t know whether this was worth sharing with her, or if it’d only needlessly frighten her. “We are in the area where the highest incidence of grizzlies can be found, as many of them have been coming down out of the mountains.”

  It had the desired effect, for she turned pale. “Then we’d better get that satellite phone, stat.”

  “That’s right.” He smiled up at her, attempting to relieve the anxiety he saw on her face. “It’s in the knapsack.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Knapsack, stat.”

  “Stat,” he said weakly, and then dropped his head back to the ground.

  “Guide me, okay?” she called out.

  “Okay.” He opened his eyes and watched as she hurried back over a shattered piece of wreckage to get to the cockpit and scrambled over to the opposite side of the console until she found what she was looking for, his knapsack. She cried out with exultation as she pulled it out of the debris and carried it back over to Jake’s side and pushed the knapsack under his nose. He glanced at it, smiled faintly. “Good girl. Now, pull it out of there and let me take a look.”

  She pulled open the zipper, reached inside, and pulled out the satellite phone. “There it is.”

  “Good, now let’s turn it on and dial the emergency code.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” she said.

  “It’s okay, honey. I do.”

  It’d just popped out of him, honest, the endearment, and she started with surprise, but quickly recollected herself and returned her focus to getting the satellite to work.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re not going into shock, are you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Here, let me check.” She put her hand against his forehead, and he smiled inwardly at the lovely sensation of her skin against his face.

  “How am I, Doc?” he asked, smiling.

  “Not bad,” she mused. “You seem okay, but then again, how can I tell, my fingers are frozen to the nub.”

  “My gloves ought to be in the bottom of the knapsack there.”

  “I’ll get them in a minute.”

  “Get them now, and I’ll get the satellite up.”

  “Okay.”

  As she scrabbled around in the bottom of the knapsack, he got the satellite started. He adjusted some knobs, set some dial tones, and searched the channel until the satellite phone erupted into a hiss of static and noise. After a moment, the noise cleared, and he heard a low hum.

  “That’s the sound I want to hear,” he said.

  “Can I help in some way?”

  “Find channel forty-five for me.” He shook his head. “I’m starting to fall asleep here.”

  “Oh, dear. I wonder if I should’ve given you less fentanyl.”

  “Fentanyl?” he asked, his eyelids drooping closed. “I didn’t know you gave me fentanyl. I thought it was oxycodone.”

  “I gave you an injection of fentanyl right before I started working on your leg.”

  “How strong was the dose you gave me,” he said, as his eyelids closed.

  “Jake, Jake!” she cried out, suddenly frantic. “Honey, wake up, please don’t fall asleep.” When she shook his shoulders, he startled awake, and looked around him with a bleary look. “Huh, oh, huh?” he asked, and then his eyes fluttered closed again.

  She clocked on channel forty-five and listened.

  Nothing.

  “Hello, hello?” she asked.

  Nothing.

  A grunting sound, feral, wild, came from the woods and her heart fluttered in her chest. “Jake,” she whimpered. “The bear’s coming out.”

  She gazed at the opening in the woods and an enormous brown bear—was it a grizzly—emerged into the clearing. It sniffed the ground, then looked over at them.

  Jake startled awake again. “What’s up?”

  “There’s
a bear,” she said.

  “Uh, oh. That’s not good.”

  “No, really?” she asked, sarcastic, frightened. “Really?”

  “Did you reach someone on the satellite?”

  “I can’t get it to work.”

  “Here, let me try.”

  She handed it to him, gazing over her shoulder at the bear, standing in the clearing and sniffing the ground.

  “He’s not too shy, is he?” she asked, her voice rimmed with tension.

  “No, but that’s okay.” He looked around him. “Somewhere in this shattered helicopter is a bullhorn. Why don’t you see if you can find it, while I call for help?”

  “Okay,” she said, grateful for anything that gave her something to do.

  She was running on fear and tension. The light was fading, it was getting colder. They’d been stuck on the ground for what seemed like hours, but it’d probably been only an hour or so, and in all that time she’d been focused on taking care of Jake and not on calling for help.

  They hadn’t even called for help, yet, and the realization was scaring her, because now that they were stuck, and it was growing dark, they were drawing the bear’s attention, and who knew how many more were hanging out in the woods, looking for food, for nice, tender, human morsels to munch upon.

  She fought back these worries as she scrambled back up and over the debris and into the cockpit area and scrabbled around on the copter floor and around the controls. She pulled open drawers, pushed buttons, checked boxes, but couldn’t find anything resembling a foghorn or bullhorn.

  Maybe it’s in the knapsack.

  She scrambled back to Jake’s area. He looked up. “Did you find the bullhorn?”

  “No,” she said, and at that moment, the bear bellowed, a huge, terrifying roar. It was looking right at them. It still hadn’t come any closer, but it was certainly aware of them. “I can’t find it, I’ve searched everywhere, and I’m starting to freak out a little bit here.”

  “What’s a big ole grizzly bear to my girl, huh?” Jake asked, his voice sounding slurred.

  “Um, excuse me. Did you say a grizzly bear?” she glanced back at the animal staring at her, and her heart shivered in her chest. Holy Cow, it was a grizzly bear.