Her Denali Medicine Man

by Denise Gwen

  “No, not exactly.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  She gazed up hopefully. “Yes.”

  “Are you named as his contact person on any of his advance directives or on any other instruments?”

  “No,” she said, her head bowed. “I’m not.”

  “Well, then,” the nurse said.

  An orderly popped out of Jake’s cubicle. “Ma’am?” he asked.

  “Yes?” Sarah asked.

  “The patient’s asking for you, but you can’t take too long.”

  “Why?” she demanded, fear rising in her throat.

  “We’re gonna run him up to x-ray to see how badly his leg is fractured, and you won’t be able to come with him, but you can talk to him for a few minutes, if you want.”

  “I do want,” she said, and hurried to the cubicle.

  Jake lay on the gurney bed, looking pale and wan. A bevy of medical people hovered around him, inserting needles, taking his blood pressure, checking his temperature. There was a great deal of tension in the room, but Jake looked up and smiled wanly at her and her heart warmed at the sight of him.

  “Did you set this splint for him?” a nurse asked.

  “Yes, I did,” she said.

  “Nice job,” the nurse said, even as she gently removed it from its placeholder setting, keeping Jake’s leg in place.

  “She’s a great doctor,” Jake said weakly.

  “Are you now?” the nurse asked.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Well,” the nurse said brusquely. “I’m sure you can understand, but we don’t have time to dilly dally around here. You’ve taken good care of him, out in the wild, with the little that you had available. But we’re taking him to x-ray then treating him before he goes into shock.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Sarah,” Jake said.

  “Can I kiss him?” she asked the nurse.

  “I don’t know,” the nurse shot back. “Can you?”

  Okay, you smart-ass.

  “Kiss me, Sarah.”

  She made her way around the bed until she stood at his right side, bent over, and kissed him gently on the lips. He smiled up at her, then his eyelids fluttered closed.

  “Okay, he’s going into shock,” the nurse said, concern in her voice, and Sarah took this as her cue to get out of everyone’s way.

  As she stepped outside of the cubicle, the nurse started barking orders. The nurse and the attending orderlies wheeled Jake’s gurney out of the cubicle and headed, presumably, to x-ray.

  She watched with misery as Jake was borne away, surrounded on all sides by caring, compassionate people.

  A hand on her shoulder. The nurse who’d talked to her when she first arrived.

  “Come on, girl,” she said kindly. “Let’s get your vitals, and then I’ll see what we can do about letting you see your boyfriend.”

  “Thank you,” she warbled.

  The nurse took her vitals. She was perfectly fine, this she knew.

  “You are a little bit dehydrated,” the nurse said. “So, I’m gonna start you on an IV drip.”

  “Okay,” Sarah said with a weary smile. Whatever.

  The nurse got her comfortably settled on the exam table in the cubicle, swabbed her arm, and administered the saline drip to replace lost fluids. A doctor stopped by to check her out, but the real sustenance and treatment came in the form of a lunch tray, which she wolfed down with an uncharacteristic appetite. She, who usually liked to pick delicately at her food, so as to appear not to be a raging hungry lunatic, which she was, ninety-nine percent of the time, ate quickly this time.

  As she finished the roll, topped with butter—usually she abstained from carbohydrates—a friendly nurse came into her cubicle and installed a fresh bag of saline. “Well, as soon as you finish this second course of saline, you’ll be good to go.”

  “Go?” she asked, looking up with astonishment. “Go where?”

  “Why, home, of course,” the nurse said. “Your sister and her husband are on the way here from Sitka. It’s my understanding that they’re going to keep an eye on Jake Roundtree, and get a hotel here, until he’s discharged.”

  “So, I’m not going back to the Tlingit Reservation?”

  “No, your brother-in-law said he wants to keep an eye on you.”

  “Okay, so Dr. Paul Livingston’s touched base with you about me?”

  “Yes, he said he was your brother-in-law, and we verified, so he’s good.”

  “Oh. But what about Jake?”

  “Oh, he’s not going anywhere for a good long while,” the nurse said breezily, and was about to turn on her heel and walk out of the cubicle, when Sarah stopped her.

  “Why? What all’s wrong with him?”

  The nurse turned around and faced her, hesitated, then said, “He’s got a broken left femur, but he’s also falling in and out of consciousness. What with the high dose of OxyContin that you gave him—which was just fine, by the way…” as she saw Sarah’s horrified expression, another assurance was due. “It’s fine. You gave him a bit more than was safe, but considering the circumstances, well, it’s okay—and falling into shock, his body’s now recovering from all that excitement and adrenaline, and he’s become rather ill.” She smiled encouragingly. “The doctor’s keeping him overnight for observation. They’ve got a bed ready for him upstairs.”

  “Can’t I stay with him?” Sarah asked.

  “Where would you stay?” the nurse asked her blandly.

  “I could . . . stay in a hotel?”

  The nurse frowned, checked her chart. “Are you his wife?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Sarah said, allowing her head to fall back onto the pillow.

  “Hmm,” the nurse mused.

  Sarah slept a little, then, later, she awoke to the sensation of a warm hand caressing her own. “Jake?” she asked, rising from sleep.

  “No, it’s just me,” a feminine voice said, and when Sarah looked up, she saw her older sister, Rachel, with Olivia on her hip, and Paul standing beside her, cradling a bundle in his arms.

  “When did you guys get here?” Sarah asked.

  “Just as soon as we got the call,” Rachel said. “What was it, honey? Four hours ago?”

  “Yes, the call came in at ten this morning and I packed everyone up and we hightailed it here to Anchorage.”

  The bundle in Paul’s arms stirred and a tiny mew came out.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Sarah said. “The baby. Oh, the baby. Can I hold him?”

  “Of course, you can, if you think you’re up to it,” Paul said, and laid the bundle into her outstretched arms.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Sarah said, tears filing her eyes. “Oh, he’s beautiful. What’s his name?”

  “Samuel Oliver Livingston,” Olivia announced proudly.

  Sarah cradled the tiny, perfect infant, and a wave of sorrow washed through her.

  I’d be sitting in a bed just like this one, right now, if I’d given birth to this little fellow.

  “He’s beautiful,” Sarah crooned, tears in her eyes.

  “You and Jake had quite an ordeal, out there in the woods,” Rachel said.

  “We did,” she admitted, “but he saved me.”

  “That’s funny,” Paul said, “because Jake said the exact same thing.”

  “He’s out of surgery?” she asked.

  “He spoke to me, briefly,” Paul said, “right after his surgery, but they’ve got him sedated.”

  “Oh,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “When can I see him?”

  Rachel and Paul exchanged glances.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Sarah, honey, you guys were out in the wild for twenty-four hours, and Jake’s wound turned . . . septic.”

  “Oh, my God,” Sarah said. “Oh, Jake.”

  “You did everything possible,” Rachel assured her.

  “Hmm,” Sarah murmured, and turned her face away to the wall to weep silently.

  A silence. />
  “Can you take him?” Sarah asked in a strangled voice, and Paul gently removed his infant son from her arms.

  The moment the tiny bundle of warmth left her lap, she felt suddenly cold and shivered.

  “Sarah,” Rachel said in a quiet voice.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked, angrily dashing the tears away.

  “Sarah, something’s happened, back home.”

  “Sarah,” Jake called out. “Sarah, Sarah.”

  A soothing hand on his forehead. He looked up.

  A nurse.

  “Where’s Dr. Sarah O’Reilly?” he rasped.

  “Who?” the nurse asked. “We don’t have a Sarah O’Reilly on staff here.”

  Then Paul appeared at his bedside.

  “Paul?” he asked.

  “Hello, there,” Paul said. “Heard you battled a grizzly and lived to tell the tale.”

  “What’s happened?” Jake asked. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “Your fractured leg turned septic, my friend,” Paul said. “And the doctors decided to put you into a medically induced coma, to keep you still and let the antibiotics work.”

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “I know, it’s been a lot to absorb,” Paul said, and pulled up a chair to Jake’s bedside.

  “Where’s Sarah, and Rachel?”

  “They left the hospital a few days ago,” Paul said.

  “I’ve been in a coma for two days?” Jake asked, horrified.

  “More like four, but the worst is over.”

  “Wait,” Jake said, rising up to a half-seated position, using his elbows.

  “Hey, hey, hey, there,” Paul said, placing his hands gently on Jake’s chest. “You need your rest, my friend. You narrowly avoided death.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jake said. “Where’s my Sarah?”

  “Sarah’s gone back home.”

  “Home? Back to the Tlingit Reservation?”

  “No,” Paul said. “To Omaha.”

  Sarah’s and Rachel’s father, Gus O’Reilly, suffered a stroke. It was a minor stroke, but a stroke, nonetheless. Paul and Rachel had been at home in Sitka, enjoying their new baby son and letting Olivia bond with him, when t the call from the Anchorage Hospital, advising them that a Dr. Sarah O’Reilly and a Mr. Jake Roundtree had been helicoptered in that morning, after surviving twenty-four hours in the wilds of Alaska.

  They couldn’t do anything immediately about Gus, so Paul put his wife, daughter, and infant son, into the SUV and hurried to the Anchorage Hospital, where they found Sarah in an emergency room cubicle. She was ready to be discharged, and so they told her the news. Both sisters freaked out, and they decided, together, that Sarah would catch a flight back to the lower forty-nine and attend to their dad and find out what was to be done for him, and Rachel would follow in a few days.

  When Sarah was discharged, she, her sister, and the two children, used Paul’s SUV to drive to the Anchorage Airport and Sarah took the first flight out to Seattle. From there, she’d changed planes, arrived in Dallas, and then caught a final flight to Omaha.

  Rachel and the children were in a hotel in Anchorage, hanging out, waiting for Paul. Because Jake’s wound had turned septic, they’d decided that only Paul should see Jake in person, especially as Rachel was nursing her baby. Paul had attended to Jake as he lapsed in and out of consciousness, only going to the hotel at night when he was satisfied that Jake was receiving the best of care.

  It’d all been so rushed, so frantic, so horrifyingly scary, but Paul suddenly checked himself and patted his front shirt pocket. “Dang, I must’ve left it back at the hotel.”

  “What?”

  “Sarah wrote you a note.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll bring it with me when I come back tomorrow.”

  “Any chance you can go get it now?” Jake asked. “So that I can learn the worst?”

  Paul goggled at him.

  “Jake,” he said softly, “I thought you and Sarah fell in love with one another.”

  “I thought so, too,” Jake said sadly, dropping his head onto the pillow, “but I guess I was wrong.”

  Chapter 13

  Omaha, Nebraska

  January 23rd

  Sarah picked up her cell and texted Grant.

  On my way home. Estimated arrival time… 11:22 p.m. Had to come quick. Dad sick. Sister coming with family later. Pick me up please? From the airport?

  She studied her text for a long moment. She’d put a lot of unnecessary information in the text, but the bottom-line note was the one that mattered to her, at the moment. She wanted a ride home from the airport. It was, after the last six weeks apart from one another, the very least he could do.

  She pushed send.

  But Grant didn’t call her or text her all the way home.

  She emerged into the bleak night of a winter in Omaha and a wave of misery washed over her. She gazed around her, looking up and down the length of the terminal departure gate, and again, she hoped, she longed to see Grant, or at least some proof that he’d received her message. A terse I’m on my way! would have satisfied her at this point, but no, nothing.

  Perhaps her text message didn’t get through to him . . .

  She checked her cell.

  No.

  He hadn’t responded to her message.

  He’s probably really busy.

  But a tiny part of her wondered . . . she’d been gone for six weeks, and he couldn’t be bothered to pick her up from the airport? Dad always did that for Mom, whenever she had to fly out of town for some reason . . . and yes, her future husband was an important doctor, to be sure, but then again, so was she, wasn’t she? Didn’t it strike her as a little bit strange?

  It’s of no consequence. I’ll see him when I get home.

  Sarah fought back her disappointment as she flagged down a taxi, gave the cabby the address for the house she shared with Grant—and which he still hadn’t yet put into her name—and climbed into the cab.

  When the cabby pulled up to the house on Taylor Street in the Mallard Landing neighborhood, she paid him and opened the door as he went to the trunk to haul out her battered suitcase. She looked up at the house and noticed how different it looked . . . as if it’d undergone a subtle transformation in her absence. Grant’s black Mercedes was parked in the driveway, but that wasn’t a surprise, because he vastly preferred his sleek red BMW, and she didn’t see it in the half-opened garage.

  He’s still at the hospital . . . at close to midnight?

  Why hadn’t he answered any of her texts?

  She checked her cell phone again and saw no messages or texts.

  The cab pulled away as she walked up the flagstone path to the front door and let herself in. As she opened the door to their bedroom, and as a first waft of stale air flooded her head, she realized that she’d been holding her breath. She stood in the room for a good five minutes before she stirred. There was just something different to the room, to the entire house, and what made it so weird, was she didn’t see anything untoward to give her concern, yet at the same time, nothing gave her relief from the tension rimming her shoulders.

  What did she expect to find?

  Proof of an affair?

  A stray pair of lacy undergarments under the bed?

  She dropped her suitcase at the foot of the bed, then slumped down onto her favorite armchair and leaned over her knees with her elbows on her thighs and her head in her hands.

  I’m back home, and yet I’ve never felt lonelier.

  Jake awoke with a sudden start and looked out the window of his hospital room.

  Where was Sarah? In the arms of her fiancée? No, surely not. She’d hurried home to attend a sick father, and yes, he’d only recently learned of a fiancée, who also lived in Omaha, and they hadn’t resolved their feelings for one another before she left.

  At the back of his mind, he could see her.

  Sarah, my Sarah.

  Her sweet face bubbled up in his consciousness and he saw he
r smiling at him. A shudder of sorrow shot through his heart. He longed to hold her in his arms.

  She thinks you don’t care enough to make the trek to Nebraska to bring her back.

  Well, she’s got another think coming, doesn’t she?

  He pushed the button to call the nurse. When she arrived, she stood in his doorway.

  “Did you call?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I want to be discharged, stat.”

  As she sat in her armchair, her pants pocket started buzzing. Feeling a burst of sudden hope, she fished it out of her pocket and swiped it open. Not Grant, but someone perhaps even more dear to her than he. She held it up to her ear. “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hi, honey” he said hoarsely. “Are you back yet?”

  “Just got back,” she said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, but I’d sure like it if you let me in.”

  She stood up. “In? In where? Dad, where are you?”

  “I’m standing outside your house.”

  “You are? Dad, are you crazy? It’s freezing outside.”

  “I guess you’d better let me in, then.”

  Sarah ran downstairs to the hallway and flung open the door. “Dad, get in here!”

  “Don’t need to invite me twice, young lady,” William O’Reilly said as he walked inside the foyer and stamped his feet on the rug. Luckily, Grant was nowhere around, because he would’ve thrown a little fit if he’d seen her father stamping his snow-and-ice-covered boots on his precious Aubusson carpet.

  “Dad,” Sarah said, brushing the snow off his shoulders and pulling his jacket off, “I can’t believe you. I thought you were sick.”

  “Oh, I was sick, but I’m fine now,” Dad said with a breezy smile.

  “Here, let me help you off with your gloves and your cap.” She pulled off his knit cap and uncoiled his scarf and took all his outerwear to the mudroom and hung them all up on hooks. “Dad, what are you doing here?” she looked out the window, at the pitch-black night. “Dad, did you walk here?”

  “Wow,” William O’Reilly said, rubbing his hands together. “Am I ever glad to see you.”

  “Dad, what in the world?” Sarah ushered her dad into the family room and pushed on the button for the electric fireplace. Dad walked over to it with a stiff-legged gait and held out his hands. “My, oh my, is that ever nice. I was about froze half to death.”