Catching Preeya (Paradise South Book 3)

by Rissa Brahm

  “Ma’am?”

  “Water. I need water to take my blood pressure medicine. Extra ice.”

  Of course. Extra ice, no extra manners. None at all, in fact.

  Gnashing her back teeth, Preeya glided to the rear of the cabin for the extra ice—and to take an extra long, clearing breath, then to vent to Amanda. Once at the economy crew area, she caught a moan of pain from Amanda as her friend lifted a heavy tray from a bottom fridge drawer. Without a second thought, Preeya put 9B’s ice request on hold to help Amanda restock the cart.

  “Thanks, Pree. Lower back’s really getting to me these days.”

  “Maybe that masseuse we like will be in the crew lounge today.”

  “He’s in Dallas, Pree, not Houston.”

  “You’re right. Hey, can you hand me a cup of ice from the—”

  Ping. The always-magical sound of some passenger’s call button. Amanda glanced down the aisle and sighed. “6C. God, do they have us running today, or what?”

  “You’re not kidding,” Preeya said with her head behind the mini-fridge door.

  “After 6C, can you take the cart, Pree? I left off at row twenty-three. I’ll meet you there in a minute, just gotta pee again…sooo bad.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Amanda pulled the restroom door closed and Preeya moved into the aisle when the back intercom buzzed. Leena—but Preeya had already turned her attention to 6B…and saw Dr. Ben Trainer crouching down in the aisle.

  Sudden and jagged screaming from the panicked mother. Shit.

  Preeya grabbed the Medibox to her left, pulled it from its wall clasps, then flew down to row six.

  Leena got there at the same time.

  The boy, the lanky tween with earbuds, was gasping for air, one hand at his throat, one on his chest, eyes wild with fear, wheezing and hissing and terrified.

  Dr. Ben Trainer looked up at Preeya from his crouching position in the aisle. “No known allergies, according to the mother. This is a first-time occurrence.” He refocused on the boy, offering him soothing sweeps of comfort with words and questions and instructions while he looked in his mouth, checked his pulse, scrutinized his pupils, all almost simultaneously. That is, until the boy made a hard, raspy grab for air, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he lost consciousness.

  As if in slow motion, the boy began falling sideways, limp like a rag doll, but Ben caught him and situated him upright in the seat. He held him there while checking his carotid pulse again, and without looking away from the boy, he uttered a directive. “Epinephrine…for anaphylaxis—now, Preeya. Now.”

  She had already knelt beside him, med kit beside her, the snap-clasps flung up with both thumbs. She hunted, found, grabbed the epinephrine pens.

  The mother began to shriek. Shivers scurried like a thousand spiders up Preeya’s spine. Leena tried to calm the woman, her hands stroking the mother’s arms, but the woman’s panic only worsened and made her other child—the little girl Preeya’d given crayons to earlier—sob and wail. The surrounding passengers were fast on their way to frantic, too. The contagion was hard to contain—even Leena was getting frazzled. And where the hell was Amanda? Still in the bathroom?

  Ben, somehow still mellow yet supremely focused, locked eyes with Preeya as she unwrapped the first of the two adrenaline auto-injectors.

  “His chest is still lifting.” A breathing boy, a good sign.

  “And if we can stop the rapid throat swelling, it’ll continue to. So, Preeya, listen. I need three things. I need calm, I need the captain to land at a major metro, and…I need those two epi auto-injectors at the ready—”

  She slapped the first one in his hand and began ripping open the second auto-injector while his other directives registered. She gathered all the air she could into her boa-constricted chest and prepared her announcement deep and loud, ignoring her own light-headedness. “Please, everyone,” she said as she watched him slam the pen into the boy’s thigh, but no response, “stay seated, seat belts buckled, and, for the doctor, you must remain calm and quiet.”

  She handed him the second injector.

  But he handed it back. “We wait five minutes.” He checked his watch. “Now, while I’ve got a hold of him, punch these armrests up. I need him flat.”

  She did as he asked. Locating the hidden latch on the underside of the aisle armrest, she lifted it, then slammed the other two up hard and quick, while calling to her superior who was now trembling in the throes of the mother’s fit. “Debrief the captain, Leena. We need to land. Major metro. Now.”

  “Right.” Leena sniffled, took a huge breath, then waved Amanda up.

  Amanda appeared the next second and took the mother’s arm.

  But the mother balked. “Why isn’t he doing CPR? Why isn’t he helping him breathe? My boy!”

  Preeya stood up to help Ben lay the boy out, head at the window, feet hanging in the aisle, and then turned to the woman. “Your son is in good hands, ma’am, but the doctor needs calm.” She looked deep into the woman’s eyes—such horrified, helpless eyes. Eyes, she imagined, of a mother who thought she might very possibly outlive her child. “Go with Amanda so your daughter isn’t seeing this. Then come back when you’re calm…and bring back some water for your son.” Preeya touched the woman’s arm with a soft graze. “He should be revived by then, and he’ll need his mother, and that water. Go now.”

  Amanda took the panic-stricken woman away from the scene and down the aisle, leaving Preeya to help Ben to help the near-breathless boy who had begun turning a ghostly shade of blue.

  She put her hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Okay. Ready.”

  But Leena still stood there staring.

  “Go, Leena.” Preeya snapped. What the hell? Leena spun around in the direction of the cockpit.

  “And get the AEDs,” Ben called.

  The AEDs? Preeya swallowed hard and nearly choked on the dryness in her throat. Please don’t need the defib pads for this boy. This child.

  Ben’s hand met hers, as if sensing her terror. “Probably won’t need ’em; it’s just in case. Second epi shot, please.”

  While he checked the boy’s carotid again, she placed the injector in his free hand.

  “Pulse and breathing are slowing.” He held the shot up to his face and checked the injector’s dosage. “Another point-three milligrams…here we go.” He slammed it hard into the boy’s other thigh.

  They both stared at the child. At his eyes and face, his throat, his chest…which had ceased any and all movement. The boy’s breath had stopped.

  “Okay, buddy, let’s do this.” Ben glanced at his watch to note the time again, then rose up on his knees and began CPR.

  “The pads, now?” Preeya asked from the floor while holding Ben’s waist to balance him through a rough patch of turbulence.

  Between counts, “No, not yet.”

  Ben finished two swift breaths into the boy’s mouth, now purple lips. Still nothing. “Yes—two, three, four—the pads.” Breath, breath. “But, Jesus, a defibrillator on this age heart…”

  Shit, was Ben getting concerned?

  “I’m going to grab the AEDs myself—Leena’s taking too long.” She spun toward first class to go, but Ben grabbed her wrist before she took a step.

  Ben couldn’t say a word to follow up his touch before she heard it. A gasp.

  A gasp from heaven, that’s what met her ears.

  The boy jolted, his torso suddenly perpendicular to his legs, clutching his neck in his hands, air flooding into his shocked and oxygen-deprived body. The lanky and frail twelve-year-old body, now sitting up with life. Alive, thank God.

  His mother came running up the aisle toward them and knelt at her boy’s feet. Ben slid behind the boy at the window end of the row and let the child rest on Ben’s chest while the child continued to oxygenate.

  Preeya’s heart racked her rib cage and, officially dizzy from adrenaline and pure fear, she let her body slide to the floor then surrender back onto her calves. She swal
lowed back the emotion, held it at the brink. Oh God, that mother’s terror. Dear Jesus, the weight of the mere thought of losing a child made her never, ever want kids. Thoughts of losing Prana, her baby sister, swept in but Preeya blew them out again with a violent gust as quick as they’d come. No, not ever.

  Leena was there the next second, heaving with relief. “Oh God, thank you.”

  “Landing…?” Ben asked of Leena.

  “Boise. Seven minutes out.”

  “With this type of allergic event, we don’t know if there will be another episode. Have an ambulance standing by. And two more injections at the ready.”

  Preeya got up from the floor. “The kit in the front has two more. I’ll get ’em. And waters…” The boy’s mother brought one back for her son as Preeya had instructed. “I’ll bring back a few more bottles.”

  “Yes. Please,” Ben said, his head leaning against the hard window shade, the boy still panting, eyes closed, weak, wilted against Ben’s sweat-drenched and heaving chest.

  Preeya started down the aisle, but looked back over her shoulder.

  At Dr. Ben Trainer.

  How’d he do it? Moment by moment, breath by breath, he’d pushed life back into the lifeless. He literally breathed a second chance into that near-dead boy, that hardly-lived-yet son of that mother, that gasping-and-grasping child, the brother to that wailing little girl. To keep it down, all of the erupting near-death and too-close, Preeya bit her bottom lip. Hard. So hard it might’ve drawn blood—she didn’t know or care. But the sharp pain did its job. No tears. Breathe, and no tears.

  It had been just way too much life and death. Perhaps she’d stumbled upon yet another subconscious reason for having dropped out of medical school. Life and death. Not for her.

  CHAPTER 9

  They landed in Boise, Idaho, without another anaphylactic episode, and the twelve-year-old was off-loaded quickly and safely. His trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, would be for another time, apparently.

  As would Preeya’s.

  She’d most definitely arrive in Vallarta some time after Amy’s wedding ceremony—and she’d probably miss the celebration, too. She was the flight attendant with the least seniority, the most medical training, the most favors owed to her associates, and the one who’d been most present during the entire medical ordeal in-flight, so she was required to stay grounded until all the mandatory medical and liability paperwork for the airline and FTA was finished.

  In Boise.

  “I’ll be back, say, in two hours for the forms?” the Jetta Air rep asked…but didn’t ask.

  Preeya inhaled, rallying patience and calm. “Sure thing. And when’s my flight out?”

  “Tomorrow, the two p.m. to Houston.”

  Two p.m. Three and a half hours to Houston, a minimum one-hour layover, a three-hour flight to Vallarta…if there’s a non-stop. She’d get to Amy no earlier than, shit, 8:00 p.m.?

  Preeya procrastinated making the call to Amy. An image of her friend’s far-off fist wringing out Preeya’s heart muscle in her chest made it hard to catch a full breath. And honestly, she was strangely disappointed. Amy’s extravagant shindig—and the perfect distraction from her father’s matrimonial joke—might have even been fun. Reuniting with college friends, laughing, dancing, and drinking—which she’d have kept light, the mere thought of vodka in the guest room sent shivers up her spine. She sighed then pinched the bridge of her nose.

  And shit. It dawned on her that she now had her time-off request solidified, flights set. Three days in Mexico with no one there she’d know when she arrived. Amy and Darren would be on their honeymoon cruise already, and everyone else would also be long gone. She’d have to hit the beautiful beaches and sites on her own. Solo. Chills drifted up her neck.

  She swallowed and looked across the lobby of the oh-so-glamorous Boise Inn.

  Where she was not alone.

  The Jetta Air representative stood there grinning from ear to ear, a proud glimmer in her eye—what a happy little delegator.

  And sitting at Preeya’s three o’clock with a different kind of pride—yes, a justified yet modest, subdued pride—was Dr. Ben Trainer. He’d also been asked to stay in Boise—the airline would compensate him with a few travel vouchers for the future as thanks—as his input and medical sign-off were both necessary for the liability report.

  So Boise and Doctor Ben—who she might just have been wrong about, but probably not. She sighed for the tenth time and bit her bottom lip. Bright sides? She wasn’t all alone, and she wasn’t in a guest room in Seattle or at a wedding in Berkeley. Yeah, there’s always got to be a bright side. More of her mother’s wisdom that had stuck.

  Preeya zoned out the window, but from her side view caught the good doctor’s smile and his simple, sweet gaze to match. She ventured a look his way, but he flicked his attention to the enormous pile of forms.

  Yes, best focus on the paperwork.

  Because they had only two hours. For the mountain of paperwork. And after that absurd and completely unrealistic deadline? Twenty-four hours of nothing in the nation’s great potato capital.

  Stick to the silver lining, Preeya, and just go with it.

  Go with it, right. Go help the man get through the paperwork and then…talk to him. Like a human being. What else is there to do?

  Preeya swallowed then sat forward on her seat. “Are you—”

  “—so should…”

  They both snickered at their simultaneous attempts, then immediately threw their gazes elsewhere. Until she felt his blazing eyes on her neck, and her checks burned. She turned her head and caught him. And he didn’t flinch. He only keyed in to her gaze harder. Unrelenting.

  Moments slinked by; neither looked away. Not awkward, and not necessarily hot, though something in her stomach fluttered. No, it was something else. Something lighter. A relief. One that only two people who had saved a life together seven miles above the earth could understand, know, share.

  And so this was it. Just her and him, the dynamic duo, stuck in the invigorating city—town—of Boise, Idaho. Together for the next twenty-four hours.

  *

  She pulled a breath to quiet the deafening pulse in her ears—God, what was with the nerves?—then gave him a thin-lined smile. “So, starting the paperwork…”

  “Yes, we should…” He took out a pair of glasses from his man-bag—she swallowed her giggle—then felt her phone at her fingertips.

  Wait—what about Amy? And Gigi, especially after this morning’s lecture. “Um, you know, though…I should send a few ‘I’m okay’ texts to family first. Who knows if this little detour made the news…then I’m all yours.”

  His brows floated high on his forehead and his cheeks blushed—Jesus, all yours? She shook her head, positive her cheeks were redder than his, while he cleared his throat and, blinking his eyes long and slow, he rubbed the top of his head. A beat passed, then he snickered, effectively breaking the awkward. “Yeah, good idea. Let’s, uh, get our phone calls out of the way and then…get to this pile.”

  Preeya nodded and tore her eyes from his—again. Text Gigi. Yes, do that.

  She keyed with lightning-fast thumbs—I’m fine. In Boise, detour. Will call you tomorrow. Still under the man’s well-maintained gaze, her pulse now in her neck, maybe even visible to her one-man audience, she was all-and-only thumbs—she watched the autocorrect’s necessary magic as she tried to slow her breathing down, if only a bit.

  She shifted her gaze up at him as he snapped his down—to his phone. He was now actively texting, too.

  Okay—back to her device—next, Amy. A call, not a text. Necessary for this level of news. She shifted in her seat, squared off to the window so her voice wouldn’t carry, and sighed into making her dreaded phone call.

  It rang and rang and rang—not unexpected. Amy and the rest of the bridal party would be getting ready for the rehearsal dinner—until the voice mail greeting took the baton.

  “Hi! This is Amy Rine, soon-to-be Mrs. Amy James
.” Cue the high-pitched squeals and giggles, and Preeya’s eye roll then accepting grin. “Please leave a message and I’ll try to get back to you before the honeymoon. Otherwise…catch ya after the fifteenth!” Beep.

  “Ame, it’s Pree. Just…call me back as soon as you get this. Love ya.” Love. Knowing Amy, neither love nor a thirty-five-thousand-foot-high near-death emergency would soften the blow. Preeya pictured Amy smothered by her horrid sister slash maid of honor, and her equally horrible mother, and sighed with her eyes. A connection that Amy and Preeya shared—horrendous family members—made this detour all the worse. Preeya should have buffered her trip by an extra day at least. If she had thought about—

  “So, the potato capital of the world, huh?”

  Preeya looked up from her phone while her thumbs paused at her virtual keyboard, unsure what to type as a follow-up text to Amy, anyway.

  “Yes, right.” She licked her extremely dry lips and cracked a smile. “Potato capital.”

  “And when we get done with this…crap…” Ben nodded at the pile, “I hear the Annual Potato Conference is going on in town. That’s why they stuck us here, at the elegant…Boise Inn. The real hotels are all full.” He puffed out a laugh then swallowed as awkward silence ensued.

  She smiled. “I guess every great root vegetable deserves a big annual celebration?”

  “Right. So, after we tear through this pile, we can maybe check it out…or…” He glanced at the papers then looked over his shoulder, “we could check out the bar instead. Maybe even before we hit the pile? A quick decompressing drink?”

  Preeya raised her brows at him and tilted her head. Who’s this?

  “I mean…I’m glad I skipped the drink on the plane…but I’d say that at least one drink is medically necessary at this point.” He leaned forward and looked over the paper pile’s horizon. “I tell ya, I’ve been in the middle of an Ebola epidemic in West Africa and a malaria scare in Nepal…but having an anaphylactic kid some thirty thousand feet up somehow trumped it for me. My nerves don’t rattle easily, but right now a shot of alcohol is doctor ordered.”