by Dianne Drake
At that mention of Lorna’s name, Ana Flavia’s face lit up. “Lorna OK,” she said.
“She sure is,” Gideon agreed. “More than I ever noticed.” Because he’d niched her into the same group as his parents the instant she’d become a journalist. To him, journalist equated to family neglect, instability, problems. “Lorna sure is OK, isn’t she?” he said, almost wistfully.
Of all things, he was actually thinking about asking her to stay on to the end of this rescue. Maybe he should. Normally, he might have. But her cameraman, Frayne, was perpetually complaining that they’d been using up too much of Lorna’s time with medical duties that weren’t hers to perform. Which was true. They had been. She was willing, she was good. And if he didn’t miss his guess, she liked the work. Of course the documentary was important to the operation. So it was probably best to let her get back to her own duties. Still, as he looked down at Ana Flavia’s expectant face while he did a quick check now that she was settled into bed and adequately rehydrated, he wanted to ask Lorna to stay. That was personal, though. Not professional.
“Lorna OK,” Ana Flavia said again, as Gideon prepared to take a few stitches in a gash on her arm. She smiled up at him.
Gideon returned the smile. “Yes,” he whispered. “She is.” More OK than he’d remembered her to be.
On her way up the trail, Lorna saw Estella’s mother carry the child away. It was so good to see a happy ending here. Mother and daughter reunited. Estella’s mother was crying, hugging her daughter tight. In the end, that’s all that mattered, really. Not the houses. Not the possessions. Just the lives, the reunions. “I’m glad there are happy endings,” Lorna said to Estella’s mother in passing, even though the woman didn’t understand. But she understood Lorna’s smile, because she offered one back.
“No, you can’t stay,” she said to herself as she made her way through the mud. “Don’t even think about it. This is Gideon’s life, not yours.” But she was thinking about it…thinking hard as she took the hike up to the south face of the mountain. It was a lengthy one, and trying to get herself over all the remains of houses and other buildings washed out by the mud and rain was difficult. It wasn’t raining now, but what had come down overnight and first thing that morning had made the area even slicker than it had been yesterday, and Lorna was forced to choose her steps deliberately so she didn’t fall down.
Overall, the area was beautiful, though. The jungles lush and green, the mountains stunning. It was no wonder that only a few kilometers down the road several lavish resorts had nestled themselves into the countryside to play host to the wealthy who traveled in from the entire of Rio de Janeiro State and São Paulo, and from as far away as Goiânia and Brasilia, to holiday in luxury unequaled by anything else in this part of the world. The air here was refreshing and not so humid for a subtropical climate. The temperatures were moderate, too. Not as hot as the summer’s hottest temperatures, and not as cold as the winter’s coldest.
It was a perfect place in so many ways, yet when the rains came…Lorna shuddered, looking up the south face of the mountain. When the rains came, nothing was perfect.
“Dani,” she said into the radio, hoping the reception would be good. There were too many people scattered about, picking through their belongings, to find her amongst them. “Dani, it’s Lorna. Can you hear me?”
Dani’s radio crackled on. “I thought you were working down at the hospital.”
“All the other doctors were down there, so they didn’t need me there.”
“Good, because I could sure use a doctor up here. Dag wants to get on the trail, Tom’s wandered off, and I have six people who need treating. Can’t leave them alone as a couple have some significant injuries, but I need to let Dag loose because I think he’s sensing a survivor somewhere close by.”
“Tell me where you are and I’m on my way!” Lorna could almost feel the adrenaline starting to pump. Amazing, how much she liked this. So much of the time she’d been married, especially toward the end, she’d resented the way Gideon had always gone off at a moment’s notice. They’d called, he’d run. But she understood that now. More than that, she owed him an apology.
Dani’s directions were fairly easy to follow, and Lorna found her within minutes. “Dag’s frantic,” she said, pointing to her German Shepherd, a typical tri-color variety. “He wants to get off leash, and get on the hunt, and when’s he’s this anxious I hate to hold him back.” She turned an affectionate smile toward her dog. “These dogs…it’s amazing how much they want to help. Look, I’m going to catch up with Tom. He has a couple of the volunteers with him further up but I’ll send one back to you, if you want.”
Lorna took a quick appraisal of the casualties awaiting treatment, all six men and women sitting and lying on muddy boards ripped out from the houses. They were all conscious, all alert, and none seemed too much in pain. “I’ll be fine here,” she said, dropping the bag of medical supplies onto one of the boards.
Dani held up her two-way radio as she untied Dag’s leash from a small palm tree. “If you need me…”
Lorna nodded, as she turned her attention to her first patient. She was glad to be doing this. Maybe part of that was her need to show Gideon that she was just as much a doctor as he, that she could do the hard work, too. But the bigger part of it was that getting back into real hands-on medicine felt good. It had been a long, long time, and surprisingly she’d missed it. Missed it a lot. Sure, she was a hospital consultant, but her patient care was limited, and rarely ever in a hands-on capacity. She carried a clipboard, not a stethoscope. She made arrangements, not diagnoses. Such a vast world of difference in what she did there and what she was doing here. In a way, she envied Gideon his work. A week ago she would have argued rather adamantly that she was completely happy with what she did, but now, deep down, she thought she might be even happier doing the work Gideon did. It was fulfilling in a way she’d never felt in medicine since she’d left direct patient care. And that was as much a shock as her new, more mellow feelings toward her ex.
Such a huge difference in just a few hours and it was already clear that in the near future she was going to have to have a serious think over her career direction. Until then, being needed like this was gratifying, and before she left she was going to thank Gideon for the opportunity. “I know you probably can’t understand me,” she said as she bent down to her patient, a man near her own age, “but my name is Lorna, and I’m a doctor. Where are you hurting? Meu nome é Lorna e eu sou um doutor. Onde você está frindo?” One of the few Brazilian Portugese phrases she had learned on the way down, and she was glad she had.
Somehow in the back of her mind, though, she did wish that Gideon would happen along to see what she was doing. It was a sentiment that didn’t make too much sense to her, wanting his approval. Or attention. But, honestly, nothing about her relationship with him had ever made sense. Not at the beginning, not at the end, not now. So why should this make any more sense than anything else?
Taking a quick glance over her shoulder just in case he might be coming along, Lorna forced off her disappointment with a good hard look at the task at hand when she saw that he wasn’t, setting her mind solely on taking care of the six people right here who needed her.
Even so, Gideon was still in the back of her mind.
CHAPTER SIX
“GOOD shot,” Frayne called up the hill to Lorna from his vantage point on the muddy trail just below. “Think you can turn yourself a little more toward the camera so I can get a better angle of your face?”
She knew he was only doing his job, but this did annoy her. So far, she’d splinted a broken ankle, butterflied a head gash, bandaged various cuts, and now she was evaluating a woman with chest pains. Broken ribs, she suspected. And panic. Enough to cause huge chest pains. But she wanted to make sure it wasn’t something more serious, and the last thing she needed was to do it for a better camera angle.
Pulling a stethoscope out of the rucksack, Lorna popped the earpie
ces in and had a listen. Juniata’s heart was racing a little, but not badly. And it was steady. Her lungs sounded good, her skin color was fine. But over her mid-section, below her sternum and to the right, was a huge bruise—one as large as a dinner plate and a deep, angry red. Lorna cringed, nearly feeling the pain herself, as she ran her fingers lightly over the area. Without an X-ray it was hard to tell what was going on internally, but anything that caused that kind of bruising had, most likely, broken something. Broken ribs at the worst, torn cartilage at the best. Either way, she didn’t have what was necessary for a decent splint, so Juniata would have to go to base camp, along with João and his broken ankle. The others could go along home, if they still had homes. Or they’d be welcomed at base for a hot meal and a bed.
“Lorna,” Frayne shouted. “Did you hear me? I need a better shot of you.”
“This is the best I can do,” she yelled, not budging from her position, crouching in the mud alongside her patient. “I’ve got injured people up here and I can’t maneuver around to accommodate the camera.”
Dani had checked in briefly once, and said she was on her way up to the top of this particular face. It wasn’t such a steep climb, and she’d told Lorna that Tom was already up there with volunteers, combing the area. They’d pulled three people from a half-collapsed structure so far, none of them injured badly enough to need medical attention, but one of them had mentioned a small one-room school further up. So Tom had gone on ahead, Dani was on her way, and Lorna intended to follow as soon as she finished here.
“Look, Lorna. We’re running out of time if we want to meet deadline,” Frayne yelled. “You’ve had your fun playing doctor, but we need to get back on schedule if we want to get out of here, get these tapes edited, and on air for the weekend.”
To meet their deadline. Well, that was certainly her existence these days, wasn’t it? Not a medical deadline. An on-air deadline. That had been the plan when she’d come to Brazil—grab the footage, get out. But she’d never expected this—not the sheer magnitude of what had happened here. The entire face of the mudslide went on for kilometers, some areas worse than others. And it was so odd…small patches of houses and cottages were left totally unscathed, with little old women sweeping the mud off their front porches, while the structure next door was totally flattened. Then across the way there was a patch of jungle with verdant vegetation and beautiful red, green and yellow parrots sitting unconcerned in the limbs, basking in the midday sun and looking across to the destruction. No rhyme or reason. It was a miracle anybody had gotten out, but so far, from everything she’d seen on her way out there, everybody had, and the casualty count was low, comparatively.
And people simply picked up and started over. That was the most amazing part. Already, the building process had commenced in many places…had commenced before the weather front was over. More rain was predicted, more mud inevitable, and the astonishing people of the area went about their daily lives. Of course, there was destruction here beyond the loss of human life, and in a sense, that’s where the greatest toll might be measured. The people were so resourceful, though. She’d gone through a simple divorce which had thrown her off tilt for more months than she cared to count, and yet these people literally crawled out and started over, barely missing a beat.
It did give Lorna pause to think about some of the trifles in her world. Three days ago she’d nearly had a panic attack because her hair had been a little frizzy before she’d had to go on air, and she hadn’t been able to find her styling gel. Today, the cakes of mud, straw, and who knew what else clinging to her hair didn’t matter in the least. “Just shoot the best way you can,” she called to her partner. “You can come in closer, get me any way you like, just don’t get my patient.”
“Even from your rear?” Frayne called.
The absolute rule—never from the rear. Out here it seemed silly. “Anywhere,” she yelled, then rose up on her knees and waved to one of the local volunteers she recognized. He was running down the wash, slipping and sliding in his haste, and Lorna hoped he understood enough English to get her patients back to the hospital.
“Trapped!” he shouted, when he was finally in earshot of her. “Come fast!”
“Who? Where?” she called, standing up.
The young man pointed up to the area where Dani was headed. “Hurt. Hurt bad.”
They’d found casualties! Children in the collapsed school? That was Lorna’s first thought as she shouted to Frayne. “I need you to stay here with my two patients until we can get them back to the hospital. Will you do that for me?”
For a moment, the look that crossed his face caused her to doubt that he would, but finally he lowered the camera from his shoulder and shrugged. Then he began the climb up the hillside as Lorna began her own climb to higher ground, dreading what she would find once she was there.
“Casualties,” she called into her radio as she started upward.
“Lorna?” the voice on the other end crackled back.
“We have a school, Gideon. Don’t know the extent of damage, but I’m on my way up. Frayne’s down below. He’ll show you where we are.”
“No!” he shouted. “Lorna, wait until we get to you!”
By the time those words were out, the radio was tucked into her pocket and she was fighting against the slick mud on her way to the rescue.
Gideon didn’t doubt her medical skills, but he didn’t know her rescue skills and that was the problem. They never let any inexperienced volunteers out to do what he feared Lorna was about to do, and half of him wanted to strangle her for doing something so stupid, while half of him wanted to hug her for doing something so brave. Lorna Preston was an amazing woman. Lorna Preston Merrill had been an amazing woman, too, only he’d been too blind to see it. “Send up a team!” he shouted to Priscilla on his way out of the hospital tent. “Don’t know what we’ve got yet. She didn’t say.”
One of his trained rescuers would have said more. Exact location. Condition of the area. One of his trained rescuers would have set out with a partner. “Damn,” he muttered. Mud splashed up to his knees as he ran down the trail, carrying a sackful of supplies in one hand and a radio in the other. “Lorna,” he shouted into it, his voice breathy. “Come in, Lorna.”
No answer.
“Dani, are you out there?”
No answer again.
This wasn’t good. “Tom?”
Again, nothing. Not one of his people was answering. Cardinal rule, keep in touch! The first thing that crossed his mind was that it was time for a refresher course on protocol. Even the best, including himself, needed reminding, and he was a prime example of breaking the rules as he was out on his own. No partner. Yes, a refresher course would be good, and he made a mental note to schedule it. But then the second thing raced through his mind, and a cold chill gripped him. Other than breaking protocol, or simply losing a radio, which might happen to one of his people, but not two of them together, like Dani and Tom were, the only other reason for no one to answer was… ”Damn,” he muttered, picking up his pace. That was a reason he didn’t even want to think about.
He also didn’t want to think about Lorna, out there alone, heading into that possibility.
The higher Lorna and the volunteer went, the steeper it got, and by the time Lorna was near the top of this particular wall of mud, she was practically crawling her way through it on her hands and knees. So far, she hadn’t seen anybody up there except a handful of people picking through the remains of their houses. No one was injured and, thank God, no one was dead. But there were more damaged and destroyed buildings ahead, and no way of knowing what she’d find when she reached the next level up, or the one after that. “Remind me to switch to a first-floor flat when I go home,” she muttered, taking a brief pause to brush a twig out of her hair. It had caught fast and scratched her cheek.
“Lorna Preston!” someone ahead shouted. She looked up in time to see one of the volunteers from camp, not one of the local volunteers, frant
ically waving at her. “Over here. We need help!”
That’s all it took to get her going again. One thing was sure—she wasn’t even close to being in the good physical shape she’d thought she was. The work was hard, the effort to climb up the side of the hill exhausting. By the time she’d reached her destination on the shelf above, she was so winded her belly hurt and her chest felt on fire. So maybe she understood more now why, years ago, Gideon had always collapsed when he’d come home from a rescue—collapsed and sometimes stayed in bed, sleeping, for two days straight. She’d always been so glad to see him, and hurt that all he’d wanted to do was sleep when she’d wanted to make up for the time he’d spent away. Even the sexy little nighties she’d bought for his homecomings hadn’t worked at those particular times.
Yes, now she understood, and felt a little embarrassed. What she didn’t understand, though, was how she could have listened to him tell her about his rescues and yet never truly heard. Another apology she owed him. One of the many adding up lately.
“What is it?” she asked the volunteer.
“I think Tom McCain’s down. Haven’t heard from him in ten minutes. So is Dani.” This was another of the four U.S. volunteers from Gideon’s team—the one called Richard Eggington. He was a computer programmer, Lorna had heard. No medical experience, but he came out to do the hard labor whenever he had a chance. “Dani’s in a lot of pain. Don’t know a thing about Tom. He’s off the radio and I’ve got a couple of the locals looking for him, so as soon as you can get to Dani, I’m going back up to help look and make sure the volunteers aren’t getting into any difficulty.”
“What…happened?” Lorna gasped, trying to catch her breath.
“School structure. We were on our way in to have a look and it partially collapsed.” He took hold of Lorna’s arm and pulled her along until she finally found Dani, lying in the mud at the edge of a pile of splintered wood and timbers, on her back, eyes closed, breathing labored. “Tom had gone around to the rear by himself and Dani was on her way in the front to make a safety determination. She was just beginning to access the entry, not even inside, and it fell. When it did, I couldn’t drag her away and risk more injury, but I got the beams off her.”
