Wolf Haven (The Wyoming Series Book 9)

by Lindsay McKenna

  SKY SAT IN the plane, on an aisle seat, wrestling with so many emotions that threatened to swamp her. Lips tingling from Gray’s long, powerful goodbye kiss, she absently touched them, her heart torn over her father’s condition. A phone call to her mother, who was sitting in the ICU with her father, did nothing but hammer home her terror that he was going to die. God, no... She pressed her hands against her face, struggling not to cry. Wishing Gray was here to be the support he’d always been to her. But she was alone.

  The captain came on announcing that everyone had to return to their seats, that they’d be landing in Casper in twenty minutes. Allowing her hands to drop into her lap, Sky leaned back, closing her eyes. God, from somewhere, she had to pull herself together. Her mother’s wobbling voice at the other end tore at her stability. Balin, her mother, was Cheyenne, a strong woman warrior, a woman who was seen by her tribe and friends in Casper as indomitable.

  But less than an hour ago, her mother had been reduced to a puddle of tears, and Sky had barely been able to make out what she was saying. Her fierce love of her father was never more on display. Balin wasn’t given to many emotional displays, always the serious one, the one who didn’t smile that much or that often. It had been her father, lean, lanky Alex, who had always provided comic relief.

  Sky grew up remembering his laughter, his tickling her ribs, playing with her as her stern mother looked on. It wasn’t that Balin didn’t love her; she did. Sky knew her mother’s inherited strength was what had gotten her through the torture. As broken as her soul had been, Sky had reached so deep within herself to maintain hope even when there was none she ever expected to arrive to save her. It was Balin’s toughness that she’d genetically passed on to Sky that had helped Sky survive. Now...

  Taking an uneven breath, Sky closed her eyes, feeling the movement of the jet, being slightly jostled in her seat as it continued to lower in altitude. Now her mother was shattered, fearful that her husband, whom she loved with a fierceness Sky had never seen before, was slipping away. Oh, God, give me strength. Give me the right words.... Let me be someone my mom can lean on....

  The plane landed, and soon they arrived at the terminal. Sky was one of the first people off, thanks to Gray’s thoughtfulness. He’d bought her a first-class ticket, and she was only steps away from the door, able to quickly leave the plane.

  She needed to hurry. The urgency overwhelmed her as she practically trotted up the long tunnel that led into the terminal. She was so glad she didn’t have to wait an hour at baggage claim to get a suitcase. As she hurried out of the terminal to hail a taxicab, she called her mom on her cell.

  “I’m here, Mom. How’s Dad?”

  “He knows you’re coming, Sky. He’s rallying. It’s so important for you to get here. He says he has to talk to you soon.”

  Gulping, tears in her eyes, Sky saw a yellow cab pull up. She quickly opened the door. “I’ll be there in just a little while, Mom. Tell Dad I love him, that I’m on my way....”

  Sky asked the woman cabdriver to get her to the hospital. She sat back, immune to the sunny afternoon, the puffy white clouds in the sky above the city of Casper. Opening her iPhone, she put in a call to Gray, who she knew was hanging on tenterhooks, too.

  “Hey,” she said as he answered his phone. “I’m here in Casper. I’m in a cab on the way to the hospital.”

  “Good. Your dad?”

  Choking, Sky whispered, “My mom is falling apart, Gray. She said to hurry...” She fought to remain steady, not melt into a pool of tears.

  “Okay, baby, just take a couple of deep breaths. You know the drill. Get yourself calmed down. You can do this. I’ve seen you do it before.”

  Just listening to Gray’s calm, deep voice, the care in it, she did as he instructed. Taking slow, deep breaths always helped. As a nurse she understood it was getting more oxygen into a person’s body, feeding the cells, calming every system down and keeping things stable. Sky looked out the window as the cab sped along the freeway. In the distance, she saw the hospital. Her throat ached with unshed tears. “I’m so glad you’re here with me,” she whispered unsteadily. “Thank you...”

  “Listen, keep taking those breaths. Sky, you’re a lot stronger than you realize. I’ve always told you that. Now, you need to pull down and grab that strength that’s always been there that’s available to you. You have two people you love most in the world in the worst crisis of their lives. You’re an R.N. You blossomed in the emergency room. Just consider this an E.R. crisis. Fall back into that muscle memory. Let it come forward to support and protect you. Okay?”

  His words triggered something deep and knowing within her. Muscle memory. SEALs knew those words and understood them better than nearly anyone. It meant that a person had gone through the motions so many times that they no longer had to think about it. Their body, their central and peripheral nervous systems remembered it. All of it. Taking a gulp, she rasped, “That helps me so much, Gray. The cab is almost at the hospital. I’ll call you as soon as I can....”

  “Good. I’m there in spirit with you, Sky. Just feel me with my arms around you, holding you...”

  Sky swore she could feel his arms, his protection, enclosing her as he spoke those gritty words. Reluctantly, she shut off her iPhone and pocketed it into her purse. The cab pulled up to the front entrance of the hospital, and she paid the driver, getting out. Looking up at the three-story building, her heart beginning a ragged pound in her chest, Sky refocused, visualizing herself back in the E.R. of the Bagram hospital. A calm descended upon her and her body, her mind and emotions slid into that old, familiar emotional detachment. Sky couldn’t do her job with chaos around her, if she hadn’t detached and allowed that unique calm to guide her in every way.

  As she stepped into the opening doors of the hospital, Sky felt strong enough to cope, and that was all she needed. Just endure and be a quiet center in the storm surrounding her beleaguered, shocked parents. Stepping into the elevator to go to the second floor, where the ICU was, Sky leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, picturing Gray smiling. He didn’t smile often, but when he did, his entire face changed and became unbearably beautiful to Sky. His laughter was like rolling thunder through his massive chest, and she allowed the memory of that to flow through her, feeding her, soothing her, giving her even more strength than before. Gray was only a phone call away. She had a lifeline....

  Sky spotted her mother standing near the waiting room of the ICU. Up ahead, she saw the nurses’ desk and six nurses in white uniforms behind it. Off to the left she saw the glass-enclosed ICU rooms. She was no stranger to any of this, and oddly, it calmed her some more. This was her other world, her other life. Sky knew it as intimately as breathing. Her mother sensed her presence, lifting her head, her eyes widening with relief as she spotted Sky.

  Balin Pascal was a Cheyenne and proud of it. From the time Sky could remember, her mother had always proudly worn long black braids that hung nearly to her waist. She remembered her mother, every morning while sitting at her dresser, combing her thick, blue-black hair and gracefully plaiting it into the braids. She always decorated the ends with bits of raptor fluff and red yarn, to symbolize the color of an Indian’s skin. But on a deeper level, her mother had taught her, the red yarn symbolized that red blood ran through all two-leggeds, and therefore, they were all brothers and sisters to one another.

  Her mother looked weary with exhaustion as Sky moved quickly toward her. Balin was Sky’s height, thin, her shoulders always thrown back, her chin lifted just enough to show her pride. Today her golden-brown eyes were marred with grief and worry. Her high-boned cheeks were glistening with recently spent tears. She was wearing familiar clothes of Levi’s and a white blouse.

  Her parents had a small, rural farm just outside Casper. Her mother had a huge garden, and she canned and froze fruits and vegetables to be eaten and savored during the winter months. To Sky, sh
e was still beautiful in her mid-forties. That fierceness that was always a part of her was gone now, as if she were a balloon that had been punctured cruelly by a needle called Life Trauma. Sky had never seen her mother as hopeless-looking as she was right now. She heard Balin choke out her name, throwing open her arms to her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Balin whispered, hugging her daughter. She kissed Sky’s cheek and held her at arm’s length. Looking her over, she asked, “How are you doing?”

  Sky settled her hand on her mother’s slumped shoulder. “I’m okay, Mom. Dad?”

  “He’s awake. I just left his ICU room.” She pointed to the one on the end. “Number six, the one closest to the nurses’ station.”

  “Okay, good,” Sky soothed. “Listen, I want to talk to the head nurse in charge on this shift. She’ll give me information that might help me understand where Dad is at medically.”

  Balin glared toward the nurses’ station. “They talk in a foreign language to me,” she huffed. “I don’t understand what they’re saying. There’s so many machines in Alex’s ICU room. I don’t know how to read them. It’s so noisy in there. That’s enough to kill a sick person, Sky.”

  “Mom,” she whispered gently, kissing her damp cheek, “let me see what I can find out?”

  Nodding, Balin muttered, “I’ll be here in the waiting room.”

  Sky noticed all the ICU rooms were filled. The nurses were very busy. Some were watching monitors behind the long, crescent-curved desk; others were caring for their very ill patients in the different rooms. Sky slowed and almost stopped at the last one. Her heart dropped.

  Her father was lying with his eyes closed. His face was gray. Gulping back tears, Sky forced her feet to keep going toward the nurses’ desk. Knowledge was power. If she didn’t get the latest stats on her father’s condition, she wouldn’t know if he was declining or improving. Or holding strong.

  “Excuse me,” Sky said, buttonholing an older blonde nurse standing behind the other nurses at the desk. “I’m looking for the charge nurse?”

  The blonde said, “That would be me. May I help you?”

  Sky knew she was checking her out. She was a new face here in the ICU. Only family was allowed on this floor. “Yes, I’m Alex Pascal’s daughter, Sky Pascal.” She saw the nurse’s name over her pocket of her uniform: C. Ramfort.

  “Oh,” she said, coming forward, “your mother, Mrs. Pascal, said you’d be arriving shortly. I’m Christine Ramfort. Is there any question I can answer for you?”

  “Yes, there is. Christine, I’m an R.N. My speciality is E.R. I would deeply appreciate seeing my father’s chart, the medications and his hourly information. Is that possible?” Sky knew that because she was a sister R.N., there was an unspoken fraternity between them. The nurse’s dark brown eyes assessed her for a second.

  “Your mother said you’d been a U.S. Navy nurse over in Afghanistan. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Yes, I was.” She saw Christine offer her a hint of a smile across her thin lips.

  “I was a Navy R.N., too, for twenty years. Come on around here, Sky, and I want you to sit at this terminal. Your parents signed the consent forms for you to see the files. It has all your father’s data on it.”

  Gratefulness flooded Sky. She reached out, gripping Christine’s narrow hand. “Thank you,” she managed, her voice cracking.

  Christine grinned. “If any doctors show up, I’ll have to ask you to quickly vacate yourself from the terminal. Okay?”

  The glimmer of amusement in the charge nurse’s eyes made Sky feel on the verge of crying. “Got it.” Because Christine was putting her career on the line by letting someone not affiliated with this hospital read the raw records on a patient. But because she and Christine had both been in the Navy, there was a stronger, deeper military bond and sisterhood shared between them.

  Sky quickly sat down at the computer terminal. Christine leaned over Sky’s shoulder and brought up her father’s records. Instantly, Sky’s gaze narrowed on the numbers, the medicalese, the lab reports, the MRI showing the clot sitting in his right lung. In five minutes, Sky had a detailed understanding of it all. She quickly got up and walked to the other side of the desk. “Thanks,” she said to Christine, who went and hid the information with a keystroke.

  Nodding, Christine walked around the desk and stood next to her. “The good news is the blood thinner the doctor’s given him is helping. You can see his pulse-ox is improving hourly.”

  “Yes, this looks better than I’d hoped.”

  “He’s a fighter, your dad,” Christine said, giving her arm a squeeze. “Your mother is an emotional wreck. I tried to ask if she’d like some sort of sedative, but she got really pissed off when I asked her.”

  Sky grinned a little. “My mother is Cheyenne. She hates white-man drugs. Refuses them for herself.”

  “Mmm, that explains it.” Christine’s eyes glinted. “Maybe a little chamomile tea for her nerves, then? That’s an herb well-known to calm someone down. And it’s natural. Would she be open to that?”

  Sky gave the woman a warm look. “All good advice. I’ll ask her if she’d like any. I’m going in to see my dad now. Do I have five minutes?”

  “Give or take,” Christine murmured, flashing her a grin. “As long as he doesn’t look like it’s tiring him out, stay with him.”

  “I will. First I need to talk with my mother.”

  “I tried to explain things to her,” Christine lamented, “but she didn’t understand.”

  “It’s okay. My mom is a pretty fixed person. And English is her second language. Cheyenne is her first.”

  “Ohhh,” Christine murmured. “Okay, got it. If you need anything else, come see me. Navy sisters stick together.”

  The sense of control over the situation, the knowledge, her years of experience as a trauma nurse were kicking in big-time. Sky walked to the lounge and sat down with her mother, who looked so broken and forlorn.

  “Mom, Dad is better.” She squeezed her hands. “The medicine is working. It’s reducing the blood clot in his lung, and he’s breathing easier. He’s getting more oxygen into his blood.”

  Her mother frowned, as if the situation was still too complicated medically for her to understand.

  Smiling, her voice hopeful, Sky said simply, “Dad is better. He’s rallying. And those are all good signs.”

  Instantly, her mother’s eyes lit up with hope.

  “Really? Is this true, Sky?”

  “Yes,” she murmured, giving her mother a warm look, fighting back her tears.

  “What does this mean, Sky? Will he live?”

  Hearing the desperation in her mother’s hoarse voice, Sky hesitated. “I don’t know yet, Mom. It’s too early to tell. But all things point in that direction.”

  “I’ve been praying so hard,” Balin whispered, pulling her hands out of her daughter’s hands, covering her face.

  “I know, I know,” Sky soothed, sliding her arm around her mother’s sagging shoulders. “You keep praying because it’s working, Mom.” She leaned over to catch her mother’s tear-filled eyes. “Okay? You know prayer is powerful.”

  “I asked our medicine woman from the reservation to conduct a healing ceremony for Alex. That was yesterday.”

  Nodding, Sky knew her mother believed in the medicine, the prayers of her people. And so did she. “It’s working, Mom. Really, Dad is better. You hold on to that thought while I go see him.”

  Sniffing, wiping her cheek off with the back of her work-worn hand, Balin touched her daughter’s cheek. “You know how bad he felt about asking you to leave, don’t you?”

  Her smile dissolved. “Y-yes, I do, Mom. I figured it was about that.”

  Balin gripped her daughter’s hand. “Your father never told you what he did in the Marine Corps, Sky. He—well,
he needs to tell you himself. I pray you’ll understand more...better... Why he reacted the way he did.”

  Sky placed a kiss on her mother’s furrowed brow. “Mom, I have a man in my life who has helped me understand why Dad did what he did. I think I already know, but let me go find out. In the meantime, will you go down to the cafeteria in the basement of this hospital? See if they have some chamomile tea? It’s good for helping worry.”

  “Really? Why haven’t I heard of this before?”

  Grinning, Sky stood and helped her mom to stand. “You know, Nurse Ramfort is a very wise woman.” Sky gestured toward the nurses’ station, where Christine was. “She knows a lot about healing herbs. She’s the one who suggested to me to tell you.” She saw Balin’s face change and grow respectful.

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. If you want, you might go over and ask Christine if she might know exactly where that tea is kept in the cafeteria. So you can go have a cup.”

  “I’ll do that,” Balin said, suddenly stronger, more confident. She pulled at her white blouse and straightened her long braids. “She’s a good woman if she knows about healing herbs, Sky.”

  “Indeed,” Sky murmured, hooking her arm through her mother’s arm and walking toward the desk.

  Sky released her mother and walked over to the glass door of her dad’s ICU room. He appeared to be asleep, his long, work-worn hands across his blanketed belly. Quietly opening the door, Sky went in, feeling suddenly shaky and unsure. Muscle memory couldn’t help her now. Her robust, vibrant father had never been ill. She’d grown up with him always being strong and caring for both her and her mother.

  She crept closer, her damp hands resting on the bed that had been lifted up into Fowler’s position so that he was at an angle that promoted better breathing for him. There was a cannula in his nostrils, delivering pure oxygen to his struggling body. Her eyes flicked to the monitors, reading each of them. Sky was so glad she knew how to read them and what they meant. Relief sped through her as she saw his blood pressure was normal. It meant he was resting well. The medication to melt that deadly blood clot in his right lung was doing its work. Thank God.