The Harder They Fall (Intimate Moments)

by Lovelace, Merline

  Only then did she recall that article also stressed the need to stay calm and analyze the situation.

  Calm! With her father stretched out on the ground, venom seeping into his veins! Gritting her teeth, she forced the tremors from her voice.

  “I’m trying to remember what I read about snakebites. I’m pretty clear on what not to do.”

  A half smile, half grimace tracked across his haggard face. “I’m all ears, Missy-mine.”

  Somewhere under her layers of near panic, a memory clicked. He’d called her that. Missy-mine. When he rocked her to sleep.

  She couldn’t think about that now! Couldn’t think about anything except those don’t do’s.

  “You can’t move, okay? No walking or running or anything to speed up your circulation. And no tourniquets, just a…a pressure bandage.”

  Her thoughts whirling, she’d reached out to tear a strip off his shirt when she realized she had something that would work much better. Yanking the hem of her tank top free of her jeans, she ducked her arms inside and jerked them though the straps of her sports bra. The stretchy fabric would constrict as well as an Ace bandage.

  “Just lie still. Keep your arm low, below the level of your heart if possible. I’ll wrap this right here, above your elbow.”

  Her hands shaky, she rolled up his sleeve. The oozing puncture wound in his arm raised a sob in her throat. Fiercely Lissa choked it back.

  When she had the spandex wrapped around his upper arm just above the wound, she sat back on her heels and tried frantically to remember what came next. Most of the articles said not to cut into the wound or try to suck out the venom by mouth. They recommended instead use of the little rubber suction pump that came with commercial snakebite kits. Which was all well and good if you happened to have one of those suckers handy!

  Swallowing hard, Lissa eyed the blood trickling down her father’s arm. She suspected that the caution against sucking the venom out stemmed in part from worry over transmission of diseases like AIDS. Seeing that thin, crimson line brought that worry slamming home.

  She didn’t know the man whose blood dripped onto the sand. Had no idea where he’d been for the last twenty years, or what caused his hollow-cheeked gauntness. As quickly as those grim thoughts flashed into Lissa’s mind, she shoved them aside.

  She couldn’t let him die. She couldn’t let anyone die.

  “I’m going to try to get the venom out. Just lie still.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he said with a feeble smile.

  Returning his smile with a wobbly one of her own, she bent over his arm. With the first suck, the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. She spat it out and sucked again.

  Within moments, the small wound had yielded all the liquid it would. Clearing her mouth as best she could of the residue, Lissa dragged in a deep breath while she considered her next options.

  Getting medical help was right up there at the top of the list. So was watching the victim for signs of swelling or shock or convulsions leading to possible cardiac arrest. If the worst happened, she’d have to administer CPR. How could she do that if she had to seek help?

  With the wild idea of trying to roll him onto her back and carry him to the car, she swiveled on her heels to gauge the distance to the parked vehicle. Harsh reality killed that idea instantly. She’d never be able to stagger that far without jostling him and doing far more harm than good. Gulping, she made a wrenching decision.

  “I’ve got to go for help.” Her hand fluttered down to cover his. “I’ll take your car. It’s only a few miles to my trailer. Evan’s there. We’ll call 911 and come right back. I swear.”

  His eyes gentled at her obvious distress. “I know you will.”

  She tried to get her feet under her. Told herself she had to leave him. Yet the possibility that he might die alone under the now blazing sun kept her in place.

  “Don’t look so scared, baby.”

  He turned his hand, just an inch or two and wove his fingers through hers. Lissa trembled at the contact.

  “I’ve been trying to kill myself the hard way ever since your mother died. If all the poison I poured down my throat over the years didn’t finish me off, this little bit won’t do the job, either.”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  He searched her face, from her scraped forehead to her chin, as if to imprint her features on his mind for all eternity.

  “I’m so sorry for those wasted years, Missy. So sorry I left you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I just couldn’t…” His Adam’s apple worked. “Couldn’t…”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” she promised fiercely. “When I get back.”

  With a last, gentle squeeze of her hand, she pushed off her heels. She’d taken only a step when she remembered Wolf. She spun around, relieved to see him on his feet and watching her with his usual wary alertness. Apparently the snake had emptied its venom in the man before the dog attacked.

  Wolf could stand watch over her father until she got back.

  “Stay here, boy! Sit!”

  He made a small whine of protest.

  “Sit!”

  Clearly unhappy, he sank onto his haunches.

  “Okay, now stay! Stay, Wolf, stay!”

  With that gruff order, she spun around and took off. She could only hope that whoever had owned him before losing him to the desert had drilled the command into him.

  Her heart pounding, she flew across rock-strewn terrain. Despite the urgency that grabbed at her throat, she kept a wary eye on the ground ahead. She couldn’t help her father if she put her foot down on another rattler. With every step, she poured her terror into prayer.

  She was halfway to the parked car when a distant roar cut through the now smothering heat of the desert. Lissa whipped her head around, yelping with joy when a helmeted figure on a black-and-silver behemoth rose through the shimmering heat waves.

  “Evan!”

  The little blip of worry Evan had experienced a half hour ago when he woke to find Lissa gone didn’t begin to compare to the fear that knifed through him when she stumbled onto the road ahead of him.

  Then, it had only taken a quick glance out the trailer’s window to see that she hadn’t succumbed to a fresh attack of nerves and bolted. Her rusted pickup was still parked next to his bike.

  Now, her wildly waving arms and frantic face told him something had spooked her, and bad. But not until he’d started to throttle back did Evan see the bloody scrapes on her face and legs. Rubber screamed on asphalt as he wrenched the handlebars around and skidded to a stop.

  She ran at him, her words lost in the dying roar of the engine.

  “Lissa, what…?”

  “It’s my father! A rattlesnake bit him. He’s over there! With Wolf!”

  Evan followed the line of her outflung arm, saw a dark shadow against the sand that looked like her scruffy pet.

  “Get on!”

  Waiting only until he felt her arms lock around him, he opened the throttle. The Harley bucked once, bit dirt, then raised a plume of dust as it raced across the desert. Evan was off the bike and down on one knee beside the fallen man before the dust settled.

  “I wrapped the bandage around him right away,” Lissa panted, hanging over his shoulder. “Then sucked out what I could.”

  Nodding, Evan met the older man’s intent gaze. “Do you feel any burning?”

  “A little.”

  “How high up does it go?”

  Arlen held his eyes. If he didn’t know, he could probably guess the implications behind the quiet question. The further the burning sensation had traveled, the greater the likelihood the venom would damage his heart and central nervous system.

  “It only stings below my elbow right now. Lissa kept me still and went right to work.”

  “Smart woman, your daughter.”

  “Smart…and kind,” he murmured, his glance drifting over Evan’s shoulder. “Like her mother.”

  “I’ll take your word fo
r that.”

  Gently, he probed the flesh around the wound. To his relief, he detected only slight swelling.

  He’d lost enough horses to rattlesnake bites during his boyhood years on the Bar-H to know the signs. A rapid swelling around the wound was usually the second step in sometimes irreversible tissue damage. A lot depended on the size and the species of the creature that had inflicted the bite. Angling around on his heel, he searched the immediate vicinity.

  “Anyone get a good look at the snake? Note its size or the arrangements of the bands on its tail?”

  “Not me,” Arlen muttered.

  Shuddering, Lissa shook her head. “Me, neither. But it’s over there,” she added with a grimace. “What’s left of it.”

  “The docs will need to see it to determine whether to administer antivenin.”

  Stripping off his shirt, Evan strode over to the mangled remains. The broad black and white rings circling its tail identified it as a Western Diamondback. A young one, thank God. In Texas, where rodents were plentiful, these coon-tail rattlers grew to seven or more feet and packed enough venom to take down a bull elephant. Here in Arizona, where the desert took its toll on predator and prey alike, they averaged only about four feet. This one was just under three.

  Scooping the carcass up in his shirt, Evan had a quiet word of praise for the hound that had obviously torn the rattler apart.

  “Good boy.”

  Wolf’s gums lifted. A throaty growl rolled up from his chest as he eyed the suspicious bundle. Lissa exhibited a similar response when Evan approached her.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. You’ll have to carry this. I’ll carry your father.”

  Her mouth twisted, but she took the grisly object without flinching.

  “Okay, Arlen.” Stooping, Evan slid one arm under the older man’s back, the other under his knees. “Let’s get you out of this sun and into a hospital.”

  He surged to his feet with a single flex of his thighs and strode through the scrub toward the car. Lissa hurried after them, the dead snake held out at arm’s length and Wolf padding alongside her.

  The next hours passed in a blur of knuckle-cracking tension.

  Once at the car, Evan laid Arlen across the back seat, making sure to keep his injured arm lowered. Wolf scrunched down at Lissa’s feet in the front seat. The moment the door slammed, Evan pushed the accelerator to the floor to get them back to Paradise.

  To Lissa, it seemed like an eternity before they tore into Charlie’s Place, tires screaming, but the ride probably didn’t take more than five or ten minutes. While Evan ran inside to use the phone, she leaned over the front seat and watched her father for signs of shock. His color remained good, thank the Lord, although his forearm had begun to swell. From the way he chewed hard on his lower lip, she guessed the burning sensation had progressed to severe pain.

  She counted the seconds until Evan came tearing out of Charlie’s Place with the mechanic following hard on his heels.

  “EMS is scrambling a chopper,” he told father and daughter. “It’ll take them a half hour to get here. How’re you doing, Arlen?”

  “Hanging in there.”

  “Good! This should help the swelling.”

  Hunkering down beside the open car door, Evan wrapped the wet towel around the distended area. That done, he draped his wrists over his bent knees.

  “Charlie keeps a stock of snakebite kits in his store, but the paramedics said not to administer the antivenin unless you get dizzy or your vision starts to blur.”

  What they’d said was that the antivenin could sometimes produce as many complications as the bite itself, including a potentially fatal allergic condition called anaphylactic shock. Evan didn’t think either the victim or his daughter needed that bit of information at this point.

  “They did suggest electroshock treatment of the injured area. It’s a new, supposedly more effective method of stopping the venom’s spread. The paramedics told me how to administer it…if you feel up to it.”

  Arlen lifted a grizzled brow. “You know anything about electricity?”

  “My brother’s got degrees in both civil and hydroelectric engineering,” Evan replied, forcing a grin. “A little of the knowledge he crammed into his head had to have rubbed off on me.”

  The older man’s gaze sought Lissa’s. “What do you think, Missy-mine?”

  “I think you can trust him,” she said with a gulp. “I do.”

  Evan hurried to gather the necessary equipment, hoping to hell he hadn’t gained Lissa’s trust only to destroy it by bungling this job. The procedure the medics had outlined sounded pretty straightforward. He’d need about 100K of DC voltage, coupled with amps at about the one or two level. Any coil-based gasoline engine could provide the necessary combination. According to the paramedics, lawnmowers, outboard boat motors, or car engines could be pressed into service.

  With Charlie’s help, Evan quickly connected a voltage regular to the car’s engine, peeled back the ends of an electrical wire and connected one end to the regulator. He was sweating bullets when he hunkered down beside Arlen again.

  “The idea is to hit the area with enough voltage to destroy the venom’s molecular structure, but not so much it will cause tissue damage or burn your skin.”

  It sounded good…in theory. With the live wire only inches from Arlen’s arm, however, theory was smacking up hard against reality.

  “Ready?”

  “’Spose so.”

  “Okay, here we go.”

  His jaw tight, Evan tapped the exposed end of the wire against the swollen skin an inch or so from the puncture. He allowed only a flick, less than a second of contact. Relief speared through him when Arlen didn’t jerk or cry out.

  “I’m going to work around the wound in a circular pattern,” he told the patient. “Five or six taps. Then we wait ten minutes and do it again, further out. Just lie back. Try not to clench your muscles.”

  Every moment of that agonizingly slow procedure would remain etched in Lissa’s mind forever. Air-conditioning poured from the car’s vents. Heat crawled in through the open rear door. She knelt in the front seat. Evan was wedged in the space between the back seat and the door, his jaw tight and brows creased in fierce concentration.

  She was cursing her own helplessness when her father’s sunken eyes found hers. The plea in them stripped her soul bare.

  “Sing to me, Missy. I’d like to hear you sing once before… I’d like to just hear you once.”

  Her throat ached so badly she didn’t think she could force out anything remotely resembling a note. She wet her lips. Swallowed. Reached deep inside her.

  “I shall…”

  Her voice cracked. She dragged in a breath. Tried again. Softly. Slowly.

  “I shall walk…in the light,

  I shall sit…in the splendor,

  When I come to the Father,

  When I find my way to Thee.”

  By the time the distant beat of a helicopter reached the small group huddled around the dusty car, the hymn carried clear and silver-bright through the heat waves rising from the deserted streets of Paradise.

  Chapter 16

  Her nerves as brittle as spun glass, Lissa peered through the second-story casement window at the mob jostling for position on the flagstone patio below.

  She couldn’t believe only four days had passed since those terrifying hours in the desert. Three since the doctors had confirmed that Lissa’s on-the-spot first aid and Evan’s electroshock treatments had saved Arlen’s arm and most likely his life. A mere twenty-four hours since Lieutenant Colonel Sam Henderson had flown a twin-engine Commanche into Phoenix and whisked brother, father, daughter and dog to the Bar-H.

  Yet already they’d found her. The reporters, the reps from the talk shows, the fans. Already the media had converged on Flagstaff, bombarding the folks at the Bar-H with so many calls and requests for interviews that Lissa had agreed to a press conference just to give the Hendersons some peace.

  Ev
an was the one who suggested that she do it here, on safe ground, with his family and hers beside her. He’d also put out the call to the rest of the Hendersons.

  They’d responded immediately, converging on the ranch en masse. So many had arrived in the past twenty-four hours, Lissa had trouble sorting them all out. There was Evan’s mother, Jess, trim, tanned and proud of the character lines that came from raising five sons. Sam and his wife, Molly, with bright-eyed Kasey darting joyously from uncle to uncle demanding kisses. Dark, handsome Reece and his very talented, very pregnant wife, Sydney. The newest Henderson bride, Lauren, a willowy artist with a shock of glorious auburn hair and a smile that welcomed Lissa warmly.

  And Jake. The oldest. The quietest. The saddest.

  Strange how Arlen seemed to sense something in Jake, something only the older man could relate to. Last night, while the rest of the family had clustered around the scrubbed oak kitchen table and overwhelmed Lissa with their unquestioned acceptance of her and her past, Jake had spent hours sitting out on the patio with Arlen. They’d talked in quiet stretches. Watched the sun sink behind the San Franciscos. Listened to the crickets chirp their evening song. With his swollen arm still brutally painful and showing black, necrotic flesh around the wound, Arlen couldn’t manage much more.

  Somewhat to Lissa’s amazement, even Wolf seemed content to simply rest his muzzle on his front paws and lie on the flagstones between the two men. Evan had watched the scene with intense satisfaction, keeping the others away and saying only that it was good for Jake to understand what Arlen had put himself through these past twenty years.

  The only Henderson missing from the scene was Marsh, the middle brother. According to Lauren, he’d gotten a call at the airport in El Paso yesterday afternoon, just before they were supposed to board their flight to Arizona. Some hot drug bust or border operation was going down, she’d said with a shake of her head.

  They expected him at any minute, though. He’d called an hour ago from twenty thousand feet up, told them to hold the show until he got there. The Henderson brothers would stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind Lissa when she walked out on the patio to face the media.