Grave Risk

by Hannah Alexander

  “May I ask who it is you’re concerned about?” The expression in Cheyenne’s dark brown eyes was direct.

  He hesitated, feeling foolish. His request had been impulsive, which was uncharacteristic of him. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get out of this situation without looking unprofessional, even silly, to these two serious, obviously dedicated physicians. Karah Lee Fletcher’s frown deepened.

  He cleared his throat. “I simply wished to speak with this particular person in private before any—”

  There was a clatter beyond the closed conference room door. Someone had come running into the waiting room of the clinic.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?” came an urgent, feminine voice—a voice familiar to Rex, even after all these years, and even with the sharp edge of urgency that carried it down the hallway.

  Cheyenne frowned at Karah Lee, who rose quickly, opened the door and stuck her head out into the hallway. “Noelle? What are you doing here? It’s Saturday.”

  “Oh, thank goodness! I didn’t expect anyone to be here, or I’d have called. Jill and Sheena are doing CPR on Edith Potts at the spa. Not sure what happened. I came to get—”

  “She’s unresponsive?” Cheyenne shoved away from the table and came out of her chair, yanking the door open wide.

  Through the doorway, Rex caught sight of a beautiful woman with thick brown hair and small, exquisitely feminine features. She would be in her midthirties now. The only thing that marred her beauty were those blue eyes filled with dark concern. She was very obviously pregnant. Jill’s younger sister.

  “She stopped breathing,” Noelle said. “Jill is—”

  “Karah Lee,” Cheyenne said over her shoulder, “grab the crash cart. Make sure there’s a cric kit on it. We may have to do a cricothyroidotomy.”

  “There is a cric kit,” Noelle said. “I checked it myself yesterday.”

  “Let’s get it to the spa,” Cheyenne said. Without a backward glance, both doctors followed Noelle from the clinic, pushing a fully loaded crash cart in front of them.

  Rex rushed out behind them. It had been three years since his last official stint in an emergency department, but he would be there if he was needed.

  And besides, he, too, needed to know what was wrong with dear old Edith Potts.

  In frustration and despair, Jill forced her own breath into Edith’s lungs through the protective pocket mask Noelle kept in each massage room, while the young massage therapist pumped rhythmically on Edith’s chest. The soothing background music was a stark contrast to the sound of hard breathing. This spacious room suddenly felt far too confining.

  Sheena’s face was red from exertion and anxiety. Though she obviously knew the procedure, it was just as obvious she had never handled an emergency like this before.

  “She isn’t responding, Jill. It isn’t working!” The young woman’s blond hair had darkened around her neck with perspiration. “What are we going to do?”

  “Stop a second.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m not tired, I’m just—”

  “Stop, Sheena! I need to check her.”

  The masseuse withdrew her trembling hands from their locked position over Edith’s chest.

  Jill knelt close to Edith’s mouth and listened for air movement. None. She pressed her fingers against the carotid artery and checked for a pulse. Nothing. Lord, please don’t take Edith!

  “Come and do rescue breathing, and I’ll take over the chest compressions,” she told Sheena.

  “No, I can do the compressions. I’m not tired.”

  “I’m not asking, I’m telling you, trade places with me.”

  “Where’s Noelle with that kit? Shouldn’t she—”

  “Just do it!” Jill shouted.

  The sound of multiple footsteps reached them from the marble-tiled front entryway.

  “Noelle?” Jill called to them. “Is that you? Did you get the intubation—”

  Cheyenne burst into the room with a crash cart, followed by Noelle and Karah Lee and a bearded man she didn’t recognize—

  For a millisecond, Jill glanced at him again. Not a stranger. She knew that face, in spite of the short, salt-and-pepper beard she’d never seen before, and the cropped dark hair, receding hairline and slight creases of maturity around the calm, gray eyes….

  Jill knew that man. Very, very well. Or she had known him once.

  But there was no time to react, no time to think. “Chey, she’s gone unresponsive—”

  “We’ve got it.” Cheyenne ripped the intubation kit open and started giving orders.

  Jill gave a quiet sigh as she scrambled out of the way of the doctors and waited for her first orders. If anyone could bring Edith back, these people could do it.

  Rex endured the expected sense of déjà vu, unable, for a few seconds, to drag his gaze from Jill Cooper’s face, which was, at this moment, smeared with some kind of green stuff. Several strands of her hair, dark and thick as he remembered it, had fallen from the confines of a floral turban, grazing the tops of her shoulders. Her body was wrapped in a matching green-and-lavender floral gown.

  After a very brief double take at the sight of him, she returned her attention to the still figure of her beloved mentor lying on the floor.

  He set to work moving a lounger and a magazine rack out of the way to give the rescue team freedom of movement as they worked.

  He remembered Edith Potts, even after all this time, and as he worked he said a silent prayer for her. It had been Edith to whom Jill turned for wisdom and for motherly love.

  It had been the strong, wise Edith on whom Jill had depended for advice when her younger sister skipped school or decided not to return home after an evening of partying.

  The older woman had also been the one to prepare special meals for Rex when he visited Hideaway on those rare weekends of freedom from the hospital. When there wasn’t room at the bed and breakfast, he had stayed at her house. That was before she and Bertie Meyer purchased the bed and breakfast.

  “Get a rhythm,” Cheyenne barked, crouching at Edith’s head.

  Karah Lee grabbed the paddles from the cart and placed them on Edith’s chest. “Stop CPR.” She then looked at the monitor. “I’ve got it. Is there a pulse?”

  “None,” Cheyenne said, also looking at the monitor while feeling for a pulse in the neck. “It’s PEA. Not shock-able.”

  Rex slumped. Pulseless electrical activity. Bad news.

  “Continue CPR,” Cheyenne said. “I’m going to set up for intubation. Noelle, bag her while I get ready.”

  The doctor worked with quick efficiency. Karah Lee stopped compressions long enough for Cheyenne to insert the breathing tube. Simultaneously, Jill established an IV in the patient’s arm, and drew blood, following normal code protocol. The breathing tube was in place in little over half a minute.

  Cheyenne had been an ER doc in Columbia, Missouri, and she had obviously not gotten rusty on her skills. Rex couldn’t help being impressed by this precise teamwork.

  Cheyenne secured the tube and allowed Noelle to resume bagging. “Breath sounds?”

  Karah Lee pressed her stethoscope over the belly first, then moved the bell to the chest. “Good. The tube is in place.”

  “Resume compressions. Sheena, I need you to call an airlift for us.”

  Sheena looked up at her. “Who do I call? What do I say?”

  “I’ll give you the number. Get a pad and pen and write it down.”

  The young woman scrambled toward the doorway.

  Cheyenne’s voice was calm but firm as she shot orders to the others. Rex took over the job of recording the proceedings on a sheet of notebook paper he found on a table.

  He knew he should be observing this scene with professional detachment in order to best evaluate the staff’s strengths and weaknesses. They would need that evaluation later as they applied for hospital designation.

  He couldn’t detach. He felt the desperation in this room, could hear it in the quickened breathing of
each person. He wanted to reassure Jill that everything would be okay, but she might not welcome any kind of comment from him right now. Every moment they worked over Edith with no response, he was more convinced that she was gone for good. Though he knew Jill was a woman of faith, a word from him would be an intrusion. Lord, please help us. Guide our hands, give us wisdom.

  Why had he asked Cheyenne to keep his identity a secret from the staff? He had seldom been more sorry about a decision. His intention had been to reconnect with Jill personally before they met in a cold, professional environment. He wanted to reassure her he wasn’t still the ogre she’d once thought he was.

  If they lost Edith, it would break her heart. She didn’t need any additional stress on top of that.

  Chapter Three

  Fawn Morrison sat behind the counter in the lobby of the Lakeside Bed and Breakfast, entering numbers from a ledger sheet onto the computer program Blaze Farmer had set up. She loved this part of the job. It was mindless yet engaging enough to keep her from worrying about her plans for the upcoming wedding, her adjustments to college, her preparations for the pig races at the festival.

  She was racing her very own pig this year. Why had she agreed to do that, with everything else going on? She was practically the sole planner for Karah Lee’s wedding, and she wasn’t getting a whole lot of help from Karah Lee.

  Fawn loved her foster mother, but the woman had no fashion sense, no concept of the amount of time it would take to complete their plans. Furthermore, those plans kept changing.

  The front door squeaked open and the old-fashioned bell rang above it. She glanced over her shoulder to see a tall man with broad shoulders and thick, gray-streaked auburn hair step into the lobby. He looked awkward, nervous.

  He wasn’t bad-looking, for someone in his forties, at least. Bertie or Edith might threaten to stick him out in the garden to scare away the crows because he was a little on the skinny side. He had a turkey wattle beneath his chin and dark circles under his eyes.

  Okay, so he wasn’t that good-looking. He just looked like maybe he had been, once upon a time.

  “Be there in a minute,” Bertie called from the dining room at the far side of the lobby.

  Fawn started to get up to help the man.

  “Why, Bertie Meyer,” the man drawled, his voice deep as the growl of a big dog, “you’re just the person I was hoping to run into. What a welcome sight you are.”

  Fawn sat back down.

  Eighty-something-year-old Bertie stopped midstride in the broad entryway between the dining room and the lobby. She held an empty waffle plate, and her white apron was stained with strawberry syrup and bacon grease. Her white hair tufted down over her forehead, and her eyes looked like those of a cat caught in headlights.

  “Austin?” Bertie’s voice suddenly sounded her age, which didn’t happen often.

  “I bet you thought I was gone for good, huh?”

  Bertie set her waffle plate on a nearby table and entered the lobby, absently wiping her hands on her apron. “I heard you and your mom had moved to California.”

  Fawn frowned. Austin. Where had she heard that name before?

  “Mom’s living with Aunt Esther down in Eureka Springs now,” the man said. “I went to California for a few weeks to visit my cousin, but the traffic’s a mess out there. A fella can’t even make a trip to the grocery store without risking his life.”

  “Seems to me a real estate agent could make some good money in LA,” Bertie said.

  There was a short pause. “Money doesn’t mean as much as I used to think it did.”

  Fawn realized she was partially shielded by the greenery that Edith loved to keep on the counter. And she realized she was indulging in one of her worst habits—eavesdropping.

  Her best friend Blaze and her foster mother Karah Lee had nagged her so much about it that she’d almost broken the habit. Until now. Right now she couldn’t leave without drawing attention to herself.

  Bertie’s passion for hospitality drew more customers here than to any hotel or lodge in a twenty-five-mile radius, but the tone of her voice did not sound welcoming. It sounded wary.

  The man walked across the lobby to her. “I’m not here to cause trouble for anyone, Bertie.” His voice softened until Fawn could barely hear what he was saying.

  Austin…wasn’t his last name Barlow? Was he the guy who used to be mayor of Hideaway?

  “I didn’t think you were,” Bertie said. “I’m just curious, is all.”

  “Got a cottage I could rent for a couple of weeks?”

  Fawn nearly snorted out loud. This place had been booked solid since early April.

  She listened to the murmur of quiet voices for a moment, too low for her to hear and yet just loud enough to frustrate her when she heard a word or two now and then.

  Ashamed, but unable to stop herself, Fawn finally scooted her chair back so she could hear a little better.

  “Have you heard from Ramsay lately?” Bertie asked.

  “Just yesterday. You might not believe this, but he’s living at a boys’ ranch up in northern Missouri. How’s that for payback after all the griping I did about Dane Gideon’s ranch for so many years?”

  There was a long silence. Fawn peeked over the counter and saw Bertie’s expression. Fawn knew that look. Bertie had such a tender heart.

  Ramsay. Fawn remembered Blaze telling her about him. They’d been friends, or so Blaze had thought. Then it turned out Ramsay was vandalizing the town and allowing his father—Austin—to place the blame on Blaze. Finally Ramsay had flipped out completely and tried to kill Cheyenne because she had done something that made his father mad.

  And what was the kid doing at a boys’ ranch? Shouldn’t he be in a place that took psych cases?

  “Bertie, I came to apologize,” Austin said in a rush, as if he couldn’t be sure he’d have the nerve to get all the words out. “I thought I’d start with you. I know I have a lot to answer for, and it’s time. Way past time.”

  Fawn couldn’t make out Bertie’s response, but she knew that Austin Barlow was forgiven.

  Rex Fairfield shoved the heels of his hands against the yielding flesh of Edith Potts’s chest, taking his turn at the grueling task of CPR. He felt the sweat of desperation on his own forehead and heard the despair in Cheyenne’s voice as she continued to call orders to them.

  “Where’s that airlift?” Jill asked. “It should be here by now. It’s been—”

  “Too long,” Cheyenne said, her voice brittle from the force of tight control. Grief drew lines of tension around her mouth and eyes.

  It had been twenty minutes. Rex knew this would be a tough one for all of them. He also knew they had done more than was normal for a code such as this.

  “Sheena,” Cheyenne said, “go ahead and—” She frowned, and Rex glanced at Sheena Marshall crouched in the far corner of the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself, eyes glassy as she stared at the floor in front of her.

  “Noelle,” Cheyenne said, “call the airlift and cancel—”

  “No!” Jill’s usually mellow voice broke, ragged with pain. “Please, Chey, just a little longer.”

  Rex continued to pump rhythmically.

  “It’s been taken out of our hands.” Cheyenne spoke with tender sadness.

  Jill shook her head, short jerks of denial as she reached once more for the crash cart. “Atropine is next, isn’t it?”

  “We’ve already maxed out the Atropine.” Karah Lee placed a hand on Jill’s shoulder and squeezed, her voice husky with sorrow.

  “There’s some left, though. Can’t we just try one more—”

  “Honey, it’s time,” Karah Lee said.

  “Epi again, then.” Jill’s movements had taken on the frantic tightness of extreme anxiety. “One more dose, Chey. Please, just one…”

  “Jill.” Cheyenne caught Jill by the hands. “She’s gone. We knew it was a reach when we saw the rhythm in the first place. We’ve carried this much longer than was warrante
d already.” She nodded to Karah Lee, who had taken over the recording from Rex. “Time of death, 2:30 p.m., September third.”

  “Oh, Edith, no!” Jill’s cry filled the room.

  Chapter Four

  Fawn watched Bertie return to her work in the dining room, and then saw Austin Barlow’s broad shoulders slump as he reached for the handle of the front door. She suddenly felt sorry for him, though she couldn’t understand why.

  The guy was a bigot. He’d accused Blaze of vandalism simply because Blaze was black in a cream white town. The former mayor had complained constantly about Dane Gideon and the boys’ ranch, and according to Blaze, he had even tried to cause trouble for Bertie Meyer.

  Bertie didn’t hold grudges, and she’d been kind to Austin after the initial awkwardness. Still, she couldn’t pull a room for rent out of thin air. There was nothing to be had in town.

  Fawn remembered a few more things Blaze had said about Austin Barlow. He was a real estate agent, and one time he’d rescued a starving horse from a pasture he had listed, then had taken the animal to Cheyenne’s farm, since he lived in town. When Cheyenne had hired Blaze to take care of the horse, Austin had been angry. The moron had actually expected to use the starving horse as an excuse to see Cheyenne more often.

  Had to give the guy credit for originality, but it was still stupid. He must not know much about women.

  “I hear you used to be the mayor.” The words slid from Fawn’s mouth before she realized she was going to say anything at all.

  Austin turned and glanced around the room, and she could tell he hadn’t even known she was there. That ficus tree made a good eavesdropping blind.

  She stood up.