He turned to Kate. "What kind of casualties are we looking at here? How's your medical situation?"
"So far it looks worse than it is," Kate answered. "Mostly minor cuts and bruises and hysteria. We've got a couple of bad cases that need hospitalization—"
He nodded, anticipating her. "I've been on the shortwave with neighboring hospitals. Some of than can take our overflow, but we've got a transportation problem. Most of the streets in town are blocked, and some of the roads leading out aren't much better. If we sent for ambulances now, I'm afraid of how long it would take them to get here."
"What about helicopters?" Kevin asked.
The mayor nodded. ''I've contacted the National Guard, but it's going to be daybreak before they can send us any help. We weren't the only place that was hit, and they've got their own ways of deploying their helicopters."
Damn, Kate thought, and her hands tightened unconsciously into fists. They already had one emergency surgery scheduled, and Dr. Brandon was a miracle, but how many more miracles could she count on? They had neither the equipment nor the supplies to handle major cases, and it could get a lot worse before it got better.
Suddenly Kevin said, "I know where we can get some choppers."
The major looked at him with the astonished caution usually reserved for deities; Kate was a bit more skeptical. "Kevin..."
He got energetically to his feet, his eyes alive with determination. "Come on. Let me have a crack at that shortwave."
Kate reached for him in quick alarm. "Kevin, wait, your shoulder—you shouldn't be running around."
He gave her a quick backward wave. "I'm fine, Katie." And he was pushing through the door, the mayor eagerly in tow, just as Dr. Brandon poked his head in.
"I could use an assistant, Doctor.''
With the opening of the door came the noise and confusion of crisis and urgency, a swelling tide of demands that clamored for Kate's attention, and then she was certain that the few tender moments alone with Kevin had been nothing more than the product of her overwrought imagination. Kate looked anxiously from the waiting surgeon to Kevin, who was disappearing around the corner. She wanted to call out to him again, to reach for him again, and she had one brief flash of dim puzzlement as to why, with all that waited for her, all those who needed her, it should be only concern for Kevin that was uppermost in her mind.
But Dr. Brandon was watching her with patient, slightly puzzled eyes, and she couldn't hesitate any longer. She said brusquely, "Yes, of course." And hurried to join him.
Chapter Five
Kate occasionally assisted in surgery; it comforted her patients to know she was with them in the operating room. But OR at the county hospital had never been like this. Under normal conditions, it was filled with confident experts, the most modern lifesaving equipment, the highest technology. Irreverent banter and ribald jokes were tossed casually back and forth, usually to the beat of a rock-and-roll radio station playing softly in the background. Everything was routine, relaxed and easy.
The atmosphere in Examining Room Three was taut and silent, broken only occasionally by Dr. Brandon's requests or instructions and Kate's terse replies. Iris carefully administered ether through a gauze pad and anxiously monitored the patient's vital signs; Kate assisted the surgeon and prayed intensely. They had neither the time nor the environment to attend to detail, and what they performed amounted to field surgery—a quick patch-up job that would see the patient safely to a proper hospital. What would have been a routine operation for any moderately qualified orthopedic surgeon was complicated tenfold by the use of the unstable anesthetic, the lack of proper equipment and the appalling conditions under which they worked. Kate tried not to think about the patients who waited for her while three-fourths of Victoria Bend's medical staff was otherwise occupied. She tried not to think about what might happen on this makeshift operating table if even the slightest complication developed, if even one of them made the smallest error in judgment. She tried not to think about Kevin and the look in his eyes when he had touched her face.
After a time, Dr. Brandon said, breaking the tense silence with his matter-of-fact tone, "My name is Jeff, by the way."
Kate concentrated on the retraction she was holding. She did not look up. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Kate."
"Hell of a get-acquainted party you throw, Kate. I think this gentleman is going to be all right. I wouldn't have wanted to wait much longer, though. What are the chances of getting him to a real hospital before these bones start to knit?"
His calm, quiet manner was reassuring, and his work, for the circumstances, was remarkable. He was a godsend. "We're working on it now," she replied. "Hopefully, we'll be able to transport by morning."
"Ah, yes. That young fellow that was rushing out with the mayor. He looked familiar, somehow."
Kate glanced at him. "Kevin Dawson. From Code Zero."
His eyebrows arched above the mask. But he murmured only, "I'll be damned," and concentrated again on his work.
"You do good work. Doctor," Kate said after a time. "Orthopedic specialty?"
"No. I spent a few years in emergency services, though. See a bit of everything there. What about you?"
Kate released a long, not entirely steady breath through her mask. "I think I've seen enough tonight to last a lifetime. How's his pressure, Iris?"
Iris's eyes were encouraging. "Holding."
Kate concentrated on trying not to keep telling herself that this couldn't be happening, that she couldn't be performing surgery with a virtual stranger in the examining room of her own clinic, relying on nothing but ether and luck. The last emergency this place had seen had been when Mary Hobbs had given birth two weeks early; before that, one would have to go back to the time Mike Kelly had accidentally shot himself in the foot with his father's hunting rifle. She tried instead to count her blessings, to remind herself that if it weren't for a long tradition of self-reliance, the medical facilities of Victoria Bend would have been unequipped to handle even the crudest of surgeries, that they were lucky the clinic itself was still standing, and that, thanks to Kevin and her father, they had electricity.
It wasn't until the last stitch was in place and relief had strengthened her voice that she said, "Well, Dr. Brandon, are you going to tell me?"
His eyes met hers calmly. "Tell you what?"
"Whether or not you're licensed to perform surgery in Mississippi."
She heard Iris's soft gasp behind her, and Jeff's eyes crinkled above his mask. "Why don't you check my résumé? It's been sitting on your desk for over a month."
Of course. Her interview for tomorrow. How odd to think of her calendar sitting complacently on her desk with a space of time marked off for one more applicant, a name that before tonight had meant nothing but another decision to agonize over and postpone. How unsettling to realize how drastically the future could change in a span of only a few moments and how even more peculiar to know that she had changed, too, somehow.
There was no more time for hesitation, no more room for the luxury of dreading the decision that before tonight had been the biggest one of her life. She smiled at him and extended her hand. "Well, Dr. Brandon," she said simply, "I think you've got yourself a job."
A DAY AGO—even an hour ago—Kate would never have considered leaving one of her patients to recover from such a traumatic experience under the supervision of a doctor she barely knew. She would have sat by his bedside, holding his hand, monitoring his response, reassuring him with the sound of her voice until he was fully conscious, and then she would have moved heaven and earth to make sure he was transported safely to the nearest hospital, and she would have stayed, if necessary, another day and night, until she was certain there was nothing more she could do for him that others could not do just as well. But tonight was a night of firsts for her in more ways than she could count.
The faces, the voices, the demands all became a blur for her. Everyone needed something from her, and everyone needed it now. After a whil
e she stopped wondering where her father was and why he wasn't here when she needed him; she stopped reminding herself that one doctor couldn't possibly be expected to handle all this by herself. She sutured cuts, dispatched patients to X ray for broken limbs and directed those not in immediate need to the church across the street, where a temporary shelter had been set up. She received periodic reports on the situation, one of which was that helicopter service had been arranged to transfer the most needy to local hospitals. She didn't question how.
By ten o'clock a brief lull was in the making, and Kate took advantage of it to rest a moment. Her back ached magnificently, and she was light-headed from hunger. She took a Coke from the refrigerator and a candy bar from Iris's private cache and sat down in the lab, dull with exhaustion and almost too tired to eat the high-energy junk food.
She leaned forward and rested her head for a moment in her crossed arms on the counter. When a warm hand fell on her shoulder, she jerked upright and turned. It was only Kevin.
He had changed his torn sweater for a shirt of soft India cotton and had fashioned a sling for his arm out of a nylon jacket. He was hollow-eyed and rumpled, but he smiled at her, and he looked a lot better than she felt. "Sorry," he said. "You look like you could've used that nap. I just didn't want you to fall off the stool."
She bhnked and made a tired sound low in her throat, then took a sip of her Coke. In the melee of the last hours, she had almost forgotten about him. "How's the arm?" she asked with an effort.
He grimaced. "Hurts like hell."
"Do you need another shot?"
"Are you trying to turn me into an addict?"
Kate forced herself to take a bite of the candy bar. It tasted like sawdust. "Find Iris and make her give you some Percodan. That should get you through the night." She broke off the bottom half of the candy bar and offered it to him. "You should really try to find a place to lie down and rest."
"Look who's talking." He took the candy from her and pulled up a stool. "And stop pushing the dope. I'm okay."
They sat in silence for a while, eating the candy and sharing the Coke, and Kate tried to empty her mind, waiting for the sugar to metabolize into the energy she so badly needed. After a while she asked, for it simply had not occurred to her to question before, "How did you swing the helicopters?''
"There's a celebrity limo service in Jacksonville. They were more than happy to put a few of their choppers at the disposal of Colt Marshall."
Kate tried to smile but was simply too tired. "Name-dropper."
He lifted his good shoulder lightly, dismissively. "If you've got it, flaunt it."
"Crazy world, isn't it," Kate commented without rancor, "when hundreds of injured people are put on hold but a celebrity can snap his fingers and have whatever he wants."
Kevin looked at her soberly and made no reply. She hadn't the energy to try to imagine what he was thinking.
"Where did you get the clothes?" She took a final sip of the Coke and passed the can to him, indicating the change of shirt.
He chuckled. "My driver. The fool fought off the highway patrol to get back to me."
She lifted an eyebrow. "Loyal fellow."
"Well paid," corrected Kevin. "And also terrified that he would have to report to his boss that he'd lost Kevin Dawson in a tornado." He finished off the Coke and tossed the empty can into the trash. "So I thanked him very much, took my luggage and sent him off to report to the world that the living legend is safe and sound."
Kate stretched and winced, rubbing the pain in the center of her back. "I'm surprised you didn't go with him."
He lifted an eyebrow. "And leave you in your time of need? Does your back hurt? Here, put your head down." She hesitated, but he stood up, his long fingers already moving soothingly along her spine. "Go on, relax for a minute. I owe you something for interrupting your nap, anyway."
Kate sighed and crossed her arms on the counter again, lowering her head to rest upon them. "I've got to get back to work."
"How bad is it, Katie?" he asked seriously. His fingers, gently pressing the fabric of her blouse against her skin in a long rubbing motion, were already beginning to draw the tension from her back.
"Not as bad as it could be. No one is critical, thank God. And now that we can move some of them to the hospital, I think the biggest danger is past. There's just so much—"
"I know." His voice was heavy. "You wouldn't think in a town this size there could be so much damage."
"That's just the point. We're so small, we feel it a lot more than a bigger town would have."
"At least they've gotten emergency power and telephone crews out. We should be in contact with the rest of the world before too much longer. Don't hit me; I'm going to put my hand under your shirt."
Deftly, his fingers plucked her blouse from the waistband of her pants, and his fingers slid against her skin. Kate let her eyes drift closed. "I don't have the energy to swat a fly," she murmured. "Have your way with me."
He chuckled. "If only you knew how long I've waited to hear that."
Kate moaned in half pain, half pleasure, as his fingers dug into the taut muscles of her back, massaging, loosening, stimulating. "You have strong fingers."
"I'm even better with two hands," he replied smugly.
"I'll bet. Ow!" She bit her lip as those fingers pressed sharply into the tender flesh at the small of her back, gathering and kneading. "That hurts!"
"No pain, no gain."
She groaned out loud. "You can torture my body, Dawson, but have mercy with the clichés."
His hand swept up her back, brushing over the clasp of her bra, working a gently rotating pressure against her shoulder blades, then gathering and releasing the hard muscles at her neck. He was good. He was, in fact, wonderful. She felt guilty, allowing herself this luxury while there were people who needed her and things that should be done, and she gathered herself enough to object. "I should be doing this for you. You're the one who's hurt, after all."
"That's the trouble with you, Katie. You're always so busy doing things for other people you don't give anyone a chance to do anything for you."
"I never noticed you objecting before."
"You never noticed a lot of things." There was a strange note to his voice with that, and she wanted to turn her head to look at him, but just then his fingers closed around her neck muscles again and made moving impossible. And with his next words he sounded more like himself. "Anyway, I'll take a rain check on the massage. And you know I'll collect."
She smiled a little to herself. "You always do."
The long, sweeping motions of his strong fingers against her skin were a gentle soporific, a vaguely intoxicating stimulant. He drew warmth to the surface, he stroked away fatigue, and his touch was one moment as deft as that of a professional masseur, the next as sensuous as a lover's caress. Kate had been half drugged with fatigue before he came in; now it was all she could do to keep her eyes open. She let herself drift, pushing aside the nightmare that surrounded her, the demands that awaited her, connected to this time and this place only by the sensation of Kevin's fingers, delicate now and caressing, stroking her skin in slow, soothing, up-and-down motions.
She murmured, half smiling into her crossed arms, "Kevin, if I tell you something, will you promise never to repeat it, not even to me?"
"Hmm. Sounds like a secret worth promising for. What?''
"I dream about you sometimes," she said drowsily. "Not you, exactly, but Colt Marshall."
Only the slightest hesitation in the movement of his fingers registered his surprise. But his tone was mild, hiding a smile of delight or a hint of laughter. "Erotic dreams?"
"Hmm... sort of. Not exactly. Romantic dreams. It's not unusual. All women have fantasies. You probably account for a good eighty percent of them."
"I'm flattered." It was becoming harder for him to keep the surprised laughter out of his voice, but his fingers felt so wonderful, moving now with a sensual rhythm along the side of her ribs an
d downward to her waistband, that she hardly noticed.
"It's funny though." And it was she who smiled, drowsily, to herself. "You told me a while ago that I was your sanity. And you're my fantasy."
There was a tender, rueful chuckle in his voice, and his fingers slipped around to the soft flesh of her waist. She didn't mind. "God, Katie, are you going to regret telling me this in the morning."
"You promised," she reminded him, trying to force sternness into her voice and reaching for alarm she didn't feel. She didn't feel anything but his fingers, now moving gently, caressingly, over the naked flesh of her waist and her ribs. He was closer, too. She could feel his thigh pressing lightly against her hip and the warmth of his chest near her back. He was embracing her, and it felt right and natural.
He said softly, "Katie..."
And the moment he said her name, she realized what was happening. The tone of his voice, the awareness of his hand beneath her clothing and closing lightly on her waist, then the warmth and gentleness of his touch, reminded her that this of all times was no place for fantasy and brought her to an abrupt—however reluctant—recognition of the effect stress and shock can have on an otherwise perfectly rational mind. She straightened up quickly, and he seemed to come to a realization of what was happening at the same time she did. He grinned, half defensive, half embarrassed, and stepped away. He drew a breath to make some teasing comment, but just then Jeff Brandon looked in.
"I'm ready to ship our fracture, Kate," he said. "Do you want to check him over one more time? And the ambulance just got in with the second wave. The patient is asking—" he made a dry face "—no, demanding, to see you."
Kate pushed herself to her feet. "On my way," she said briskly and much more efficiently than she felt. She left the room without glancing back at Kevin.
After The Storm (Men Made in America-- Mississippi) Page 7
