Stop, Kayla. This isn’t doing you any good.
True, but what if she had such serious injuries that there’d be no getting past them? Was this life’s way of telling her she had no right to want to kick-start things and begin enjoying life again? Should she crawl back into the dark hole and wait for another year to go by?
‘Here we are. Now you’ll get warm.’ Jamie interrupted her fears, slowed them down. ‘Doc, this is Kayla Johnson. We had to dig her out of the snow.’ He turned away to fill in the details.
She couldn’t hear what he said. His quieter tone wasn’t getting through the ringing in her ears that had started the moment she’d been brought inside to the warmth. Frustration took over, and she shoved her arm out of the blanket to bump his hip. ‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ she snapped, cringing when it came out as a whimper.
The big man came into focus as he crouched down beside her. ‘I’m not a medic of any kind, but you were feeling pain in your legs and they aren’t as straight as they should be.’ He pulled a glove off and wrapped those comforting fingers around her hand again. ‘It’s hardly surprising you might’ve broken a bone or two, Kayla. From a witness’s account of the avalanche you copped the worst of the three women in your group and are very lucky to have survived it.’ He squeezed gently.
‘Keep talking to me.’ He anchored her, helped her believe she was alive. ‘Was anyone else caught in the avalanche?’ She gabbled so he wouldn’t leave her, gripping his hand tight, regaining a sense of reality, along with relief at having made it back from the brink of something too horrible to think about.
‘Not that we know.’ Jamie stood up, still holding her hand. ‘But I have to go out for a final check in case there was someone else on the slope we don’t know about.’ His chest expanded and he looked hard at her. ‘You take care and look after yourself, okay?’
Of course he had to leave her. She’d get through this. She had to, without hanging onto his words and deep voice that held her together. ‘I’ll do my best. Thank you very much for finding me. Thank the others who helped, too.’
‘I will. Now, can I have my hand back?’
His smile struck her deep, made her soft inside, and lifted some hope out of the chill shaking her body. It was the first time she’d felt hope in years. Would there be some good to come out of this latest mess she’d got herself into? History said no, while hope said possibly. She’d hang onto that over the coming days, which she suspected weren’t going to be too wonderful. The pain in her legs was excruciating and had nothing to do with cold.
‘If you have to,’ she gasped through clenched teeth. Slowly unbending her fingers, she let her saviour go. ‘Bye, Jamie.’
See you around sometime?
Copyright © 2021 by Sue MacKay
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ISBN-13: 9780369712042
Taming the Hot-Shot Doc
Copyright © 2021 by Susan Carlisle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Taming the Hot-Shot Doc Page 17
