Truly Madly Montana

by Fiona Lowe

“You play pool? Are you any good?”

  There were many things about herself she second-guessed, but this wasn’t one of them. “Does the pope have an art collection?”

  “Good to see you’re not hiding behind a facade of humility,” he said with a laugh. “And if we’re boasting, I’ll have you know, I’ve got my name on a couple of trophies back in Murrinwindi. Fancy a game?”

  The thought of watching Will lean over a pool table, with his soft chinos hugging his delectable behind, was more than she could handle. “I—”

  A woman screamed.

  “Millie,” Ethan shouted down the microphone, his left arm pointing in the direction of the distressed woman.

  “He’s choking,” a distraught voice called. “Someone help him. Please.”

  Millie moved, barely recognizing Ellen Hanson’s voice, which was usually so cool and controlled but was now vibrating with fear. She could feel Will immediately behind her.

  She reached Wayne Hanson, the overweight car dealer, first. He was seated at a table, and his flabby cheeks were flushed fire-engine red, his two chins wobbling and his stubby fingers gripping his throat as if that would help him breathe. “What happened?”

  “He was eating the steak and he laughed at a joke I’d made,” Ellen wailed, wringing her hands. “The next minute, he was like this. I hit him on the back, but it didn’t work.”

  She didn’t tell the almost hysterical woman that may have forced the meat farther down his trachea. Putting all her weight behind the big guy, she pushed Wayne forward so his chest pressed hard into the edge of the table. She fervently hoped the pressure caused by the momentum would be enough to dislodge the obstruction.

  Come on. Fly out of his mouth.

  Nothing happened.

  Ethan appeared next to them. “Can I help?”

  “Grab my medical bag from the black Jeep parked outside,” Will said authoritatively as he moved in front of Wayne.

  “Wayne, this is Doctor Bartlett,” Millie said, giving thanks that Will was here. She’d have struggled to lift Wayne on her own.

  “Mate, try and stay calm,” Will said in his laconic drawl, putting a hand on Wayne’s shoulder.

  Unable to talk, Wayne’s hugely terrified eyes locked with Will’s, as the desperate, guttural sound of his retching left nothing unsaid.

  “I’m going to put my arms under yours and force that lump of meat out of your throat.” He hauled Wayne to his feet.

  “Here.” Millie gripped Wayne’s shoulders and helped Will turn the heavy and panicking man around so he could grab him from behind.

  Will formed a fist with his left hand, pressing it thumb-side in just above Wayne’s belly button. Then he covered his fist with his right hand. Pulling his fist upward and inward, his strong arms pressed in hard, increasing the pressure on Wayne’s airway to expel the obstruction out of his trachea.

  Millie watched Wayne’s mouth and held her breath, willing the meat to appear. The only thing that happened was Wayne’s lips turned a dusky blue.

  Will repeated the maneuver two more times and then he suddenly staggered backward, his brow knitted tightly with worry. “He’s down. Where the hell’s my bag?”

  “Oh my God, Wayne.” Ellen sobbed in an uncharacteristic show of emotion, her blond bob swinging wildly.

  “We need a sharp knife, a pen or a straw. Now!” Millie yelled to no one in particular as she grappled to support Wayne while Will regained his balance. Together they lowered their patient to the ground.

  “We’ve got two minutes,” Will said quietly, his breath warm against her ear.

  “Here’s your bag,” Ethan said, panting as he slid it toward them.

  “Call 911,” Will said, “and tell the dispatcher we need the MontMedAir helicopter.”

  Millie reached for the bag, but he batted her hand away. “There’s no time for you to try and find what we need in here when I know exactly where everything is. I’ll assist you.”

  She stared at him half terrified, half excited. “You want me to do a tracheotomy?”

  “Cricothyroidotomy,” he said briskly, one hundred percent the emergency physician. “Put your fingers on the Adam’s apple and then go down two and half centimeters—sorry, an inch,” he translated from the metric as he threw a pair of gloves at her. “You’ll feel a soft spot. That’s the cricothyroid membrane.”

  She snapped on the gloves. With trembling fingers, she followed Will’s instructions as he sloshed antiseptic over Wayne’s throat before ripping open a scalpel blade.

  The ambient noise of the room faded, and all she could hear was the roar of blood in her ears. In what seemed like forever but was probably only about ten seconds, her fingers finally detected the soft spot. “Got it.” I think. I hope. “Are you sure I should do this?”

  “Stabilize the larynx and then cut one inch vertically just through the skin.” He passed her the scalpel before grabbing the endotracheal tube from his bag.

  She swallowed hard and pressed down, remembering how tough skin actually was, until she felt a loss of resistance. “There’s not much blood? Have I gone deep enough?”

  “That’s normal and good. Means you missed blood vessels.” He handed her a pair of hemostat forceps. “Pull the edges apart and check you’ve totally missed the thyroid gland.”

  “Okay.” She did exactly that.

  “Now, puncture the cricothyroid membrane and widen the forceps so I can insert the ET tube.”

  She pushed down. Nothing happened and panic scuttled through her. “It’s not working.”

  “Use more pressure,” Will said calmly. “He’s a big guy with a thick neck.”

  How could he sound so unfazed when she’d never done this before and the clock was ticking down fast. Every second was one more that deprived Wayne of oxygen and brought him closer to a cardiac arrest. If she was the teacher, she’d be grabbing the forceps and taking over.

  She tried again and this time felt the shift. A thrill ran through her. “I’ve got it.” She widened the forceps to allow for the ET tube.

  “That’s one hell of a way to kick off your TRUST experience. Well done.” Will gave her a quick smile of acknowledgment before he advanced the ET tube between the jaws of the forceps, carefully avoiding tearing the tube’s cuff. “Now hold it there, check his pulse and then secure the ties,” he instructed firmly before leaning down to puff air into the tube.

  His hair brushed her fingers, and the clean, fresh, masculine smell of him enveloped her. Gripping the tube with her right hand, she sought Wayne’s carotid pulse in the deep folds of his neck with her left. Her fingers delved and probed—desperately seeking. Where the hell was his pulse? She located his windpipe and slipped her fingers sideways, the thumping of her own heart loud in her ears. Had she been too slow? Had he arrested? The faintest movement beat against the tips of her fingers. “Very weak and thready.”

  “But there,” Will said, relief infusing his words. “I’ll take that for a win. Wayne, mate”—he shook the big guy’s shoulders—“can you hear me?” The car dealer’s eyes stayed closed. “I’ll bag him,” he said, attaching the small cylinder of oxygen to the bag and valve before connecting it all to the ET tube.

  She leaned in close to his ear. “Was I too slow?” she asked softly.

  He shook his head firmly.

  “I thought he’d come to the moment he got air.”

  “Not always. He might just need time and oxygen.” He gave her a meaningful look. “It’s nothing you did or didn’t do. You did great. As soon as you’ve secured the tube, check his pupils and start a HIC chart. There’s a torch in the outside pocket.”

  She understood the acronym for the head-injury chart, but torch confused her. “You mean flashlight, right?” she asked, querying the Australian word. It seemed highly unlikely Will had an open flame in his bag.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Ellen whispered, the soft sound as loud as an explosion in the now deathly quiet bar.

  The question jolted Millie. She�
��d been so engrossed in saving Wayne she’d forgotten there was a crowd of fearful people gathered around them.

  “He’s still unconscious,” Will said, immediately looking up at Ellen, “but the important thing is we’ve bypassed the obstruction and Wayne’s now getting the oxygen he needs.” His long, wide fingers rhythmically squeezed the valve bag. “Does your husband have any underlying health issues we should know about, such as diabetes or any cardiac problems?”

  “No,” Ellen said, shaking her head quickly. “What about the meat? It’s still in his throat. How are you going to get it out?”

  “My job’s to get him to Great Falls where a respiratory physician will remove it.”

  “And then he’ll be fine?” Her questions peppered Will. “Then he’ll wake up?”

  “I hope so,” Will said sincerely but without promising Ellen a thing. “We’ll know more when we get him to the hospital.”

  “Oh, Wayne.” The woman who’d so brazenly pinched Will’s ass at the wedding sank to her knees beside her prostrate husband. “Honey, open your eyes. Please.”

  Millie heard the vestiges of long-lost affection in Ellen’s now brittle voice. A near-death experience did that to people. Made them remember. Made them think. Made them question things they didn’t even know they’d been running from. At least that’s what she’d discovered. She suddenly felt desperately sad for the woman.

  The deafening roar of the whizzing helicopter’s rotors sounded above them, and she realized it was preparing to land at the hospital. Where were the paramedics? They needed an ambulance to transport Wayne the half mile up the road. Thinking of transport, she said, “Ellen needs someone to take her to Great Falls and stay with her.”

  Sally Walters, one of Ellen’s book club friends, stepped forward and put her hand under the anguished woman’s elbow. “Honey, I’ll take you.”

  “He’ll need . . . pajamas,” Ellen said hollowly.

  “I’ll help you pack a bag,” Sally replied.

  “The paramedics are here,” Ethan called out.

  Everything sped up again. Millie took over the bagging while Will and the guys maneuvered Wayne onto the gurney and wheeled him outside to the waiting ambulance, only it wasn’t there. The parking lot was empty of all vehicles.

  Millie stared at the enormous red and black twin-engine Dauphin helicopter. “How did this happen?”

  “Ethan got us to move our cars,” someone said.

  “Hand over the bagging to the paramedic and get on board,” Will instructed before climbing in behind her. She’d flown with him on a plane before, but this was the first time on a chopper. The first time she’d ever been on a chopper.

  As she watched the legs of Wayne’s gurney neatly collapse so it could be stowed in the helicopter, Will passed her a red headset. “Put this on, because in two minutes, you won’t be able to hear a thing.”

  “Got it.” By the time she’d adjusted the headphones over her ears and moved the mic in front of her mouth, the stretcher was inside the mobile intensive care unit. She sat beside her patient and took over the bagging from the paramedic.

  Will wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Wayne’s arm, slipped the pulse-ox monitor onto his finger, applied the EKG dots and studied the readout. “I’ll be happier when I see his blood work,” he said as the paramedics closed the doors.

  The pilot began talking through his checks, and she heard the rotors start with a low whir that built slowly over a few minutes until they hit a screaming crescendo. The noise was deafening.

  “Testing Millie, one, two, three. Can you hear me?”

  Her head jerked around at the unexpected intimacy the headphones gave Will’s voice. It was deep and mellow, its timbre vibrating through her and startling her with its intensity. Her eyes met his and he smiled at her—a combination of general inquiry and friendliness.

  A bubble of lust tried rising to the surface. Not here! I’m at work. She forced it back by focusing on squeezing the bag and filling Wayne’s lungs with air. “Hearing you loud and clear.”

  There was a change in the sound of the engines, and excitement as bright as the dancing northern lights on a summer Montanan night flared in the depths of Will’s dark eyes. “This is it. Here we go.”

  The cabin swayed disconcertingly from side to side as the helicopter rose, and then it tilted forward, moving fast and smooth up into the sky. It all happened so quickly, and then they were banking in a sweeping turn as the pilot headed the chopper southeast to Great Falls. She glanced back at Will, who looked like an awestruck six-year-old taking his first helicopter flight instead of a seasoned veteran.

  He met her gaze with an enthusiasm that grabbed her and held her tight. “Medicine and flying, Mils,” he said, his voice filled with wonder as he leaned forward and checked Wayne’s pupils. “It’s a combination that never gets old.”

  Chapter 7

  It’s going to be another glorious day in northern Montana. The perfect weekend weather with clear and sunny skies.

  “There’s no going to be about it,” Will said to the pretty television newsreader with the immaculately straight, white teeth. “It already is.”

  Bright summer sunshine flooded his room at the Glacier Park Inn, cheerfully blasting through the thin curtains as if they weren’t even there. He couldn’t believe it was only 5:45 A.M. What sort of a crazy place was it where the last light lingered until ten at night and returned less than eight hours later? And if that was the case, why the hell didn’t the motel have decent drapes?

  The high-pitched squeal of a child snuck in under his door, immediately followed by the pounding of feet in the hall. The sun had risen, and with it so had every kid under the age of six. In celebration of a new day, they were having relay races outside his room. Where were their parents? They’d probably tipped them out of the room so they could keep sleeping. He sighed. Good luck with that.

  Not that he wasn’t used to being up early, but there was something particularly galling about being up at this hour on a Saturday when it wasn’t required and when he could have been having a rare sleep-in. What the hell was he going to do? It was too early even for breakfast, and if the motel restaurant wasn’t open until six, then he doubted anywhere else in town would be. The thought of two months of living at the motel sucked at his soul.

  The clanking of water pipes shuddered in the walls and was immediately followed by the whooshing sound of water—the guest in the room next door was up and in the shower. He really didn’t like being this close to the intimacies of other people’s lives. When Floyd Coulson and his boss had asked him to work the summer in Bear Paw, he’d been thinking about the welcome challenges of the job, about Millie and Josh, and about how being in Bear Paw might ease the bouts of soul-sucking loneliness that continued to plague him no matter where he was living.

  He hadn’t factored into the equation that he’d be living in a motel without his stuff. Not that he had a lot of stuff in his Great Falls apartment, but over the last year he’d collected some books and framed some of his photographs, and slowly a collection of knickknacks he’d purchased from places he’d visited had started to grow. He also had a kitchen and one of those devices that chopped and blended and cooked while he drank wine or worked out or wrote journal articles.

  His sister, Lauren, had made a crack about boys and their toys when he’d sent her a Snapchat of him and the first meal he’d made. Sure, it was a toy, but at least he was using it and cooking some of his own meals. He hadn’t told her that the aromas reminded him of the times Charlie had taken to watching MasterChef with great gusto and had spent hours re-creating many of the meals with his typical enthusiasm and have a go approach to life.

  Being in the motel meant Will wouldn’t be cooking for the next two months. He looked up at the only wall decoration—matching framed prints of two spectacular, craggy mountains—and read Sinopah Mountain and Lone Walker Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana. There was a folder of tourist information on the desk, a bible in
the nightstand drawer and a flyer about pizza delivery. He suddenly missed his apartment, which, although sparsely furnished and barely decorated, seemed warm and a lot less lonely than the motel.

  The image of Millie’s untidy bedroom flashed unbidden into his head, and with it the memory of her sitting at the end of the bed with her bare, creamy legs crossed and her curly hair bouncing around her face. He wondered what she was doing. Would she be having coffee with Tara?

  Duh! It’s 5:50 A.M., you drongo. She’s asleep.

  All right, smart-ass. I meant, I wonder what she’s doing today?

  He should have asked her last night on the return flight, which had been relaxed compared with the one out to Great Falls. He’d kept Wayne Hanson sedated on the short flight, and they’d both been busy with checks and ventilating him. Despite Will having thrown Millie in at the deep end, she’d shown she had a knack for emergency medicine. She hadn’t panicked or shied away from doing a tricky procedure for the first time; instead she’d taken that leap of faith and stepped out of her comfort zone.

  He’d seen the moment the rush of a good save had hit her. He’d recognized the look—the thrill and the euphoria that the addictive, feel-good adrenaline blast always gave. His colleagues had told him they could always tell how close a save it had been by the width of his smile. Last night, Millie’s smile had been huge, dimple-filled and enticing.

  On the flight back, after her excitement had faded, she’d suddenly morphed into a tour guide, pointing out rivers, breaks, buttes and the Two Medicine fight site. She’d told him about the Blackfeet Nation and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. As the weather conditions had been perfect, Jay, the pilot, had happily hovered over the winding river and the emerald green floodplains so he could get a clear view in the summer-evening light. Like most places where a violent incident had taken place a long time ago, it now looked peacefully benign.

  Just like Murrinwindi with its line of shady trees that divided the main street in half and the wide verandas that protected the stores from the sun.

  He hauled his mind away fast from that particular thought, distracting himself by checking his messages on his phone. Floyd Coulson had sent him a work schedule, his boss at Great Falls had attached the pro forma for him to document all the cases he flew out of Bear Paw as part of the golden hour study and Brandon McBain had texted: