by Dianne Drake
Joey chuckled. “Your way, his way. Two stubborn men who don’t want to budge. Glad the extent of my medical knowledge doesn’t go beyond applying a bandage and some good, old-fashioned horse medicine.”
True, they were alike in a few ways. Stubbornness for stubbornness, maybe they did match up, but only a little bit. “OK, so maybe we have some similarities. But the old man thinks he can practice medicine again, and I know he can’t. It’s time for him to retire.”
“Two peas in a pod. Actually, let’s make that two peas in separate pods since you’re not seeing eye to eye on pretty much anything right now.”
It bothered Beau more than he let on. He liked being here, on Brax’s land, close to nature, in a place where no one could touch him. It let him remember the best times of his life when he and his grandfather would go out to mend fences together then stay over for a camp-out.
He missed those uncomplicated days. Missed his once uncomplicated life. But the complications came from so many directions now—some of his doing, some from Brax’s physical condition. Too many bitter pills to swallow.
“That’s why I’m going out for the night. Brax and I need some space. There’s too much conflict going on in the house and it’s not good for him.”
“Not good for you either.”
“But I’m not trying to recover from a stroke.”
“A little space might be good. I’ll give you that. But what if Nell decides that tonight’s her night? Or there’s a medical emergency?”
“Call me.” He patted the pocket of his chambray shirt, where his cellphone was tucked away. “Or come get me in the helicopter.” Yes, Brax had a helicopter. A necessity in these spread-out parts for a GP who still made house calls. “And I’m fine to be out there by myself, brooding about my life and all the things I can’t fix, so quit worrying about me, OK?” Actually, he was looking forward to going up to his spot to contemplate his past, present, even his future. Because right now it was one big blur, and he wasn’t sure about any of it.
“You up on the ridge all alone, your grandfather holed up in his study all alone... Like I said, different pods, same peas.”
Beau chuckled, and patted Joey on the back. “Leave me the hell alone, will you? The last thing I need is all that perception hanging around me, making too much sense.” The truth was, he was still in a wallowing mood, and he’d become damned good at it.
* * *
“You’re not going to find a better view anywhere in Sugar Creek,” Kelli Dawson said, as she pushed back the double doors and invited Deanna to step outside onto the porch to the see the view. Kelli was the rental agent, giving Deanna the grand tour of her home for the next month. “Hot tub in the left corner, porch swing in the right. And look at everything you can see from here.”
It was breathtaking, Deanna did have to admit. And the photos Kelli had e-mailed didn’t do this cabin justice. “But you’re going to sell it?”
“I’m just the listing agent. My client wants to sell, but it’s been on the market a year now and nobody’s interested. Sugar Creek is a nice town, but it’s small, too isolated. Our doctor here has to use a helicopter to make house calls.”
Braxton Alexander was the doctor, but she needed to hear it acknowledged. “Your doctor is...?”
“Doc Brax. Wonderful man. Everybody loves him.” That was encouraging. It was nice to know the baby’s daddy was liked. “He’s been an institution here for ever. Delivered most of the babies around here. Including me!”
No way...! According to the donor card, Braxton Alexander was thirty-six. Was she chasing after the wrong person? Wasting her time, not to mention her emotional investment, in the wrong place?
“And he’s still delivering babies?”
“Not since his stroke. He recovered from it pretty well. Needs a cane sometimes to help him get around better. But I’d still let him be my doctor if he hadn’t quit, because his mind’s as sharp as ever. By the time my grandpa was Doc Brax’s age, he was forgetful and he just seemed so withered up. But Doc Brax looks good for his age, and Joey, the man who runs Braxton Acres, says he’ll be able to get rid of his cane any day now.”
“How old is Doc Brax?”
“Seventy-five, I think. Could be seventy-six.”
Not the baby’s daddy, then, unless the sperm bank had got that wrong, too. “He’s the only doctor in this area?”
“He was, until his grandson Braxton, known as Beau took over. Good doctor, but not friendly like his grandfather. People don’t think he likes being back here... He used to be the town troublemaker when he was a kid. But he does what he’s supposed to now, and he’s as good as his grandfather, so the rest of it doesn’t really matter.” Her smile widened.
“Upstairs you’ll find the game room and TV. Downstairs you’ll find the laundry and a couple of extra bedrooms. And on this level...you’ve seen it all. The kitchen, the great room. Oh, and there’s a whirlpool in the master suite.”
“It’s lovely,” Deanna said absently, her mind still on the Braxton Alexander who’d fathered Emily’s baby. Good doctor a plus, lacking in personality a minus. Troublemaker as a kid an even bigger minus! “I think everything will suit me just fine.”
“You can call out for groceries, too. Number’s by the phone. If you want to hole up for the entire month and never leave, you can. So, what was it you said you were going to do? Write a book?”
Sugar Creek, where everybody knew everybody else’s business. That could work to her advantage, or against it. One way or the other, she was going to have to be very careful here, because her business was nobody else’s. “Something like that.”
“Well, if you find yourself craving company, my office is on the main street. Stop by any time. We can have lunch or I can show you around. There’s not much to do here so it’s always nice to make new friends.”
She liked Kelli. Maybe under other circumstances they might have been friends. But she wasn’t here about friendship, wasn’t here to have lunches or insert herself into the local culture. This trip was only about finding out what kind of man had fathered Emily’s baby, and once her curiosity was satisfied, she’d leave. Hopefully she would return to the larger apartment her own real estate agent was scouting for her right now. Another of those life changes happening too fast.
After hastily unpacking and tossing a few articles of clothing on the bed rather than hanging them, Deanna fixed herself a pitcher of lemonade and headed out to the porch swing. This was her next month: sitting, watching, hoping to learn. So why not start it now?
“They say your daddy isn’t too personable,” she said, laying her hand protectively over her belly as she lowered herself into the swing. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Not to either of us. I want you and love you, so it’s going to be fine even if he is an old grump.” Although somehow she’d wanted him to be pleasant, and she was a little disappointed by the prospect that he wasn’t. “So what else are we going to discover?”
The truth was, now that she was here, she was scared about it, and feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. “But we’ll get through it,” she said. “I always do.” A fact that scared her even more because, for the first time since she’d agreed to carry this baby, she realized she didn’t want to do it alone. But alone was what she was.
So very alone. And nothing could fix that. “So now I’m going to cry,” she said as the tears welled in her eyes. “Damn the hormones.” And the loneliness.
CHAPTER TWO
IT UNVEILED ITSELF before her eyes, almost in slow motion. Even from her mountaintop perch she saw the beginning of it, two cars climbing up the modestly steep highway leading into town, one in the front, one bringing up the rear at a safe distance.
Nothing out of the ordinary except the deer that darted out in front of the first car then paused in the middle of the road to
stare at its would-be attacker, and run safely off to the other side. All this while the first car swerved to avoid it then jammed on its brakes, sending it into a fishtail that caused it to cut in and out, from lane to lane, over the center line, then whip back to the other side. Correcting and over-correcting to right itself.
That’s when the full realization of what she was witnessing grabbed hold and propelled her off the swing and right up to the rail of the porch for a better look. And as that horrible realization sank in deeper, and the second car jammed on its brakes to avoid the veering of the first car, her hand crept to her pocket and her fingers wrapped around her cellphone as the second car braked too hard and skidded...and skidded...and skidded...
A sickening crunch of metal permeated the mountain air, one so hideous it caused a roost of black birds in a far-off tree to flee their sanctuary with great protest and screeching. Holding her breath, Deanna didn’t divert her eyes from the road below as her fingers slid over the phone’s smooth face. She glanced down just long enough to see the numbers to push, and pushed.
Then, as she looked back down the side of the mountain, the second car was flipping, side over side, repeatedly hitting the pavement. Its course to the edge of the road clear, the clutching in her heart turning to a stabbing pain. “Dear God,” she murmured, as the emergency dispatcher came on.
“This is 911, what’s your emergency?”
“No,” Deanna cried in a strangled scream, hoping God or somebody would hear her and stop the second car’s inevitable plummet over the side of the mountain.
“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asked again, followed by, “Miss Lambert, are you all right? Please, can you hear me?”
Hearing her name snapped her back into the moment. “Yes, I’m here, and I’m watching a wreck in progress. Two cars...” She glanced left, to the semi heading down the mountain, its driver not yet able to see what was ahead. “And maybe a semi, if it doesn’t get stopped in...” Her voice trailed off as she watched the second act unfold.
“Where, Miss Lambert?”
Again, hearing her name from the dispatcher jolted her. “It’s a road I can see from my porch, but I don’t know its name. I’m in my cabin...”
“Above the Clouds,” the dispatcher supplied, then asked, “South porch?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me, exactly, what kind of damage or injuries we might be looking at?”
Massive, devastating injuries, she thought. “Yes. One of the cars has just gone through the guardrail and over the edge. And the other...” She swallowed hard. “It hit the guardrail a few times and it’s still trying to correct itself on the road... I think the truck coming from the other direction’s going to hit it.”
Whether or not the driver of the semi saw the impending disaster ahead, or simply assumed the car careening head first at him in his lane would move over, Deanna had no idea, but the excruciating squeal of the semi’s brakes and the low wail of the truck’s horn was what snapped her totally out of the surreal watching mode and into action.
“I know exactly where it is,” the dispatcher said, “and I’ve sent out an alarm to the volunteer fire department. They’ll be there as fast as they can.”
How long would that be? In a study concerning rural emergency response times Deanna had conducted last year, she’d discovered that those waiting times could be fatally long—sometimes thirty minutes, up to an hour. And from what she’d just witnessed, there were people down below who needed help before that. “What about the local doctor?” she asked. “Can we call him?”
“He’s out mending fences right now, but I’ll give his grandpa a call and see what we can do to get him there. Kelli Dawson’s my daughter, by the way. And I know this is probably not the best time to say this, but welcome to Sugar Creek, Miss Lambert.”
She heard the cordial greeting, but it wasn’t registering because... “Oh, my... No!” The semi didn’t hit the oncoming car, as she’d thought it might, but in its attempt to do a hard brake, it jackknifed and turned over, sliding on its side along the road.
And the car swerved right into it, hit the back end of its trailer with full-on force, bringing both the truck and the car to a stop. “More casualties,” she informed Kelli’s mother. “Two cars and one semi now. Can’t see how many people...” Wasn’t sure she wanted to see how many people.
But after she’d clicked off from the dispatcher, curiosity got the better of her and she grabbed her binoculars, took a look. Nobody was moving. No one was trying to climb out of the carnage. No one was trying to climb up the side of the mountain from where they’d toppled off.
And there was no one there to help. That’s what scared her the most. People down there needed help and she prayed they weren’t past the point where help mattered.
Without a thought for anything else, Deanna grabbed her medical kit, one she carried out of habit more than necessity, and sprinted for her car. She backed it out and headed down the steep road, making sure not to speed lest she ended up like one of the cars below. At the turn-off to the highway, she slowed to let a minivan by, made a left-hand turn and headed for the crash site, hoping help would be there when she arrived.
But the minivan was the only car present, and the woman driving it was standing outside her vehicle, torn between running to look for victims and trying to subdue three small children in the rear of the van. Her cellphone was in her hand and she was physically standing in front of the van’s door. Was she trying to block the view from her children? Deanna wondered about that as she pulled alongside the van, waved to the woman, then continued to drive into the heart of the scene.
It’s what she would do, she realized. She would protect Emily’s baby from seeing what she herself was about to confront. She absolutely understood that mothering priority. She wasn’t sure she’d respond that way in a crisis out of a natural tendency but, looking at it from a purely practical point of view, there was no denying the minivan mom was doing what she had to do. Something Deanna hoped she would learn when she became a mom.
As Deanna brought her car to a stop, several hundred yards short of the crash site, her cellphone jingled before she had a chance to step out. “You’re a nurse?” the deep voice practically shouted. He sounded winded.
“I am. And who are you?”
“Local doctor. Beau...”
She wasn’t even going to ask how he knew who she was, that she was a nurse, her cellphone number... “Your ETA?”
“Five minutes, tops. But without supplies. You’re on the site already?”
How did he know that? “Just got here. Don’t know how many victims yet.”
“OK, you go see what we’ve got and I’ll keep the line open, Miss Lambert. And please start the assessments, establish the priority if you can, figure out what I need to do first, and I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
He knew her name, too. And trusted her to prioritize the scene? She hadn’t done that in a while. Hadn’t been in active practice for years. Maybe if she’d told him that, he wouldn’t be so trusting of her.
Those were the thoughts that stayed with her for the next seconds as she grabbed her medical bag, switched her phone to her earpiece, and headed straight for the first car. “I’m not sure we’re cut out for small-town life,” she whispered to Emily’s baby as she went straight to the driver’s-side window of the car that had hit the semi, and looked in.
“In case you’re listening, Doctor, I have a red sedan embedded in the back of the semi’s trailer. Inside, three people. Male, mid-twenties, driver. Female passenger, approximately same age. Both unconscious. Airbags not deployed. No seat belts. From what I can see, both have had head contact with the windshield, profuse cranial bleeding both victims. Not seeing movement of any kind. And back seat...”
She bent, took a closer look, and was hit with a cold chill. “Child, age
approximately three. No child seat. No seat belt. And...” she pulled open the car door and kneeled inside “...he’s conscious.”
“Stay with the child, Miss Lambert. Do you hear me? Stay with the child. I’m a minute away.”
Not that she would have left this little boy. “Hello,” she said, crawling all the way in. Instinctively, she reached over the front seat, took the driver’s pulse. Found nothing. “My name is Deanna,” she said to the toddler. He was curled up in a ball on the floor, looking at her with huge blue eyes that registered shock and terror and total confusion. “Can you tell me your name?”
Crawling across the seat until she was above the little boy, she leaned forward until she could get a good positioning on the female passenger’s neck and, again, felt no pulse. “Can you tell me where you hurt?” Were his parents both dead? Admittedly, she wasn’t in the best position to make assessments on the couple, so she wasn’t making any assumptions.
“No pulses detected,” she said to the vague voice on the phone. “Nothing affirmative, though. I’m not at a good angle to tell.”
“But you’re in the car?” he asked.
“Yes, with the child.”
“Is the car safe? No fuel leaking, nothing that looks like it’s going to ignite? Not close to the edge of the road?”
“Front end’s a mangled mess, but I’m safe.” She was pleased he actually sounded concerned.
“No chances, Miss Lambert. You keep yourself safe. Do you hear me?”
Yes, she heard him. “I have every intention of doing just that, Doctor,” she replied. To get Emily’s baby safely into the world, she would take no risks.
“Is the child injured? Can you tell if he’s hurt?”
“Can’t tell yet. I’m trying to check, but it’s cramped in here.” Cramped, even without her baby bump. She wondered how, in months to come, she was going to maneuver with a baby bump. “We’ll just have to wait and see how that works out,” she said to Emily’s baby.
