by Radclyffe
“Nope. Haven’t seen her.”
Dara frowned as they approached the family room at the end of the hall. “Sounds like she’s up here. I thought everyone was gone.”
Sawyer glanced in and slowed for an instant. Catherine was talking, all right, on the big flat screen on the wall. The Channel 10 logo ran across the bottom of the screen, the wind blew Catherine’s blond hair into artful disarray, and a shot of Sawyer and Dara leaning into the ambulance filled the background.
Chapter Sixteen
Landfall minus 2.5 days, 5:00 a.m.
Channel 10 News Storm Update
Miami, Florida
“This is Catherine Winchell, reporting live from outside Key West Memorial Hospital, where evacuation has been under way since early yesterday. Behind me is the National Guard Black Hawk helicopter waiting to take the last of the most critical patients to Miami Memorial Hospital. The Florida state disaster management division designated Miami Memorial, under the direction of Dr. Dara Sims—a noted area physician—as the medical command center for the upcoming crisis. By this time tomorrow, all hospitals in the Keys will be closed. Hundreds of tourists have rushed to the local airports in an effort to escape the oncoming hurricane, and thousands of residents have already begun the arduous journey to the mainland along the single highway linking the Keys.
“This just in. The National Hurricane Center reports Hurricane Leo has changed track and is now on course to make landfall on the east coast of southern Florida. The storm has been upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane, and some models predict Leo will be a Cat 5 by the time the storm comes ashore. Governor Valez, in conjunction with Mayor Santos of Miami-Dade, has issued a mandatory evacuation order for coastal areas in Zone A and the eastern part of Zone B. This includes low-lying areas of Miami Beach and the county’s other barrier islands.
“The governor states, This storm has the potential to cause more damage than Andrew and over a much wider area. Do not ignore orders to evacuate. If you are in an evacuation area, seek shelter at designated areas in your county now.
“Stay tuned for more up-to-the-minute updates as I follow the emergency response to Leo, live with the Florida National Guard.”
Catherine, wearing a red windbreaker, her shoulders hunched against the wind and steady rain, intercepted Sawyer on her way back to the hospital to pick up the next ICU patient for transfer to the helicopter. “The pilots tell me we’re taking a different route home.”
“That’s right.” Sawyer didn’t slow down, not because she was trying to avoid the reporter but because there was work to be done. If Catherine wanted to tag along, fine, but she wasn’t going to stop for a photo op. Not that the rain-drenched parking lot was a great place for one. Although given her brief glimpse of the TV news feed with Catherine reporting while being buffeted in the foggy, wind-lashed ER lot, Sawyer figured Catherine was likely capable of doing most anything anywhere. She was a pro.
Catherine kept pace easily and Sawyer had a quick mental snapshot of her in the white bikini. Yeah, she was in good shape. Either she was naturally fit or she worked out, or both. If she hadn’t been so ruthlessly fixed on getting her story, she’d be the kind of woman Sawyer admired. Unlike Dara, though, who was just as professional and determined, and light-years more beautiful, Catherine’s motivations never seemed selfless. Maybe that’s why Sawyer didn’t find her attractive personally. Unlike Dara.
Catherine held out her recorder as they trotted along side by side. “Colonel Kincaid, what advice can you give people about evacuating?”
Sawyer slowed. Part of her rescue and recovery mission was to get the civilians to safety before they needed her aid. She spoke as she walked. “If you’re in an evacuation area, don’t wait, hoping the storm might turn out to be less serious than predicted. It’s going to be every bit as bad as you’re hearing. Our forecasters are experts, and this is going to be a dangerous event. Go now.”
“Excellent advice. You would know how important it is to heed the evacuation orders, especially after the tragedy you suffered when your family failed to evacuate in time during Hurricane Andrew. What prompted your family to delay?”
Icy cold slithered down Sawyer’s spine, and a rage so deep it burned roiled inside. “No comment.”
“Colonel,” Catherine said, “you survived a terrible ordeal when only a child, and now you’re out here trying to prevent others from suffering the same tragedy. Your story might save lives.”
“Right now, I have a helicopter crew and critical patients to secure.” Sawyer yanked the ER doors open and Catherine followed her inside.
“All right, then, off the record for now.” Catherine put the recorder away. “But will you agree to an interview, one-on-one, when we land? People will listen to you. You know I’m right.” Catherine pulled out the big guns. “It’s part of why you wear the uniform, after all. You hold a position of authority and it’s your duty to keep the public safe.”
“I know my duty.” Sawyer’s chest cramped with the effort to hold back her anger.
“Then give me a five-minute interview when we land.”
“I’ll think about it.” Sawyer slowed outside the ICU. “How did you get that broadcast out from here anyhow?”
Catherine smiled. “Ah. The wonders of modern technology and excellent station editors. A smartphone with video capability and a portable tripod is more than adequate for live scene clips. Any blips in the quality just add to the drama and realism. I send the clips plus my voice recordings to the station, and they do the rest. All I need is a thirty-second shot of me to go with my voice-over. There are always plenty of people around who want to be interviewed, and if I have to, I ask them to shoot a few minutes for me. An ER nurse was more than happy to record me outside in the parking lot after I asked her for a few quotes.”
“Smart.” Sawyer shook her head as she punched the auto open button for the ICU. “I’m impressed with your resourcefulness. No recording in here.”
“I’m thrilled to finally get your attention,” Catherine said, a hint of laughter in her voice. “And it’s our policy when showing sensitive clips to blur out faces to protect individual privacy.”
“Good to know.”
Dara met them just inside the door. When she smiled at Sawyer, her welcome cooled the last embers of unrest simmering in Sawyer’s midsection. The punch of awareness was so intense, and so new, she shivered.
“Hey,” Sawyer murmured.
“Hey,” Dara said, her gaze fixed on Sawyer as if Catherine wasn’t following alongside. “Myers is just signing off.”
“Great.”
Dara asked quietly, “You okay?”
Surprised, Sawyer nodded. No one else ever noticed if she was upset. Maybe she hid her distress really well, but not from Dara. She didn’t mind, which was surprising too. “Sure.”
“Good.” Dara glanced quickly at Catherine before turning her attention to the last patient in the ICU. The other cubicles stood empty, bedraggled bedding, discarded IV tubes, and blank monitors standing silent witness to the hasty retreat.
Catherine was good to her word and stayed back as Sawyer, Phyllis, and Dara readied the neurosurgical postop patient for transfer. Myers accompanied them out to the Black Hawk for final check once he was aboard.
When they reached the helicopter, Norton leaned out the bay doors and Sawyer lifted her end of the stretcher up into the bird. After climbing in, she helped secure the stretcher in the cargo area as Dara and Phyllis checked on the other patients.
Myers knelt to evaluate the stability of the external frame holding his head and neck still. After a minute she shifted into a crouch and turned to Sawyer. “Okay—he ought to be good even if you get a little bumpy weather.”
“Thanks, Doc.” Sawyer hoped a little weather was all they ran into.
Myers scanned the interior. The metal frame was unadorned, with every available nook filled with equipment and IV bags, pressure lines, and tubes hanging from the roof. The pilots were sequestered
in their armored cabin in the far front. With patients and crew, it was cramped in the main body. “Cozy. Too bad I can’t ride along.”
Sawyer shook her head. “You ought to jump in your…Jeep…and head to the mainland. The hospital isn’t going to be operating at full tilt for a while.”
Myers grinned, and looked again like a college senior with nothing but fun on her mind. “How do you know I have a Jeep?”
“’Cause you need it for your surfboard.”
“You’re scary.” Myers sighed. “If only…”
“We’re all set,” Dara said, easing in beside Sawyer. “I’ll take over here now.”
“Good luck. Ta all,” Myers called as she hopped out. She looked up at Sawyer. “Wish I flew your way.” With that, she waved and, head down, sprinted back to the ER.
Sawyer frowned after her. “I missed something.”
“She thinks you were flirting,” Dara murmured.
“Huh?”
Dara shot her a half-exasperated, half-fond look. “You weren’t?”
“No.” Why would Dara think she was flirting with a woman she didn’t even know? She didn’t flirt with anyone. And she wasn’t interested in starting. Frowning, she hunkered down by the stretchers. Teasing Dara to get her to laugh was different.
“For someone so on top of everything…” Dara shook her head.
Sawyer would have protested further, but Norton gave her the two-minute sign and a twirl of the finger indicating the bird was ready to fly.
“Roger that, Chief,” Sawyer confirmed. And now there was no time for anything but the mission. With no corpsmen for the return trip, she and Phyllis would cover all the other patients, leaving Dara to watch the fresh postop. Compared to the acutely injured troops she was used to transporting in the field, these patients were mostly stable and, other than close monitoring, shouldn’t require much in the way of active treatment on the trip home. The weather worried her way more than the medical challenges at the moment.
“Strap in, Ms. Winchell,” Norton said.
Sawyer glanced over Dara’s shoulder as Norton assisted Catherine in climbing aboard, looking windblown but a lot more comfortable in the helicopter than she had previously.
“Of course.” Catherine took her previous seat, and Norton moved forward, speaking into her headset. Everyone pulled on their headgear.
“Prepare for liftoff,” Norton said.
The bird shuddered to life with a familiar roar, rose almost straight up, and headed off into the gray morning.
Landfall minus 34 hours, 5:55 a.m.
In flight over the Gulf of Mexico
Thirty minutes into the flight, Dara checked her patient’s vital signs for the third time. His blood pressure was a little higher than it had been the last time she checked, and his heart rate a little faster. The neurosurgeons had opted not to insert an intracranial bolt to measure the cerebrospinal pressure. Myers explained they were worried about the probe being dislodged since he needed to be moved immediately. Luckily, he hadn’t shown any signs of brain injury or swelling on his preoperative MRI. Dara was glad not to have a sensitive pressure probe going through his skull and directly into his brain while they were flying through rough weather, but it also left her guessing as to what exactly was going on inside his head. He was heavily sedated, and checking his pupillary reflexes really didn’t help her. As far as she could tell with the limited access she had available, all his extremities were well perfused and neurologically intact. Still, his vital signs weren’t going in the direction she’d like to see.
Her radio crackled and Sawyer said, “Something wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” Dara was past being surprised when Sawyer seemed to read her moods or her mind, even when most of her body was covered up with a helmet and bulky flight suit. If she’d been that transparent to anyone else, it would’ve bothered the hell out of her, but she was inexplicably pleased that Sawyer was so tuned in to her. That’s what it was, tuned in. Not reading her so much as sensing her. Sawyer, for all her outward appearances of being stoic and unemotional, was unbelievably sensitive, a trait Dara hadn’t realized she was searching for in a woman until now. And what the hell was she doing thinking about that in the middle of all this. “Nothing I can put my finger on, but his vital signs are just a little rickety. How much longer?”
“Forty-three minutes.”
Dara would have smiled at the precise answer if she hadn’t been so worried. Of course Sawyer would be precise. “All right. There’s nothing to do but keep an eye on him for now.”
“Keep me apprised.”
“Roger, Colonel.”
She heard a faint chuckle and then her headset quieted again.
Ten minutes later, she repeated her vital signs check. His systolic pressure was definitely elevated now, and his pulse rate was 20 percent above normal. Something was going on. She checked his temp. Most postoperative patients ran a temperature, but his had kicked up half a degree as well. Sepsis? Too soon for that. Probably pulmonary, and not a damn thing she could do about that in this helicopter. Bleeding? That would account for the increased pulse rate but not the blood pressure, unless…unless his pressure spike was causing him to bleed and his healthy heart was kicking up to compensate for the diminishing volume. A paradoxical situation that could fool some into thinking there was no bleeding problem until his pressure dropped out in a heartbeat. She cautiously increased his intravenous fluids. With any postoperative patient, but particularly one at risk for spinal or cerebral swelling, taking care not to fluid overload them was key. Damn, how did Sawyer and Jones and the rest of them do this on a wild flight over a battlefield, with bombs exploding and bullets tearing through the helicopter, and people bleeding to death in front of them? She was riding a relatively calm wave right now, and her pulse rate was probably 150.
“We’ve got a bit of a snafu,” Sawyer said.
“Not what I want to hear right now,” Dara said. “What is it?”
“The pilots had to detour around a significant squall system, probably Leo’s calling card, and we’re running low on fuel.”
“We’re going to have to land somewhere?”
“Not the best option. If we land and can’t take off again when the storm moves closer, we’ll have to transfer all these folks to ground transport.”
“Not good,” Dara said. “Way too much delay, especially for this guy.”
“Copy that. So we’re going to refuel midair as soon as we can get a refueling tanker to intercept our course.”
Dara’s stomach tightened. She knew what that meant, she’d seen it on TV or in a movie or something, and it always seemed to be really difficult. “Is it going to work?”
“It’s going to have to.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Rendezvous with the tanker, two minutes,” Chief Norton said. “Strap in and prepare for refueling.”
Dara clipped her harness to the nearest hook in the safety rigging so she could remain by her patient, trying not to be annoyed she couldn’t move as freely as she had before. Better to be mobile enough to work than to be strapped in and practically held captive like Catherine. And, wow, really not fair to feel a bit of perverse pleasure at that thought, all because Catherine was shamelessly pursuing Sawyer at the same time she was prying into Sawyer’s private life. Once they landed, Catherine would head back to her warm, safe studio and the whole irritating matter would disappear. She hoped.
By craning her neck, she could get a look out the rain-spattered cargo bay window at a narrow patch of gloomy gray sky. A knife-edge section of wing angled into view followed by a portion of the body of an airplane that had to be three or four times the size of the helicopter. Her view was suddenly obscured by the gunmetal gray side of the really big airplane. She understood the gist of what was about to happen—the tanker would drop a flexible tube of some sort, the Black Hawk pilots would miraculously slot the thing into a receptacle somewhere, and fuel would flow into their helicopter. That couldn’t really
be such a great idea, could it? Even on a good day in clear skies? And how exactly was that tanker, considering it resembled an elephant trying to sidle up to a Labrador retriever that never held still, supposed to get close enough to accomplish that without knocking them out of the sky?
She probably should be a lot more nervous, but Norton and Sawyer seemed totally unconcerned, and her adrenaline was running so high all she registered was excitement. She experienced the same exhilaration every time she was in the midst of a medical crisis. Every thought came through as sharp and clear as a beacon, every impulse crystallized into pure sensation. The combination was addictive—hell, even good sex didn’t compare. Or maybe the sex had never been that good—something else to ponder sometime.
“You holding up okay?” Sawyer’s voice sounded in her headset.
Oh yeah, just great. I’m just comparing this near-death experience with your typical, sort of forgettable sex and deciding this was more fun. And how come I think you know that? Dara nearly laughed and just barely stifled the impulse. Way to project a solid, professional image. “Fine. How is it going?”
“The HC-130 is in position. They’ll drop the drogue to connect with our probe as soon as we get a little closer. There might be some tight maneuvering while the pilots get us lined up. Don’t let it worry you.”
“I’m okay.”
“Never doubted it.”
The confidence in Sawyer’s voice went a long way toward calming the nerves Dara hadn’t realized were making her twitchy. She probably ought to be embarrassed, but nothing about Sawyer made her self-conscious, even when she was a little shaky.
“How’s the patient?” Sawyer asked.
“Not as stable as I’d like but nothing I can quite put my finger on. I’ll be happier when we get him in the ICU, though.”
“Me too. Everyone else here is good.”
“Good. Thanks.”
