by Norah Wilson
Okay, Cal, buddy, you’re not going anywhere for a minute. Get this breathing thing under control, he told himself. But his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. If anything, each breath came harder than the last one. Dammit, he musta ruptured a lung. He knew the sensation well from losing contests with bulls.
Vaguely he wondered if the damage had been done by Harvey’s knife or by the body slam against the cliff face. Didn’t much matter. He wouldn’t be able to hang here long.
He looked down to the canyon floor below. Harvey lay sprawled against some boulders, his neck turned at an impossible angle. Sonofabitch. He’d gotten off easy. Cal wanted to beat the life out of him personally for what he’d done to Lauren.
Lauren. He closed his eyes. She must have taken Sienna. Just before Harvey pulled the knife, he’d caught a glimpse of her stumbling toward the mare, grappling for the saddle. Then he hadn’t dared take his eyes off the knife. How long would it take her to get help? With a fresh horse, maybe twenty minutes to reach the ranch. With a tired one?
Fresh or tired, it didn’t matter. It would take too long. Already he felt like he was beginning to drown. Even if his arm strength held out, he’d lose consciousness and let go his grip.
At least Lauren would be all right. A wave of profound relief washed over him, followed by remembered fear. To think he’d almost left her to face that madman alone…
“Cal!”
He looked up to see the dim outline of Lauren’s face in the twilight. She hadn’t left.
“Hang on, Cal, I’ve got a rope,” she called, then disappeared again.
Dear Lord, he was saved.
Well, maybe, he amended with a grimace. At least he wouldn’t join Harvey at the foot of the canyon.
A moment later Cal’s own rope came snaking down to him. It dangled a little too far to the left, but Lauren materialized again, shifting it for him. He watched the rope swing past his face a few times, then let go of the branch with one hand and grabbed for it. Got it.
He wrapped the rope around his arm several times so he wouldn’t lose his grip.
“Are you secured?”
He looked up at Lauren. “I’m good.” It would have to be good. He didn’t have enough of a toehold to use both hands to tie the rope around him.
“Sienna is going to pull you up,” she called. “The face of the cliff looks pretty rough. I’ll try to take it slow so you don’t get banged around too badly.”
Her face swam impossibly far above him.
“Better make it fast.”
He had no idea if she’d heard him or not, but she disappeared again. Seconds later the rope tautened, then he was zipping up the cliff. Guess she heard me.
The cliff face abraded his arms, and roots and branches whipped his face. Dirt and rocks showered down on him, forcing him to close his eyes. Then he was up and over the ledge, lying on sweet, blessed ground that still held the day’s warmth, the smell of crushed grass strong in his nostrils.
“Cal.” Lauren’s hands were on him, turning him over. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t know.”
She tore his shirt open, bending close to examine the knife wound. He flinched when her fingers probed it.
“Thank God! It didn’t go through the chest wall.”
Cal tried to drag in another breath. “You sure?”
For the first time she seemed to tune into his breathing difficulty. “Cal, what’s the matter?”
“Breath…gettin’ short.”
With a sob, she pressed her head to his chest. Cal’s head spun. Geez, was she mourning him already? He closed his arms around her. “S’okay,” he slurred. “Be okay.”
“Ssshhh,” she commanded. “Don’t talk.”
Ah, of course—she was administering first aid, not enfolding him in a loving embrace. Despite his injuries, he smiled wryly up at the reddening sky as she listened, her ear pressed to his chest, to his struggle for breath.
She pulled away abruptly. A chill skated over his skin. Then he felt her fingers tapping his chest sharply. One side, then the other. Finally she sat back and met his gaze.
Shit, I must be a goner.
“I think you’ve got air collecting in your chest cavity, but the knife didn’t do it, or air would be bubbling out. You must have had some blunt trauma to rupture the lung tissue.” She smiled bravely. “Of course, I could be wrong. The last patient I percussed was a Great Dane.”
Poor Lauren, trying so hard not to let her terror show. He tried to reward her attempt at humor with a laugh, but wound up making a coughing sound that only alarmed her more.
“We have to get you into a sitting position. It’ll be easier to breathe.”
“Closed pneumo,” he rasped.
Her eyes widened. “Of course. You’ve probably had pneumothorax lots of times from your rodeo days. Once you’ve had it, the tissue is more prone to rupture. It wouldn’t take much.”
Damn, her face looked awful. Both eyes would be black later, and her lower lip was split. Her beautiful lips. Again he wished passionately that he could resurrect Harvey McLeod and kill him all over again, this time with slow, deadly purpose.
And Lauren…she hadn’t ridden to safety as he’d instructed. His heart stuttered as he allowed himself to think about the implications of that. If Harvey had managed to plant that blade a few inches to the right, he’d be dead now. And so would she.
“Told you…to ride away…”
“Ssshhh, don’t talk.” Kneeling behind him, she drew him up into a semisitting position, using her own body to support him.
“He’d been better…with a knife…both be dead.”
“Please don’t talk.” Her voice rumbled against his back.
“Almost…didn’t get here…in time…”
“Ssshh.”
“Vision…didn’t believe.”
“It’s okay, Cal.”
“S’why you came…right? Save Marlena?”
She was crying now. A hot tear fell on his chest.
“Yes, that’s why I came. But please, save your breath.”
And why she stayed on after he closed the guest ranch. Not for him. Not for what they shared together. For Marlena, to save her from Harvey…
His torpid mind came back to the puzzle. Why would Harvey want to kill Marlena? Why’d he try to kill Lauren? If he wasn’t feeling so stoned, so dizzy, he might be able to put it together.
Then the dizziness broadened, deepened, widened. It was a black void sucking at him.
“So sorry.”
He wanted to say more, but he had no breath left. He was sorry he hadn’t believed her. Sorry he couldn’t stay with her now. Sorry she didn’t love him the way he loved her.
Then he let the blackness claim him.
Lauren’s heart stopped. She felt for his pulse. It was there, but thready. Then she noticed his color, which had taken on a bluish hue. Crushing down panic, she tipped his head to one side and gasped. The veins of his neck were grossly distended.
Mediastinal shift.
Two words, but they ripped the lid off her panic.
Jesus. The pressure of the air inside his chest was forcing all the structures—heart, blood vessels, trachea—to one side. With sickening certainty, she knew his lungs were collapsing as his chest hyperexpanded. She imagined the great blood vessels kinking, cutting off the blood supply to his heart.
Minutes. That’s all he had. If she couldn’t relieve the pressure within a few minutes, he’d be dead.
What he needed was a trauma team to get a chest tube into him. What he had was her, and she had nothing to work with. Nothing. Dear Lord, her life for a large-gauge needle!
Think.
She was going to lose him and she hadn’t even told him she loved him.
The knife. She could use it to pierce the chest wall to let the air escape. She could use her fingers as a valve…
The knife—where had she dropped it? She eased Cal back onto the ground and raced to where she’d found the knife, the spot w
here she’d been standing when she’d seen Cal go over the cliff. The sun had sunk so low, she had to search the grass on hands and knees. Ragged sobs tore at her throat.
There! Her hand struck something hard. Yes! The knife.
She scrambled back to Cal’s side. Oh God. He was cyanotic. His neck veins were distended, his trachea deviated.
“Lauren?”
Lauren glanced up to see Marlena weaving toward her, hand to her bloodied face.
“Jesus, is that Cal?” She stumbled forward. “Omigod, Cal! What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s dying. If I don’t get a chest tube into him right goddamned now, he’s going to die of traumatic arrest.”
Marlena fell to her knees. “Jesus! Fix him!”
“I’m trying, dammit.”
Trembling, she ran her fingers over his chest, locating the second intercostal space. Okay, midclavicular line, and in.
“Jesus! You stabbed him! I thought you were trying to save him!”
Ignoring Marlena, Lauren inserted her pinkie finger into the space to hold it open and felt the rush of air. His color improved immediately, as did the neck vein and trachea. She pictured everything unkinking, the mediastinum settling back, venous supply to the heart restored.
“Is he okay now?”
“Well, he’s not going to arrest this very minute, but we have to get him help. You’re going to have to ride back and get me an air ambulance.”
“I can do better than that.”
Marlena leapt to her feet and ran to Sienna. Lauren saw her digging in Cal’s saddlebags. With a triumphant cry, she held something aloft. A phone!
“A cell phone?” Lauren didn’t dare hope. “Will it work way out here?”
“Not a cell phone. A satellite phone. Cal always carries it. And you bet your ass it’ll work.”
Marlena placed the call. When she got the emergency dispatcher, Marlena gave them their location, then held the phone to Lauren’s ear to let Lauren run down the emergency. An air ambulance was on its way, the dispatcher assured her. Then she patched in a trauma specialist. After hearing that she was in a field with no materials from which to build a chest drain and no means to sterilize anything, he advised her to just stand by.
Both women were cramped and trembling by the time they heard the helicopter approaching. And when the chopper hovered overhead and Lauren felt the downdraft from its rotors tearing at her hair, she thought it might just be the sweetest thing she’d ever felt.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cal opened his eyes and knew just where he was. Recovery room. His old home away from home. He moved experimentally and winced. Bull musta stomped me good this time. Funny, he didn’t remember losing his seat, hitting the ground. Then memory surged back.
He tried to sit up. A nurse appeared immediately, her hands cool as she urged him back down.
“Welcome back, Mr. Taggart.”
“Lauren,” he croaked through a parched throat.
“She’s waiting for you up on the ward.”
“Is she all right?”
“Cuts and bruises and an extremely sore throat. She was very lucky.”
Lucky, all right. Lucky she wasn’t dead because he’d doubted her. Lucky his intuition had overruled his reason. “How’d I get here?”
“You were airlifted off the ridge.” The nurse checked his vitals. “And the only reason you lived to make it here was because Dr. Townsend gave you an emergency thorocostomy.”
He blinked. “Thoro what?”
“You had a tension pneumothorax—air leaking into the pleural space with every breath. That caused mediastinal shift, which is a true emergency. You’d have died out there if she hadn’t used a knife to open your chest wall and let all that air out.”
Jesus. “Lauren did that?”
“Yep.” The nurse stuck a thermometer into his ear and removed it when it beeped. “How are you feeling, by the way? The anaesthetist was quite alarmed. That sedative they gave you for the chest tube was supposed to just mellow you out, not send you to dreamland.”
“No head for it,” he muttered, trying again to sit up. “Take me to Lauren.”
“Patience, Mr. Taggart.” She eased him back down. “You’ve got another fifteen minutes before we move you anywhere.”
Fifteen minutes? He couldn’t possibly wait that long.
A split second later, an orderly came to move him. Hell, he must have drifted off. He might have dozed off again on the way to the room, but with the bed rolling, he had to keep his eyes open to combat nausea. Pain he could handle. He’d walked on a broken leg and ridden bulls with his jaw wired up, but give him a little sedative and he was out of it. If he’d been halfway aware, he’d have told them to stick to just the local.
As soon as his bed emerged from the elevator, Lauren appeared beside him.
“Hey,” she said, walking along.
“Hey, yourself.” Cal thought he was ready to see the bruising, but he wasn’t. Her lip was split, and both sides of her face were bruised and swollen. It made him weak to see the blood trapped beneath her smooth skin. Remembered fear gripped his gut. “You look like hell.”
She laughed. “Thanks. So do you. How do you feel?”
“A lot better than I did the last time I saw you. If it weren’t for the damn sedative, I’d be good as new.”
That wasn’t quite true. He still couldn’t say more than a few words without drawing breath, but that would come soon.
“You’re lucky you got a sedative at all.” They were rolling through the corridor now. “I’m afraid I didn’t have one on hand when I opened your chest with a pocketknife.”
Her tone was teasing, but her voice broke on the last words.
“Guess I musta scared you back there.”
“Scared doesn’t even touch it.”
“You scared me too. I could have died when I saw that bastard whaling on you…”
“You almost did die, Cal. If you had…”
They’d reached a bright private room. To his frustration, Lauren let go of the bed rail and backed off to allow the orderly to position the bed. Then a new nurse, this one younger and prettier, moved in on him to take his vitals.
“You’ve got a chest tube, Mr. Taggart, but they didn’t have to operate,” she explained. “No bleeders or big lacerations. Your lungs should re-expand and heal nicely on their own,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“The doctor will be up to see you later today, and you’ll be seeing me regularly for the next few hours.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” He gave her what he hoped was a killer smile. “But could I have a word with my friend now?”
The nurse gave him a look that said he was in no condition to flirt, but she was smiling when she turned to Lauren. “Keep it short, would you? He needs his rest.”
“Of course.”
“So where were we?” he asked when the nurse had left. “Oh yeah, the part where you and Marlena waited around on that ridge for Harvey to get there instead of hightailing it home.” He couldn’t project his voice as loudly as he’d have liked, but the fear in his gut added bite to the words.
“Believe me, I tried to convince Marlena that we should run or hide, but she wound up convincing me that we couldn’t.” Her voice wavered. “If Harvey’d missed his chance this time, he would have just tried again. Unless he made a move on Marlena, she would never have believed me. No one would have believed me. He could have lured her out again at will.”
A sudden dizzy nausea swept over Cal, and he gripped the raised bed rail to try to combat it. “I believed you.”
She shot him an incredulous look.
“Okay, so it took me a while, but I came around. That’s why I turned back.” Damn, he was tired, and it was getting harder to focus with the room spinning like that.
“You turned Sienna around on the possibility I was right,” she corrected. “But what if Marlena and I had fled or hidden? What if Harvey had come and gone? What if you got there an
d found nothing? Would you still have believed me?”
Dammit. Cal fought the desire to flat-out lie. “Probably not.”
“See? We had to make him show his hand. Until he did, no one would truly believe me, which means Marlena would never be out of danger. What was I to do? Stay forever to babysit her?”
Stay forever? No, not that. He felt a twinge in his chest that had nothing to do with his chest tube. She had a life to go back to. Mission accomplished. She probably wanted to leave right now. In her mind, she was probably already there, taking up the reins of her practice again.
The thought made him want to weep. His throat tightened warningly. Mortified at his weakness, he squeezed his eyes shut. “You know, I think I might be too tired for this after all.”
He didn’t have to open his eyes; he heard the consternation in her voice. “Oh, Cal, I’m so sorry. I said I wouldn’t keep you long. I didn’t think. I’ll go now.”
“Wait.” He opened his eyes to find his request had stopped her at the door.
Let her go, man. Do the decent thing.
Are you crazy? Don’t let her leave!
“Don’t leave without coming back to see me, okay?”
She seemed suddenly tired herself, her shoulders drooping. Even from across the room, even groggy from the sedative, he could see her beautiful eyes were troubled. The moment stretched out until he wondered if she was going to answer him at all. Was she in that much of a hurry to be shot of him? Or worse, could she see how badly he needed her to stay? Was she wondering how to keep it from getting awkward?
“Yeah,” she said at last, smiling gently. “Yeah, I’ll come back before I go. Now get some rest.”
Rest. He watched the door swing shut behind her, then closed his eyes again. He might sleep, but there would be no rest. She was his rest, his heart, and she was leaving.
Lauren’s eyes burned as she pushed blindly into the hall. Blinking, she glanced around, then strode toward the elevators.
He expected her to leave.
She pushed the button to call for the elevator, and a pair of doors slid open. Brushing wetness from her swollen cheek, she stepped into the empty car and hit the button for the lobby.
He expected her to leave. Not next week or next month, now.
