His Motherless Little Twins (17 page)

“Maybe it wasn't Johnny's plane that…” She couldn't bring herself to say “crashed”. Plane crashes signified such awful things.

“His plane is yellow, bright yellow. There's no mistaking it.”

“Was the plane you saw yellow?”

Eric nodded.

Dinah grimaced. “Since it didn't flame, that's good. Maybe they made the airstrip after all.”

“Neil's already had a call from Ella Clark. She runs the landing strip up there. She said the plane's down.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes now.”

“How long will it take us to get there?”

Eric glanced up as Jess Weldon's helicopter came into view. “A few minutes,” he said, bending into the back of the truck, pulling out equipment—ropes, bags, tools.

“The drive would take thirty minutes, this will take less than ten.” Eric waved Dinah toward the chopper and led the way, leaving Dinah to run after him, her arms loaded with the supplies he hadn't been able to carry. But when she got to the helicopter, she was surprised to find its pilot stepping out.

“It's a two-seater,” Eric yelled. “And I need you more than I need Jess.” He said something to Jess, tossed him the set of keys to his truck, and Jess turned and ran toward the parking lot.

“What are you doing?” Dinah practically screamed, her eyes still fixed on the departing pilot.

“Get in!” He yelled the command then climbed into the pilot's seat. Blindly, Dinah obeyed, but once she was strapped in, she shut her eyes and refused to open them.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” she yelled, gripping the edges of her seat so hard her knuckles turned white. She could feel the lift, hear the rotors pick up velocity as they headed straight up. But she still couldn't look down. Couldn't even get her eyes open to look, even if she'd wanted to. “Are you really a pilot, too?” she shouted. But he didn't answer. So she ventured a peek in his direction, only to find him talking into a headset. Before she could close her eyes again, she caught sight of the ground, saw dozens of people down there looking up…at them. They were getting smaller and smaller, which meant… Dinah gulped hard. Of all the incredible things not to know about a person, this had to be the most incredible. Because he was a pilot, an honest-to-goodness pilot, and a very skilled one judging from the way he handled the aircraft.

“Why didn't you tell me?” she shouted at him when he had finished talking into the headset.

“It never came up,” he shouted back.

Her hands loosened their grip a little as they turned and headed for the middle Sister. But she couldn't sit back and relax.

“See if you can spot the crash site,” he shouted, then added, “With your eyes open.”

“My eyes
are
open.” Becoming more and more open all the time. Eric was an amazing man, the man of any sane woman's dreams. Of course, climbing into a helicopter with him might be pushing the sanity point a bit far, but this was a man who kept getting better and better. Maybe the man to make her believe that she
could
believe.

“It's just ahead, but I'm not seeing…”

“They didn't make it,” Dinah shouted, practically jumping out of her seat. “I can see it. It's just to the…” She didn't have her bearings. Didn't have a clue which direction was which. “Over there.” She pointed.

Eric brought the helicopter round, hovered over the spot for a moment then turned the helicopter in the opposite direction, descending just on the edge of the landing strip. “Watch your head when you get out,” he shouted, as they touched down. “Give the rotors a minute…”

The words fell on deaf ears. Dinah bolted out, grabbed her medical bag and a few of Eric's tools, and took off running across the end of the landing strip, heading into what was, essentially, a cleared area at the base of an old ski slope that had shut down years ago, when the Cedar Ridge Lodge had been built on the other side of the mountain. No one was up there yet, except a single truck she saw ahead of her. It was parked off the gravel road, its driver's door open.

“Dinah,” Eric called, from behind, running hard to catch up to her.

“I can see it, Eric.” But not for long, as it was getting dark. And that didn't bode well for the rescue, if the victims weren't all contained in a small area.

He caught up to her, and they paused together at Ella's truck.
Looked. Then, as if there was an unspoken agreement between, ran to the crash site, Dinah going to the left, Eric to the right.

“Full plane,” Ella cried. She was on her hands and knees next to a passenger, feeling for a pulse. “I called it in.”

Dinah dropped to her knees beside the woman, but Ella gave her a grave shake of the head. “I don't think this one will be needing your services this evening.”

After she'd confirmed what the old woman already knew, Dinah stood back up, looked around. Saw someone sitting up, way off to the side of the crash. “Are you going to be OK?” Dinah asked Ella.

“I've been running one airstrip or another for fifty years. Sorry to say, this isn't my first crash. I'll be fine.”

The next two people Dinah checked were injured, but stable enough. And grateful to be alive. But she came upon the pilot, at least she assumed him to be a pilot because he wore a bright yellow T-shirt with the word
Pilot
across his chest in blue. Except
Pilot
was covered in bright red blood, and poor Johnny had no pulse. In a quick assessment, Dinah counted three serious conditions, and her stomach roiled. Johnny had a puncture wound to the thigh that was leaking a fair amount of blood, a gash to his head which had rendered him unconscious, and a huge bruise to the chest, which was going to be the injury she had to fight hardest. Death was never easy, and she didn't like losing to it. It wasn't inevitable for Johnny, though.

“Dinah!” Eric shouted from somewhere on the other side of the wreckage. “Are you OK?”

“I'm fine! Doing CPR,” she shouted back. She was starting chest compressions now, hoping it would be enough. “What's the estimated arrival on anybody getting here?”

“Ten minutes tops.”

Ten minutes. She could do this for ten minutes. But what
if someone else here needed those ten minutes, too? “Then I'll be good over here.”

“Do you need anything?” he shouted.

Other than their first right and proper date? It seemed something always got in the way, that they always had more important things to do. What an amazing team they made. A team…she'd never thought of her and Eric in those terms. “I'm good. Oxygen would be nice as soon as we get it up here, though.” Yes, they were an amazing team. Maybe with some kinks to work out. But amazing, all the same. “Well, Mr Pilot,” she said to Johnny Mason. “You'd better make this worth my while, because it's just you and me for the next ten minutes, and I don't want you letting me down in the end. I have expectations, and you'd better not ruin them for me. You hear?”

Expectations. She looked across the crash site as Eric was about to climb through the plane wreckage. Yes, she did have expectations. “It's just you and me,” she whispered. You and me, meaning Eric and herself.

“N
EED
some help with that?”

Dinah looked up, saw the silhouetted shadow of a large, looming mountain man. To her, he looked like a grizzly bear.

“You know CPR?” she asked him, wondering where he'd come from.

“In my clean-shaven days I was Dr. Walter Graham, obstetrician. Formerly a full-time doctor at the White Elk Hospital and currently part-time when I take a notion to work. In my unshaven days, I'm Walt. I was up on the overlook, getting ready to hike down the other side, when I saw the plane come down.” He knelt, nudged Dinah aside and assumed his place doing CPR. “You're faster than I am, can get to more people. You go on. Johnny and I will be fine here.”

“Rescue crew should be up here any time now.” She grabbed her medical bag and stood. “Call me if you need something.” Then she ran for the crushed fuselage, wondering if Eric was still inside. But halfway there, the faint call of someone in the distance caught her attention, so she stopped, listened. Couldn't pinpoint it.

“Hello,” she called. “Can you answer me?”

There was no response.

“Can you tell me where you are?”

Again, no response. The only sound she could hear was the crunching of truck tires on the gravel road. Help was here but, damn, she really needed silence. Really needed to be able to hear. “Hello?” She tried one more time then held her breath, hoping, praying…

A faint moan, coming from somewhere to the side of the crash site. But where, exactly? “Eric, over here. I've got someone over here and I can't find them.”

No time to wait for the portable lights to be set up, no time to wait for the rescuers to be organized. Dinah dashed off to the wooded area on the edge of the clearing, and started her search. “I'm coming,” she called out. “Don't give up. I'm on my way.”

“Dinah, where are you?” Eric called.

“Just at the tree line,” she yelled back, flashing her light in the direction of his voice. “I heard someone moaning.”

“Any other response?” he asked, once he'd caught up to her.

“No. And it was just the one moan. I mean, it could have been an animal, but… Is everybody accounted for at the site? All the victims?”

“Everybody but Fallon. And there's some confusion about whether or not she took the flight. It turns out that Johnny had her on the manifest for tomorrow morning. Her cell phone is off, but we're trying to contact her friends right now.”

“Then she could be out here.”

“And we'll find her if she is.” For the next few minutes they made their way slowly through the underbrush, pushing back branches, climbing around bushes, in places practically dropping to their knees to crawl, the undergrowth was so dense. They stayed apart, not talking but close enough to see one another, except Dinah couldn't look at him. Because to look was to admit her feelings. And to admit them was to change everything.

But changing because she was in love? That wasn't such a bad thing, was it?

After all, she did love Eric in a way she'd never known. Not with anybody, ever.

“One small step,” she whispered. But, really, wasn't it more like one gigantic leap of faith?

 

“Eric, come in,” Neil radioed from the crash site. “We've heard about Fallon.”

He clicked on his radio. “What?”

“She was on the plane. And she's not one of the victims. We have eleven, not including the pilot. One fatality and ten survivors, three of them critical, one extremely critical, six stable. Fallon's not one of them and we've looked everywhere inside the grid we laid out. She's not here, and there's nothing to suggest she's buried in the actual plane wreckage somewhere.”

Eric stood up, brushed the dirt off his knees. “Then she's here somewhere, where Dinah said she was.”

“I'll get another team in to you right away,” Neil said, then clicked off.

“Fallon,” Dinah called from somewhere off to his left.

“I think so.”

“No, it's Fallon. I've found her.”

He didn't want to ask. Didn't want to know.

“She's alive, Eric. Unconscious, pretty badly injured, but alive.”

In mere seconds he was at Dinah's side, assessing the pupils of Fallon's eyes. “Responsive,” he said, so relieved he nearly went weak at the knees.

“Can't get a blood pressure on her,” Dinah said, and immediately started probing Fallon's belly. “It's rigid. Probably internal bleeding.”

Eric was checking for bone injuries and gaping wounds. “No compound fracture, but I think she's got several facial fractures, probably a shoulder fracture…can't tell about her neck and spine.”

“Eric.” Dinah leaned in close to him. “She's losing her airway. Her breath sounds are diminishing pretty quickly.”

“Damn,” he muttered, immediately putting a stethoscope to her lungs. Dinah was right. Her breathing was being compromised…shutting down. But before he could say anything, Dinah was already pouring an iodine scrub on Fallon's throat—an iodine scrub he kept in his medical bag.

“You have a blade?” she asked him, as he took Fallon's pulse.

“In the pocket on the right side.” He bent closer to Fallon. “You stay with me, you hear? It's going to be a rough one, but I'm going to pull you through it…Dinah and I are going to pull you through it, Fallon. And what we have to do now is trach you…” Cut a hole in her windpipe to allow her to breathe. “You've got too much swelling in your trachea, but hang in there with me. We'll get you to the hospital in just a few minutes and get some pain meds into you.”

Dinah handed the scalpel over to Eric, and squeezed his hand at the same time. Without a word, she poised herself with a flashlight, ready to provide light for the procedure, but Neil arrived with several volunteers, who all carried flashlights and spotlights. And in the blink of an eye, Eric had performed the life-saving procedure, sliced a tiny hole into Fallon's throat, through the skin, through the cartilage. With no time to spare.

“She's going to be fine,” Dinah whispered, as Neil handed her a plastic tube to insert into the tiny incision Eric had made in her throat.

Eric glanced over at her, too overcome to speak. What they did together…professionally, it was a perfect fit. But person
ally…yes, he would definitely get down on his knees to beg Dinah's patience with him. “I'm glad you were here,” he said, his voice rough. Maybe beg more while he was down there.

“Well, I seem to be getting better at emergency rescue.”

“Not for that,” he said. “For me. I'm glad you were here for me.”

It took fifteen more minutes to stabilize Fallon for transport, fifteen minutes getting the IV in her vein, getting oxygen started. Fifteen minutes trying not to look at the facial fractures, the cuts, the unknown conditions that could only be diagnosed in the hospital. But she was alive, and that's what Eric kept telling himself as his team stabilized her neck and strapped her to the stretcher.

Rescue was always personal, but never this personal. And he was drained, physically and emotionally.

“She's going to make it,” Dinah reassured him, slipping her arm around his waist. “I know she's in rough shape right now, but she's going to pull through.”

“That was a good call on her breathing,” he said, leaning in, savoring her physical support as much as her touch.

“And that was pretty slick work, getting her airway opened up so quickly.” She leaned her head into his side. “We're good together, aren't we?”

“Perfect.” So now that he knew, without a doubt, what he wanted, all he had to do was figure out how to make it happen. What would it take to convince Dinah to bridge the distance she always drew between them?
Bridge it permanently
. “Look, will you do me a favour? I'm going to stay here and clean up the site. Pick up the trash, make sure we're not leaving any equipment behind. Do you mind going to Pippa and Paige? They were too close to this, and I don't want them to be scared. I'll call them when I get out of here and
get cell phone reception, but I'd feel better knowing you're with them until I can get home. Janice is good, but even the girls recognize that she gets nervous. Right now, as they saw the plane, and I'm sure they've heard all about it, I'd like you to—”

“You don't have to ask, Eric. I'm on my way.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Too bad you haven't moved into your new house, because I saw a Jacuzzi there, and that would sure be a nice place for us to relax once the girls are asleep for the night.”

“Damn,” he groaned. “That's the best offer I've had in years, and I have no way of taking you up on it.”

“Not now you don't. But maybe in a while…”

“Do you mean that, Dinah?”

“I want to mean it, Eric. I really want to mean it. But it's not easy to admit, not easy to do, and my life is still a mess…”

That distance again… Damn, what was he going to do? Rather than trying to find the impossible answer, he pulled her roughly to his chest, breaking that distance, if only for the moment, and kissed her hard and fast on her lips, then pushed her away. “We'll continue that later, but I want you going down the mountain with the team now. OK?”

She kissed her fingertips, dirty as they were, and brushed them across his lips. “OK.” Then she trotted down the trail after the rest of the team.

Eric kept the flashlight trained on her until she was out of sight then he began the clean-up. Truth was, he could have come back in the morning. There was no great hurry to get this done. But right now he wanted to be alone. He had a lot of thinking to do. And he needed to do it now.

 

“I was just checking on Fallon, and she's in pretty bad shape,” Dinah whispered to Janice. Pippa and Paige were busy in the
kitchen, making sandwiches for Eric. Ten sandwiches and counting, made out of every conceivable thing from the kitchen that could be slapped between two pieces of bread. Including the cookie dough. “We lost one, several are critical, most are stable, though.”

“Which is a blessing,” Janice said. “Although, I'm so sorry for the one who didn't make it.” She glanced at the pendulum clock on the wall. “How long before he'll be home?”

“Actually, I thought he'd be here by now.” It had been only two hours, and maybe it was merely her eagerness to be in his arms that had protracted those hours into an interminable length. “But who knows? Maybe he's taking some of the equipment back to the hospital, or even checking on some of the victims who'll be treated there? He's probably in the emergency room right now, totally unaware of the time.”

“He needs someone to make him aware,” Janice said. “Don't get me wrong. I've been happy having him here, and I love Pippa and Paige. But they need another life…all of them. And I…well. So do I. I'm not getting any younger, and there's this really nice man who owns a little café across the street from my shop. We have lunch together a couple times a week, and we've even gone out in the evenings. Yet…”

“You haven't been able to bring him home.”

Eric's sister shook her head. “My daughter, Debbi, has a life. She's decided to go to Chicago next month, after she graduates from high school, and one of Gabrielle's friends there is going to make sure she doesn't get herself into too much trouble. Which means I'll be alone for the first time in eighteen years. And I'm looking forward to it. Though I'll be sad to see her go, sad to see Eric and the twins go, too.”

“Sad, but not sad.”

“Does that sound terrible, Dinah?”

“It sounds normal. And you deserve it.”

“But I worry, because Eric is so caught up in the past. And I want him to move on with his life. This house he's buying is a good thing, and I have an idea it has something to do with you. So does his taking off his wedding band, and finally putting Patricia's photo away.”

“Her photo?”

“The one on his desk at work. He called me the other day, had me come and take it.”

Dinah had seen him stare at that photo so often, seen that distant look in his eyes when he did. These changes couldn't be easy for him, and yet he did them so quietly, and with so much strength. Not like her, making her changes kicking and screaming and being so resistant. Even tonight, when he'd asked her if she meant it…the Jacuzzi with overtones of so much more…she hadn't said she meant it. She'd said she was
trying
to mean it. Then said it wasn't easy. Wasn't easy… In truth, it was the easiest thing she'd ever done, falling in love with Eric. And the instant he walked through that door, she was going to tell him so.

 

“Still no word?” Dinah asked one of the rescuers who was still lingering in the hospital, helping to get all the plane crash patients settled in. It had been four hours and she was pacing the emergency department halls now, making a nuisance of herself.

“He's fine, Dinah. Sometimes Eric likes to unwind after these things. He's gone off before. Don't worry.” George Fitzhenry, one of team leaders, squeezed her shoulder. “He's had a lot on his mind and sometimes you simply need to get away to think.”

“I suppose you're right.” George knew Eric's habits, and he wasn't concerned. So she shouldn't be concerned either. She
was, though. Everything in her screamed she had to be concerned. “But he was anxious to get back to Pippa and Paige.”

“And he knows they're in bed by now. I think it's too soon to be so worried. Eric will turn up when he's ready.”

“But couldn't we do some kind of preliminary search?”

George shook his head. “It's too soon. People haven't even gotten home from the last effort. But if he hasn't called or come back in another hour or two, we'll look for him. Right now it's better to wait.”