Joy in His Heart (4 page)

If only it wasn’t Brian, everything would be a lot more bearable. She wondered if he had any inkling how afraid she was at that moment. He didn’t seem to. That made it easier not to hate him for looking so competent while she lay helpless, hiding her fear of their surroundings and her pain, as well.

Left with a feeling of internal disquiet over her rapidly changing perceptions of him, Joy endured a quick, efficient exam, holding tears at bay. But it took every ounce of strength she could summon. Over and over
she repeated the command her father had given her at age nine.

He’d come across her crying because one of the boys in the neighborhood had teased her. “Never let them see you cry,” he’d told her. “Never give anyone that power over you. You’re Jimmy Lovell’s kid. You don’t cry. Ever.”

And she never had. Not once in all the twenty-one years since. Not even when he was killed in the line of duty. She’d been what her father had wanted her to be. A rock for her mother and brother.

Brian cut her khaki pants open at the seam to just above her knee, wrapped that injured joint and her ankle, then made a big deal out of shining a light in her eyes and doubling the ache in her head. Had her mother not gone to so much trouble trying to make a lady out of her, she might have slugged him for it. Or for the stupid doctor noises he kept making. She assumed they were supposed to show he cared, especially as he helped her out of her jacket, but Joy didn’t believe he cared for a second. Behind that fake frozen smile, she knew he was gloating over her getting hurt and needing his help.

Added to all that, his touch, when not causing her pain, set her nerves on edge with a flood of memories. They were memories of another time and place when his touch held deep meaning and the promise of love and commitment.

“Joy, about your shoulder,” he said, finally giving up on his nonverbal communication. “It’s dislocated.”

“Finally some good news,” she quipped. But Brian just grimaced. “It is good news, isn’t it? It’s not broken
after all. Right?” She held her breath. Any more bad news just might push her over the edge into a quivering blob of crying woman. How disgusting was that?

“It’s a good news/bad news sort of injury,” Brian explained.

Which of course didn’t explain anything at all. “I’m up for some good news right now.”

“The concussion seems to be pretty slight. The sprains are only about a level two, which isn’t too bad considering how much worse it could have been.”

Now what was the good doctor dancing around? “Nice. What about the shoulder? And tell me in non-doctor speak,” she demanded. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

“Only starting?” He raised an eyebrow and grinned but the underlying tenseness in his body language worried her. “Okay, here it is in a nutshell,” he went on. “You’ll get over it a lot faster than you would a break.”

“That’s the good news, right? Hit me with the bad news and quit stalling.”

“I’ve got to get it back in joint. Right now. And it’s going to hurt. A lot. And the cut on the lower arm has to be cleaned and stitched. Since you do have a concussion, however slight, I’m not comfortable giving you any painkillers just yet. Tomorrow maybe, but not till then. By then more damage will be done to the shoulder if we don’t fix it now. The cut can’t be left open in this environment, either.”

“Terrific.” She sighed. It just got better and better. “Then I guess you should get at it,” she told him and steeled herself for more playacting. She’d just go some
where else the way she had when she’d crawled onto the parachute and actually managed to sleep for a few minutes. She’d put the bugs, the owl who’d scared her half to death while he was lowering her, and all the other animal noises out of her head. Out of her universe.

Brian only grimaced in response to her suggestion that he proceed.

“What’s the holdup?” she snapped when he didn’t just do it.

“It’s just that I’ve seen men pass out from the pain of having a shoulder yanked back into joint.”

Insulted, she huffed out a breath. “I don’t faint, Brian. Just get on with it.”

So he grasped her arm carefully, sending a shiver up her spine. She gritted her teeth as he started pulling, welcoming the pain. It would chase away that confusing feeling his touch seemed to spark. Then, as he braced his stockinged foot against her rib cage below her armpit, she held her breath. The cut below her elbow started to burn as he pulled on her arm. Then….

Joy hadn’t known a brain could actually explode from an overload of pain. Nor had she ever believed that old saw about seeing stars. But for the second time in one lousy afternoon, she did.

When she woke a second time to Brian’s concerned frown, she promised herself she’d never forgive him. Oh, not for fixing her shoulder, which she had to admit felt much better, but for having seen her faint. How humiliating was that!

J
oy glared at Brian, who sat next to her holding her wrist and staring at his watch. He looked concerned and oh-so-doctorly.

He looked up at last. Surprise widened his honey-brown eyes. “Oh. Back to the land of the living, I see. How do you feel?”

“You hurt me,” she accused and hated the disappointment that crept into her voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did try to warn you, but the good news is that I managed to clean and stitch the cut while you were still unconscious.”

He was entirely too comfortable with his role and way too competent for her liking. She didn’t want to talk to him or even look at him, and she certainly didn’t want to move, so she turned her head to survey her surroundings. Brian had sorted all the emergency items that had been in the packs. They’d contained an awful lot more than she would have thought. Then she noticed for the first time that he had his medical bag, the pad
from the gurney and even the sheets and blankets. She’d been too busy jury-rigging the yoke to watch what was going on behind her. Now she understood all that moving around behind her. Apparently he’d been planning ahead. Way too competent. She was bound to come off looking like a first-class idiot to his boy genius sooner or later. That knowledge put her on the offensive.

“Did you leave anything on the plane that wasn’t nailed down?”

He shrugged. “I took a chance and tossed all the emergency provisions and anything I thought we could use into the sheet from the gurney and tied it into a bundle. I held on to it when I jumped.”

“Since you cut my pant leg, I’m hoping you tossed my overnight bag too.”

“The contents of both of ours, actually. I figured we might need the change of clothes and such. I mean we wouldn’t have any of it or the blankets and the provisions in the extra packs if I didn’t try. We really had nothing to lose. And you never know what’ll come in handy, especially with those kids down here somewhere. I dropped the bundle before I hit the ground.” He frowned. “I was a lot farther from you than I thought I’d be.”

Ah, something she was on top of. “The plane banked and you’d drifted with the wind. I tried to glide in your direction but then I had to switch my attention back to the plane.”

He grimaced, no doubt remembering that she had crashed into the trees because she’d been watching the plane’s descent. “So, how do you feel?” he asked.

“Like some ham-handed man tried to pull my arm off,” she snapped, refusing to admit that he’d helped her. “How am I supposed to feel?”

“I imagine grateful is too much to ask?” he drawled.

“Will you settle for glad it’s over?”

Brian stood and nodded. “It’ll have to do for now. Are you thirsty?”

Her mouth felt like a desert. “A little.”

He walked to a capped, half bottle of water lying with his other booty and retrieved it. “Here, let me help you sit up,” he said, unperturbed by her foul mood. She guessed to a doctor used to screaming children, her foul mood was no big deal.

After going down on one knee, he supported her back and helped her sit. It was awkward, as her knee was too painful to bend but she managed when he handed her the water.

“I’ll immobilize the arm in a sling. It should make it a lot more bearable and the sling should remind you not to use it. It’ll heal faster if you don’t aggravate it with a lot of movement.”

“Sure. Whatever. You’re the doctor. Have you tried your cell phone?”

“I’m not getting a signal.”

She hadn’t thought he would. She reached for her own satellite phone and noticed for the first time it was gone from its case on her belt. Her heart sank. Had she lost it?

He picked up a mangled hunk of plastic and held up her smashed phone. “Yours didn’t survive. I guess it happened when you hit the tree.” He frowned. “One of the trees.”

That must be why her left hip felt bruised. She thought of the map that had been in her left jacket pocket and winced when she moved her left shoulder. As she tried to reach for it, Joy winced again for another reason altogether. Her hand encountered a torn pocket.

“What hurts?” he asked.

She was already thoroughly sick of him assessing her every breath. “Nothing. Somehow I lost the map. You didn’t find it, did you?”

The expression on his face was no less pained. “No. It could be anywhere. From the damage up in the trees, I think you were dragged through a few. I’m worried about the possibility of internal injuries. It must have taken quite an impact to smash your phone that completely.”

“Nothing hurts but my leg and shoulder. Really,” she assured him. She didn’t want him poking and prodding her again. His touch, no matter how impersonal, brought back too many memories, as did his concern. And those were memories she didn’t need resurrected.

“Good. Sprains and cuts I can deal with out here. I’ll set up a shelter and hike to the top of this peak and try getting a signal. I’ll call for help and get back as soon as I can.”

He wanted to leave her? Alone? He must really hate her. She shook her head wondering why she cared and was immediately sorry. Her headache got worse, her stomach turned over and the movement pulled the muscles surrounding her shoulder. Brian was there immediately, folding the gurney pad in three and stuffing it behind her so she could recline against it. But worse was
her rolling stomach and she didn’t think it had a thing to do with her injuries. No. It was fear churning up her insides. Paralyzing, incapacitating, obdurate fear. He couldn’t leave her out here alone. He just couldn’t!

“Not up the mountain,” she objected. She’d think this through. She would reason with him. Show him practical reasons why he had to do what she said. “We have to go down this one and back up the one the plane hit.”

“Are you crazy? Why would you want to do that?”

She sighed. They were destined to fight into eternity! That’s all there was to it. “Look, Brian, you stick to your expertise and I’ll stick to mine.”

He sent her a smart-aleck grin. “Oh, you’re an expert in crash etiquette? How may crashes have you had anyway?”

She decided this time it would be she who wouldn’t rise to the bait. “None, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know procedure. I’ve been up there looking for survivors often enough and I’ve taken a few refresher courses in survival that included crash etiquette, as you put it. I know what we have to do.”

She seemed to have his attention so she went on. “Every aircraft carries a transponder that sends out a signal when it crashes. Searchers use the signal to find the downed plane. Because of that, the first rule in a crash is to stay with the aircraft and wait for rescue. The transponder should be drawing rescue planes or choppers. We have to get there. We have to make sure it’s working and, if it is, we’ll be there to be rescued. If it was damaged in the crash or from that lightning strike, we need to get it working so we can be rescued.”

Brian was still listening intently and she wasn’t about to lose her advantage so she continued. “Another rule is not to separate the downed party. You and I are the downed party. So you aren’t going off alone. We have to stick together and get to the crash site
together,
” she reiterated, pinning him. Holding his gaze.

He shook his head and looked away. “You’d never make it.”

“Watch me. You aren’t going without me. Besides there are six kids out here somewhere. We have a better chance of finding and getting them to safety if we’re together. If they saw the plane go down they may try to get to it thinking there may be adult survivors who can help them.”

Brian pursed his lips. “There has to be some kind of compromise we can reach on this,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “I guess you’re right about the plane, but didn’t you say you thought we were being blown off course?”

“Yes, but we’d have been visible from a wide area as we came down. There’s a chance they saw us, we can’t discount that.”

“If that’s true, there’s another possibility to consider,” he added. “If they saw our chutes, they may be headed here. Unless we’re here, they’ll miss us. I could go for the plane and you could rest here.”

Panic filled her once again. “You aren’t leaving me behind! No way!” She took a calming breath when she noticed how closely Brian was eyeing her. She repeated her father’s prime directive.
Never let them see you cry, never let them see you sweat.

“You don’t know how to diddle with a transponder to get it up and running if it isn’t sending out a signal,” she told him. “Uncle George taught me a few tricks. You don’t even know what a transponder looks like.” She nearly sighed in delight at her brilliance. There, watch him wiggle out of that one.

Brian nodded. “Okay. I see your point. How about this? I’ll build each of us our own shelter here, for tonight. That way you can rest and if the kids are on this mountain and headed our way, they’ll have the chance to find us here. In the morning, you should be able to take a little pain medication. It ought to help. Then, if you’re up to giving it a try, we’ll pack up and see if you can travel.”

“I’ll be up to it. Don’t worry,” she promised. If it got her away from Brian, bears and bugs, she just might find a way to fly herself there.

“Do you think I should light some sort of signal fire in case a search plane flies over?”

A fire? Didn’t that scare away animals? “They may not send out anyone else tonight, especially after what happened to us. Just because it isn’t raining here now doesn’t mean those storm cells aren’t all around us. But, if the storms have moved out of the area and Search and Rescue does send out searchers, they might see a fire if it was big enough. You—you can make a fire?”

He grinned. “An old Boy Scout like me? Of course I can.”

Joy thought back and frowned. “I don’t remember you being in Scouts.”

Brian stiffened and Joy felt a little better about her
stupid fears. She’d always been good at finding his weak spots. She knew she should feel proud of that, but it was an unfortunate fact.

“I was. For about three meetings. Then I had to get a uniform or quit. My dad said if he spent the money, I had to stay in till I outgrew it or it wore out. I decided I’d rather play the piano.”

Joy gave him a pitying look and raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Of course you did,” she said having loaded her voice with all the derision she could muster.

Brian stood and propped his hands on his hips. He sounded utterly disgusted when he said, “Well, at least you didn’t disappoint me. It’s nice to know I still know what to expect from you. I’ll see what I can do about coming up with something you can use as a crutch. You know what’s really sad? I never wanted you for an enemy.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ll get on those shelters. Hopefully the solar blankets from the emergency packs will work as water proofing because I doubt the storms are over.”

He looked up toward the sky and she followed his gaze, needing to look away from the strong column of his throat—to forget that tired sadness she’d heard in his voice and saw in his eyes.

It was hard to see the sky clearly through the canopy of the forest. She hadn’t realized the trees had progressed this far into leaf. The sky beyond the barrier of bright, spring green looked like a vast gray blanket that had settled over the woodlands.

“It’ll probably rain again but that may be an advan
tage. It’ll keep the bug population down, especially this early in the year.”

That sounded good but what about the animals? “You were going to build a fire. What about the fire?”

“First things first. Shelter, then fire. We have blankets to keep us warm, but only if we’re dry. If I start on the fire and it rains, we’ll get soaked, be cold and the fire will just go out anyway.”

She stared at him. True, she had taken survival courses but they didn’t seem to be helping now that the real thing stared her in the face. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“My dad had a cabin in the Poconos. We didn’t go there after my brother Tommy died but Dad took us up there all the time before that. Your brother, Jim, came along a few times. Remember?”

Oh, she remembered all right. And she’d been furious. It was the first taste of the men-only club she’d been fighting ever since. Jim had been the only one who could console her. And he’d done that by telling her stories about the spiders and animal sounds inside the cabin that he’d heard all night. After that, she’d been thankful for her nice city bed.

But being excluded had still chafed. Her father had always told her she had a contrary nature. Maybe he’d been right, since sleeping in a bug-filled cabin in the wilderness was her idea of torture and yet she’d still resented having been left behind. She guessed it was the not being asked that bothered her.

Brian watched the myriad emotions float across Joy’s features and wished he knew exactly what she was thinking. But though he could usually guess her re
sponses, he’d never understood their origins. Never understood her.

She slumped down against the gurney pad and closed her eyes. “So I’ll finally benefit from being the only kid left home those weekends. Goody, goody. Wake me when you need your chute for your shelter.”

Dismissed, Brian turned away and got to work. He’d once read about how Native Americans built shelters from branches, so he got to work selecting thin poles and thinner green branches to weave into a grid that would support the parachute material. He thanked God for the parachute line he’d salvaged as he lashed together the poles and finished the first shelter. He used the parachute material as a floor over a thick bed of dried leaves, then he flipped the rest of the chute up and over the top to form a roof and sides of the shelter. It would make an adequate wind break especially since there was enough excess to allow material to hang across the front opening. He stretched the solar blanket over the top and tied it down to guard against the rain.

Brian stood back and admired his handy work for a moment. It was small but they would be out of the elements. With the first shelter finished, he started on the poles for the second, then went to wake Joy when he was ready to use the parachute. Only then did he realize she’d been watching him. He could have sworn the look on her face said she’d been afraid he’d go off and leave her.