The Baby Who Stole the Doctor's Heart (16 page)

“Or saying it?” she asked, smiling.

He chuckled. “You really do want a pound of my flesh, don't you?”

“More than a pound, Mark. I want much more.” She brushed the pine needles off her backside. “So, lead on. I'm right behind you.”

“Yeah, like I believe that one. You've been a step ahead of me from the first time I laid eyes on you. Thing is, I never realized that until now.”

“But do you respect that, too?” Laughing, she grabbed up her little backpack of supplies and slung it over her shoulder.

He grabbed her by the backpack, pulled her over to him, but long enough only for a quick kiss. “I love it, and you, and my plan is to show you just how much later on. But right now I'm going to climb up there on that ridge…” he pointed to a narrow, rocky shelf above their heads “…and see if that vantage point is better than what we're seeing from down here. You go parallel to me down here.”

She watched him scale the rock face. It was an easy thing for him to do. Not steep, not particularly dangerous. No harness, no equipment whatsoever. Just one man with so much ability… A lump formed in her throat as she watched him. Could she leave White Elk? Take Sarah and go with him, follow the man until the man found his dream?

If home was where the heart was, then her answer was yes. Because her heart was with Mark. And she couldn't imagine her life without him, no matter where that life took her. As much as she loved White Elk, she loved Mark Anderson more. And that was her answer, the only answer she needed.

“Head north,” he shouted down to her, as he skimmed his way along the rock ledge.

She did, taking in everything around her. The pine-tree cover had let little snow in, so the walk was mostly on a bed of needles, with only snowy patches here and there. No tracks to find. No sign that anyone had come this way. But it was an easy walk, one a child might have taken. And not so far from the lodge that she couldn't run straight back there in ten minutes, if she had to. A good place to bring her camp
kids…
her kids
. Another lump formed in her throat when she thought about how she might not be here in another eighteen months. She did love her JD camp, more and more every day. Even with the frustrations, like Scotty's proclivity to find food. Just last night Walt Graham had reported impressive gains in blood-sugar control for all but a couple of the children. Physical activity was up, eating problems were stabilizing. All in all, her kids were getting healthier and she couldn't wait for the six-week interval, when they'd all have a follow-up A1C test. She was expecting big things. Good things.

But she was expecting good things with Mark, too. Things that would be good for the rest of her life. And even though he hadn't asked her to come with him, she knew he would. For her, for Sarah, going with him would be a good decision. The right decision.

They'd gone several hundred feet when she spotted something in the rock. Not an opening so much as a crack. “Mark,” she called up to him, “I see something. Down here…not sure…” She dashed off the trail, went straight to the rock face beneath him, looked at just the tiniest crevice going straight into the rock. Immediately, she flashed her light inside, didn't see anything. But the little mound of snow off to the side…was that a partial footprint in it? She couldn't tell, it was so chopped up. “Aimee,” she called, not so loudly as to frighten the girl, if it turned out she'd crawled in there. “Can you hear me, sweetheart? Aimee?”

She listened. No noise.

Mark came down off the ledge in an instant, and knelt beside her. “Anything?” he whispered.

Angela shook her head, but pointed to the area where the snow was disturbed.

He arched his eyebrows in admiration. “Aimee, it's
Dr. Mark. We've come to take you home now. Can you hear me?”

They listened. Still, nothing.

“Aimee?” he tried again. “If you're in there, please tell me so we can come get you.”

This time there was a faint rustling. “An animal?” Angela asked, looking at the size of the opening. “Nothing much larger than a small animal could have crawled in there, could it?”

He shook his head. “Aimee?”

This time the response was a tiny moan, and his heart pumped an extra beat. The problem was, he was too large to fit the opening. And even if he could get through, if the passage narrowed in there, he might end up being the one who needed rescuing. “Eric,” he said, into his walkie-talkie, “I'm pretty sure we've got her located, don't know her condition, haven't seen her yet, but we've also got a problem. She's crawled into a crevice, and I don't think she's coming out of there on her own. I can't get in, and we need someone small enough—”

“I'm small enough,” Angela said without hesitation.

Mark shook his head, and continued talking to Eric. “I'm not sure who you've got, but we're talking tiny.”

“I'm tiny,” Angela interrupted.

“But not experienced. Look, Angela…”

“Neil's got a couple of people with him who might work,” Eric said. “Let me get that taken care of and I'll get back to you.”

“So we just sit here and wait?” Angela snapped. “You're too big, so we just have to sit here twiddling our thumbs? Because I can do this, Mark. I can go in, see what kind of shape she's in, maybe comfort her…”

“I said no!”

“I'm not your father, Mark. I'm not going in and never
coming back. There's a child in there who needs me. Needs you to let me do this. She could be injured. Broken bones. Hypothermic. Concussion. I've studied those things, I know what they're about, and I know what they can do to a child her age. She's been out for hours, maybe suffering exposure, and for your information I know about that, too. And I can do this because I have you here to help me.” She took a deep breath. “So let me go. More than that, Mark. Help me go.”

Mark studied her for a moment. The hardness in his eyes softened and he shook his head in surrender then smiled. “You do have me, Angela. Now, put on your climbing harness,” he said. “Just like I taught you. You'll wear it in and if you can't get out on your own, I'll pull you out.”

She pulled the harness from the pack she'd brought along, strapped the belts on, did all the double-backs without a struggle, even though her hands were shaking. This time it was for real. It made a difference. She had to get it right because, trained or not, she
was
a mountain rescuer. She had a life to save.

As she got ready, Mark was on the radio to Neil, giving him their location. And his last words were, “I'm sending Angela in. She's the one we're going to rely on to get Aimee out of there.” He clicked off, turned to Angela and, without a thought, tested her belts. “You ready?”

She nodded. Smiled. “The question is, are you?”

His answer was a kiss to her cheek. “I really didn't want to fall in love with you, Angela Blanchard. You know that, don't you?”

She laughed. “And I really didn't want to fall in love with you, either.” In that instant before she dropped to her knees to start crawling, when their eyes met, everything that needed to be said between them was said. The longings recognized, the needs acknowledged. The love fully realized. Words weren't imperative because one brief look told the story. To break
the moment, to return to her concentration, which she desperately needed now, Angela pointed down to the knee pads she'd thought to include. “See, I'm not as ill prepared as you thought I was.”

“I've thought a lot of things about you, but ill prepared was never one of them.” He watched her crawl into the narrow opening. “Just remember, if it's dangerous, if you don't think you can do something, don't. The cardinal rule of any rescue is to never, ever put yourself in a position that you're the one who needs rescuing.”

Words she took seriously as she crawled in, down on all fours, pushing her flashlight out front of her then crawling up to meet it. Repeating the same steps, over and over. She'd hoped that once she got in, the opening might get wider, but she was disappointed to find that the widening was only a few inches. She was, essentially, crawling into a cold, dark, damp chamber that brushed along both her shoulders, and only allowed her to rise high enough to be on her knees.

Why would a child, especially a shy child like Aimee Landry, have come into a place like this? The only answer that came to mind made her angry. She was trying to escape, and this seemed safer than where she had been…which was with her mother. “Aimee,” she called, “can you hear me? My name is Angela, and I'm coming in to get you. Are you hurt?”

The answer didn't come as Angela had hoped. In fact, the only noise in the tunnel was what she was making…her breathing, the way her shoulders brushed the rock walls on either side of her, the clanking of the metal on her harness. Her own grunts of effort. The flashlight scraping over the rock floor. The noises amplified. Got louder. Nearly thundered in her ears. Yet when she stopped, everything became so deathly quiet that chills leapt up her arms, down her back, through her legs. “Aimee,” she whispered, then paused while
her voice bounced ahead of her, echoing on the rocks, getting softer and softer until it died out. “Can you hear me?”

She shut her eyes, held her breath to listen, and the nothingness amplified in the pitch dark. It was all around her, so still. And that stillness was so deafening. “Aimee?”

She listened again. Held her breath again. Felt the blackness closing in on her again, but this time… Was that a moan? Had Aimee moaned, or was that her imagination playing tricks on her? “I'm coming, sweetheart,” she said, doubling the speed of her crawling. As if the Three Sisters had reached down into the very center of their core to help her, the chamber seemed to open a little. Her shoulders no longer touched the sides of the passageway, her back no longer scraped the roof. To her ears, her breathing gained volume. She could hear her heart beating, and feel it pounding in her temples. She was so close. So very close… “Aimee…”

“Help,” the little voice whispered from the darkness.

But where? She trained the light straight ahead, saw nothing. Looked left and right, hoping to find a hollow of some sort, but was greeted with flat rock everywhere. “Where are you?”

No answer.

“Aimee, where are you? You have to tell me.”

“She'll be mad.”

She was so close to the voice she could almost reach out and touch it. “She's not going to be mad at you, Aimee.”

“But I didn't do what she said.”

Angela gave her flashlight another shove ahead, and it fell down…down into some kind of hole. Immediately, she grabbed a tiny penlight from her pocket, Mark's penlight. And shined it down. There, just five feet below her, Aimee Landry lay huddled in a fetal position, clasping a teddy bear. Shivering so hard Angela could see it from her vantage point.

“Found her!” she shouted back to Mark. He wasn't so far away, really. Maybe fifty feet. Fifty feet that seemed like forever. “She's in a hole. I'm going to climb down.”

“Is she injured?” he yelled back.

“Can't tell. I'll let you know in a minute.”

“How deep?”

“Just a few feet. I'll be fine.”

“No chances, Angela. Don't take any chances.”

Chances? Climbing down into the hole to get Aimee wasn't taking a chance. But spending the rest of her life with Mark was, and she was ready to do that. Ready to take the biggest chance of her life. “I'm going down.”

The climb was easy. More like a slide down the rock to the bottom. And once there the first thing she did was find her flashlight, rattle it, get it to flash back on. Then she went to Aimee, didn't scoop her up as she wanted to. Instead, she went about a very methodical examination. “Are you hurt?”

“Yes,” the girl whimpered.

“Can you tell me where.”

“My leg hurts. And my arm and head. And I'm cold.”

Angela immediately pulled off her outer layer, a quilted vest, and laid it over Aimee. Then she grabbed her personal little first-aid kit out of her pack, pulled out the thermometer, and took Aimee's temperature. “Her temperature's ninety-six,” she called out.

“You have a thermometer?” he called back, sounding quite amazed.

“I brought my first-aid kit. And her pulse is one-twenty. Respirations forty. All a little high, but I've covered her up so that may help. Can she have water, Mark?”

“No, not yet. We need to check her for internal injuries.”

Angela looked at Aimee's legs, didn't see anything
remarkable except cuts and bruises. But her arm… There was a slight crook in the forearm. Aimee flinched when Angela ran gentle fingers over it. “Is that where it hurts the worst?”

Aimee nodded.

“Well, I have something that might just make it feel a little better.” She knew it wouldn't, but she'd read about the placebo effect, telling a patient something they wanted to hear in the hope they believed it, even though what was being told might necessarily be a little white lie. “This scarf around my neck…it's magical. That's why I wear it, because it always makes me feel better.” She pulled the knit scarf off, tied it gently and loosely around Aimee's arm, more a buffer from any bumps she might sustain while they took her out of there. “If it makes your arm feel better, you can keep it on for as long as you like.”

Aimee didn't say anything, but Angela could see the scarf working its ‘miracle' as Aimee's sniffles lessened a little. “Now, does your tummy hurt?” she asked.

“No. But I'm hungry.”

“Well, that's something we'll be able to take care of once we get you to the hospital. You tell me what your favorite thing to eat is, and if Dr. Mark says it's OK, I'll make it for you myself.”

“I like peanut-butter sandwiches. With jelly. Grape jelly. And chocolate brownies.”