“Kevin! It’s Mommy! Honey, can you hear me?”
Mud and sand sucked at her ankles as she sprinted along the row of planes. Rain stung her eyes, but she barely noticed as she searched for Kevin. Her only focus was finding her precious child, and there was no force on earth that could have stopped her.
Cupping her hands on either side of her mouth, she screamed his name. “Kevin!”
A flash of blue in her peripheral vision snagged her attention. At first she thought the tiny form huddled beneath the belly of an old jet was a piece of debris. Then she recognized the blue jacket, and her heart simply stopped.
“Kevin!” She sprinted toward him. “Kevin!”
Halfway there she realized he wasn’t moving. Fresh terror flashed through her. “Oh, God. Oh, God!” Please let him be all right. She silently chanted the words as she sped across the sandy path.
But her son didn’t move.
On reaching the plane, Alison dropped to her knees and crawled beneath the fuselage. A cry escaped her when she reached him. Her hands shook uncontrollably when she pulled him close and gathered him into her arms. “Kevin? Honey, are you all right?”
“Mom...” he said, but broke into coughing.
She could feel his little body trembling. He felt cold and listless. Her worst nightmare came true when she realized he was wheezing, struggling to get air into his lungs.
“I’m here, honey,” she said. “Everything’s going to be all right. Are you hurting anywhere?”
“Can’t...breathe...right.”
Her blood ran cold when she turned him toward her and saw his face. He was deathly pale. His lips were turning blue. She lifted his little hand, saw that his nail beds were dark. She shoved back a paralyzing wave of terror.
Jerking her cell phone from its clip, she punched 911. “This is Alison Myers! I’ve found my son. But he’s having a severe asthma attack. I need an ambulance! Now! Please! Send someone!”
The dispatcher said something, but Alison couldn’t hear over the roar of wind and rain. “Send an ambulance! Right now!” she cried. “I’m at the Brewer Salvage Yard on Cypress Creek Road. Please, send someone. Hurry!”
“Ma’am, we’ll get someone there as soon as possible, but the streets are flooded because of the hurricane. We’ve got a lot of emergencies this afternoon. Is there any way you can get him to help?”
“I don’t know!” She looked around wildly, panic and terror clawing at her like a ferocious animal. “I’ll try.”
“Okay, I’m going to do my best to get a paramedic and an ambulance out there, okay? Is the patient breathing?”
She looked down at Kevin, felt a sob tear from her throat. “Yes, but he’s having difficulty.”
“I want you to sit him up and keep his airway open. Can you do that?”
“Yes!” Alison knew the drill and already had him sitting up.
“Can you administer his medication to keep his airway open?”
She looked around wildly, spotted his backpack a few feet away and crawled over to it. She ripped open the flap and emptied the contents onto the ground. His teddy bear tumbled out. A half-eaten chocolate bar. A pair of socks. A sob escaped her when she spotted the inhaler. Snatching it up along with the spacer, she crawled back over to her son.
Because she needed both hands, she set the phone down with the connection open. “Kevin, honey. Mommy has your medicine. I want you to open up and let me help you, okay?”
“I’m s-scared,” he said, wheezing.
“Don’t be afraid, honey. Just open up for me, okay?”
Kevin’s mouth opened, and she gently inserted the spacer. “Okay, honey, that’s good. Now close your lips around the spacer like you always do.”
He continued wheezing, a terrible sound that reminded her of a dying animal.
She expressed some of the inhaler, but most of it escaped without being inhaled because he hadn’t closed his lips. “Come on, sweetie. You can do it. Just like we practiced, okay?”
When his bluing lips sealed around the spacer, she quickly expressed a generous amount of the inhalant, then lifted his shoulders slightly to help him take a breath. “Take a deep breath for me, honey, okay?”
Kevin closed his eyes with the effort, but Alison thought he inhaled most of the vapor. “Oh, that’s good, honey.”
By the time she got back to the 911 dispatcher, she’d lost the connection. Knowing every second counted, she jammed the cell phone onto its clip and looked down at her son. She could hear him wheezing, feel his little body straining for each breath. Tears trickled from his eyes. She could see that he was afraid. The attacks were terribly frightening for him, but she could also see that it was taking every bit of his concentration just to take his next breath.
A terrible sense of helplessness surged through her that there was so little she could do to help. “I’m here, sweetheart. The ambulance is on the way, okay? You’re going to be just fine.”
Holding him against her, she tried to warm him with her body. He’d lost one of his sneakers at some point and his sock was muddy and wet. She looked around, listened for the wail of the ambulance, but could hear nothing over the wind and rain.
In the back of her mind she wondered if she should try to carry him all the way back to the house, put him in the car and drive to the nearest hospital herself. He would get wet. She wasn’t sure if she could lift him over the six-foot-high chain link fence.
She didn’t know what to do.
“It shouldn’t be too long now,” she said. “The ambulance is coming. And I called Drew, too, honey. He’s on his way. Just hang in there and someone will be here soon. Okay?”
But when she looked down at her son, she saw he had lapsed into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Alison! Kevin! Answer me!”
After tying the seaplane to one of the cleats, Drew left the pier at a dead run. The storm seemed to be worsening by the minute. The wind tore at his clothes. Rain slashed like spears. He barely noticed either of those things. The only thing that mattered as he sprinted toward the row of defunct planes was finding the woman he loved and the little boy he’d come to think of as his own.
“Alison!”
He didn’t understand why it had taken something like this to make him realize how precious they were to him. To make him realize he’d been wrong to push them away. Alison was everything he’d ever wanted. She was generous and kind and sexy as hell. She made his heart light. Made him smile. Made him whole.
He loved her. Dear God, he loved her more than life.
The truth shattered him. Tore down everything he’d ever believed about himself. The need to hold her close, to know that she and her little boy were safe ate at him like acid. He refused to consider the possibility that he was too late. That something terrible had happened.
“Alison!” he screamed.
Drew’s heart surged when he spotted the small patch of blue beneath a vintage Cessna turbo prop. He changed direction and splashed through a deep puddle. “Alison!”
“Drew! Over here! Help us, please!”
His heart plummeted when he saw her crawl from beneath the belly of the plane with a semiconscious Kevin in tow. Her face was bone pale. Both of them were wet and muddy, but it was the stillness of the boy’s body that shook him to his core.
“He’s having an asthma attack!” she cried.
Drew crossed to her and reached for the child. It was hard to assess him in the pouring rain, but he could plainly see the bluish tinge of his lips and fingernail beds. Fear coiled around him and squeezed. But the steely resolve that he wasn’t going to lose this precious little boy bolstered him.
“Did you call nine-one-one?” he asked.
Alison nodded. “The ambulance will get here as soon as it can.”
Drew lifted Kevin’s shoulders slightly to help keep his airway open. “Did you try the inhaler?”
“Twice. I’m not sure if it helped. He doesn’t seem to be responding.” She
touched Kevin’s face with violently shaking fingers. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t acknowledge them. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
Turning abruptly away from him, she put her hand over her mouth as if to smother a cry. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to him.” Drew glanced toward the seaplane bobbing in the lagoon twenty yards away. “I can get him to the clinic in ten minutes if we take the seaplane.”
“What about the storm? The wind? Can you do it?”
He glanced down at the little boy in his arms, realized he would lay down his life for this child. “It’s a risk, but I don’t think he can wait.” His eyes met hers. “It’s your call. The ride will be bumpy, but I can get you there.”
“I’ll do anything to save him, Drew. Anything.”
Shielding the boy as much as he could against the driving rain, Drew carried him toward the plane at a jog. The plane tugged and wrenched against its moorings, but the cleats held fast. On the pier, he swung open the hatch for Alison. Once she was inside, he passed Kevin to her, then turned to untie the moorings.
On board the plane, he quickly strapped in and started the dual engines. In the passenger cabin, he could see Alison easing Kevin into a seat, keeping him upright in an effort to ease his breathing.
“Try the inhaler again,” he said.
“All right.”
Whispering a prayer that he wouldn’t encounter any debris during takeoff, Drew turned the plane around and taxied away from the pier. Once he committed himself to takeoff, there was no way he would be able to stop if he spotted an obstruction in the water.
At the far end of the lagoon, Drew administered full throttle. The dual engines screamed. The floats slammed through swells and banged into small debris. The seaplane left the water like a clumsy seabird, less than a yard from a downed palm. Seeing the treetops loom dangerously close, Drew pulled back on the yoke and took the plane into a death-defying climb.
Wind lashed at the plane with a violence that had sweat popping out on the back of his neck. But he never took his eyes off the instrument panel. And he never stopped praying.
Once the plane was stable, he radioed Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport air traffic control and told them he was going to make an emergency landing on the east/west canal just north of the Waterton Clinic. The controller advised against such a landing, but Drew explained that he was an EMT and had a medical emergency on board. The controller cleared him for an emergency landing, then charted the course, using a combination of coordinates and landmarks recognizable during low visibility.
In the passenger cabin, he could hear Alison speaking quietly to Kevin, trying to rouse him.
“How’s he doing?” he asked. But he could hear the boy wheezing even above the roar of the engines.
“He’s really tight,” she said.
“He’s going to be all right,” Drew said fiercely.
Twisting around in his seat, he looked at her. Her eyes were ravaged when they met Drew’s. “How much longer?” she asked quietly.
“Five minutes.”
“Please hurry. Please.”
Drew wanted desperately to go to her. To put his arms around her and tell her everything was going to be all right. He wanted to tell her that her son was going to be all right. That he wasn’t going to lose that sweet little boy. But because he had to get the plane down safely before he could do any of those things, he turned back to the instrumentation and concentrated on landing.
He began his descent three miles from the canal. Drew knew it was a big risk taking the plane down when he didn’t know the condition of the water. But he figured he didn’t have a choice. Flying the Mallard in hurricane force winds might be a little on the crazy side, but he would never forgive himself if something terrible happened to that precious child because they’d opted to wait on an ambulance that might not come.
The plane jolted when they broke through a bank of clouds. To his left he spotted lights, realized they were the sodium vapor streetlights that ran along the street in front of the clinic. The swollen canal paralleled the street. As the plane slipped lower, he could make out the lights of a small pier.
“Strap in,” he told Alison. “Keep your head down.”
He glanced once behind him to see her lifting Kevin into a seat and strapping him in, then turned back to his instrumentation.
“Come on, baby,” he cooed to the Mallard. “Show me what you’re made of.”
The plane passed over the canal at three hundred feet. There was no visible debris, but he was moving too fast to be sure. No time to change his strategy now. He turned in a wide arc for a final approach.
Wind tore at the plane, but Drew held her steady. He lined up with the canal banks. Brought the nose up. Held his breath. And prayed.
The floats hit the water hard, sending water high into the air. The plane skidded sideways and for a horrible instant Drew thought it would cartwheel out of control. Instead, the plane lurched and came to an abrupt stop. Letting out a breath of relief, he wiped the sweat off his forehead with a violently shaking hand.
Turning in his seat, he looked back at Alison. “How is he?”
Tears streamed from her eyes as she worked to unstrap him from his seat. “Oh, God, Drew. He’s still unconscious.”
Because there wasn’t a place for him to secure the plane this time, Drew gunned the engines and ran the floats aground on the muddy shore adjacent the clinic.
Breathing hard with the aftereffects of adrenaline and a new fear for Kevin, he fought off his safety belt. Alison was just finishing unstrapping Kevin when Drew stepped into the passenger cabin. “Follow me.”
He unlatched the hatch and threw it open. Wind and rain whipped at him, but he didn’t care. He stepped onto the float and then jumped into waist-deep water. He reached for the boy. “Okay, give him to me.”
Alison knelt and passed her son to Drew. “Hurry, Drew. Hurry!”
“He’s going to be all right. I promise.” Holding the little boy tightly against him, Drew struggled through the water toward the muddy shore. As he stepped onto the bank and ran toward the front doors of the clinic, he hoped he could keep his word.
* * *
Alison stood at the window in her son’s hospital room and watched the rain slide down the glass. A few feet away, Kevin slept peacefully. Every minute or so she would sit in the chair next to the bed and pick up his hand or lean over to kiss his soft cheek. She couldn’t stop touching him. She couldn’t stop looking at him. She couldn’t believe she’d come so close to losing him.
If it hadn’t been for Drew...
It had been nearly two hours since Drew had carried him into the emergency room. Alison had hovered over her son while the doctor on call and a seasoned respiratory therapist poked and prodded and administered treated oxygen through a mask. By the time the orderly rolled him to his private room where he would be spending the night, Kevin was fast asleep.
Today was one of the most terrifying ordeals she’d ever experienced. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Kevin had looked at her, as if trusting her to reach into him and open his restricted air passages by the sheer force of her will. Of course, she hadn’t been able to do that. And she’d never felt so helpless in her entire life.
If it hadn’t been for Drew...
It seemed everything went back to Drew. But because she wasn’t yet ready to think of him, because she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to do about him, about her feelings for him, Alison walked over to the bed and pulled the sheet and blanket up to Kevin’s chin. “I love you, sweetheart,” she whispered.
Back at the window, she watched the rain beat against the glass. One of the nurses had given her a blanket. She’d draped it over her shoulders, but her clothes were still damp and it did little to ease her shivering. She was cold inside and out, but knew the chill wasn’t the only reason she was trembling.
She was going to have to face Drew. She
was going to have to decide what to do about him. How she would handle her feelings for him. How she would handle living in San Diego when the man she loved was almost three thousand miles away.
She would never forget the way he’d struggled up that steep bank with Kevin in his arms, like a soldier carrying a fallen comrade. He’d sprinted across the street, then burst through the doors and taken Kevin directly into the emergency room. She wondered how he could see himself as anything but the hero he was.
“How’s he doing?”
She spun at the sound of Drew’s voice. Her heart stuttered at the sight of him standing in the doorway. Mussed hair. Damp clothes that clung to him. Grim expression. Even in the dim light she could see that he was watching her with an intensity that unnerved her. His mouth was set into a thin line. Someone had given him a towel, which he’d used and then draped over his broad shoulders.
“He’s doing fine,” she said, amazed that her voice sounded so normal when she felt as if she were coming apart inside.
He glanced at Kevin, a sigh sliding between his lips. “He’s a fighter. Like his mom.”
She didn’t know what to say about that. “They want to keep him overnight for observation.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Are you okay?”
She choked out a sound that sounded vaguely like a laugh. “I’m a wreck.”
“You did great today,” he pointed out. “You really kept your head.”
“I came close to losing it.” She laughed again. “I can’t stop shaking.”
“Post-adrenaline jitters.”
A loud and uncomfortable silence ensued. As much as she wanted him to stay and talk, having him so close was almost too much to bear. She was trying to decide if she should ask him to leave when she realized she hadn’t yet thanked him for saving her son’s life.