It's a Love Thing

  “Did the new microscope and medical equipment come in?” Blanca asked, settling at her desk with the juice and bagel. She took a huge bite and groaned. “Thanks for the breakfast. How did you know I skipped eating this morning?”

  Nikki flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder and quirked a smile that made her dark eyes twinkle deviously. Apparently breakfast wasn’t the only thing she’d picked up before coming to work.

  “You gave Longbow a ride to work again didn’t you?”

  It seemed Blanca’s neighbor didn’t own a car. He relied on the good-will of others to drop him off or pick him up from work. His work, during the off-season, was reforestation: planting pine and fir saplings in old burn areas or on land that had been clear-cut. Nikki had told Blanca the company Longbow worked for was owned by a Mexican family from one of the neighboring towns. Blanca figured that was how he knew Spanish, but it still didn’t explain how he knew about the white island, Ibiza, that was her namesake.

  “You keep picking him up like that he’ll think you want to give him a ride of a different sort.”

  “It was nothin’,” Nikki said, busying herself around the office. “Forest isn’t like that anyway. He’s a loner. I’ve never known him to date or have a girlfriend. I don’t mind giving him a lift now and then. Besides, fire season has already started in Nevada and California. It won’t be long before he’ll be called out and we won’t see hide or hair of that perpetually tanned body for months.” She stopped at the copy machine and peered into the office. “I thought you wanted me to tell you how I knew you skipped breakfast this morning, not dish on the private life of your sexy neighbor.”

  Nikki was the one who’d offered up the unsolicited information, but Blanca knew she wouldn’t gain any ground with her secretary for pointing that out. She eyed her for a minute and then smiled and said, “Sorry, my bad. Go on.”

  Nikki beamed like she had the world’s greatest secret to tell. “Forest said the walls between your place and his are paper thin. He said you hit the snooze on your alarm clock five times this morning and that you cussed it out and threw it on the floor the last time it went off.” Nikki sat down in a chair in Blanca’s office and crossed her legs. “So, I figured with you running late, you could use a bite to eat. You wanna talk about what’s keeping you up at night? I’m a good listener, comes with the job. Both of them,” Nikki added quickly.

  An alarm of a different kind sounded throughout the clinic, shrill and high. Lights began to flash over the inside of the clinic’s doors. The town’s fire department and ambulance services were right next door and their alarm systems were hardwired into the clinic. Blanca reached over and turned her short-wave radio up so she could hear what emergency had triggered the alarm while Nikki got out a map and waited.

  “Responder One, do you read?”

  Someone from the ambulance crew answered. “Responder One here. What you got, Tony?”

  Tony, the fire chief Blanca had met upon arrival, answered in a rush. “A State Trooper came upon a campsite of Meth brewers below Lowman. He caught ‘em by surprise and one of the fools shot him. He’s driving himself in, but by the sounds of his voice he’s not gonna make it before he passes out. Send the ambulance to meet up with him.”

  “Responder One rolling. Tony, you got an ID on the Trooper?”

  “Yeah, it’s one of ours, Reynolds. I’m calling his brother Max right now.”

  Nikki spread the map out on Blanca’s desk and pointed to the area she believed the chief had been talking about. “These camp sites are way back in the woods, hardly anyone but the locals know about ‘em. I’d say it’s a good twenty miles from the campgrounds back to the highway, and then another ten miles from the highway to here. Max is one of our best paramedics. I’m sure there’s nothing that’ll keep him from going out with the team.”

  “Should I offer to go with them?” Blanca asked. She couldn’t help but think of the burly officer with the stern face that had pulled her over on her way into town. She hadn’t liked the way he’d questioned her about being an out-of-stater, or how he’d laughed at her mispronunciation of the town’s name, but she also knew he was just doing his job. Somehow it was worse knowing he had a brother on the emergency responder team. It made her feel responsible for him. The first responders in rural areas like this were all like family, and families were supposed to take care of each other.

  “No,” Nikki said. “Let the paramedics do their jobs. If they need you, they’ll let us know.”

  The wail of the ambulance as it left the bay and rushed past the clinic made the fine hair on the back of Blanca’s neck stand on end.

  *****

  Blanca was on the phone with Garden Valley’s high school wrestling coach, Alex Thompson, when Nikki rushed into her office. Blanca could tell before Nikki opened her mouth it wasn’t good.

  “They’re bringing Reynolds here. Max called me on his cell phone. The life flight from Boise can’t be here for another hour, and Max says he’s lost too much blood to make it to Boise in the ambulance.” Nikki was back out the door and prepping the triage room before Blanca could ask questions.

  “Mr. Thompson, I’d love to volunteer my time providing physicals for your athletes, but you’ll have to call back another time to arrange it. I have an emergency coming in.” Blanca hung up the phone and dashed into triage to prepare.

  “Paramedics can’t give blood. We’ll need all the O negative and Humate we have.”

  Nikki pulled bags from the medication fridge and dragged an IV pump into the room. “They’ve already given Vasopressor and two liters of fluids but he’s bleeding out as fast as they’re putting it in.”

  “Did they say where he was hit?”

  Nikki finished placing the IV solution on a warming pump before answering Blanca’s question. “They went ballistic on him. The maniacs must’ve been high. He’s got a head wound that’s contained, a shoulder wound that’s oozing, and a groin wound that’s gushing. Max thinks they might have hit the femoral artery. He’s hoping you can do something to slow things down while they wait for the life flight.”

  “There’s no repairing a femoral artery under these conditions, if that’s what is, and I’m not a surgeon. Sutures and minor procedures are the scope of my practice. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do for him,” Blanca said, staring blankly at the clinic’s back entrance where the ambulance would arrive. The docs back home had pounded the boundaries of her license into her for so many years, she could barely think outside them anymore.

  Nikki grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “You’re all we got. Nobody here is going to give a horse’s hiney about what you’re licensed to do and what you’re not. If there’s something you can do to save Jax, do it, and worry about the consequences later.”

  “Jax?” Blanca echoed. “Who’s Jax?”

  “Reynolds, Max’s twin brother.”

  The ambulance siren blared in the distance.

  Nikki offered Blanca a pack of sterile gloves and a gown. “Fake it ‘til you make it, I always say.”

  Reynolds was pale as a sheet and out cold when they brought him in. His pressure was in the toilet and the paramedic team practically had him standing on his head in the bed to slow down the bleeding from his left groin. He looked so different lying on his back with an oxygen mask over his face and IV lines coming out both arms. He was no longer the picture of strength and justice he’d engrained in her upon their first meeting, but a man on the verge of losing his life.

  The bloody bandages at his head and shoulder were darker than the one on his groin and Blanca could tell, even with the pressure dressing the paramedics had applied, the blood was too bright and plentiful to be coming from anywhere other than a major artery.

  “Hang a bag of Humate first,” she ordered as men scrambled into place around the cot. “He’s at risk for going into DIC and multi-system failure if we don’t replenish his clotting factors. Hang a bag of blood on the other side as soon at that one is finish
ed. Use a pressure bag,” she added. She’d worked in a trauma center for many years as a nurse practitioner; she just hadn’t been the one in charge of making the life-saving decisions.

  Blanca carefully removed the pressure dressing, applying force with her hand in place of the weighted sandbag, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was going to be enough if the artery was torn or severed. Nothing, that is, short of a miracle. She followed the hole in Reynolds’ groin with a finger. “Can someone get some suction over here and a bright light so I can see what I’m doing?”

  “Sure, Doc,” a man in khaki’s and a muscle shirt answered.

  It took a minute for her to recognize the face, but the stature and the coloring of the man was the same as Reynolds’ so she figured it must be his twin. “I take it you’re Max,” Blanca said, keeping her eyes on her work. “Does your brother have any allergies we should know about, any other conditions, ailments, abnormalities?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s fit as a fiddle… normally.” His voice dropped to a whisper but he recovered quickly. “And if we run out of blood you can hook me up to an IV and siphon it directly from me to him. We’re an exact match, antibodies and all. We were both tested when we served in

  Afghanistan together a few years ago.”

  Great, Blanca thought. Jax was a war veteran on top of being a twin, and was currently an officer of the law. Could you get any more pressure than that?

  A bright light was turned on and someone placed a magnifying lens over her head. It wasn’t the type surgeons wore, more like that of a jewelry maker, but it did the trick. She suctioned with one hand and pressed deeper with the forefinger of the other. Her finger hit something hard and foreign and she immediately knew it was a bullet. Trauma nursing in a big city had been hell on her nerves, but good experience. And right now she was praying that experience would pay off.

  “Hand me those forceps,” she told Nikki. Then she slid the tool in next to her finger while Brandi took over suctioning. When she pulled out the bullet and dropped it on a tray, she swore she heard the heartbeats of every single person in the room. The bleeding got worse for a moment, but she pressed harder using the entire pad of her finger, and a couple of dressing changes later, the bleeding had almost stopped.

  “You can’t stay like that forever. Can’t you stitch it up or block it with something else?” Nikki said, horrified and relieved at the same time.

  “It’ll have to do. I can’t risk cutting into him or blindly trying to sew him up. I could tear the artery worse or even sever it completely. What time is it? How long before the life flight can get here?”

  A blonde kid she hadn’t met answered. “It’s five-o-clock. The flight crew was on stand-by last I checked. They should be able to get here in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll call them,” Max said, leaving the room looking a little taller than when he’d first arrived.

  “Here, Doc,” Nikki said, pushing a rolling stool under her. “Take a load off. You’re going to need all that stamina for the flight to Boise.”

  “His pressure is rising, slowly but surely,” the blonde paramedic said.

  The tow-headed youth couldn’t have been more than twenty, but he seemed to know what he was doing. Blanca drew in a deep breath and thanked the Lord for the first time in a long time that she’d grown up and practiced in a big city. She’d never imagined gunshot wounds, or any of the other crazy things she’d dealt with in Chicago would follow her to the rural area that was supposed to be her sanctuary. She should’ve known. The grass is always greener…

  The flight crew strapped Reynolds in with Blanca at his side. They were about to take off when Reynolds started coming to and began fighting the restraints. Blanca hovered over his body and pressed her quickly numbing finger deeper into the tissue of his wound while the flight nurses medicated him. She’d seen pain and fear turn mortally wounded men into raging beasts before.

  “It’s scary what a little adrenaline can do for the body isn’t it? The flight nurse next to her said.

  Blanca nodded. “He’s as strong as an ox, even with the wounds and the blood loss.”

  The male nurse snorted. “He’s a Reynolds. It’s in their blood. Both he and Max were shot down in Afghanistan. Their fire-team was ambushed by snipers. It didn’t keep ‘em from dragging each other out of the depths of hell, or from saving the lives of two others while they were at it. This isn’t going to keep Jax down either. Believe me. I know. I was one of the guys they saved. We were all in the Guard together. The military just loves redneck sharpshooters like us. We’re too stupid to know they’re sacrificing us on the front lines and too proud to do otherwise once we realize it.”

  When the meds set in, Reynolds relaxed and his eyes grew heavy, but he fought it and looked down at Blanca with a goofy grin on his face. “Darlin’, I don’t usually let a woman handle my goods without at least getting her first name. I guess you could say I’m old fashioned that way.”

  The flight crew laughed and the tension in the air eased a bit. If only her mother could see her now, Blanca thought, cringing at how she must’ve looked with her head so close to the man’s lap. She returned to sitting and the change of position must’ve brought her face into better light because Reynolds gasped and shook his head like he finally recognized her.

  “I never dreamed in a million years I’d be getting intimate with you,” he said in a husky voice. “When I pulled you over the other day, I just wanted to be the first one in town to meet the new lady doctor. I tailed you for twenty minutes trying to think of a way to pull you over without sounding like a complete idiot. Lucky for me your car wasn’t made for traveling our rocky roads. I would’ve missed out on being the first to look into those big, hazel eyes and watch the wind blowing that golden hair around your freckled face.”

  He’d pulled her over to check her out, huh? Well, all things considered she should be flattered. The man was, after all, a hero, a fine looking one at that. And the way he was acting like a smitten teenager was kind of cute. Blanca knew the drugs and mental shock were to blame for the officer’s confession, but she couldn’t help blushing just the same.

  “Get a room next time, Officer Reynolds,” the pilot hollered back from his seat in the cock-pit. “I guarantee you it will cost a whole hell-of-a-lot less and not be nearly as painful.”

  *****

  Blanca had just settled into a seat in the hospital waiting room with a cup of coffee when Max stormed in, followed by an older man wearing dark-rimmed reading glasses and a suit and tie. Max had said he would catch a flight with his uncle from Garden Valley to Boise, so Blanca figured the man was his uncle. What she didn’t figure on quickly bit her in the butt.

  “You’re the Practitioner my nephew said removed the bullet?” the man asked, looking over the rim of his glasses at her. “I don’t believe the clinic is insured for major surgery. In fact, I know it isn’t.”

  Oh brother, here we go, she thought. But she had no idea where the conversation was actually headed. Not until the man identified himself as Dr. Phelps and informed her he would be turning her in to the State Board of Medicine and requesting the suspension of her license immediately.

  “If my nephew suffers any more than necessary because of your malpractice,” Phelps continued, “I’ll make sure you never get work in any state, ever again!”

  So there it was. Not only had Reynolds pulled her over to check out the new scenery in town, but he also failed to mention the crazed physician he’d warned her about was his uncle. The man either had a very weird sense of humor, or one sick sense of justice. Blanca stood and walked away. No use getting into an argument with a patient’s family member.

  Outside the hospital’s blue sign gleamed in the night sky like a beacon of hope. She sat down on a bench and willed herself not to cry. Hope was something she’d usually cling to but tonight she was fresh out. She’d come to central Idaho seeking a fresh start, a reprieve from her past, but the way things were looking, she’d only managed to jump fro
m the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

  Max sat down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him. “Don’t worry ‘bout my uncle. He’ll come around as soon as Jax is out of surgery and on the mend.”

  Blanca didn’t respond. She knew the doctor wasn’t going to give up, even if his nephew came out of surgery a new man. She’d met doctors like Phelps before, ones with God complexes, those who either saw you as their equal or too far below them to care about. There was no middle ground with doctors like him.

  “Come on, cheer up. I promise I’ll speak to my uncle when he’s settled down. You saved my brother’s life, it’s the least I can do.”

  She leaned into Max and closed her eyes as a tear escaped. She was so exhausted she couldn’t think straight. Didn’t want to think anymore…

  Sometime later the tow-headed paramedic who Max introduced as Tim, arrived in Max’s truck. Max loaded her up and told Tim to drive her home. She didn’t remember much of the hour and a half drive back to Crouch. She barely opened her eyes when Longbow pulled her out of the truck and carried her into her apartment.

  The next morning she sat in the swing on her back porch and watched the birds and insects take turns feeding from the garden in Longbow’s half of the yard. Robins pulled earthworms from the soil, a hummingbird flitted around the lilac bushes, and bees buzzed around the purple daisies lining the garden bed that looked like it was ready for planting. Usually a scene such as this would have made Blanca smile, but not today. She didn’t have it in her.

  It was Saturday, her first day off since starting her new job, and despite the promise of an early summer, she couldn’t bring herself to even think about going out and exploring the new area she’d chosen to call home. What was the use? She probably wasn’t going to be allowed to stay long anyway.