“I’ll bet that was quite a fall you took,” she said, just talking to keep him awake. He lifted his head, then closed an eye.
“Just lie still.”
“My leg,” he whispered, blinking rapidly as the tears started to form in those incredible eyes.
“Shh. Let me look at it.”
He tried to move again. “I can’t get up,” he said with an edge of panic to his voice.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of you. All you have to do is relax and don’t move.”
“It hurts,” he said, then uttered an oath under his breath. He had the look in his eyes of a wounded, cornered dog and Veronica’s heart went out to him.
“I’m sure it does,” she said, offering him a smile. “Hang in there, we’ve got a basket coming and we’ll get you down. Do you hurt anywhere else?” She was touching him gently, looking for signs of injury. He had a bruise forming on his chin, but thankfully there were no signs of other head injuries.
“No.”
“No headache?”
“No.”
“But you did pass out?”
“Yeah—” He looked around and blinked again, “I guess I did.”
Aside from his leg, he didn’t appear to have sustained any other injuries, but she had to check and the fact that he’d lost consciousness earlier wasn’t a good sign. Either he’d hit his head or nearly scared himself to death. “How about your back, neck or arms?”
“Just my leg, okay?” he shouted, then clamped his mouth shut and looked guilty as sin. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly, realizing how scared he was. He was big, five eight or nine and probably somewhere between the ages of twelve and fourteen, but he still resembled a little kid. “How long have you been here?”
“Don’t know. Not long.”
Good. He was dressed warmly, so he shouldn’t have any frostbite. But he couldn’t move his leg without biting hard on his lower lip. She glanced at the sky, ever-threatening, and noticed the wind was too fierce for any snow to collect on the branches of the surrounding trees.
“My skis—”
“We’ll take them, too.” Or what’s left of them. “What’s your name?”
“Bryan.”
“Got a last name?” she asked, watching carefully for any signs of shock setting in. Come on, Tim. Hurry up.
“Keegan,” he said.
“Okay, Bryan Keegan, I’m going to untangle you from this Douglas fir and if anything hurts too bad, you let me know, okay?”
“’Kay.” He didn’t utter a sound as she worked him gently away from the branches of the trunk. Tears filled his eyes and he brushed the drops aside with the back of his gloved hand when he apparently thought she wasn’t looking. She had seen the tears and the look of embarrassment on his face, and her heart went out to the hurt boy. Somewhere nearby, she heard a snowmobile rush by and in the distance was the wail of an ambulance. Above both sounds was the disturbing sound of a helicopter’s rotor. The little girl on Double Spur hadn’t been as lucky as Bryan.
Ronni thought of Amy and sent up a silent prayer for the injured child, then she looked at her new charge. “That’s not for you,” she assured him. “I think it’s about time for formal introductions, don’t you?” Before he could answer, she said, “My name’s Ronni Walsh and, if you haven’t guessed yet, I’m part of the ski patrol,” she said, even though her red jacket and name tag said as much. “Are you skiing here alone or are you part of a group?”
“My dad. He’s here somewhere. I, uh, was supposed to meet him at the lodge.”
“Good.” She hoped to sound reassuring. “We’ll find him and let him know what’s happened. That way he can meet you in the clinic. What’s your father’s name?”
“Travis.”
“Keegan? Same as yours?” These days she didn’t want to assume anything.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He was finally untangled from the tree and some of his color seemed to be returning. Rocking back on her heels, she asked, “What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Mount Echo. Devil’s...Devil’s Bowl?”
“Close enough.” He didn’t seem to have any kind of memory loss, which heartened her. “As soon as my partner gets here, we’ll take you down to the lodge and find your dad. Sound like a plan?”
“I guess,” he said warily, but offered her the faintest of smiles.
Tim Sether arrived pushing the basket-sled, which was shaped like a canoe with bicycle handles and runners. Together they helped Bryan into the sled, covering him with a plastic thermal blanket before strapping him in tightly. Kneeling beside the rig, Tim laid a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder and explained the procedure. “I’m gonna take you down the hill. Just relax and go along for the ride. I’ll do all the work. Ronni, here, she’ll try to find your dad. Okay?”
“’Kay,” the kid mumbled, his teeth chattering.
“Let’s do it,” Tim said to Veronica as he tugged on the edges of his knit cap.
The going was rough, the wind a blast of arctic air that blew across the snow. Veronica skied down first and Tim followed behind, never losing his grip on the sled as he guided it, plowlike, down the hill. At a path, they cut across the face of the mountain, back to the protected area and groomed runs. Within minutes they were at the basement of the lodge where the small emergency clinic was housed.
An ambulance, lights flashing, was already waiting at the double doors and a little girl wearing a cervical collar and strapped to a gurney was being hauled into the back.
“It’s going to be okay, Jackie,” a man in a black jumpsuit was saying as he leaned over the stretcher. His goggles hung around his neck, his face was ashen and his eyes were worried.
A middle-aged woman in a purple jumpsuit who was fighting tears cleared her throat. “That’s right, honey, you just hang in there.”
“Don’t worry,” the doctor, Syd Fletcher, was saying. “I’ve called Dr. Bowman in Portland. He’s a good man, been to him myself. He’ll be able to help you get back on your feet again, Jackie.”
The woman blinked rapidly. “But a crushed pelvis—”
“It’ll be fixed. Come on, let’s go.” They didn’t have time to argue and the mother climbed into the back of the ambulance before an attendant slammed the door and the vehicle tore out of the parking lot.
Veronica stepped out of her bindings. “Are you all right?” she asked Jackie’s father.
He was still standing where his family had left him, his eyes fixed on the brake lights of the disappearing ambulance.
“What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, fine,” he said brusquely before letting his mask of bravado slip a bit. “It’s just that Jackie’s our only child and if anything happens to her...” Kneading the stocking cap he was holding, he let his voice trail off. “Damn it all, anyway.” He shook his head and seemed to snap out of it. “I don’t know what I’m doing standing around here like a dime-store dummy, I’ve got to get to the hospital.”
“Maybe you should have a cup of coffee first—give yourself a little time to pull yourself together.”
“No time,” he said as he gathered skis and headed across the parking lot and disappeared behind a bus.
Dr. Fletcher turned his attention to the boy on the stretcher. “What have we got here?”
“Right leg—though the injury seems to be confined to the knee,” Tim said. He’d already stepped out of his skis and was unstrapping Bryan from the sled. “Possible head injuries, he was knocked out, but he’s stabilized, no sign of concussion.”
Fletcher frowned. Bending down, he ran expert hands over Bryan’s head, examined his eyes and asked him a few questions. Apparently satisfied that Bryan wasn’t injured more ser
iously than Tim had said, he smiled at the boy and clicked off his penlight. “Knee, is it, son? Haven’t had one of those today.” Fletcher gave Bryan his famous relax-and-let-me-take-care-of-you smiles which people always said reminded them of an old-fashioned country doctor who made house calls. In truth, Syd Fletcher was a sought-after internist whose thriving practice in Portland was more than enough to keep him busy. A skiing enthusiast who spent every other Sunday working in the clinic, he spent as much free time as possible on the mountain. “You’ll be my first this afternoon. Kind of an honor.”
From the looks of him, Bryan didn’t think so.
“What’s your name?”
“Bryan...Bryan Keegan.”
“His father is somewhere on the mountain,” Veronica said to Fletcher, then smiled at the boy. “Okay, Bryan, hang on to Tim and me and we’ll carry you inside to a wheelchair.”
“’Kay.” He didn’t argue and within seconds they’d maneuvered him into a chair.
“Now, about your father. Any idea where I can find him?” Ronni asked.
“Probably in the lodge,” Bryan said with a shrug, but beneath his nonchalance and the pain that caused his skin to be the color of chalk, there was hint of guilt in his eyes as he avoided looking directly at her. “I, uh, was supposed to meet him.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
The nurse on duty, Linda Knowlton, was a friend of Veronica’s. With a “Well, what have we got here?” she wheeled Bryan through a maze of stainless-steel equipment, desks and occupied beds to an area behind a heavy door where an X-ray machine was located.
Once Bryan was out of sight, Veronica used the phone mounted on a wall near a cupboard containing first-aid equipment and called the information desk. She asked the receptionist to try to find a male skier by the name of Travis Keegan who might or might not be in the lodge. If located, Travis was to be sent to the clinic to pick up his son, who, though injured, wasn’t in any medical danger.
Now all they could do was wait for the father to come looking for his missing boy.
After a few minutes with Linda in the X-ray room, Bryan was lying on one of a series of hospital beds that were crammed against one concrete wall of the small clinic. His boot was off, his leg in a brace. “Nothing’s broken,” Dr. Fletcher told his patient. “You were lucky this time.”
“Don’t feel lucky.”
Fletcher chuckled. “Well, no, I imagine not.”
Veronica felt a measure of relief for Bryan though she couldn’t help remembering the little girl that had been rushed away by ambulance. The mountain had a way of taking its toll on young and old alike.
Unforgiving. Savage.
Gritting her teeth, she noticed the other patients. One woman in her sixties had twisted her ankle and seemed to think it was a snowboarder’s fault for cutting her off and causing her to fall. “They shouldn’t be allowed on the mountain,” she asserted. “Dangerous, reckless wild kids who have no place on ski runs! I’ve been skiing for forty years and never seen the like. Rude. That’s what they are. Should be barred!”
“Hey, I board and it’s safer than skis,” a teenage boy with long bleached hair and a splint on one arm chimed in.
A little girl wearing a thumb splint was waiting for her parents and a man in his twenties was being given pain relievers. His right arm was in a sling and the preliminary diagnosis was that his elbow was broken. An ambulance had already been called. “When’s it gonna get here?” he demanded as Bryan stared at the ceiling.
There was something about the boy that tugged on Veronica’s heart strings. Beneath his macho I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude was a scared little kid. She could read it in his eyes whenever he glanced in her direction.
“Look, I’ve been here for half an hour,” the twenty-year-old complained.
“The ambulance will be here soon,” Fletcher remarked without looking up from the chart on which he was scribbling.
“I’m dying here.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But there was already a vehicle.”
“Which took away a little girl who was in worse shape than you,” Fletcher snapped. “This isn’t a cafeteria line where it’s first come first served. Everything here is done by priority—the more serious the injury, the faster you get medical attention.”
The patient rolled his eyes. “I’ll never get out of here.”
The nurse, Linda, a blond woman with a patient smile, said, “I know it feels like it, but it will be just—”
The doors burst open and two attendants stormed into the room. With a cold rush of air and the smell of exhaust was a glimpse of an ambulance, lights spinning eerily as it idled next to the clinic. “Here you go,” Linda added, and without the least bit of wasted motion, the two attendants, dressed in ski coats and caps, hustled their charge into a wheelchair and out the door. Within seconds they were gone.
“Thank God,” Linda muttered.
“So how’re you doing?” Veronica asked Bryan.
“Fine,” he mumbled and wouldn’t look in her direction.
“You up here for the day?”
His gaze flattened as if he was bored. She could hear the words, What’s it to ya, lady? Buzz off! though he hadn’t uttered a sound.
“Well, good luck,” she said. It was four o’clock and she was officially off duty. She could pick up Amy from the Snow Bunny area where the little girl had taken toddler ski lessons earlier. After the group lesson, Amy was fed lunch, then encouraged to nap on one of the cots placed around the play area. She spent what was left of the afternoon in a special day-care area of the lodge where she played with kids her age under supervised care.
Ronni had just started for the double doors when they flew open and banged against the wall. A tall man, mid-thirties from the looks of him, with harsh, chiseled features and dark hair dusted with snow, strode into the room as if he owned it. His mouth was turned down at the corners, his gray eyes dark with worry, his thick, unruly eyebrows slammed together in concern. “I’m looking for—” He stopped suddenly when he saw Bryan lying on one of the beds. “Thank God,” he said, relief softening the hard angles of his face. His gloved hands opened and clenched in frustration. “Hell, Bryan, you gave me the scare of my life. I thought you might be dead or unconscious somewhere.”
“May as well be,” the boy responded. He glanced sullenly around the room, disdain radiating from him. “This place is about as lame as it gets.”
“But you’re okay?”
“He’ll walk again.” Syd extended his hand. “I’m Dr. Fletcher—”
The phone rang shrilly.
Linda answered it and waved to Fletcher. One hand over the receiver, she said, “It’s Dr. Crenshaw. He wants information on the little girl who came in this morning with the injured spleen. Her name was—” She searched for a chart.
“Elissa, I remember. Excuse me for a second.” Dr. Fletcher took the phone from the nurse’s outstretched hand and turned his back on Bryan while he concentrated on the conversation. Meanwhile, Linda attended the older woman who was asking for a pain pill while she waited for her husband.
Keegan turned his attention to his son. “I thought I told you to meet me at the lodge.”
Bryan scowled deeply. “I lost track of time.”
“You’ve got a watch and the lifts have clocks at the bottom as well as the top.”
“Yeah, I know, but I said I lost track of time,” Bryan repeated sullenly.
Keegan rubbed a hand around the back of his neck in frustration. “It doesn’t matter. You’re all right and that’s what I really care about, but why don’t you fill me in? Tell me what happened, how you ended up here.”
“I caught a little air and landed wrong.”
“Where were you?”
Bryan didn’t answer.
> Veronica thought she had to step in. She didn’t want to get the kid into trouble with this large man who looked as if he was barely hanging on to his patience, but it was important that they both realize how dangerous it is to ski in closed areas, how lucky Bryan was not to be in worse shape.
“I found him on Devil’s Spine,” she said, stepping to the other side of Bryan’s bed.
“Devil’s Spine?” the man echoed, seeing her for the first time. His troubled gaze centered on her face, hesitated, then dropped for an instant to skim her chest where her name tag was pinned.
“I’m Veronica Walsh, one of the rescue team.”
He was staring into her eyes again and she noticed just how intense his gaze was—flinty gray, the color of storm clouds gathering over an angry ocean. “You found Bryan?”
“Yes.” She bristled slightly as she always did when she came up against someone who didn’t seem to think a woman could handle the job. But she held on to her temper as she realized he was upset about his son. Maybe he wasn’t a first-class chauvinist.
“Where on earth is Devil’s Spine?”
“North canyon,” Bryan said.
“That’s right. Because of the windy and icy conditions today, parts of the north side weren’t groomed and the area around the spine, which is an expert run, was closed today.”
“Closed?” Keegan repeated and his son’s face hardened.
Feeling like a rat, Ronni did her duty. “I think Bryan might have been jumping from the top of the spine to the bottom. That’s a drop of nearly ten feet.” She stared at the kid. “Am I right?”
Bryan shrugged.
Keegan’s mouth thinned into an unforgiving line and Ronni couldn’t help comparing him to the mountain. Fierce, savage, challenging. Keegan’s fingers tightened over the rail of the hospital bed as he stared at his son. “For the love of God, Bryan, what were you thinking?”
“Look, Mr. Keegan, people do it all the time, but not when the run’s closed,” she said, trying to soften the blow. Bryan’s father needed to know that his son had broken the rules, but she didn’t want to get the boy into big trouble. She touched Bryan on the shoulder and he flinched. His gaze was hard and accused her of being a traitor. “It turned out all right,” she added. “Bryan was lucky.”