The Unexpected Hero

“So your dad used to be sheriff here?”

She almost laughed at the pointed change of subject. “Yeah. Forever, it seems. Certainly since before I was born. Deep roots in these parts.”

“I haven’t really had a chance to get to know him yet.”

“You will. Retired or not, this county belongs to Dad.” She grinned. “Or so he thinks. He’s keeping his hand in, one way or another. Small ways. It must be driving Gage nuts.”

“Gage? You mean the new sheriff, Gage Dalton?”

“Yup. And note the way you say ‘the new sheriff.’ He’s been doing it for three years now, and everyone still says he’s the new sheriff.”

David chuckled. “That could get annoying.”

“Gage doesn’t seem to mind. He’s either a really good actor, or he has his priorities straight.”

“I don’t really know him, either. I don’t have a whole lot of contact with the sheriff’s department.”

“Well, we’ll have to change that. It’s the best way to get wired into the county. You probably know my sister, though. Wendy Yuma, the flight nurse with the emergency response team.”

“She’s your sister? I know her all right, her and Billy Joe. Great people.”

“Maybe we should all get together some time.” As soon as she said it, she wanted to withdraw the suggestion. How much better did she really want to know this edgy, possibly difficult man? He might want to forget he’d come on like gangbusters at their first meeting, but she wouldn’t. Couldn’t afford to. She’d had enough of control freaks to last her a lifetime.

“Yeah, that could be fun.”

He went back to eating, obviously blessed with a healthy appetite as well as dark good looks. But as she sat there, nibbling at her toast and omelet, Krissie realized the man didn’t look happy at all. Either last night was still upsetting him, or he carried a load of garbage even bigger than hers.

Which wouldn’t be surprising. You didn’t come out of a war without garbage. Tons of it. Not if you were human.

But she didn’t want to go there. Not now. Maybe not ever. Even thinking about the VA hospital upset her, so how could she talk about what they’d both seen in Iraq? Sometimes it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Finally, Krissie simply couldn’t eat another bite. She pushed her plate to one side, expecting Maude or Mabel to come give her the standard lecture about wasting good food. Instead, Mabel didn’t say a word. She simply refilled their mugs with fresh coffee and took the plate away.

Maybe, Krissie thought with a burst of inner humor, miracles still happened.

David suddenly spoke. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you go get some sleep? I’ll get the bill. My treat.”

As soon as he spoke, she realized he was right. She was too exhausted to manage a conversation about even something as inane as the weather.

“I am tired,” she admitted.

“I can see that.” He lifted one corner of his mouth in a smile. “Go rest up. I’m sure I’ll see you tonight.”

“Tonight?” That rattled her, then she remembered. “Oh, yeah. Tonight. I’m on shift.”

He nodded, and his smile widened. “Definitely exhausted. Off with you. See you later.”

She was strangely glad to escape the normally pleasant sounds and smells of the diner and climbed into her little car with relief.

The night was over. So much for peace.

Chapter Three

Afternoon sunlight slanted through Krissie’s bedroom window, a welcome sight as she awoke. She smiled and stretched contentedly. The air mattress beneath her made its familiar hollow sounds.

Being in the navy for six years had taught her to minimize her possessions. If it didn’t fit in a duffel bag, she didn’t own it. Then the habit proved hard to break, and the few items of furniture she had bought while working in Denver had seemed easier to sell than to move.

She needed to change that mindset, she thought now. A bed, a table, some additional cooking utensils, maybe even a sofa. She could afford these things from her savings, and since she was determined to stay here now that she had come home, she didn’t need to live like a gypsy any more.

In fact, she thought ruefully, gypsies probably had more worldly possessions. She stretched again and glanced at the small travel alarm clock near her bed. Four o’clock already! She must have slept like the dead.

Just time enough to grab a shower and try to make something to eat, then pack a lunch for her shift. And maybe a quick chat with Mom on the phone.

Almost as if reading her mind, her cell phone rang, and she saw her parents’ phone number pop up. Smiling, she opened the phone and answered.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, honey.” Her mother’s warm voice filled her ear. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I was just waking up.”

“Oh, goodie. So, you know what the best thing about having you back in town is?” Marge Tate’s tone became gently humorous.

“No, what?”

“I can ask you over for dinner now. And it just so happens we decided to eat early. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact you have to be back on shift at seven.”

Krissie laughed. “Oh, Mom!”

“So your dad’s heating up the grill and I thought we’d make burgers, and I’m in the middle of making this really great salad—”

“Sold!” Krissie said. “I just need to shower and throw some things together for tonight.”

“Don’t rush, honey. Dinner won’t be until five or so. But while you’re not rushing, hurry up. I miss you.”

Still smiling, Krissie closed her phone, jumped up and trotted to the shower. God, it was good to be home!

The Tate family house looked as it always had during the years Krissie and the five other girls had grown up there, except that it had a fresh coat of white paint and some new bushes out front. The full-size van was gone, too, no longer necessary for carting six kids around.

But it was still home, and as soon as Krissie stepped through the front door, she felt enveloped in warmth and love.

She found her parents out back on the deck, sipping tall glasses of lemonade. Immediately, they enveloped her in hugs, as if they hadn’t just seen her two days ago, then sat her down with her own glass of lemonade.

Nate, her dad, didn’t look a day older than he had when she left for the navy eight years ago. It was as if he’d weathered and aged all he could by forty, and then remained unchanging.

Marge had put on a couple of pounds, but on her they looked good. She had apparently stopped washing her short hair with henna, so the red had faded mostly to gray. The years, however, had taken no toll on her smile or her twinkling eyes.

“We invited Wendy and Billy Joe for dinner, too,” Marge said, “but apparently there was a car accident, so you’re stuck with just us for company.”

“As if I’d complain?”

Nate chuckled, a deep gravelly sound. “Well, I know how much you were looking forward to the three-ring circus.”

“No, that’s Christmas, when everyone comes home.”

Nate laughed again. “My favorite time of year.”

Marge smiled at him. “Go get the burgers, dear. Krissie has limited time and I want to have a private word.”

“Uh-oh,” Krissie said humorously as her dad rose from his chair.

He leaned over and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Call me if you need protection.”

“Oh, go on,” Marge laughed. “It’s nothing like that.”

Nate disappeared through the sliding glass door, closing it pointedly behind him.

Marge looked at Krissie as if drinking in every detail. “I know you wrote and called all the time while you were away. But I’m a mother, and I can tell there was a lot you weren’t saying.”

“Mom…”

Marge shook her head and patted her hand. “Nate says I shouldn’t ask, and he would know. I just want you to know that if you ever need to talk, I’m here.”

“I’ve always known that.” But Krissie felt her throat tighten anyway, and she had to swallow hard.

“And if you feel it’s something only your dad would understand, well, he’s here, too.”

“I know…” Krissie could hardly talk around the sudden lump in her throat. Marge left her chair to come wrap her arms tightly around her daughter. All of a sudden, Krissie felt like a small child again, when all the comfort in the world could be found within the arms of her mother, with her head on her mother’s breast. Comfort and safety.

“I can only imagine,” Marge murmured. “I can only imagine. But you’ll heal now. I know you will.”

“I’m healing already,” Krissie managed, her voice thick.

“Yes, you are. I knew it when you decided to come home.”

Marge squeezed her hard then let go. As if reading a signal, Nate returned with a plate of raw burgers.

“I hope you’re hungry,” he said jovially. “ ‘Cuz I’m cooking for four.”

Marge resumed her seat, raising a brow. “He’s always looking for an excuse to get a second burger.”

“Well, if you’d let me have them more often, I wouldn’t need to resort to tricks!”

Krissie laughed, feeling the intense emotions begin to subside, allowing her to breathe and swallow again. “I love you guys,” she said.

Her answer came in unison, “We love you, too.”

When Krissie arrived at the hospital just before seven, she realized the auto accident must have been a serious one. Police cars and two ambulances stood at the emergency room entrance, and the medevac helicopter was on the pad not far away. Even as she walked across the parking lot, she saw her sister Wendy emerge alongside a gurney headed for the helicopter, an IV bag swinging in the breeze. The rotors were powering up even before the gurney reached the chopper.

Taking a chance, she entered by way of the E.R. and was collared immediately by David. “We need you here,” he said briskly. “Have someone call the ward and tell the charge nurse not to leave.”

“What happened?”

“Three-car pileup. One of them was a van with a family of five.”

Krissie nodded and took off. She called the ward herself to advise them she’d be late, then tore to the changing room to pull on scrubs and booties. Back out in the E.R. controlled chaos reigned. To a practiced eye, it was clear that everything was functioning as it should, even though they were shorthanded, but to the uneducated, it probably looked like total uproar.

“In here.” David motioned her into a cubicle and she found a child of maybe eight or nine on the gurney inside. He was unconscious, but breathing normally. David bent over him, ignoring the blood, and began to listen to chest sounds, then to palpate.

“I don’t see any wounds,” he said. “Do you?”

Krissie immediately stepped in and began to check the small body from head to toe. “Head gash,” she said. “Already stopped bleeding. Maybe two stitches, nothing major.”

“Got it.”

She kept working her way downward, checking limbs, searching every inch of skin. “Nothing else. Either he bled heavily for a while or it’s someone else’s blood.”

David finished putting two sutures in the scalp wound. “Check BP again, make sure it’s not falling.”

She pressed the button on the automatic blood pressure machine and watched the cuff inflate then release. “Good BP,” she said, scanning the readout.

“Good. Send him on to X-ray. No way to tell what’s broken, but make sure they do a good job on the head.”

But before they could take him away, David stopped them and looked at the boy’s abdomen again. What he saw made him pause. “Seat belt.”

Krissie stepped closer and watched David trace the faint outline of an emerging bruise. As soon as she saw it, she turned back to the BP monitor and took another reading. “Steady,” she said. But as she turned back to David, she saw the worry in his eyes. They both knew what a seat belt could do in an accident: ruptured spleen, other organ damage from sudden pressure. The damage might be small right now, too small to detect with palpation, but if allowed to go untreated, it could become a death sentence.

“You go with him,” David told her. “Monitor constantly. But we need those X-rays.”

“Yes, doctor.”

So, keeping the child hooked up to his IV, and with the blood pressure monitor tucked onto the bed with him, Krissie helped push the gurney to X-ray. “What’s his name?” she called over her shoulder.

David shook his head. “No names yet.”

“Tell the cops I need to know.”

“I will.” He was already moving on to the next patient. A woman suddenly screamed, but not even that woke the boy.

“Poor little tyke,” said the orderly helping her to push the gurney. For the first time, Krissie looked up and saw Charlie Waters.

“Oh, hi, Charlie. Sorry, I was focused on the boy.”

He nodded. “Everyone is focused right now.”

Two X-ray technicians were already waiting. Krissie insisted on remaining at the boy’s bedside, so she donned a lead apron. As they moved his little body around so they could get an unobstructed view of every bone in his body, she found herself grateful that, for now at least, he remained unconscious. If any of those bones were broken, this would have been hell on earth for him, and he’d already been through quite enough.

A radiologist had been called in, and he began examining the X-rays as they developed, before the entire set was even taken. Krissie kept checking the blood pressure, and every few minutes, palpated the child’s abdomen. No sign that it was hardening, even though the seat-belt bruise was becoming more apparent.

The radiologist joined her before they were even done. “He needs to be transported,” he said. “There’s a compression fracture in his left skull. It’s not deep, not something you’d probably find by touch, but he needs an MRI stat.”

That was all Krissie needed to hear. Small hospital, no MRI available. It was one of those things you dealt with here. “Call down to E.R. and tell Dr. Marcus, will you? We’ll get him out as fast as we can.”

The radiologist nodded and waved them on their way. Another gurney, holding a moaning man, was already waiting in line.

By the time they returned to the emergency room, another helicopter was landing, this one from a neighboring county. The boy was rushed on board, along with a woman who seemed to be wavering in and out of consciousness. Instructions were given, then Krissie, Charlie and David stood back as the helicopter lifted to the sky.

“God,” said David, “some days I hate being at a small hospital.”

“Yeah.” Krissie could understand his frustration. With something like this, every minute counted, and because they didn’t have all the bells and whistles, the minutes were stacking up.

Then she looked into David’s eyes, and saw the same ghosts that must be in her own. He visibly shook himself and started back to the E.R. She and Charlie followed.

“Maybe,” she heard David mutter, “we need to start a fund-raising drive for some new equipment.”

“I’ll help,” Krissie said promptly.

He looked at her, appearing slightly embarrassed. “That wasn’t meant for general distribution.”

“I know. But it’s still true.”

“Stabilize and transport usually works.”

“I know.” And she did. That’s mostly what they’d had to do in field hospitals. Even in major metropolitan areas, only one or two hospitals were equipped as trauma centers. Stabilize and transport was a medical dictum in many places, because it was the only efficient way to use resources.

An hour later, they’d cleared the accident victims. Two had gone to surgery, two had been moved to the general ward, the rest had been transported. Krissie hurried to take a shower and change into clean scrubs before going up to relieve the day-shift charge nurse.

Denise Albright greeted her like a savior. A small woman with surprisingly broad shoulders, she had pretty gray eyes and a huge smile. “Girl, am I glad to see you! My feet are screaming.”

“Been busy?”

“You wouldn’t believe. I guess the last week was the calm before the storm. In addition to the two accident victims you already know about, we got four more.”

“What’s going on?”

Denise grinned. “The usual. Accidents. You shouldn’t stand on the edge of the bathtub to change a light bulb.”

Krissie compressed her lips to stifle a laugh. “New rule.”

“Definitely. Lucky it was only a broken arm and a concussion. Then we have Mr. I-got-careless-with-the-farm-equipment. He needed twenty-nine stitches, a unit of blood and is on IV antibiotics. We have a first-degree burn case which is highly painful and resulted from splashing grease. New rule: watch it when you dump those frozen fries into a big pot of very hot grease. She’ll be okay, she was lucky to be standing back far enough for the grease to cool some, but the pain is enough that she’s on some powerful meds, so she needs watching. Also, they said she seemed a little shocky when she came in.”

“Got it. And the last one?”

“Now this is my very favorite.” Denise paused for effect.

“Another new rule?”

“Yup. When you get mad at your husband, don’t punch your arm through a plate-glass window.”

“Oh, my gosh!”

“Two units of blood, seventeen stitches, IV antibiotics and an emergency restraining order. I doubt she’ll get any visitors tonight. No one has showed up so far.”

“I’d be worried about who would.”

At that, Denise laughed. “Yeah. Anyway, Julie and Nancy are making the rounds, so you have time to read the files and get up to speed. Me, I’m off. I need my supper. See you tomorrow!”

Krissie settled in to read all the files, finding pretty much what Denise had told her. Except, the burn patient niggled at her. Linda Nelson had been admitted by Dr. Randolph at 4:30 p.m. with extensive first-degree burns on her stomach and abdomen, and a much smaller second-degree burn on her arm. The wounds had not been inspected since they had been treated and bandaged.

At once, she left the nurses’ station and went to find Linda Nelson. The thing about burns, even first-degree burns, is that when they first presented, you didn’t always see all the damage. Also, more damage could appear later and the body sometimes produced an immune reaction to burns, which could make them worsen.

Everyone had been busy with the mess in the E.R. so it wasn’t surprising that the nurses had forgotten to check the burns again.

She found Linda groggy from morphine, but still conscious. “It hurts,” the patient said plaintively.

“Burns are the worst,” Krissie said sympathetically.

“You’ve seen a lot?”

“Too many.” Another mental image to shove out of the way. “I’m going to check them, okay? Someone needs to look every so often.”

“Will it hurt more?”

“I’ll be as gentle as I can, I promise. Sometimes though, when the air hits a burn, the pain can spike a little.”

Linda bit her lower lip, then nodded. “I get more morphine soon, right?”

“As soon as I can give it to you. I won’t forget.”

“Okay.” She screwed her eyes shut. “God, I can’t believe I was so stupid. But Tommy screamed just as I was starting to pour the fries into the pot.”

“Tommy?”

“My four-year-old. I guess Sally, his older sister, accidentally hit him in the head with a ball…I don’t know. He just screamed, and I jumped.”

“Accidents happen,” Krissie said soothingly. Gently, she opened the woman’s gown and began to ease the huge gauze pad away. “I know you, don’t I?”

“Maybe.” Linda drew a sharp breath. “I was six years behind you in school, but everybody knew you because you were the sheriff’s daughter.”

“That was a curse, I can tell you.”

“I bet. Every bit as bad as being the preacher’s kid, probably.” Linda winced and gasped.

“I’m sorry.” She was even more sorry when she saw the reddened skin beneath the gauze. Widespread blistering had begun. Gently she laid the pad down. “I’m going to get the doctor in, okay? But first let me check whether you’re due for more morphine.”

“God, I hope so! I swear, it’s hurting worse.”

“It probably feels that way. Must be time for another shot.”

It was. She administered the morphine immediately through the IV port, then promised to come back in ten minutes.

Outside Linda’s door, Krissie saw Julie coming down the hall. “Stay with Mrs. Nelson while I get the doctor. Put her on the monitor and watch for shock.”

Julie’s eyes widened a hair. “Got it. What’s going on?”

“The burns are deepening.”

“Oh, no.” Julie’s step quickened, and she entered the room with a squeak of rubbery soles.

Krissie hurried down to the nurses’ station and paged the physician on duty. Of course it was David.

“What’s up?” he asked on the phone.

“We’ve got a burn patient up here. Randolph admitted her with first-degree burns of the abdomen and stomach. I just looked and she’s blistering badly.”

“I’m on my way.”

She couldn’t hold it back then. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the counter while memories washed over her in Technicolor horror. Burns of every kind and description, burns of men, women and children, burns so bad you couldn’t believe the victim still breathed. At its very heart, war burned.

A touch yanked her back from the precipice. She opened her eyes and saw David.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Burns,” she answered. It was all she could say.

His face darkened. “I know. God, do I know. Which room? You stay here if you need to.”

Sympathy from the devil. A crazy thought that just popped into her mind. David Marcus was no devil. No, there were real devils out there.

Gathering herself, she followed him to check on Linda. Julie sat beside the bed, the monitor had been connected, and the patient’s blood pressure, a tad low, was still okay.

David spoke a few words, then leaned over Linda. “Is the morphine helping?”

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