Minutes later, they walked out of the house into a blast of snow that stung their faces, but Glory didn’t falter. As she was about to step off the porch, J.C. appeared out of nowhere and lifted her off her feet, carrying her through the snow to the waiting vehicle. She shuddered as she clung to his broad shoulders, still locked into the vision before her. And as she saw…she prayed.
“We’re not gonna make it,” the ambulance driver groaned, as he fought the steering wheel and the vehicle’s urge to slide.
“Damn it, Farley, just quit talking and drive. We have to make it! If we don’t, this fellow sure won’t.”
Luke Dennis, the emergency medical technician whose fortune it had been to be on duty this night, was up to his elbows in blood. His clothes were soaking wet, and his boots were filled to the tops with melting snow. The last thing he wanted to hear was another negative. They’d worked too long and too hard just getting this victim out of his car and up the side of the mountain to give up now.
“Come on, buddy, hang with me,” Dennis muttered, as he traded a fresh container of D5W for the one going empty on the other end of the IV.
An unceasing flow of blood ran out of the victim’s dark hair and across his face, mapping his once-handsome features with a crazy quilt of red. It was impossible to guess how many bones this man had broken, and to be honest, those were the least of Dennis’s worries. If they couldn’t get him back to the hospital in time, it was the internal injuries that would kill him.
“I see lights!” Farley shouted.
Thank God, Dennis thought, and then grabbed his patient and the stretcher, holding on to it, and to him, as the ambulance took the street corner sideways. Moments later they were at the hospital, unloading a man whose chance of a future depended upon the skills of the people awaiting him inside.
Before he was a doctor, Amos Steading had been a medic in Vietnam. When he saw Wyatt Hatfield being wheeled into his E.R., he realized he might have been practicing medicine longer than this patient had been alive. It hurt to lose a patient, but the younger ones were much harder to accept.
“What have we got?” Amos growled, lowering his bushy eyebrows as his attention instantly focused upon the injuries.
“Trouble, Doc,” Dennis said. “Thirty-four-year-old male. Recently discharged from the Marines. He’s still wearing his ID tags. He got sideswiped by a truck and went over the side of Tulley’s Mountain. Didn’t think we’d ever get him up and out. He’s got head injuries, and from the feel of his belly, internal bleeding as well. From external exam, I’d guess at least four broken ribs, and, his right leg has quite a bit of damage, although it’s hard to tell what, if anything, is broken. We had to saw a tree and move it off him to get him out of the car.” He took a deep breath as the stretcher slid to a halt. As they transferred the victim to the gurney, he added, “This is his third bag of D5W.”
Steading’s eyebrows arched as he yanked his stethoscope from around his neck and slipped it into place. This man was bleeding to death before their eyes. Moments later, he began firing orders to the nurse and the other doctor on call.
“Get me a blood type,” Steading shouted, and a nurse ran to do his bidding.
It was then that EMT Luke Dennis added the last bit of information about the victim, which made them all pause.
“According to his dog tags, he’s AB negative,” Dennis said.
A low curse slid out of Amos’s mouth as he continued to work. Rare blood types didn’t belong in this backwater town of eighteen hundred people. There was no way their blood bank was going to have anything like that, and the plasma they had on hand was sparse.
“Type it anyway,” Steading ordered. “And get me some plasma, goddamn it! This man’s going to die before I can get him stable enough for surgery.”
The once quiet hospital instantly became a flurry of shouts, curses and noise. Luke Dennis stepped out of the way, aware that he’d done his job. The rest was up to the doc and his staff…and God.
He started back toward the door to restock the ambulance, aware that the night was far from over. It was entirely possible that more than one fool might decide to venture out in a storm like this. He just hoped that if they plowed themselves into the snow—or into someone else—they were nowhere near a mountain when it happened. But before he could leave, the outside door burst open right before him, and three people blew in, along with a blinding gust of snow.
Glory breathed a shaky sigh of relief. One hurdle crossed. Another yet to come. She burst free of her father’s grasp and ran toward the EMT who’d stepped aside to let them pass.
“Mister! Please! Take me to the soldier’s doctor.”
Dennis couldn’t quit staring at the young woman clutching his coat. Her voice was frantic, her behavior strange, but it was her request that startled him. How could she know that the man they’d just brought in was—or at least had been—a soldier?
“Are you a relative?” Dennis asked.
“No! Who I am doesn’t matter, but he does,” Glory cried, gripping his coat a little tighter. And then she felt her father’s hand move across her shoulder.
“Ease up, Glory. You got to explain yourself a little, honey.”
She blinked, and Dennis watched focus returning to her expression, thinking as he did that he’d never seen eyes quite that shade of blue. In a certain light, they almost looked silver…as silver as her hair, which clung to her face and coat like strands of wet taffy.
She took a deep breath and started over.
“Please,” she said softly. “I came to give blood.”
Dennis shook his head. “I don’t know how you heard about the accident, but I’m afraid coming out in this storm was a waste of time for you. He’s got a rare—”
Glory dug through her purse, her fingers shaking as she searched the contents of her wallet.
“Here,” she said, thrusting a card into the man’s hands. “Show the doctor. Tell him I can help—that it’s urgent that he wait no longer. The man won’t live through the night without me.”
As Dennis looked down at the card, the hair crawled on the back of his neck. He glanced back up at the woman, then at the card again, and suddenly grabbed her by the arm, pulling her down the hall toward the room where Steading was working.
“Doc, we just got ourselves a miracle,” Dennis shouted as he ran into the room.
Amos Steading frowned at the woman Dennis was dragging into their midst.
“Get her out of here, Dennis! You know better than to bring—”
“She’s AB negative, Doc, and she’s come to give blood.”
Steading’s hands froze above the tear in the flesh on Wyatt Hatfield’s leg.
“You’re full of bull,” he growled.
Dennis shook his head. “No, I swear to God, Doc. Here’s her donor card.”
Steading’s eyes narrowed and then he barked at a nurse on the other side of the room. “Get her typed and cross-matched. Now!”
She flew to do his bidding.
“And get me some more saline, damn it! This man’s losing more fluids than I can pump in him.” He cursed softly, then added beneath his breath, fully expecting someone to hear and obey, “And call down to X-ray and find out why his films aren’t back!” As he leaned back over the patient, he began to mumble again, more to himself than to anyone else. “Now where the hell is that bleeder?”
There was a moment, in the midst of all the doctor’s orders, when Glory looked upon the injured man’s face. It wasn’t often that she had a physical connection to the people in her mind.
“What’s his name?” she whispered, as a nurse grabbed her by the arm and all but dragged her down the hall to the lab.
“Who, Dr. Steading?”
“No,” Glory said. “The man who was hurt.”
“Oh…uh…Hatfield. William…no, uh…Wyatt. Yes, that’s right. Wyatt Hatfield. It’s a shame, too,” the nurse muttered, more to herself than to Glory. “He looks like he was real handsome…and so young. Just got out of the service. From his identification, some sort of special forces. It’s sort of ironic, isn’t it?”
