Helicopter Rescue
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Danica Winters
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26
Chapter One
The man stepped out of the ditch, a stuffed lobster dragging on the ground behind him. The orange bailing twine was looped around the animal’s neck, and the lobster bounced like it was hoping for the sweet release of a figurative death—if only it could have been so lucky. Instead, it was the perpetual stuffed clown of a man who seemed to have as much apathy toward the thing as he did self-awareness.
Kristin Loren glanced down at the man’s Bermuda shorts, one leg markedly longer than the other and tattered and torn, with a strip of hibiscus-printed cloth flapping against his leg as he teetered toward them.
From what she had been told about the man, he was in his eighties, was a former dean of the physics department at CalTech and suffered from Alzheimer’s. Seeing him now, his ripped and dirty clothes, and stumbling gait, she had a hard time seeing him as the powerful authority on astrophysics that, according to the internet, he had once been. He was proof of the ravaging effects of the disease, and how it could even bring an intellectual juggernaut to his knees.
Perhaps one day in the not-so-distant future, due to her own family’s history of Alzheimer’s, she would be found like this man had been, confused and disoriented and smelling of sweat and urine. She hoped not, but it made the ache in her chest for the man intensify.
“Wh-where am I?” the man stammered, a look of uncertainty in his eyes. “Who’re you?”
“I’m Kristin. What’s your name?” she asked, hoping the man was capable of answering.
“I’m Hugh.” He pointed at the flight crew as the nurse approached. “Who are they?”
“We were sent out here to help you get back home. That is Greg,” she said, motioning toward the pilot, “and he will be helping to make sure you make it home safely. This lady here—” she indicated the thirtysomething brunette woman at her side “—is a sweet nurse who wants to get you medical assistance. Okay?”
The nurse smiled up at Hugh. “Is it okay with you if I check your vitals really quick?”
The man frowned but nodded, then pulled the lobster into his arms like he was not an eighty-seven-year-old man and was instead a seven-year-old boy. The nurse set to work, slipping on her stethoscope.
“How are you feeling this afternoon, sir?” the nurse asked.
“I’m fine,” the man said, shrugging. The man seemed not to realize they had spent nearly a day looking for him, or that the nurse appeared to be slightly alarmed by his condition.
According to his son, the man had managed to escape the confines of their home and disappeared into the night. They had only noticed he was missing when they woke up and found the man wasn’t in his recliner watching reruns of The Price is Right.
She could almost imagine Bob Barker yelling “Come on down...” as this man with a stuffed lobster rocked away, engrossed. Then again, at the thought, she could understand why the man would have wanted to get up, slip out and disappear into the scrubby landscape of the rimrocks.
“You look nice,” the man said to Kristin, seeming to forget about the nurse as she worked. A droopy, sad smile adorned his lips like forgotten party streamers left to the rain.
“Well, thank you. You look nice yourself.” She sent him the closest thing to a real smile as she could muster. He deserved some respite from the chaos in his mind, if even just for a moment, thanks to her fleeting grin.
Kristin had been on so many of these types of calls for search-and-rescue that most didn’t really faze her anymore, but there was something about this old-timer that pulled at her. Perhaps it was his utter lack of understanding, or the way he had seemed to look into her soul when he spoke. He reminded her of her grandfather in the last years of his life, when she was small enough to pull on his beard and whisper Popsicle-stick jokes into his failing ears.
She missed him.
“Do you remember your full name, Hugh?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at the double-bladed helo that rested in the pasture behind her.
The man’s gaze slipped toward the helicopter. “I used to fly in the war,” he said, not bothering to acknowledge, or not knowing the answer to, her question.
She’d long ago learned that the best way to get answers from someone who was aggressive or confused was to take a round-about approach. The wrong style of communication in fragile situations only led to undesirable results. For now, it was imperative that she handle him gently so that they could get him into the helicopter and transport him to the hospital in Billings, and hopefully then get back into the hands of his family.
“Which war were you involved in?” Kristin asked.
He stumbled as he took a step and she put his arm around her shoulder, helping him to walk. “Vietnam. Did two tours.” He glanced up at the sky, then covered his eyes as if he was staring into the midday sun. “I should have never made it out.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a wish; either way, the agony of his tone set against the precariousness of his situation made her want to sob, but she couldn’t pay heed to her emotions when there was a life to be saved.
“His BP is pretty low. We need to get him some fluids and get him stabilized so the doctors can sort him out,” the nurse said as she moved to the other side and helped to walk him toward the helicopter as Kristin tried to keep chatting with the somewhat listless man.
By keeping him talking about the details of his war years, it didn’t take long to get him loaded. They spent the next forty-five minutes pushing IV fluids while she and Hugh chatted about her job at FLIR Tech and their forward-looking infrared equipment that they had used to locate him in the field near the edge of a sage-lined cliff. Every time she tried to get him to answer more questions about his identity or where he lived, he avoided them and turned the conversation back to his younger years.
She watched as the nurse on the flight took the man’s blood pressure as they neared the helo pad outside the hospital. The nurse’s face pinched, and she took it again.
“Everything okay?”
The nurse seemed not to hear her, and instead glanced over at the EKG monitor. The green lines on the screen were jagged and irregular, like the thrusting peaks and valleys of freshly shorn mountains. Kristin didn’t know a great deal about the line on the screen, but she knew enough to realize that with a heart rate at 43 bpm and a read like what she was seeing, it didn’t point at anything good.
The nurse took out a syringe, then glanced down at her watch and turned to the pilot. “How much longer until we touch down?”
The pilot pointed down at the ground, where Kristin could just make out the red circle with an H in its center. As they got closer, she saw a group of personnel waiting near the doors of the hospital with a gurney.
Reaching down, Kristin took Hugh’s hand. He looked up at her, his actions slow and deliberate, as though he was struggling to control his body. “It’s going to be okay, Hugh,” she said, positioning the lobster deeper into the nook of his arm. “We’re at the hospital. They’re going to take you from here and get you the help you need.”
He answered her with a broken nod and an almost imperceptible squeeze of her fingers. The chill of his skin made her wonder if this simple exchange would be one of his last.
“Tell my son...” He took in a gasping breath as the nurse plunged the needle into his arm. “Tell him, I’m sorry.”
The man closed his eyes just as the helicopter touched down. Before the blades even stopped rotating, there was a rush of nurses and hospital staff, and Kristin was pushed out of the way. Hugh was pulled onto the pad and put on the gurney, then he was whisked out of sight, into the belly of the industrial building.
She wanted to follow him, to make sure that he would be okay and that she had been wrong in her thoughts. The man hadn’t been hurt, only left in the elements for too long. He couldn’t be dying...not on her watch. If anything, she had just let her fears get the better of her. There had been dozens of other rescues she had taken part in where the persons they had rescued were in far more precarious medical states and had pulled through.
Hugh would be fine.
Yet, she couldn’t help but step out of the helo and make her way inside the hospital in hopes of hearing good news. The staff had disappeared into the triage area, so Kristin made her way to the waiting area. It was empty, aside from a couple holding a small, ruddy-cheeked baby who was pulling at his ear and starting to cry. The poor mother had dark circles under her eyes and the father was pacing, as if each step would bring them closer to relief for their child.
She wasn’t a parent, but there was no amount of pacing that could quell another’s pain—she was well-acquainted with that concept.
After ten minutes or so, she was unable to watch any more of the parents’ struggle and she made her way to the check-in area. “I’m part of the flight crew that came in with Hugh Keller. I was wondering if you have an update on his status?”
The secretary behind the desk nodded, the action stoic. “Hold on for just a moment and let me check for you.”
As the secretary headed for the glass doors leading to the ER, the automatic doors at the entranceway slid open and a man came rushing in from outside. He was wearing blue-tinted Costa sunglasses and a tight-fitting, gray V-necked shirt that accentuated all the muscular curves and bumps of his body. Though she couldn’t explain why, she caught herself catching her breath as she stared at him. He definitely wasn’t bad-looking; in fact, she could safely say he was the hottest man she had seen in person in a long time. But standing here and waiting on a man’s medical status seemed like the last moment that she should have found herself stunned by a handsome brunette.
The man walked up beside her and she caught a whiff of expensive cologne, made stronger by his body heat. If she had to guess, it was Yves Saint Laurent or some other haute scent, but as quickly as she tried to name it, she noted how out of place it was in the industrial austerity of where they were standing.
“Is there anyone working here?” he grumbled, tapping on the counter.
“She just ran to check on something for me. I’m sure she will be back in a sec,” she said, her initial attraction somewhat dampened by the man’s annoyance.
The man grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, but she was sure it was a string of masked expletives and she frowned.
“Sorry,” the guy said, finally seeming to notice that she was a real live person and not just a source of information. “I’m not trying to be an ass... It’s just...” He ran his hands over his face and bumped against his sunglasses, realizing he still had them on. He gave a dry chuckle as he took them off, then looked up at her with eyes that were even more blue than the lenses on his glasses. She thought he was handsome before, but now he was absolutely stunning and she found herself unable to look away. “It’s been a long day.”
“Uh-huh. I get it.” She glanced at the little line next to his mouth, a crease that came from a life of smiling—which seemed at odds with his current mood.
“My father. Yeah...” He paused. “They recently brought him in.”
Just like that, she was whipped back to reality. She couldn’t just ask who he was because of privacy laws, but even without knowing his father’s name, she could tell from the shape of his eyes and the curve of his nose that he was Hugh’s son. She wasn’t sure how she could have missed it until now. There was no denying that the man before her was a younger version of the man whom she had found deep in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m sure your father is going to be okay.”
His face darkened, but she wasn’t sure if it was because he feared that it was an empty platitude, or if he was actually angry at her for her attempt to mollify him—either way, she wanted to make that look disappear.
The glass door through which the secretary had disappeared reopened and she walked out. She glanced over at the man at Kristin’s side, then back to her. The woman raised her eyebrows, a silent question. Kristin gave her a furtive nod.
“The man you accompanied, Hugh, is currently with the doctor.”
“Hugh? Hugh Keller?” the man asked.
The secretary nodded.
The man gripped the edge of the counter. “That’s my father. I’m Casper Keller. I’m going to need more information. What’s the doctor saying? Is he going to be all right?”
The secretary’s mouth opened and closed, as if she was hoping the right words would just magically appear on her lips in this challenging situation. “I... I’m afraid I can’t speak to—”
“But you have an answer. Please, if this was your father...” Casper pleaded, making Kristin’s chest ache. “Please.”
The secretary wrung her hands and looked down at the desk. “I’m sorry, Mr. Keller.” There was an agonizing pause before the woman finally looked up. There were tears in her eyes. “I heard the doctor say he didn’t think your father will survive. I’ll try and get you back to see him.” The secretary turned and slipped back through the door.
Kristin didn’t know what to do to comfort the man when her heart was breaking for both Casper and the man who had reminded her so much of her grandfather. Something about this situation made it feel like she was losing the patriarch of her family again.
“I’m so sorry, Casper.”
He looked at her, but there was no recognition in his eyes, and the look was so much like his father’s that she was thrown off balance. “Yeah.”
In that single, breathless word, she felt every ounce of his loss...and it tore her to pieces.
