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“Thank God,” he said. “Zoe.”
“We’re not dead.” She spoke in awe. It was a miracle. Impossible. And yet, somehow, true.
Dax retreated to his seat, tipped his head back and shut his eyes. He still held the bloody shirt to his head. Really, he didn’t look so good. She realized he needed help. And she was just sitting there …
Blinking away the last of her dizziness, she went for the latch on her seat restraint. For a moment, she thought it was jammed, that somehow, in the landing, which had turned out to be something of a crash, it had been broken and stuck shut.
Panic tried to rise. She bit the inside of her cheek, focused on the sharp little pain, and worked at the latch some more.
A second later, it popped open.
She was out of the seat and ripping off her white shirt without even stopping to think about it. She wadded the cotton fabric into a ball and crouched over his seat. “Dax.” She caught his chin with one hand. “Let me see …”
He lowered his hand and she saw the deep gash at his temple—the really deep gash. Beneath all that blood, she could see the ivory luster of bone.
And the blood? It was still flowing, lots of it, pulsing from the wound in great gouts. It ran down the side of his face, into his eyes.
“Here. Use this.” She gave him her own shirt.
He dropped the blood-soaked one and put hers over the wound. Through the blood in his eyes, he looked at her in her bra and shorts. A corner of his mouth twitched in the faint hope of a smile. “I’ve got you with your shirt off, and I’m bleeding too hard to do a damn thing about it.”
“I need a first aid kit.”
“In the floor compartment behind your seat.” He held her shirt to his head, but it was already soaking through, turning a bold, bright crimson.
“Keep the pressure on that. Good and firm.”
“Right.” He did as she instructed without a word of complaint, without giving her any argument. It was so unlike him to be docile. And that terrified her, brought the reality of their situation too sharply home.
The fuselage, amazingly, remained intact. They were reasonably safe inside. But outside the battered plane, the rain kept on coming, in buckets. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. The windscreen was a thick, pearly spiderweb of cracks, obscuring the world beyond. And the window in Dax’s door was the same, but with a small jagged hole punched clean through it—just possibly caused by whatever had sliced his forehead open.
However, she could see well enough out the window in her door. Too bad visibility past the window was poor. Nothing but sheets of rain and, indistinctly, a wall of green where the jungle started.
Not now. Don’t think about what’s out there now….
She squeezed between the seats and had to spend several precious seconds tossing supplies, suitcases and equipment back toward the baggage area. Water bottles were scattered everywhere, broken loose from the case of them they’d brought along, rolling around on the floor. But finally, she got the area cleared. She was able to get the compartment open and take out a large, black canvas-covered bag with a white cross printed on the front.
“How you doing back there?” Dax asked. “Need help?”
“I’m on it. Just stay in your seat and keep the pressure on that wound.” She cleared a space on one of the backseats and zipped the bag open. It was a really good kit—way beyond the basics. More like something a paramedic might carry. It even contained the necessary tools for sewing up a man’s head.
I can do this. I took first aid. And then there was that survivalist training weekend she’d gone on once in her ongoing effort to prove to her dad that she was as good as any of the boys. They’d taught her how to stitch up a wound over that weekend. She remembered thinking at the time that she would never need to use that particular skill …
She sucked in a breath—and shook her head, hard. No. No negative thoughts could be allowed to creep in. She knew what she needed to do. And she knew how to do it.
Grabbing the kit, she scrambled between the front seats again. When she got up there, she set the kit, open, on the passenger side.
“Zoe?” He sounded worried.
“I’m right here. Keep the pressure against the wound. I know what I’m doing.”
He made a low sound. A chuckle—or a groan? “Of course you do.”
She smiled at that. Even now, with a gash the size of Texas on his forehead, he could manage to both tease and reassure her at the same time. She found the butterfly bandages and gazed at them longingly. If only they would do the trick.
But the wound was too deep. Maybe they could help to hold the edges together while she stitched him up.
She still wore her fake engagement ring. During the crash, the stone had scratched up the fingers to either side of it. She was clearly the lucky one. A few bruises, some scratches. A goose egg on the back of her head. No gash so deep the bone showed—and really, they were both lucky.
Lucky simply to be alive and in one piece. She had to remember that.
She yanked off the silly ring and shoved it into a pocket of her shorts. Then she rubbed disinfectant on her hands and laid out what she was going to need: the butterfly strips, tweezers, more disinfectant, sterile gloves, absorbable thread, scissors, the creepy little curved needle, the dressing she would use after, along with a tube of antibiotic ointment—and extra gauze. There was nothing to dull the pain of what she was about to do to him. Nothing stronger than acetaminophen—wait.
There was codeine. She almost kissed the little bottle of pills before she screwed off the cap.
“Dax, did you get knocked out, even for a few seconds during the crash?”
“Huh?”
“I’m afraid to give you a serious pain killer if you’ve been unconscious.”
“No,” he said. “Something sharp flew by and sliced my head open, that’s all.”
“Excellent.” She took his free hand, dropped two of the pills into his palm, and closed his lean fingers around them. “Here.”
“What are they?”
“Codeine.”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t hurt that much. Head wounds usually don’t.”
If it didn’t hurt now, it would when she went to work on it. “Dax. Take the pills.”
He blew out a breath, opened his mouth and tossed them in.
“Perfect. Thank you.” She grabbed for one of the water bottles that had escaped the baggage area, and gave him a sip.
“More,” he said low. She let him have the bottle. He drank half of it, then handed it back. He was eyeing the other seat: the scissors, the needle, the pile of white gauze, all so carefully laid out. “You’re actually going to try and sew me up, huh?”
“That is the plan—and I’m going to do much more than try.” She cleaned her hands again, then put on the gloves. “Okay, let’s take another look …”
The console between the seats was in her way, but she lifted one knee and braced it on his seat to get in close. He tried to scoot over a little, to give her room to work—and gasped.
She frowned. “What? Your leg, too?”
“My ankle …” He hissed through his teeth, panting, getting through the pain. He reached toward it but got nowhere, with her practically on top of him. “I think it’s just a sprain.” He let his head drop to the seat rest again and swore low. “What a screwup. Bleeding all over the place—and I don’t think I can walk.”
“It’s okay,” she told him, not because it was true, but because there was nothing else to say. “The codeine will help with the pain and we’ll deal with the ankle once we take care of your head.”
He grunted, tried a grin but didn’t quite make it. “Nurse Bravo, I’m at your mercy.”
“Hmm. Could this be the right moment to hit you up for a raise?”
“Always working the angles.”
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Now, let me see what I’m dealing with here….”
He lowered the bloody shirt from his forehead.
The blood flow had slowed, which was good. But then she had to clean and disinfect the injury thoroughly and that got the bleeding going again. She dabbed and poked and pressed at the gash and the surrounding tissue until she had it clear enough to work on.
The sewing-up took way too long. Each stitch had to be separate, so the whole thing wouldn’t come apart if one happened to break. At least she found she did know what she was doing. During that delightful survivalist weekend, they’d made her practice doing stitches on a round steak, which she’d found thoroughly gross at the time. Who knew that someday she would be grateful for the experience?
Dax sat still beneath her hands. She knew it had to hurt, but he didn’t make a sound.
She was sweating bullets by the end of it—from the stress, from the concentration, from the increasing sticky heat in the cabin. It was a great moment, when she finally set the scissors and needle aside. The dressing came next and that took no time at all.
“There,” she said, snapping off the disposable gloves. “Done at last.”
He tried to smile. “How do I look?”
“Rakish. All the girls will be after you. The scar is going to really wow them.”
He grunted. He was probably thinking that he didn’t need any more girls after him. But he didn’t say it. He only whispered, “Thank you, Zoe.”
She handed him the water bottle. “Drink.” She grabbed one for herself, too, and took a big gulp.
He screwed the lid back on his slowly. “Don’t know why I’m so exhausted.”
She was repacking the first aid kit by then. “Maybe the crash landing. Maybe the loss of blood. Maybe the twelve stitches in your forehead.”
“Maybe the codeine.”
“Hmm. Could be that, too—I need to look at your ankle now.”
His lower lip had a mutinous curl. “It’s okay for now. I think the codeine is kicking in. I can hardly feel anything.”
“Still, we can wrap it, for support, and you should get it elevated. Too bad we don’t have any ice …”
“You’re a pain in the ass, Zoe, you know that?”
“Flattering me will get you nowhere.”
He grunted. “There should be a six-pack of instant ice pouches in the first aid kit—good for a whole twenty minutes each.”
“Twenty minutes is better than nothing—and times six, that’s a couple of hours. Every little bit helps.” She dug out the box of cold packs, put the unzipped first aid kit on the cabin floor at her feet and sat in her seat again.
“Just shake one,” he said, “and it gets cold.”
For the moment, she set the box aside. “Okay. Can you hoist that foot up here?” She patted her lap.
He bit back a hard groan as he lifted his right foot and cleared the console. Very slowly, he stretched out his leg and gently laid his foot in her lap. He wore lightweight, low-cut hiking shoes.
She pushed up his pant leg. “It’s swollen.”
“No kidding.” He winced as she gently probed at it.
She untied the lace and eased the shoe off and the low-rise sock as well, dropping them both to the floor beside the first aid kit. “Yep. Swollen. But probably not broken.”
“And you know this, how?”
“I don’t. But let’s think positive, okay? Can you wiggle your toes?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Don’t they always ask if you can do that when you hurt your foot?”
He laughed—a laugh that got caught on a moan. “Some nurse you are.” He wiggled his toes. All five of them. “There. What do you think?”
They were very handsome toes, actually, long and well-formed. No weird bumps or bunions.
And what was she thinking? They’d just crashed in the jungle. How good-looking his feet were ought to be the last thing on her mind.
“Zoe?”
“Um, I think I should wrap it and then use the cold packs. And you should keep it elevated.”
“Good a suggestion as any.”
So she got an ACE bandage from the kit at her feet. She started wrapping at the base of his toes. “Tell me if it’s too tight …” She wrapped halfway up his calf and then used the little hooks to secure it. “How’s that?”
“Seems fine.”
She shook one of the cold packs and it grew icy. Then she used another section of ACE bandage to hold it in place over the swelling. “There. Now we should get you in the back where you can stretch out, get this ankle higher than your heart.”
He shook his head. “First, we should see if we can call for help, don’t you think?”
“Like … try our cell phones?” That seemed hopeless.
“Let me see about the radio first.”
That took about half a minute. The engine—and the radio—were deader than a hammer. They got out their PDAs.
No signal.
He slumped back in his seat, against the door, his leg still canted over to her side, his calf across her knees. “Now it’s taped, I might be able to hobble around on it at least. We should try and get to higher ground, somewhere we can build a signal fire.” His eyes were drooping as he struggled to stay awake. Maybe she shouldn’t have given him two codeines. But at the time, easing his pain had seemed the priority.
“You need to keep that ankle up,” she said. “And you’re exhausted. You’ve lost more blood than can possibly be good for you. And you might recall I just sewed up your head? Not right now, Dax. I say we stay in the plane, for the time being anyway. Until the weather clears …” Her words trailed off. The rain had already stopped. And right then, far above their tiny clearing, the sun appeared. Through the water droplets that clung to the side window, everything looked brighter out there.
