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Calm. Cool. Professional. “Nine-one-one, what is the address of your emergency?”
“Help!” raged a small child on the other end, his screams cutting into the calm of the day. “P-please help me! My daddy’s dying.”
Lexy’s body lurched into full adrenaline alert mode, but she maintained her controlled tone through pure force of habit and years of training. Calls from kids were both the worst and the best. No doubt these crises reached out and grabbed you by the throat, but in her experience, children under stress followed instructions much better than adults. “Okay. Where are you?”
“I.I.”
He sounded young. What if he didn’t know his address? She glanced at the ANI-ALI screen, wishing it read differently. But the call had come from a cell phone—no exact location, just the nearest cell tower hit. Dammit. Murphy’s Law. “Take a deep breath, honey. I need to know where you are.”
“Um … um … D-deers make tracks.”
She blinked. “What?”
It came in a breathless tumble of words. “Deer Track T-trailhead. Eleven-eleven. He always has a medicine shot with him but I can’t find it.”
Medicine shot. High-country trail. Experience told her they were dealing with an allergic reaction. She quickly keyed the unfamiliar trailhead into her computer, then snapped her fingers to get Dane’s attention.
He spun around in his chair. Flagging him closer, she pointed at the address field on her computer screen.
Dane leaned forward to read the data, then nodded once and snatched the open-space map out of its upright holder and began flipping pages, tracing the myriad of high-country hiking trails with his index finger.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Lexy said to the caller as Dane tracked down the trailhead.
“I don’t know! I w-was pickin’ flowers! I think he got stung by a bunch of bees,” the boy said, voice wavering and watery. “He’s all red and puffy and I can’t find the medicine shot thing. I looked everywhere!”
Lexy took a deep breath to keep her own emotions in check. Anaphylactic shock could kill in a matter of ten minutes. And they didn’t even have an exact location yet. Press on.
“What’s your name, hon?”
“Ian,” he wailed, sucking in breaths between sobs. “Please, m-my mommy died two years ago today. Please don’t let my daddy die, too.”
Kick to the gut. Lexy squeezed her eyes shut; her stomach churned with empathy. “Listen to me carefully, Ian,” she said almost forcefully before softening her tone. “My name is Lexy and I’m not going to leave you, okay? I’m going to help you through this.”
“’K–’kay,” Ian said, clinging to her promise like a lifeline. “I’m scared, L-Lexy.”
“Be brave for your daddy, Ian, okay? I’m sending paramedics to help him. You can help now by staying calm and answering some important questions. Will you try that?”
“’Kay.”
“Good boy. Is your daddy conscious?”
“Huh?”
“Is he awake?”
“N–no, and I don’t think he’s breathin’ very good. He sounds … funny.”
Lexy’s alert spiked into the red zone. Funny how? she wondered. Funny like the allergic reaction she’d assumed, or funny like agonal breathing just before death? It could be a heart attack, for all she knew. “Do you see bee stings on your daddy? Red bumps?”
“Um … yeah. On his arm. L-lots of ‘em.”
She keyed that into the notes and hit Save. “Okay. You said eleven-eleven. What’s eleveneleven?”
“We, um … um … started hikin’ the Deer Track Trailhead at eleven-eleven. We always m-make our watches m-match just in case something bad happens. Daddy’s SUV is parked by the brown sign. Are they comin'? Hurry!”
“We’re getting them started. Hang tight.”
“Got it,” Dane said, in a lowered rasp, tapping his finger once on the map before lunging for his keyboard. Within seconds he’d keyed the exact location into the CAD computer system, set off the pre-alerts and aired the call to the closest units.
Thank God. Lexy flicked a quick glance at the call timer. Ian and his father had been hiking approximately ten minutes when the call came in. They’d be close to the trailhead, but who knew how long the father had been down. “What color is your SUV, Ian?”
“Blue. It’s a H-Honda.”
“And what’s your daddy’s name?”
“Drew K-Kimball.”
“Okay, good.” In her peripheral vision Lexy saw Dane standing to her left, slightly behind her. He was intently listening to her side of the conversation for important details. She pointed to the line she’d just typed in: BLUE HONDA SUV, DREW KIMBALL, signaling for Dane to run a check for the vehicle. She covered the headset microphone with her thumb and told him, “Check under Andrew, too.”
“Got it,” Dane said.
She refocused on her caller. “Stay with me, honey,” she said, sounding much calmer than she felt. “You’re doing an excellent job.”
“’K–’kay. Are they comin’, Lexy?”
“Yes, honey, they’re on the way. Look around you and tell me exactly what you see on the trail so the paramedics can find you quickly.”
“Um.um. Orange f-flowers. A whole gigungus field. We stopped to pick them for the angels to take up to Mommy at the top of the mountain, because orange was her f-f-favorite color.” He sucked back a sob and his pitch rose. “Right around a curve after a tree tunnel.”
“Okay. Orange flowers. Got it.” Despite the continued stabs to her heart with this child’s every word, Lexy swallowed back her instinctively human, sympathetic reaction. Sadly, she didn’t have time to feel sorrow for Ian, not while his father still needed life-saving help.
She click-clacked the location details into CAD and pushed a button that would transmit it straight to Dane’s computer, so he’d have everything he’d need to update the responding units over the radio. They had maybe ten minutes before Ian could quite possibly lose his father.
Could they get there in time?
No clue.
That part was out of her hands. But she needed to engage Ian in the rescue effort, so that regardless of what happened, he’d know he’d done everything he could to help his father. No regrets.
A thought struck her. “Ian, do you think the medicine shot is back in your daddy’s SUV?” A stretch, she knew.
“I don’t know!” came another agonizing wail.
“Ian, honey, take a deep breath for me.” She paused, listened to him drag in air and blow it out noisily. “Good boy. Do you have your daddy’s keys?”
She heard him fumbling.
“Um … um … yeah! I got ‘em from his pocket.”
“Good. How fast can you run back to the SUV?”
“I d-don’t know. I’m a-scared, Lexy!” he wailed. The wobble in his voice had returned full force. “When are they comin'?”
“Honey, you’re being very brave. I know it seems like a long time, but they’re coming as fast as possible. Take a breath.”
He hiccupped in some air and blew it out.
“Good. Now, listen to me. This is your most important job. I want you to run as fast as you’ve ever run before and look for that medicine shot, okay? I’ll stay on the phone, but if we get disconnected, don’t panic. I’ll call you right back as soon as we have a signal.”
“’K-’kay—”
“Ian, wait. Are you listening?”
“Y-yeah?”
“When you have that shot, you run right back to your daddy fast, fast, fast. Okay?”
“’Kay.”
“I’m not going to talk while you run because I don’t want to slow you down, but I’ll be here if you need me.”
“’Kay.”
She listened to Ian, footsteps pounding, sucking wind, as he ran back to retrieve the EpiPen she prayed was in the vehicle. Every once in a while, Ian would gasp, “Lexy?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.”
Astonishingly, they never lost the signal. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he said, “I’m here!”
Lexy exhaled, squeezing the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Check the car, Ian. Take a breath and look carefully.”
She heard the unlocking, the scrambling, Ian muttering to himself. A moment passed. “I have it! It fell out on the floor by the um … um … gas pedal.”
Lexy crossed her fingers. “Run, Ian. Run back to your daddy and I’ll help you give him that shot.”
“I…I know how,” he gasped out. More pounding. Voice jostling with his steps. “Daddy taught me ‘cuz he and I are a team now.”
Oh, God. “Good. Run fast.”
Adrenaline pumping, she tapped a pen rapidly on the console, her gaze ping-ponging from the call timer to the GPS map on a separate computer that showed the paramedics’ progress toward the scene, and back again. She focused on her young caller’s panting breaths, counting them.
In, out. In, out. In, out.
One, two. Three, four. Five, six.
“L-Lexy?”
“I’m here, honey.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you.”
Finally a shaky-voiced Ian said, “I’m b-back. He’s still not awake. He slid off the rock, Lexy. He’s on the ground.” The panic reared up, making his words higher pitched, thready.
“That’s okay. Ian, you can still help him.” She had to tamp down his hysteria in order for him to be effective. She flicked a glance at the call timer: seven minutes. Lexy gulped and said a quick prayer in her mind. “Listen to me carefully. Open the package and get the shot ready. Did your daddy teach you that part?”
“Yes. I c-can do it.”
“Perfect. Set the phone down and do it. Then pick it back up and tell me when you’re done.”
“’Kay.”
The phone clattered to the ground. She listened to the package being torn, to Ian’s heavy breathing, to her own blood surging a staccato rhythm in her ears.
More shuffling. “I’m ready. Lexy?” Ian asked.
“I’m here. I need you to be brave, Ian, because, when I tell you to, you’re going to press that needle down into your daddy’s leg and hold it there for ten full seconds so he gets all the medicine. That’s very important. We’ll count the time together, okay?”
“’Kay,” he said, in a whimper.
“Now, do as I say. Put the tip of the shot against his upper leg and I’ll count to three. Then you’ll press down as hard as you can. And we’ll count out the seconds.”
“W-will it hurt ‘im?”
“No, sweetie, not at all. It just may save his life. Be strong for your daddy now, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three—go, Ian.”
“I did it!”
“Hold it down hard, no matter what, and let’s count,” she said in a rush. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten,” they said together.
Nothing.
Lexy held her breath. Dane stood frozen.
Even Ian remained silent.
