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Her phone chimed. Her aunt’s doctor’s name appeared on caller ID. Thank God!
Val cast a visual appeal toward Officer Stallings. “Excuse me. I have to take this. Hello?”
“Miss Russo, I don’t have long to talk. I’m here at Refuge Memorial Trauma Care with your aunt. She needs surgery right away. Her vitals are veering toward unstable. We suspect she has internal bleeding. The only way to know where it’s coming from is to open her up. Her hip is also broken. She says you’re her closest next of kin and she’s asking for you. How far out are you?”
Val’s heart rate dipped, and then sped up. “We’re on the way. I would be there by now but I’ve been involved in a car accident.”
“I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
She fought a tremor in her voice. “I am. Please don’t tell Aunt Elsie about the accident.”
A remembrance of the angry red scrapes on Vince’s skinned-up body and hands caused her arms to ice. Images of his badly damaged helmet swerved through her mind. And to think if he hadn’t been wearing it—
Her arms went from deep-frozen to arctic-numb.
She could have killed him.
“Your aunt is mildly sedated but fairly adamant about seeing you before she goes into surgery.”
“Do you think she’s afraid she won’t come out of it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“She will come out of it, right?”
The extended pause on the line constricted Val’s throat. She shuddered, taking in a breath.
“We hope so. But I can’t promise. With her in her eighties, any surgery is risky. The anesthesiologist is here now. At this point it’s more of a risk to wait.”
“Then don’t. Tell her I was unavoidably detained but I’ll be there when she wakes up.”
Please let her wake up.
“Okay. Be careful.”
Val ended the call so Elsie could get treatment. At least she was a strong believer. God would be with her and give Elsie a sustaining sense of His presence.
But what about the man called Vince? Hadn’t he said he wasn’t one for religion? His eyes and tone had grown belligerent the more she’d prayed. So she’d resorted to praying silently. What if he had internal bleeding, too? The sudden thought struck terror in her.
She’d made a stupid, stupid mistake today.
One that could have cost a hero his life.
Where had he been going in his military garb? Someplace important, no doubt. Or what if he’d been deployed and was just returning home to his family? She hadn’t thought to ask if he wanted her to call his family.
Surely a man like that had a wife and children.
The more her mistake settled in, the more the acid reflux seared her throat. This man Reardon might never forgive her. But the bottomless pain she’d witnessed in his eyes ran deeper than the wreck today. He needed God.
“Everything okay with your aunt?” Stallings’ voice crashed into her thoughts.
“They’re taking her into surgery now.”
Now on Verbose Street, the main one running through Refuge, Stallings began passing traffic. Probably to get her to the hospital sooner, for which she was grateful. “It might far better for you if Reardon knows about the nature of the phone call you received while driving.”
“Maybe,” Val said. “But that still doesn’t excuse it.”
Stallings didn’t say anything for a few blocks.
Hospital in view, she pulled her purse into her lap. “Is there anyone else you know of who could help rebuild the bike?”
Stallings looked at her sharply. “Just his sister. But they’re estranged.”
“What else can you tell me?” Val asked, feeling indebted to the man whose bike she destroyed and whose life she endangered.
“If you can locate her, she builds custom bikes, too. That’s an idea if you really want to replicate that bike close to how his brother built it. She may have helped his late brother design it. But it’s no secret to anyone who knows Vince that he and his sister haven’t gotten along since their brother’s death.”
She probably shouldn’t wonder why. Hard to help it though. Her two options balanced on a mental justice scale. She had to do something to right this wrong.
She shifted in her seat. “Will it anger him more that he doesn’t get his bike fixed the way it was, or if I contact a family member he doesn’t get along with?”
Stallings made a slight coughing sound. “Not sure. Both rank equally high on the danger scale.”
“Would you know how I could contact her?”
Stallings shook his head. “I’m steering clear of this one. You’ll have to search that out on your own then decide whether contacting her is a risk worth taking.”
“If you at least know her name, I’ll obtain her contact information. I have to try.”
“Don’t know her first name.”
“Is she still a Reardon?”
“Far as I know. You might ask Joel, Vince’s team leader. He owns the DZ, Refuge Drop Zone, a skydiving facility west of town. He’s there a lot. I can’t guarantee he’ll know how to locate her or be free with information if he does.”
Stallings looked doubtful enough for discouragement to handcuff her normally bulletproof courage and arrest her determination.
But something about Vince called to her. He seemed an imprisoned soul with tortured eyes, and it had nothing to do with the wreck today. His pain dwelled deeper than the crash, larger than the loss of his bike.
And no matter how long or hard or difficult, she was determined to get to the bottom of it—to ease the trauma life had put him through and to erase the anger that had been directed at her and everything she stood for.
Somehow, this wreck was no accident. She felt God’s fingerprints all over it.
Something stirred in her soul for Vince Reardon’s. As sure as the land had law, she had to get through to him.
“You don’t need to be here,” Vince said to Joel and the rest of the team, who hovered in a restless horde as hospital triage staff wheeled him back to the emergency room after X-rays. “You should be on the field bringing a pilot back to his family. Not here bugging me.”
Why hadn’t they gone?
“We aborted. Petrowski sent another team,” Joel said as though perceiving his question.
“Yeah, thanks to Stallings’ loose lips and a reckless-driving woman’s big mouth,” Vince bit out. Mostly because mentioning her mouth evoked pleasant images more than unpleasant memories of the collision she’d caused.
A paternally stern look entered team leader Joel’s eyes. But so what? It was his bad day and he had a right to be rude and testy. At least outwardly. Didn’t help matters that his skin burned like fire from scrapes and nurses’ merciless cleaning of them. Speaking of, Nurse Torture stepped toward the door. “I need to see another patient.”
“Good.” Vince started to fold his arms but stopped. Pain clenched his shoulders.
He didn’t want to see or talk to anyone right now and especially not the crazy lady who crashed his bike and brought a bomb of worry crashing down on his team.
Worry for nothing. “It’s not like the wreck was fatal.”
“No, but it could have been,” Joel said.
“Well it, wasn’t. So you can all go home.”
His teammates eyed one another, but refused to budge. If it wouldn’t hurt his scraped-raw jaw to cuss, he would.
Aaron Petrowski, commander over three pararescue teams within their joint task force, entered the room and stood by Joel. Both were strong military leaders and two of Refuge’s most well-respected men. They also had the most solid faith of anyone he knew. Not that he’d admit it to their faces.
Why couldn’t his dad have been that kind of man? Then maybe his childhood wouldn’t have been so humiliating. Son of the town drunk. That’s what he’d been known for. And he’d grown to despise pity because of it.
Petrowski leaned over his side rail. “Saw your bike. Or what’s left of it.”
Vince cringed inwardly.
Manny Peña knuckled Vince’s unscathed shoulder. “Boy, I think you got me beat. Word on the street is you had a world-class crash.”
Vince raised the head of his bed. “Yeah, but my accident wasn’t my own fault.” He made sure to inject heavy doses of sarcasm in his words.
Manny grinned. Then his face sobered. “Seriously, Reardon. I’m glad you’re okay.” He assessed Vince’s bandages. “For the most part.”
Vince despised the sympathy in his stocky teammate’s eyes. Or maybe it was empathy.
Manny had crashed a parachute a couple years back. The one jump in Manny’s history that he’d left the plane without his hook knife. When a line-over collapsed his main chute, he couldn’t cut it away. When he’d activated the reserve chute, it tangled on the malfunctioning main chute and he’d crashed into the only grove of trees for miles.
Vince’s respect for Manny ramped though. The dude had to have been in much more pain than Vince was in now.
Teammate Chance moved in. “Yeah. You’re blessed to be alive.”
Blessed? Since when did Garrison start using churchy words? If one more member of his team crossed over to the dark side—as Vince deemed Christianity—he’d…well, he didn’t know what he’d do. Be hard-pressed for partying buddies, that’s what.
For once the thought of alcohol caused a sour taste to settle in Vince’s mouth. For sure he’d smacked his skull.
Joel eyeballed Chance then Vince. “God protected you, bud.”
It was on Vince’s tongue to remark against that and say that God hadn’t protected him, Vince just cheated death. But something stopped him. Weird. He never would have thought twice about spouting something like that before. If nothing other than to rile Joel.
A knowing settled deep inside. He’d felt protected by someone much bigger than himself. He couldn’t deny that.
Joel was right. The wreck could have killed him. Or caused permanent brain damage or spinal-cord injuries. None of which showed up on the barrage of tests Refuge’s trauma team put him through in the past hours.
Minor injuries, arm and leg abrasions from the skid and a slight concussion from impacting pavement at high speed were his only diagnoses. Doctors were calling him a miracle. Whatever. His mind would normally refute the word with vehemence.
But for some reason, this time the word sobered him.
The foreign feeling that had filtered through him back at the accident scene when the woman prayed fell in around him again. Tangible. Soothing. Like warm water on a cold day. He felt drugged. But he’d refused pain meds.
“You’re skinned up pretty good,” Joel observed as a doctor salved Vince’s arm scrapes then bandaged them.
“Still. You should be overseas with someone really hurt. Ridiculous that you guys chose to stay with a bike-wreck victim over a pilot whose plane crashed.”
“You’re not just a bike-wreck victim, Vince. You’re our brother.” Ben Dillinger bumped gentle knuckles into Vince’s uninjured shoulder.
“No way were we gonna leave you, not knowing how bad you were,” Petrowski added.
Everything in Vince wanted to flail against the friendship that had caused his team to choose him over a mission.
But looking into the eyes of his team—Leader Joel, Mountain Manny, Gentle Ben, Compassionate Nolan, Wise Aaron, Shy Chance and Boisterous Brock—Vince couldn’t bring himself to scrutinize their decision. He’d have done the same for each of them had fate’s tables been turned.
He clenched his jaw against an agitating sense of belonging. One he didn’t want to grow too comfortable in. He didn’t feel deserving of their love and sympathy.
If he was a soft kinda guy, their concern could get to him as far as stirring his emotions. He blinked and cleared a foreign knot from his throat. Alien emotions rushed forward and pressed against the back of his eyes. Vince clenched his jaw and blink, blink, blinked.
The guys eyed him then one another, surprise evident.
His hackles rose. “What? Hospital’s dry. Makes my eyes water.” He ground his teeth and wanted nothing more than to go home and sulk alone.
No one looked convinced. He scowled and huffed.
A nurse entered, breaking the moment. “Ready to get out of here?”
He yanked down his side rail and stood so fast she jumped. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Laughing, she brandished his instructions. “Take it easy for a few days. Doc says no skydiving or dangerous activities for a couple of weeks.”
Vince opened his mouth to protest but Petrowski’s hand clamping his shoulder stopped him. “We’ll make sure he has desk or rigging duty until his doctor clears him.”
Rigging chutes? He’d rather eat overgrown slugs. But desk duty was worse than rigging. A sitter he was not. A rigger he could be and survive. Anger resurfaced over the woman who sent his day south. Two weeks? Not only would he be at risk of death by boredom, he’d miss important training sessions with recruits. And for what? To be holed up in a back room with a bunch of parachutes that he’d have to fold instead of fly. Better than desk duty though.
He bypassed the wheelchair the nurse brought him and limped with his team toward the exit. They stayed close but knew well enough not to try and lend a hand. Speaking of, something else hit him.
He faced his superiors. “I’ll still be able to launch Refuge’s community swim-safety program, right?”
The cautious looks Petrowski passed Joel told Vince he probably didn’t want to know the answer to that.
Once again, ire flared against the woman who caused these problems. He wrestled mental frustration at thoughts that the community programs would be delayed, therefore risking the sponsors’ continued support.
Pressure-cooked anger boiled inside his lidded emotions to the point of explosion.
“If Miss Russo knows what’s good for her, she’ll steer completely clear of me.”
