“You were out cold for over two minutes. You’re not ‘fine.’ Bart’s in a lot of pain. I’m going to give him morphine and splint his arm and then we’ll assess your symptoms.”
“Is it his arm that’s crushed against the frame?”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to splint his arm with no help? And why are you crawling?”
“Sprained an ankle. It’ll be fine. I told you, just a little banged up. Cuts and bruises.” He’d broken bones before. He was 99.9% certain that if anything, he had a mild sprain. Had it hurt? Yes, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to be anything major.
She looked him over critically, even though her eyes were still a bit hazy. “Let me take care of the worst of your cuts.”
“After I take care of Bart.” When she tried to get up, she would have fallen if he hadn’t been right there. He managed to convince her to stay put.
He took the morphine and another couple of air splints—one for the arm and another for Bart’s ankle and leg—with him. But Bart was wedged in against the side of the helicopter that had smashed into the ground. In order to splint it he needed to get Bart out and that wasn’t happening without help. He could probably splint the leg and ankle that wasn’t trapped, and he could clean up Bart’s facial lacerations from the broken glass. Anything else would have to wait for the ski patrol.
*
Spending the nextseveral hours either in transit to the hospital or at the hospital was not Connor’s idea of fun. At least not as a patient. They were rescued by the ski patrol, as no one else was able to gain access to the wrecked helicopter. Their only bit of luck was that they’d landed on a ski mountain even if it was in the woods. Fortunately the team made it to the chopper quickly. A good thing because Connor was worried about both of his patients. Bart had gone silent, pain etched on his face, and Sierra had stopped arguing about helping him, which was unlike her.
Extracting Bart was going to take significant time. Connor was torn between helping with Bart and staying with Sierra. She’d been taken out of the chopper already. One of the ski patrol asked him if he wanted to go with her. “You need to take care of those cuts and get your leg looked at.”
“I will. Once Sierra and Bart are taken care of.”
“We’ll handle the pilot. No sense you sticking around. Someone should be with your flight nurse.”
The ski patrol put Sierra on a stretcher and skied down the mountain with her. Connor hooked a ride on the back of a snowmobile, down to where a helicopter waited to fly Connor and Sierra to Marietta. Before they left Connor talked to the guy who’d taken him down and was preparing to go back to help with Bart.
“Let us know about Bart.”
“Give me your number. It’s going to take a while to get him out and stabilized enough to take him to a hospital.”
When they rolled in to the Marietta hospital both were taken to the ER but then they were separated. As he’d suspected, nothing was broken. Dr. Wyatt Gallagher, a friend of Connor’s, was on call for orthopedics. He read his X-ray while his cuts were finally taken care of. The nurse had tried to talk him into stitches for one of the facial lacerations but he’d vetoed it. “Steri-Strips are good,” he told her. She frowned but did what he said.
“No break. You’ll limp for a bit, but your ankle should heal pretty quickly.”
“Can I go back to work?”
“I’d give it a couple of days, but I’m sure you can soon. You won’t be 100% for a while yet. Come see me if you have any trouble,” Wyatt told him. “And take it easy on your ankle. Ice and elevate. But you know what to do.”
“So why are you telling me?”
“I’m a doctor. It’s my job,” he said with a grin. “Touchy, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He was worried about Sierra, not his damn ankle. “Where is Sierra? Have they finished assessing her yet?”
“I don’t know but I can find out. If she does have a concussion, they’ll probably have her stay the night.”
“I’m not sure she’ll agree to that. Hopefully, she will, because I’m almost positive she has one. She was out cold.”
“Let me track down Sierra.”
A short time later he found her where Wyatt had told him she’d be, arguing with the doctor about staying overnight.
Shocker. Not.
“You need someone to keep an eye on you tonight. You live alone, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—” She broke off when she saw Wyatt. “You’re limping. What did you do?”
