Part 8 (2/2)

His words didn't register. Her mind was in a state of terrible confusion as she stared, speechless, at his blood-drenched hand. Telling herself she must be wrong, she reached out to touch him again, but before she could, something happened that drove all other thoughts from her mind.

Her fingers, pressed to the chilled flesh of c.o.o.ney's wrist, had been keeping tabs on the deteriorating pulse, and it suddenly penetrated her awareness that it wasn't deteriorating anymore. In fact, it was a little stronger than it had been a few moments ago.

Her gaze fell to the injured man's chest, and she was stunned to see it rising and falling as he drew deeper and deeper breaths; they were ragged breaths, to be sure, but far stronger than any she'd expected him ever to draw again. A glance at his face made her eyes widen, and she dropped his wrist in order to lay her palm against his cheek, unable to account for his improving color-or the fact that he was no longer so cold.

”Sam . . .” she began brokenly.

”Shh.”

”Sam, he's breathing better, but what-”

”Shh,” he repeated softly.

Her gaze flickered upward to see that his eyes were still tightly closed. As she watched, though, his countenance underwent a dramatic transformation. The marks of pain and suffering began to fade. His jaw relaxed, and his lips, which had been pressed together, slowly a.s.sumed their sensual contours. His brow smoothed, and a few seconds later, his eyes opened.

When he met her gaze, she uttered a soft, startled cry. Compa.s.sion, tenderness, and a kind of vulnerability that took her breath away: not the defenselessness that came from innocence, but the fearlessness that came from having faced the worst and won. His very soul lay open for her to see in the almost ethereal light s.h.i.+ning from his eyes. This was what she'd glimpsed all those other times. This was the thing he tried so hard to hide from her. Yet even as she realized that he was hiding nothing at that moment, she balked at naming what she saw.

”Loosen the tourniquet,” Sam said quietly, urging her with a nod when she merely continued to stare at him.

Kate's heart was pounding as she let her gaze drop to the blood-soaked bandage. Rationally, she knew what would happen if she loosened it; not nearly enough time had pa.s.sed for the torn veins and arteries to close off. And yet . . . She reached for the bandage hesitantly, then pulled back, filled with an unaccountable fear-not that the man would bleed to death but, absurdly enough, that he wouldn't.

”Go on,” Sam coaxed. ”It's okay. I promise.”

He sounded so certain. And so calm. Still, her insides churned as she reached for the tourniquet. Her cold fingers shook, making her clumsy, and she let the pressure off in slow increments, not trusting her intuition. Finally, though, the ends of the cloth were untied, and she dropped them, pressing a clenched fist to her middle as she whimpered in shock.

The bleeding had stopped-completely. And for several long seconds, she stared at the open wound in Ray c.o.o.ney's leg, her common sense trying to account for what her eyes beheld, at the same time a quiet voice inside her insisted that she accept the impossible.

”Katie, don't be scared. It's all right.”

Sam's gentle rea.s.surance sank in slowly, and her gaze rose to his. He met her numbed look unwaveringly, his stark features awash with tenderness and concern. She couldn't help being afraid-afraid of what she didn't rationally understand and couldn't accept. Yet she also couldn't deny what she had seen or the conviction growing within her that, somehow, against all odds and biological laws, he had saved Ray c.o.o.ney's life.

She tried to speak but couldn't, and an instant later, Bob came racing toward them along the path that ran through the woods. Following him were two state troopers, carrying a stretcher. She hadn't even heard the helicopter arrive.

Abruptly, Sam pulled his hands off c.o.o.ney's unconscious body and shoved himself to his feet, taking a couple of steps backward. His eyes continued to hold hers, but before she could think of anything to say, the others were there.

”They sent a police chopper,” Bob announced breathlessly. ”No medics.”

”Sorry, Miss . . . ?”

”Morgan.” She offered her name tonelessly.

As the men went into action, strapping c.o.o.ney to the stretcher, the trooper told her about the interstate accident that had tied up all the medevac crews. She didn't hear a word he said. Her eyes were glued to Sam's as he gave her a long, piercing look; she knew he was asking her not to tell anyone what had happened.

How could she? She didn't know.

At that moment, though, it didn't matter whether or not the past twenty minutes made a sc.r.a.p of sense. It only mattered that a man she had expected to be dead by now wasn't. And she wasn't responsible for his being alive. Sam was. She didn't know how, but she knew it was true, just as she knew that, should it become necessary, he could do whatever he'd done again.

With a strange sense of calm stealing through her, Kate turned her attention to helping the others get her patient ready for air travel.

In less than a minute the rescue crew was hurrying through the woods, the troopers carrying the stretcher as she trotted beside it; Sam, who was carrying her emergency kit, followed with the other men. The helicopter awaited them in a meadow, inside a ring of glowing flares. The wind created by its whirling blades. .h.i.t her full force, and she ducked, gathering her hair in her fist to keep it from blinding her. There was no protection from the deafening noise. She ran with the others under the blades, grabbing for a hold to step aboard as Bob and the state troopers loaded the stretcher. With an instant's hesitation, Jeff Lindstrom climbed in after her.

Then, crouching in the doorway, Kate pivoted on her toes to take her emergency kit from Sam. He slid it in beside her, and she pushed it out of the way to make room for him in the confined s.p.a.ce. When he hung back, making no move to climb aboard, she blinked in confusion. He must not understand, she thought, that it was okay for him to come. It wasn't really, but she would make it okay if anybody said anything. She held out a hand, beckoning him to get in.

Instead, he hesitated, looking at her, then casting his gaze over the helicopter. When he took a step back and shook his head, her heart thudded into high gear.

”You're coming, too!” she shouted over the noise.

He took another step in the wrong direction as he yelled, ”He'll be all right! You don't need me!”

But she did need him. He'd become indispensable to her. Didn't he realize that? What if c.o.o.ney started bleeding again? What if he wasn't really as improved as her mere clinical a.s.sessment indicated? Would Sam save a man's life, then let him go on, to the hospital, without him?

Would he let her go on without him?

He answered the question with another backward step. And when a trooper closed one of the double doors, he turned and ran out of the way. The other door closed as the chopper prepared to take off, and Kate was left staring at solid metal. It made no more sense than anything else that had transpired in the past half hour, but she felt, in that instant, as if she'd been abandoned. It was a bleak and wretchedly familiar feeling.

Sam trudged across the dark field and through the woods to Katie's pickup, fighting nausea every step of the way. He had a knot in his stomach the size of a football, and it didn't go away during the drive to Bourner's Crossing to get his Jeep, or during the drive to the cabin. When he stripped off his bloodied clothes and climbed into the shower, it was still there, and it kept him awake long into the night, as he sprawled naked across the bed, staring through the darkness at the beams above him.

There was no avoiding it. No way to deny or rationalize it. He'd been lying to himself long enough, pa.s.sing off the couple of minor incidents since the crash as residual effects of a bad experience. He'd been sure they were no big deal, just a temporary thing that would take care of itself. But he couldn't pa.s.s this one off. It had hit him smack in the face, standing there next to that chopper, when he'd wanted to climb in and go with Katie-and couldn't.

He had a problem. A bad problem. Far worse than anything he'd imagined. Sure, the other things he'd had to put up with lately were annoying and a little embarra.s.sing. He didn't like not being able to eat a steak or to drink a cold beer on a hot afternoon. He missed the smell of brewing coffee and the rush that first cup in the morning gave him. He missed smoking, too, as bad a habit as it might be. In the long run, though, those things weren't all that important, and he could accept having to give them up.

But this? No. He'd never be able to accept it.

And he'd never forgive himself, either. For the first time in his life that he could remember, he'd truly let a woman down. Worse, she was maybe the only woman he'd ever been aware of wanting not to disappoint. He'd seen the look of confused panic on Katie's face when she'd realized he wasn't going with her to the hospital, and if that look hadn't been enough to make him grit his teeth and climb into that d.a.m.ned chopper, he wasn't sure anything ever would be.

He rolled over in bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, and he thought about the woman he'd deserted that night, and about the way she'd handled herself in the face of imminent tragedy. He thought about the wholehearted manner in which she'd given herself to an unconscious stranger, who would have died on her. And he thought about the others to whom she gave so much.

He'd healed a man tonight who'd been more dead than alive-something he'd have done whether or not Katie had been there-and he had a gut-level knowledge, however recently he'd acquired it, of the things that went through a person's mind when faced with another human being's suffering. He knew how Katie had felt, kneeling there, watching that guy die, and he wondered how she stood it: the pain of knowing that, sometimes, what she gave wouldn't be enough, the fear that there would never be enough of her to go around to all the people in need.

Which was why he felt so G.o.d-awful about deserting her. He'd known how she felt. He'd wanted to help her. But it would have meant flying with her to Marquette. And that he hadn't been able to do.

Staring out the window at the three-quarter moon rising above the trees, Sam let out a ragged sigh. Face it, Reese, you're not a man anymore. You're a coward. And the last thing Katie needs is a gutless b.a.s.t.a.r.d like you to add to her list of burdens.

Eight.

In the light of day, things didn't look much different. If anything, the slate-gray sky heightened Kate's sense that she'd been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the real world and plunged into a world of illusion. All night long she' d managed to behave as though everything were normal, following the hospital's routines, filling out forms for the chopper crew. Meanwhile, a voice inside her kept asking, Don't they know? Don't they realize something strange is going on here? Why aren't we talking about that instead of filling out these silly forms?

If she could have believed that what she'd seen Sam do was an illusion-merely a misunderstanding on her part-it would have been easier, but the facts refused to allow it: Ray c.o.o.ney was alive and in astonis.h.i.+ngly good condition. Indeed, she'd had a heck of a time explaining his condition to the trauma unit's attending physician. The doctor simply couldn't understand how c.o.o.ney had survived so long, and so well, with so little body fluids. Well, she didn't understand it, either.

Something incredible had happened. Something she couldn't describe or name. Something that made her insides tremble. And she desperately needed to know what it was.

<script>