Part 21 (2/2)
He trailed off, and when he raised a hand to her face to brush aside a long strand of hair-one of many that had escaped the clips she'd stuck into it so many hours ago-she stiffened at his touch. Don't do this to me, she wanted to cry. Don't touch me or be warm and tender, when you're only going to take it away. Please, just don't make it hurt any worse than it already does.
Sensing her response, Sam hesitated, the backs of his fingers grazing her cheek. She couldn't meet his gaze but stared at the blue T-s.h.i.+rt molded to his chest.
Finally, he dropped his hand and sighed. ”I know. I've got a couple of other scores to even, don't I?”
Kate's brow twitched into a wary frown, and she glanced at him. But he turned to snag his jacket off the couch and sling it over his shoulder. Then, catching her hand in his, he started toward the door.
”Come on, Katie. What you need is a dose of Sam's Special Elixir. It's guaranteed to cure whatever ails you. And we've got just about enough time to catch the show, too-if we hurry.”
Special Elixir? The show? Her look became pained when he shot her a wink. Did he expect her to respond to his lighthearted att.i.tude? Was she supposed to put on her usual cheerful face and play along? She couldn't have done it if her life had depended on it, and as she allowed herself to be towed through the terminal, she wondered if he knew how hard it was for her right then simply to speak to him. . . . But he must know.
Her confusion deepened when he gave her a sideways grin and asked, ”So, how'd it go at the hospital? Did you have to spend the night explaining away another miracle-or was this just a 'highly improbable'?”
Tossing an apology to a lady she'd b.u.mped into, Kate replied, ”Neither. But if Doc hadn't been there, I might have had trouble.”
”Oh?” Sam swerved around a couple of people ahead of them.
”He altered my notes on the delivery before the medevac team got there. As he pointed out to me, you may be a miracle worker, but you're not an x-ray or a sonogram-meaning, I shouldn't have used your intuition about what was going on inside Lynn as the basis for a diagnosis.”
”But you knew when I told you-”
”Yes, I knew, but. . . .”
Stopping in front of a door that read FLIGHT SERVICE ST AT ION, he waited for her to finish.
She avoided his gaze as she admitted, ”I don't know how I knew. I just . . .”
”Read my mind.”
She hesitated. ”It seemed like that. But not words. Just images.”
He opened the door, motioning her through it, then led her across the room to a long, high counter. Leaning on the counter he turned toward her, saying, ”Images are all I get. I never know what's happening in a technical sense, unless it's explained to me. And I've never had bleeding stop, then start again, like that -like it wasn't working. It worried me, Katie, and if you hadn't been there to give me the clues I needed, I might have given up.” His gaze skimmed her features, then met hers in a look that was far too intimate for her nerves. ”I thought we did pretty good together,” he murmured.
She'd been trying not to think about how good they'd been together. It would only be one more thing to miss.
Deliberately avoiding his clear, knowing gaze, she said, ”But Doc was right. Officially, we don't know the cause of the hemorrhage. So, instead of saying Lynn had a partial previa-”
”A what?”
”A condition where the placenta covers part of the cervix. It almost always requires a C-section.” Kate shook her head a little. ”Anyway, it doesn't matter. The chart now reads, 'cause of bleeding unknown.' Since previas aren't a chronic or genetic thing, the chances of Lynn ever having another one are extremely slim, so-”
”So what they don't know won't hurt them,” Sam concluded.
”Right.”
Picking up a flight plan form off the stack on the counter and a pen from the holder in front of him, he began filling in blanks.
She watched him as she continued. ”Are you aware that whatever you do to people when you heal them seems to act like a . . . a . . .”
”Megadose of vitamins?”
”Yes. The obstetrician was pretty well flabbergasted at what good condition Lynn was in, all things considered.” A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she added, ”Doc had a great time, acting smug in front of all those hospital doctors, saying what a fine day it was that he decided to take me on as his a.s.sociate, and how some Obs he's met would do well to take a lesson from me in labor and delivery management.”
She watched Sam's face as he wrote, expecting to see him scowl. Instead, to her surprise, he began to chuckle.
”So, he handed you the rap, huh? How'd you get out of it?”
”I stammered a lot.”
His earthy laugh turned into a bad-boy grin as he glanced up from his writing to touch a fingertip to her cheek. ”You should have just flashed your dimples at them. They'd have been eating out of your hand.”
Flashed her dimples? How insensitive could he be, making fresh remarks, flirting with her, like he'd been doing since the day they'd met? Yet as Kate felt the pain-and the anger- slice through her, a voice said, Wait. Sam wasn't insensitive or cruel, not deliberately, like this. Maybe, though, he was feeling so good about flying again that he didn't realize what his obvious happiness was doing to her. And she almost could have forgiven him for that.
Almost.
Ten minutes later, strapped in and helmeted in the back seat of the Mentor, Kate listened on the headset to the confusing radio chatter as Sam got clearance for takeoff. She didn't understand most of what was said, but she understood something more important: He wasn't scared. He was excited, though, and despite her exhaustion and heartache, his excitement was starting to affect her, too.
It was still dark as they zipped down the runway; but the weather had cleared so that, as the plane climbed, Kate saw the first blush of dawn starting to pearl the eastern horizon. The view was breathtaking, sitting high in the low fuselage of the old military plane, with nothing in the way of seeing the pink and lavender shades seep into the sky off to her right. Below, the lights of Marquette rapidly disappeared, replaced by an unrelieved inky blackness. Finally, it occurred to her that she was looking at the deep, chilly waters of Lake Superior.
Confused, Kate glanced to the left, then down, then to the right again, where the sky was growing brighter. When Sam did a banking turn to the right to head due east, she adjusted the microphone on her headset and spoke on a tentative note.
”Sam?”
”Hmm?”
”May I ask a dumb question?”
”Honey, you can ask me anything you want.”
”Aren't we headed in the wrong direction?”
”Oh, I don't know,” he drawled. Then, as the first piercing ray of suns.h.i.+ne shot over the horizon, he added quietly, ”Are we?”
But she knew he didn't expect a reply.
It came fast, much faster than it did at ground level. The top of the sun's fiery arc appeared first, in a sliver at the watery edge, its golden beams rippling over the water's surface, reflecting in its mirror. The arc grew, swelling over the rim of the earth, the light racing ahead of it. Glittering, blinding light. Higher it rose, above the horizon, a throbbing ball of golden-white fire.
It was glorious. A breathtaking display so powerful, so pure, it could make a person forget everything else. Before long, though, the sheer physical impact of such blinding light became overwhelming, and Kate had to shut her eyes.
She was reaching to pull down the black visor on her helmet when she heard Sam mutter, ”So much for the show.” Then the nose of the plane took a swing upward and blocked out her view of the horizon.
Instead of turning, though, Sam kept going-straight up . . . and over, until the plane heeled onto its back. For several long seconds, the waters of Lake Superior became the sky, and the sky, the ground. Then, with a flip, the sky was where it belonged again-and her heart was somewhere down around her feet.
”Katie?”
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